“Mistress Murray,” a woman’s voice beckoned me to awaken. Her voice was soft and familiar, although I could not give a name to the voice. A gentle hand touched my arm. I struggled to open my eyes. My eyelids felt as though steel weights were placed over them.
“Hm... where am I?” I tried to sit up in the bed but lacked the strength and collapsed back down on the soft pillow. My unfocused eyes shifted around the unfamiliar room. I rubbed my eyes to beg them to focus. The room was about the size of my room at home, with a small dressing table, and a smaller side table next to the four-poster bed with a canopy. There were a couple of paintings that hung on the white painted walls, portraits of a man and woman. Nothing too spectacular. There were two windows with the curtains pulled open to let in light. The curtains, canopy, and bedspread matched in a simple indigo cotton. I did not recognize the woman that stood next to my bed. She wore a simple, long brown dress, and looked as though she had come from a play or a reenactment. It was not clothing from 2019, which meant I was still in 1754. This was not a dream. Her light brown skin and the realization that I was in 1754, told me she was an enslaved woman. I had hoped that I would have gone through my time in Colonial America without crossing the path of slavery. I was not sure how I would react. Do I help her escape to somewhere safe? Stand on a soapbox and preach about people being equals no matter the color of their skin? Or the atrocities of treating people as chattel? Start the Underground Railroad? I ran through different scenarios of how I thought this could play out. Then, I realized I was not up to starting a revolution while lying in the bed. I couldn’t help myself to sit up. How could I help an entire population? Surely, I couldn’t do it on my own. I would have to figure how to help, even though I wasn’t sure where to begin. I took a deep breath of defeat. “How long have I been asleep?”
She bowed her head. “Three days, mistress.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Who are you? Where are Captain Spencer and Private MacDonald?”
“Ruth, mistress. I will get Mistress Lovett.” The young woman fled the room and left me alone and confused. By this point, 1754 did not impress me. I was exhausted, hungry, and confused. If I had been there for three days, I did not remember any of it. However, Ruth’s familiar voice told me she spoke to me those three days.
Ruth opened the door and a stout woman with a heavy step walked in. “I am Mistress Lovett. You are at my house.” She sat down on the side of the bed. “Your man brought you here three days ago. You were delirious with fever. He has stayed by your side day and night, fraught with worry about you. You gave him a good scare.” Mistress Lovett wiped her hands down the front of her apron.
“I was traveling with two men, Captain Spencer and Private MacDonald. Where are they?”
She patted down her greying brown hair. “I don’t know about a Private MacDonald. Captain Spencer brought you here,” she said as she grabbed my hand. Her hand was soft, cold, and showed her years, which I guessed to be around sixty. “You gave us all quite a fright.”
My eyes shot around the room. There was not much in the room “Where is Captain Spencer?”
“He has gone into town to pick up a package. He will be back soon. Are you hungry? We could not wake you to eat proper. Ruth has been feeding you a stew. I was afraid you would choke on anything solid.”
“Oh, goodness, yes,” I said with enthusiasm that seemed to startle Mistress Lovett. “Please, I could eat a horse.”
“We are not serving horse, but we have some turtle soup,” Mistress Lovett said with a laugh and a look of confusion on her face. “I've added a bit of sherry to it. It will make you feel better.” She gave a coy smile and patted my hand again.
“Turtle soup sounds wonderful,” I said, trying not to seem hesitant to try turtle soup. After the scraps of food over the past week, a proper meal–even if it was turtle soup–sounded like heaven. “Thank you.”
Ruth returned, helped me sit up in bed, and handed me a warm bowl of soup and a spoon. “You will want to sip it slowly, since you haven't eaten proper in days. You will make yourself sick if you try to eat it too quick.”
Mistress Lovett sent Ruth away with a flick of her head. I felt an interrogation about to happen. Avoiding eye contact to stave off the interrogation, I blew on the soup to cool it down. All I accomplished was to make myself lightheaded.
“Now, now. It will cool, you must be patient. No one is going to take the food from you.” She looked me up and down. “You don't look like you could eat much. You are too thin.”
I snorted. No one had ever called me thin. In fact, thin would not have been in any of my descriptions, as I was always on the curvy side. I blew on a spoonful of thick soup and took a sip. I took another spoonful filled with chunks of meat. The meat was delicious. It felt good to chew food. The strange combination of flavor tasted like chicken, pork, and clam all rolled into a chewy morsel. The sherry helped bring together the flavors of the turtle meat with the stewed vegetables.
“Is that not the best turtle soup you have ever tasted?” Mistress Lovett's brown eyes beamed with pride. “Ruth does a wonderful job in the kitchen.”
“I have never had turtle soup before,” I confessed. “But this is delicious.”
“Never had turtle soup,” Mistress Lovett exclaimed. “Where exactly are you from?”
