One of Us Buried by Johanna Craven (year 2 reading books TXT) 📕

I’d sat beside her at the spinning wheels, we were not sisters. We were Irish rebel and sasanaigh. The reality of it stung.

I was still scrubbing when Blackwell shoved open the door. His hair was windblown and I could smell tobacco on him. He eyed me, and then the contents of the shelves I had upended across the table. Books and candles and soap and razors were piled high.

“You’re still awake,” he said sharply. “Why are you still awake?”

I raised my eyebrows, hand planted on my hip. “I’m cleaning the shelves.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that.” He slid off his jacket and hung it on the nail beside the door. “I hoped you’d be asleep.”

I tossed the cloth back in the bucket of muddy water. I didn’t deserve this sharpness. I had not dragged him to the Christmas party. I had not poured the liquor down his throat, or forced him to fall asleep on the floor with his body pressed to mine.

 “I’m here as your housekeeper,” I snapped. “And you are to reprimand me for cleaning your house?” My words came out drenched with my best high society inflections. Blackwell looked taken aback.

For a moment I thought to tell him of the way I had been dragged from the hut by Owen and the other men. Something to shift his anger from me to the rebels. But no. I did not want him to know what tales were being told of him.

He took the rum bottle from the table and poured himself a cup. Sank heavily into a chair and brought his drink to his lips.

I hovered beside the bucket of water, twisting the cloth between my hands.

Blackwell filled a second cannikin and set it on the edge of the table. The chair creaked noisily as I sat beside him. In the centre of the table, the candle hissed and spluttered. I wrapped my hand around the cup, but didn’t drink.

He lifted Sophia’s portrait from the top of the pile. With one hand, he clicked it open, then closed it again quickly.

“Do you miss her?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

I ran my finger around the rim of the cup. “Just sometimes?”

He didn’t speak at once. “It’s as though she belongs to another life,” he said finally. “Another world.”

His eyes were down as he spoke. Was he ashamed of the distance he felt from his wife? Or was he feeling the inappropriateness of sharing all this with a mere convict woman? He sat the portrait back on the table and took a mouthful of rum.

“Forgive my coldness,” he said after a moment. “It was not about you.”

I nodded, though I did not believe him. I knew this had plenty to do with me.

“How were the celebrations?” I asked.

He scooped back the dark liquid of his hair, his shoulders relaxing visibly. “Captain Daley’s wife singed her eyelashes playing Snapdragon.”

I smiled. “I almost did the same as a child once. My father was horrified. He told me it was most inappropriate for a young lady to set herself on fire.”

And so there it was; my admission that I was not a pitiable story of stolen eggs and squalid slums. I was a long-ago lady who’d fallen from a world of twelfth night balls. It felt right to tell him, after his brief moment of openness.

He peered at me, turning his cannikin around in his hands. I could tell there was much he wanted to ask. Could tell he desperately wanted to break that unwritten rule and ask me what had led me to my prison ship. Instead, he said:

“And how did you spend your Christmas once the Snapdragon was forbidden?”

I smiled. “Father had me play carols on the fortepiano.”

It seemed impossible that such things had happened on the same earth as this. Blackwell was right; it was as though our old lives belonged to another world.

“You play the piano?” he asked.

I nodded faintly. “At least, I used to.” I was quite certain I would never do such a thing again.

“Captain Macarthur’s wife owns a fortepiano,” he said. “Downriver.”

“Really?” I heard the light in my voice. While I knew, of course, that a lag like me would never get her hands to it, it filled me with inexplicable joy that the instrument had made it to this outpost of the world. It made me feel less like I were living on the wildest edge of the planet.

 “I had a lesson or two when I was a boy,” said Blackwell. “My mother used to play. But I rather think I gave my tutor nightmares.”

A laugh escaped me. It hung in the stillness of the hut. Brought a crooked smile to Blackwell’s face. I found it oddly easy to imagine him as a boy, bashing at the keys of his mother’s piano.

A smile moved across his face. A smile of reminiscence? Or was he simply enjoying the present moment? I wished I could see inside his head, if just for a second.

He emptied his glass, chuckling to himself. “I must say, Eleanor, of all the strange things I’ve seen in this place, you are by far the most surprising.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I’m not sure how I ought to take that.”

“You ought to take it as it was intended. As a compliment. A sign I value your company.”

Stillness hung between us, half pleasant, half terrifying. I wanted to scream to break the silence, wanted to hold it forever. Wanted to step towards him, wanted to run away.

Lottie had warned me away from him. But my trust in Lottie had splintered. She had been standing there at Patrick Owen’s side, spouting tales so vicious they could only be lies.

I was no fool. Blackwell was a soldier. I knew there was blood on his hands. And I knew much of