“He’ll be all right. He’s in a good place where he’s cared for. They’re even letting him go to school.”
“How can you get to Massachusetts? You’ve no money for coach fare.”
“I’ll walk,” she said proudly. “A person should walk to freedom.”
“A person’s feet will get mighty sore,” muttered Triphena.
7
South to Freedom
Lyddie set out at once. Or nearly at once. First Triphena made the girl put on her own second-best pair of boots. They were, of course, too large for Lyddie, so she had to wait while the cook fetched two extra pairs of stockings and paper with which to stuff the toes. When Lyddie objected, Triphena kept muttering, “A person can’t walk to Massachusetts barefoot, not in April, she can’t.”
Next, Triphena made her wait while she packed her a parcel of food large enough to feed a table of harvesters. And, finally, she gave her a tiny cloth purse with five silver dollars in it.
“It’s too much,” Lyddie protested.
“I’m not having your dead body on my conscience,” the cook said. “It will be enough for coach fare and the stops along the way. The only tavern food I trust is my own.”
“But the mistress …”
“You leave the mistress to me.”
“I’ll pay you back the money—with interest when I can,” Lyddie promised. Triphena only shook her head, and gave her a pat on the buttocks as though she were five years old.
“Just don’t forget me, ey? Give your old friend a thought now and again. That’s all the interest I’ll be wanting.”
It was three in the afternoon before she could even start her journey, but she would not let Triphena persuade her to wait. She might let the mistress talk her into staying or lose her nerve if she didn’t set out at once.
; Her heart was light even if her feet felt clumsy in their makeshift boots and oversized stockings. She remembered Ezekial and thought: He walked north for freedom and I am walking south.
She had forgotten in the excitement that she had already walked above ten miles that day, but her feet remembered. Long before dark they were chafing in the unaccustomed bindings of stockings and ill-fitting boots, reminding her that they had done too much. She sat down on a rock and took the boots off. But before long she felt chilled, so she put them on again and started out, but more slowly than before.
Then, just at dusk, the sky opened, and it began to rain—not light spring showers, but cold, soaking torrents of rain, streaming down her face, icicling rivulets down her chest and legs.
She was obliged, reluctantly, to stop in the next village and seek shelter for the night. The mistress of the local inn was at first shocked to see a young girl traveling alone and then solicitous. “You look near drowned!” she cried, and asked her where she thought she was headed.
“Lowell, is it? Well, the stagecoach will be coming through the end of the week. Work for me till then and I’ll give you your board.”
Lyddie hesitated, but her sodden clothes and blistered feet reminded her how unsuited she was to continue the journey. She gratefully accepted the mistress’s offer and worked so hard that before the week was out the woman was begging her to forget Lowell and stay on. But Lyddie was not to be persuaded.
She boarded the coach on Thursday in the same dismal rain she’d arrived in. Handing over three of her precious dollars to the driver, she settled herself in the corner of the carriage. There were only two other passengers—a man and a woman who seemed to be married, though they hardly spoke to each other. The woman gave Lyddie’s dress and shawl and strange boots a critical going over with her eyes, then settled again to her knitting, which the bumping of the coach made difficult.
With the muddy roads, it took two days to get to Windsor. They had not even left Vermont. Lyddie often wished she had saved her dollars and walked—rain or no rain. Surely she could have made it just as fast. But at least the disagreeable people left the coach at Windsor. The bed in the inn was infested with bugs, so she felt both filthy and itchy the next morning, and was not happily surprised that the coach, which had seemed overcrowded with three, was now to carry six as far as Lowell.
One of the passengers was a girl about her own age. Lyddie wanted to ask her if she, too, was going for a factory girl, but she had a young man with her who appeared to be her brother, so Lyddie was hesitant to speak. Then, too, she remembered the look the previous female passenger had given her.
The six of them were jammed into the carriage. There was hardly room for any of them to move, yet the rolling and pitching of the coach seemed worse rather than better for the load. Lyddie tried to sit delicately on one hip and then the other—to spread the bruising out if possible. One of the gentlemen lit a large pipe and the odor of it nearly made her retch. Fortunately, another gentleman reminded him sternly that there were ladies present, and the first man reluctantly tapped his pipe against the metal fixings of the door. But the stench had already been added to the air of foul breath and strong body odors. Lyddie longed for a healthy smell of a farmyard. People were so much fouler than critters.
And still, when the others weren’t concentrating on keeping their seats in the swaying coach, they were looking at her—at her clothes especially. At first she was mortified, but the longer they rode, the angrier she became. How rude they were, these so-called gentry.
Everyone’s clothes were a disgrace before they’d reached Lowell. The thaw and spring rains had turned parts of the roadway into muddy sloughs, and despite the coachman’s skill, early on the last morning they were stuck fast. The passengers were all obliged to alight, and the four men ordered by the coachman to push the wheels out of the rut.
Lyddie watched the hapless gentlemen heave and shove and sweat, all to no avail. The coachman yelled encouragement from above. The men grunted and cursed below as their fancy breeches and overcoats turned brown with the mud and their lovely beaver hats went rolling off down the road.
After at least a quarter of an hour of watching, she could stand their stupidity no longer. Lyddie took off her worn shawl, tied it about her waist, and tucked up her skirts under it. She found a flat stone and put it under the mired wheel. Then she waded in, her narrow shoulders shoving two of the gaping men aside as she set her own strong right shoulder against the rear wheel, ordered the men to the rear boot, and called out; “One, two, three, heave!”