twenty-three

A scrabbling noise awoke me. My head pounded and my hands were icy. What? I opened my eyes but my glasses were askew. Why was I sprawled on the floor of a … a carriage house? I pushed up to sitting, straightening my spectacles. A gray mouse scurried past me and darted under the carriage. A carriage house … Oh.

I’d come for a labor. Someone had attacked the back of my head. The note had been a ruse to lure me up the hill. I now knew without even looking that there was no apartment upstairs, no woman in travail, no baby on its way.

I pushed up to standing, dusting off my still-gloved hands, wincing at the pain the movement brought to my head. I reeled with a moment of dizziness. I heeded it, standing still until the vertigo passed. I needed to get out of here. I grasped the door’s handle but it didn’t budge. My knuckles on the handle tightened, and I swallowed down a sudden lump in my throat. Someone had not only attacked me but had locked me in.

I stared at the door. I tried to slide it again, putting all my weight into the effort. It wouldn’t move. I shivered from the cold, and even more from fear. If I didn’t come home after dark, the Bailey family wouldn’t worry. They were accustomed to me going off to births and staying up to several days. My heart beat so hard I could barely breathe. Whoever attacked me hoped to have left me for dead. Just like Rowena. I removed a glove, lowered my bonnet, and touched the back of my head. My hand came away damp with blood, but not a lot. I must have been unconscious for some time for the blood to be already coagulated. Scalp wounds were heavy bleeders.

I was about to dissolve into tears, but crying would help nothing. “Be strong, Rose,” I scolded myself out loud. “Thee must think.”

I looked around and decided to make a circuit of the carriage house interior. I didn’t see any other egress, and the only windows were shut tight, the light filtering through them dim from the storm. I couldn’t tell how late it was except night hadn’t yet fallen. I passed a water trough and ran my hand inside it, but it was dry.

I turned to look at the stairs. I was sure there was no apartment but I lifted my skirts and trudged up, anyway, to be certain. Sure enough, all I saw were bales of hay. No bed, no lamp, no laboring woman crying out for my help.

As I sank onto one of the steps halfway down, my heart sank, too. I was alone and cold in a snowstorm with no way to get out. This had to be the doing of the murderer, who wanted to assure that my questioning self was well out of the way, possibly permanently. I was an idiot. My brain had deserted me, letting a note delivered by a boy persuade me to come to a birth of a woman I’d never met, especially after receiving the anonymous threat. The whole thing was a trick. There was no James Smith, nor a pregnant Mrs. Smith. I should have paid attention to the small, elusive voice I’d heard in my head after I’d entered. But it was too late now.

My throat was thick with fear and worry, and my full eyes threatened to overflow. I had to find a way out before despair overwhelmed me. I might survive here for a few days, but without water, I wouldn’t last much longer than that. I didn’t have any hope of the property owners returning before spring. The only person who might open the door would be the one who lured me here in the first place. Next time he might have a gun to finish me off with.

Or was it a she? If Zula were the guilty party, she could have done the luring, hitting, and locking. Although the boy had said a man gave him the note.

I shook my head and sniffed back my self-pitying tears. Right now it didn’t matter who the villain was or how scared I was. What mattered was getting out. My exit was going to involve going out a window. I went to each fenestration in turn and tried with both hands and all my strength to raise the sash. None would budge. They must have been painted or even nailed shut. At least they were the newer style of window where the glass was in two pieces broken up by only one vertical wooden muntin. I prowled the carriage house, searching for a tool I could use to pry open one of the windows, but I came up empty handed.

Was I going to have to break the glass? I spied my birthing satchel near the door where I’d dropped it. I rummaged through the bag, but the only sharp object I had was my scissors, and I expected they would break if I tried to use them as a pry bar. I made the rounds of the windows again and my heart sank even further. While the front of the carriage house was at the level of the road, it was, of course, built on the hill. The bottom of the side windows stood a good eight feet from the ground outside, and the one in back was even higher. I was going to have to jump out.

I hurried around the space, searching for something with which to break a window until I located a metal bucket with a handle near the trough. I had to get out of here before the storm got any worse, or before my attacker returned. Widening my stance, I braced myself and turned my head away, not wanting to risk shards of glass flying into my eyes. I swung the bucket fast at the glass. My aim was poor though, and my improvised hammer bounced off the wooden window frame.

“Haste makes waste,” I scolded myself out loud. I took a good look at where the pail needed to go, braced my legs into a strong stance, turned my head, and swung again.

With a crack, the glass shattered and made a tinkling sound as it fell on itself. I glanced down to see an icicle-shaped piece embedded in my woolen cloak and I carefully extracted it. I drew a cloth out of my satchel and wrapped it around my hand, making something like the padded boxing glove I’d seen in a newspaper article about the violent sport. With great care I punched out the flimsy muntin and the jagged shards all around the frame. The cold air rushed in along with the driven snow. My teeth began to chatter but I kept moving. I found a dusty lap rug in the carriage and spread it, thickly folded, on the bottom of the sash’s frame, since I couldn’t get all the points of glass out.

The window’s sill was three feet off the ground inside. Grateful for my long legs, I hoisted myself up and swung one leg over the sill. No! I’d forgotten my satchel. I climbed back down and grabbed it, then repeated my moves until I sat with both legs out the window. The snow now covered the ground and it swirled in the air such that I couldn’t tell if any obstacle lay under the white covering. I had to take my chances. I took a deep breath and leapt.