Chapter 17

"How's the stove working, Annie?" Beall asked as he squatted before it and fiddled with the doors.

"Fine, fine, leave it be. It was jus' like I want it," replied the young woman, pulling her dress down as she rolled out of her rope bed.

"How'd you get that bruise on your shoulder? I do that?"

"None a'your business, Alexander Beall. I don't have to tell you everything jes' cause we roll in the quilts from time to time and you brung, brought me this here little stove." Annie smiled at what was a long speech for her and lifted her chin with pride.

"Somebody hit you, right?"

"Maybe, but I been hit before, probably will be again, bit too, here and there. Goes with the work. Should'a seen me down in Georgetown after you run me out a'town. Black an' blue most a'the time, soldiers and sailors every night."

"Now you know I had to do that," Beall said pulling on his short boots. "Them Redcoats and Tories was that unhappy you wouldn't service none of 'em."

"I know. I was jus' funning you," Annie said as she reset the stove doors the way she wanted them. "This here was a good idea, but this shack don't have two boards that meet all the way up. In that wind the other night, I thought my bed was going to go flying and my poor bum would freeze."

"Not much I can do about that. Tim McNish ever come to visit you? Boy's a good carpenter."

"You know I'm not going to tell you who comes to my bed. That's my business, but I think I am going to have to go down to Georgetown for the winter again. It'll be December soon."

"Damn hard, Annie. Thought with the stove, you could stay," Beall said, shaking his head. "Say, did you ever know a young whore name of Joan Suede down there, the Swede some call her?"

"What's that to you? Think of taking your trade elsewhere? I'm not good enough for you now that you're road superintendent or whatever the hell it is?"

"Don't get all excited. I just saw her down there a couple of weeks ago and wondered if you knew her," Beall said calmly as he checked the buttons at his waistband and hitched up his belt. "You know, from when you was down there."

"Oh yes, I know that one. She's bound, you know. She come, came to town 'bout two years ago, right after the war ended, and took the cream right off the top. That's what she did, took all the rich ones that we'd been sharing around, cultivating. Left us the tars and the clodhoppers, the hicks. She might be a nice girl, but I can't understand ary a word she says. Calls herself a 'luder' or something like that. She's young, fifteen or so. We tried to talk to her, some of us did, one night, late, no rough stuff, up in her little room, but we couldn't make her understand. I do think she had rough time, either back home or coming here on the ship."

"That so? What makes you think that?"

"She looked scared sometimes, watching the door, like, well, like she was afraid of something."

"You remember Sparks, the Brookes' overseer?"

"Yes, damn him. Deserves to be dead, drawn and quartered. I did him once and never again. Nasty, rotten cur he was. Dirtiest man I ever laid."

"Can you imagine the Swede swivin' him, regular like, or him all but courting that high-priced bawd?"