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

I hesitated. Was I walking into a trap? Would he haul me to the cells the moment I took the first bite? But then my hunger got the better of me.

The lowest point of my life, I saw then, was not the moment I’d been arrested. Or sharing a shit bucket with fifty women at Newgate. It was this moment; here, now, eating a stolen potato, about to sell my body to the redcoats, with the filth of the factory clinging to my skin. I turned my face downwards as I ate, unable to look another person in the eye.

Blackwell took a loaf from the shelf and broke off the end. Held it out to me.

I chewed slowly, the dry bread sticking in my throat. But the food in my stomach took away an ache that had begun to consume me.

I could feel Blackwell’s eyes on me. Could feel the heat rising from his body. I closed my eyes. I had eaten his bread now. The thing was done. I owed him compensation, and my only way of paying was to lie on my back and lift my skirts.

He opened a wooden storage chest beside the bed and took out a thin grey blanket. Laid it on the floor in front of the empty grate. “You’ll sleep here.”

I watched him smooth the edges of the blanket across the uneven dirt floor. What was this? If he was going to take me, I just wanted it over with.

But I went to it, that thin little blanket by the unlit fire. My sodden skirts tangled around my legs, dampening the blanket. I was barely warmer than I had been on the street. Blackwell crouched in front of the grate and laid a fire, despite the water drizzling down the chimney. I shuffled backwards and hugged my knees to avoid his arm brushing against mine.

The fire hissed and spat before taking. I watched a line of steam rise from my clothing. I was acutely aware of Blackwell’s presence as he moved slowly around the edges of the hut, rearranging things that didn’t need rearranging. The silence was thick and heavy. Rain pattered dully against the window.

He took a book from the shelf and carried it to his sleeping pallet. He slid off his boots, and stretched out on his side, a blanket pulled to his waist and the book opened on the floor beside him.

A faint flicker of hope stirred inside me; perhaps he wouldn’t come to me that night. But that scrap of hope felt too dangerous. I steeled myself against it.

I looked past him to the door. I could reach it without difficulty.

I could run.

But I didn’t. What was keeping me there? Was it the warmth of the fire, or the roof over my head? Was it the faint flicker of curiosity I felt for this man? Perhaps I just wanted to see who would be first to break this silence.

I shivered hard and shuffled closer to the fire. Blackwell looked up from his book.

“Your clothes are wet,” he said. “If you sleep in them you’ll get ill.”

His words were matter of fact. No threat, no lechery. But I understood them to be an order. I wrapped the blanket around myself and reached beneath it to unbutton my bodice, wriggling out of my dress and laying it beside the fire to dry.

Was he still watching me? I couldn’t tell. I dared a glance over my shoulder. His eyes were on his book, but the muscles in his forearm were tense beneath his rolled-up shirtsleeves.

There were no more words. Just a thick, weighty silence and the crackle of the fire.

I see now, with painful clarity, that I should never have set foot inside that hut. I ought to have stayed beneath the awnings of the church and let the rain soak me through to my bones. But I didn’t leave. Instead, I stayed with the blanket pulled to my chin, hardly daring to breathe. Waiting for footsteps to come towards me. Waiting for the moment that I lost a part of myself.

*

When I opened my eyes, dawn was flooding the hut and Lieutenant Blackwell’s sleeping pallet was empty. I sat up, rolling the stiffness out of my shoulders.

I’d done my best to stay awake through the night, but exhaustion had finally pulled me down. It was a surprise to be woken by the morning light and not the lieutenant’s breath on my skin.

I climbed to my feet and folded the blanket, hanging it over the back of a chair. My skirts were still damp and smelled of wet wool.

My eyes moved to the small wash basin sitting beside the storage chest. It was filled with clean water, a bar of soap and a washcloth resting on the rim. It was almost as though it had been placed there for me. I knew it foolish to think such a thing. I would likely be punished if Blackwell returned and discovered me splashing about in his washbin uninvited. But I didn’t care. I could barely remember the last time my skin hadn’t been caked in grime.

I plunged the washcloth into the water, scrubbing at my arms until they were red. I sloughed away at my face and neck, then lifted my skirts and worked the cloth up my legs, beneath my shift and across my stomach. I worked the soap suds over my body, inhaling their faintly sweet scent. Tears of gratitude overcame me. I had become so accustomed to the layer of filth on my skin, to my own stench of grime and sweat and saltwater. With soap suds gliding over my body, I felt fleetingly, preciously human again.

I looked back at the basin. I had left the water murky and brown. I carried it outside and emptied it into the vegetable patch behind