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Dysentery this spring.”
    Sarah thought she might
truly
be ill then. Talk of corsets and petticoatswas one thing, but her damaged health was quite another—no business of these Virginia men.
    â€œMy poor Sarah,” said Mary.
    The pity made her queasy.
    Freddy gave her cheek a light smack with his open palm. He lifted his hand to do it again, but she grabbed it with ungloved hand.
    â€œMr. Hill,” she said firmly. “Would you kindly not do that.”
    She had completed her mission and so was finished with the charade. She would not stand to have this young man thwacking her as if burping a nursing baby!
    Freddy sat her upright while Annie moved the rungs of her skirt so that her legs were not exposed. The guard finally brought a cup of water and hardtack. Her mother fed her the cracker. The dryness choked her, and she reached for the water.
    â€œDrink slowly,” Freddy instructed, his words blowing strands of hair loose over her ears.
    â€œWe had a lighter lunch than usual,” Annie told them.
    Another lie. They’d eaten nothing. Sarah swallowed hard. The pulpy lump worked its way down sluggishly. Worried it’d hit her stomach like a rock in a cotton gin, she followed Freddy’s instruction, then handed him the empty cup.
    â€œThank you, I’m fine now,” she insisted and pulled herself up out of Freddy’s embrace. The back of her neck was hot and pinpricked where his breath had been.
    â€œShe needs sustenance,” said her father. “All of you do. Go with George now.”
    â€œPriscilla, my wife, has a hearty cawl waiting over the fire,” said George. “Corn pones, freshly made. We’re honored to host you in New Charlestown.”
    â€œVery kind of you,” said Mary. “But I can’t say good-bye just yet. I
can’t
.”
    â€œDear,” John said to calm her. “God has counted the minutes of my life, so you are free of that duty. Besides, I’d like some time alone to prepare.Jesus Christ’s hours in the Garden of Gethsemane were vital to his forbearance.”
    No one dared argue with that, though Mary did tremble so fiercely that George took her by the arm to keep her from falling.
    Still Mary did not move from John’s bedside, until he commanded, “Go, Mary. Don’t make me worry after you in my final hours. I will see you in the morning. God bless you and the children.”
    At that, Mary collected herself. “God have mercy on you.” She let go of George’s steady arm and kissed John’s forehead. Then, calling meekly for both daughters, she proceeded out of the jail cell without turning back.
    Sarah and Annie kissed their father good night as they would have at home. It was easier that way—to adhere to routine and do what they’d always done, convince themselves that by virtue of action, the world might set itself right. That in the morning, birds and sunlight would be welcoming visions and not harbingers. That tomorrow was simply tomorrow.
    â€œGood night, Father,” said Sarah. His rough beard scratched her cheek. She’d never embraced him without that sting.
    â€œThank you, Sarah,” he replied, and in his words she heard the chimes of Resurrection Day. He would use her map to escape in the night. She would’ve bet her soul on it.
    â€”
    T HE MILITARY stagecoach drove Sarah, Annie, and Mary away from Harpers Ferry, over a creek branching off the Shenandoah River, through a forest sounding of bullfrogs, to a community of modest brick buildings tucked between the Blue Ridge cliffs.
    A gabled white church stood in the center, its steeple rising like an icicle grown backward. Sarah envisioned the prayers of the townsfolk dripping to heaven. It seemed entirely possible by the way the starlight glinted off the needle point, twinkling bright and causing her gaze to shift heavenward. Maybe all those constellations were towns like this one, with prayers melting