Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace

By eight o’clock we were on board the steamer Transit, with the wagon, and Charley Horse, and the boxes and all, and pulling out of the harbour; and I was much relieved. The day was fair, with a fine breeze, and the sun sparkling on the blue waves; and by this time James was in high spirits, and very proud of himself; and I was afraid that if he got out of my sight, he would go about boasting, and strutting in his new clothes, and showing off Mr. Kinnear’s gold trinkets; but he was eager to keep me in view, in case I should tell someone what he had done, and he stuck by me like a leech. We were on the lower deck, because of Charley, as I didn’t wish to leave him alone; he was nervous, and I suspected he’d never been on a steamer before; and the noise of the engine, and the paddle-wheel going around, must have been frightening to him. So I stayed with him and fed him crackers, which he loved because of the salt. A young girl and a horse will always attract attention from admiring youths, who will pretend to be interested in the horse; and soon we did; and I found myself having to answer questions.

James had told me to say that we were brother and sister, and had left our unpleasant relations, with whom we had quarrelled; so I chose to be Mary Whitney, and said that he was David Whitney, and we were on our way to Rochester. The young fellows did not see any reason why they should not flirt with me, as James was only my brother, and so they did; and I thought it my part to return their sallies with good humour, though it told against me at the trial; and at the time I got some black looks from James. But I was only attempting to allay suspicion, both theirs and his; and underneath my show of happiness I was very downheartened.

We stopped at Niagara, but it was nowhere near the Falls, so I was unable to see them. James went ashore, and made me come with him, and he ate a beefsteak. I did not take any refreshment, as I was nervous the whole time we were there. But nothing happened, and we went on. One young fellow pointed to another steamer in the distance, and said it was the Lady of the Lake, a United States vessel which until recently was thought to be the fastest boat on the Lake; but she had just lost a trial-of-speed race to the new Royal Mail Standard boat, the Eclipse, which outran her by four minutes and a half. And I said didn’t that make him proud, and he said no, because he had a dollar bet on the Lady. And all present laughed.

Then something came clear to me which I used to wonder about. There is a quilt pattern called Lady of the Lake, which I thought was named for the poem; but I could never find any lady in the pattern, nor any lake. But now I saw that the boat was named for the poem, and the quilt was named for the boat; because it was a pinwheel design, which must have stood for the paddle going around. And I thought that things did make sense, and have a design to them, if you only pondered them long enough. And so perhaps it might be with recent events, which at the moment seemed to me entirely senseless; and finding out the reason for the quilt pattern was a lesson to me, to have faith. Then I remembered Mary Whitney reading that poem with me, and how we would skip through the dull courtships, and move on to the exciting parts, and the fighting; but the place I recalled best was the poor woman who’d been stolen away from the church on her wedding day, kidnapped for a nobleman’s pleasure, and had gone mad from it, and wandered about picking wildflowers, and singing to herself. And I considered that I too was being kidnapped after a fashion, though not on my wedding day; and I feared I might end up in the same plight.

Meanwhile we were coming into Lewiston. James had attempted to sell the horse and wagon to those on board, against my better judgment; but he asked far too low a price, which aroused suspicion. And because he’d offered them for sale, the Customs Officer in Lewiston put a duty on them, and detained them because we did not have the money to pay it. But although James was angry at first, he soon passed it off as being of little importance, and told me we would sell some of the other things, and come back the next day for the rig. But I was quite anxious about it, as it meant we would have to spend the night there; and although we were in the United States, and should think ourselves safe, as we were in a foreign country now; yet that never stopped the slavers up from the States from seizing runaway slaves they said were theirs; and altogether it was far too close for comfort. I tried to make him promise not to sell Charley Horse, though he could do as he liked with the wagon. But he said, Horse be damned; and I believe he was jealous of the poor horse, because I was so fond of him.

The scenery in the United States was much the same as that of the countryside we had just come from, but it was indeed a different place, as the flags were different. I remembered what Jeremiah told me about borders, and how easy it was to cross them. The time when he had said that to me, in the kitchen at Mr. Kinnear’s, seemed very long ago, and in a different lifetime; but in reality it was just over a week before.

We went to the nearest tavern, which was not a hotel at all, as was said in the broadsheet poem about me, but only a cheap inn by the wharf. There James soon swilled down a lot more beer and brandy than was good for him; and then we had supper, and he drank yet more. And when it was time to retire, he wanted us to pretend we were man and wife, and to take a room together; for, he said, it would be half the cost. But I saw what he was after, and said that as we had started on the boat as brother and sister, we could not change now, in case any remembered us from the boat. So he was given a room with another man in it, and I had one to myself.

But he tried to push his way into my room, saying we would be married soon enough anyway. And I said we would not, and I would sooner marry the Devil himself, than him; and he said he would have my promise off me anyway. Then I said I would scream, which would be a different thing in a houseful of people than in one with only two corpses. And he told me for God’s sake to shut my mouth, and called me a slut and a whore; and I said he should think of some new words to use, because I was heartily tired of those. And he left in a foul temper.

I resolved to get up very early, and dress, and steal away. For if I was forced in some way to marry him, I would be dead and buried in one shake of a lamb’s tail; as if he was suspicious of me at present, he would be more so later. And once he’d got me into a farmhouse, in a strange neighbourhood with no friends about, I would not give two pins for my own life, as it would be a knock on the head for me, and six feet deep in the kitchen garden, and I would be making the potatoes and carrots grow, a great deal sooner than I cared to think.

Happily there was a door that latched, and so I latched it; and then I took off my clothes, all except my shift, and folded them neatly across the back of the chair, as I used to do in the little room at Mrs. Alderman Parkinson’s where I slept with Mary. Then I blew out the candle and slid myself in between the sheets, which were nearly clean for a wonder; and I closed my eyes. On the insides of my eyelids I could see the water moving, the blue heaps of the waves as we came across the Lake, with the light sparkling on them; only they were much bigger waves, and darker, like rolling hills; and they were the waves of the ocean which I had voyaged across three years before, though it seemed like a century. And I wondered what would become of me, and comforted myself that in a hundred years I would be dead and at peace, and in my grave; and I thought it might be less trouble altogether, to be in it a good deal sooner than that.