Disclaimer: I don't own "The Patriot", Elizabeth and Christine are mine.
Libertiney, Scorpian, Bizziebee - Thanks for the reviews, I'm glad that you like it.
II. A Nightmare Come True
"Do you know in who I'll fall in love with?" The old woman raised her head and looked straight into Elizabeth's eyes.
"The Devil." She said shortly and dropped the girl's hand. Elizabeth somehow couldn't believe what the woman was saying, but what she told her, was so different from what she told her friends. She automatically reached into the pocket in her dress and took out the one pence for the Gypsy. When she was about to give it to her, the old woman stopped her. "No, keep it. You'll need it in the future more than I need it now." The Gypsy said and started to walk away. Elizabeth threw a glance at her friends and then turned into the old woman's direction, but she was nowhere in sight.
XoXoXoX
One year later
"We're running out of money." Elizabeth said to her sister as she sat on their bed in the small room they rented.
About a half a year earlier the plantation where they lived with their mother was burned down by the redcoats as their family belonged to the supporters of the Continentals. It was a miracle that they survived as they weren't home on that day. After that Elizabeth and her sister landed on the street with practically nothing except for the clothes on their backs and the money Elizabeth got for her necklace – a small silver cross on a silver chain. She and her sister got each one of those, but Christine refused to sell hers, as she said it was a gift from their mother and a symbol of their faith. Elizabeth couldn't help but to think: 'We'll see what your faith will give you when you'll starve to death.' It was truly a fact, that they now lived on the brink of starvation as most of their money went on the scruffy looking room.
As surprising it might seem, it was Elizabeth who took a step into the rough world as an adult responsible for her twin sister, that kept her naivety. In some moments she was angry that she had to be responsible for both of them, overcoming all the obstacles, while Christine though the changes in their life, still remained in the warm blanket representing the world of a normal, almost sixteen year old girl. Still, at most times she thought that it's good that at least one of them can remain in the lacking of true responsibilities world. When Christine was kept safe in it, Elizabeth looked for newer and newer ways of finding money for them.
She knew that it would be a lot easier for them if she was able to find work as a mere maid, but nowadays people were too scared to hire strangers that 'came from the street'. At this time, every house was on one of the two sides – it was a house of Loyalists or a house of supporters of the Continentals. But nomather from the side they were on, they all feared one thing – spies that might be hired in their houses and that would pass on information about the house owners to the opposite side.
This situation made Elizabeth look for other ways of getting money than earning them. She stole money from people's pockets when in a crowd, she stole food when shopkeepers weren't looking. She never told her sister about it, not wanting to listen to another of Christine's lectures about sins and other things. Elizabeth stopped having problems with her conscience on the matter a long time ago. First every time she stole money she got thoughts that those might be the last their former owner had and now he would land on the street. But she directed her thoughts on another track: these were hard times for everyone, it's me or him/her. But as more she thought that way, the more she was bothered by another thing, the fear of being caught. At present that scared her the most.
She wasn't the only thief in the crowd. Their number grew and with that grew the number of thefts. This made the penalties for stealing grow higher, until Elizabeth started wondering what was worse – hunger death or the penalty for thievery.
"You'll think of something as usual, Elizabeth." Christine answered her sister's blank statement with a smile. Elizabeth sighed sadly and walked up to the only window that was in their small room. The place where they rented it, was a small house that lay on the grounds belonging to the mansion, that Fort Carolina was built around. It was surprising that the woman owning the small house – some relative to the owners of the mansion – wasn't driven out of it. Now the woman rented rooms, and her tenants were now mostly whores who found it more than convenient to be close to an entire encampment of the British army including both infantry and cavalry. The motive why Elizabeth chose to live here instead of somewhere else, was that living near a fort, must've been now the safest place in South Carolina. It didn't matter to her that they were the ones that killed her mother and burned their home, causing the situation she was now in. Now, she was set on survival and she was indifferent to the 'cause' of the British or the 'cause' of the Continentals.
"Yes, well, at least I'll try." Oh how Elizabeth envied her sister's naivety. She watched the camp and the mansion from the window as a thought kept repeating itself in her head, a thought of the most probably last way that was left to get money for her and her sister. Elizabeth knew that this would ruin her already not so wonderful reputation to the end, but honestly, did she have another choice? She had been thinking about this for some time now and at present it seemed that all alternatives except for dying of hunger on the street had ended. She was now forced to sell the last thing she owned – herself. She would have to sell her body over and over again if she wanted to survive.
The next few nights Elizabeth spent tossing and turning in her and her sister's small bed. She couldn't sleep as she desperately looked for other ways, but she knew there were none and they had less and less money with every day. When it finally got to her, that her mental search for alternatives was fruitless and would remain that way, she started looking for a way to tell her sister what she planned to do. She felt inside that she shouldn't tell her and that she should protect her from that kind of truth, concerning what Christine thought. But still, Elizabeth didn't want to be forced to watch her every word as she did till now, when she stole money. She didn't want to hide from her sister like an escaped convict that was forced to live in one house with a jail guard that just by accident forgot his face, but would recognize him immediately if a single wrongly chosen word would slip from the fugitives mouth.
On one day Elizabeth gathered all the bravery she had in herself and decided to tell her sister about the situation. Christine's reaction to what she planned was exactly the way she expected.
"You can't do that, Elizabeth. It's a sin. Besides, don't you remember what mother said about keeping our virginity until our wedding nights?" Christine replied to what her sister had just told her. Yes, Elizabeth did remember, but it was always obvious which one of them listened to their mother more about life and which one was more religious. Their dead mother tried to make good Christians out of them both, but managed to do it only with Christine. Elizabeth always more ignored what her mother said, than listened to it. Now she thanked for the way she acted then, because at present her past lack of attention allowed her to feel less guilty while using all possible methods of keeping her and her sister alive. "Surely there must be some other way than breaking the promise we gave to our mother about staying pure till our wedding day." This time Elizabeth had enough of her sister's babbling about religion, sins and their mother.
"No, damn it! There is no other way!" Elizabeth snapped at Christine. "I went through it a thousand times in my head, but there is no other way! And as for sins, my dear, it's thank to them you're still alive, you have a roof above your head and food to eat! Thanks to your so hated 'sins' you're still able to live in that dream world of a child and not lift a finger to help me in anything!" Elizabeth shouted so loud that Christine backed away from her against the wall. "Your naivety makes me sick! I made a mistake by trying to keep you safe from the world instead of breaking the truth to you at the beginning! All I get from you for everything I do is criticism! If you weren't my sister I would've thrown you out on the street a long time ago, concerning that I'm the one who takes care of us! But believe me, although you're my sister the perspective of hurting you is becoming more tempting with every day! Grow up Christine, the world is a lot dirtier and stinking place than you ever could imagine in your little, naive head!" Elizabeth sat down on the bed and buried her face in her hands. "You think I wouldn't want there to be another way?" Her voice was a lot calmer now. "But understand, please understand there is no other option except hunger death on the street, and that's not something I want to experience." Christine just kept looking at her sister, to afraid to come near her.
On the next day Elizabeth took a bath and tried to put her hair in the most tolerable hairstyle she was able to. She tried to look the best she could, knowing that when looking like a November night she won't be able to get anyone's attention. It was sunset when she left her and her sister's room. Christine didn't say a word when Elizabeth left.
To tell the truth, Elizabeth had no idea how she was going to go through this. Because of the way her mother was, the girl's knowledge of 'that' part of life was hardly basic. She had never even kissed in her life – not that Elizabeth didn't want to, but there simply never was an occasion. She knew that when it would start, it would pass through somehow. But how to start? She knew that if she wanted to actually earn something, she would have to try with the higher ranked officers, so she decided to go to the mansion. Still, when she was already standing before it, she had no idea what to do next.
Elizabeth was standing with her back to the gate, so she didn't notice when it opened. She then heard the sound of a horse galloping into the fort. She turned her head to see who just rode in. In that moment her eyes fell onto the commander of the Green Dragoons, Colonel William Tavington.
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