My face flushed with embarrassment. By her reaction to my comment, I must have committed the biggest mistake of the eighteenth century, or she must think of me as a simpleton. “What I meant to say, my late husband did not care for the taste of it. I did not serve it in our house.” Not that anyone would serve me in my house. I tried to wrap my head around the thought that Ruth must be enslaved. It was one thing to read about the atrocities of slavery, it was another to sit in the middle of it and witness it firsthand. I hoped that statement recovered my faux pas. I reminded myself to avoid going off on her about Ruth. Be mindful of your words, Murray. Things were not the same, and I needed to play the part of a typical eighteenth-century woman. I could not let this woman know I was from the future. They would brand me a witch. Although the witch trials were a thing of the past, with the luck I was having, I was sure they would bring them back just to persecute me.
“You finish eating.” She patted my leg and stood up. “I will send Ruth in later to take your bowl. There is a chamber pot over there, if you need it. Ruth has been helping you with that, but I think you can do it on your own now.”
“Thank you.” I smiled and continued eating my soup. She left me alone in the room with my soup, chamber pot, and my thoughts. It was a hearty soup and, after the past week of being given very little to eat, my stomach could only handle a small portion at a time.
I needed to relieve myself but had not used a chamber pot. If Ruth helped me use it, I had no recollection. When I was at the encampment, they had taken me to a spot in the woods and I would squat. I convinced myself it was like camping or if when had to go while out on a long hike. No big deal. Right? A chamber pot was a unique experience altogether. My aim had better be good or else I would be on my hands and knees cleaning up a mess. I tossed the blankets back and padded over to the pot in the corner. “Well, I can't sit on it. How in the... oh! This is going to be interesting.” At some point, they removed my clothes and dressed me in a long white gown. I lifted my shift with my right hand, held on to the back of a chair, and squatted down. “Come on, Murray, it's just like camping.” I thought the stream would never stop flowing. That was not nearly as bad as I had expected. Although, I would have preferred to use a toilet.
The knock on the door startled me. I stood up quick and almost tipped the chamber pot over. That would have been an embarrassing mess. Before my brief excursion to the chamber pot, I paid no mind to the fact that the only item of clothing I wore was the linen shift. I looked around and find my clothes. I stumbled over my feet, weak from all that had happened, missed the chair that I reached for, and fell hard on the ground with a loud bang and an equally loud “umph.”
The door flew open. I looked up. Captain Spencer ran in, dropped a package at the door. “Mistress Murray, please, let me help you,” he said, reaching out to me to help me up. He lifted me into his arms and carried me to the bed.
“I really could walk,” I said as I wrapped my arms around his neck for support. I felt embarrassed about the whole situation and was sure my cheeks had flushed to crimson. I laughed at the absurdity of the scene. Could this day get worse? I decided not to tempt fate, or whatever powers or being brought me here, and not ask that question out loud.
“And I can help you,” he said, as he sat me on the bed and covered me up with the quilt I had tossed to the side when I got out of bed. He moved a lock of wavy auburn hair out of my face and tucked it behind her ear. That was cheeky of him. I grabbed my hair and pulled it back, out of the way. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean...” He darted towards the door.
“Wait, don't leave.” I reached out to Captain Spencer as if to pull him back. Sitting up in the bed, I pulled the quilt up to cover my chest, quite aware that the shift hid little. I was nude under it and felt uncomfortable with the lack of support from a good bra. The pull on forty-year-old breasts was something that I was painfully aware of. “Jumonville and Bouchard are cruel men. They did some, um, terrible things to me. I need to work through it all, I guess. It's going to take me some time.” I shook my head and tried to shake off the thoughts of my recent past. “You don’t need to leave, I was just a bit startled, is all.”
“Of course. Would you like me to come back later? I'm not sure what I was interrupting when you fell, but I will let you get back to it.” His blue eyes glanced over to the chamber pot that was near the spot on the floor where he found me. He knew what I had done but was too polite to acknowledge it.
“Interrupting?” My eyes widened, and I could feel my face flush again. “Please, don't worry about that.”
“Are you feeling well enough to get out of bed today?”
“I think so.” I stopped to think about how I felt. I had only recently awoken. “I mean, besides the fact that I'm still weak.”
Captain Spencer continued to stand next to the door. He was tall and filled the space quite nicely with his broad shoulders. “I'll send Ruth in to help you get dressed.” He was different than I remembered when I met him a few days prior. Although he still seemed proper in his presentation, he was more approachable.
“I was wondering where my clothes went. I didn't see them in here.” My eyes darted around the room to look for the missing clothes.
“I am not sure what she has done with those clothes that you were wearing. I brought you this to wear.” Captain Spencer held out the package he had retrieved from the floor and placed it on the nearby table. He realized I would not stand up and come retrieve it from him and wasn’t going to get near the bed again. “The men's clothes you were wearing were filthy and falling off you. I thought you would be more comfortable in women's clothing.”
“Men's clothing? That was my favorite...” I stopped mid-sentence. I thought about the clothes I wore when this had all started. My favorite blue corduroy blazer had seen better days. My skinny jeans had become saggy and loose. I assumed it was from the constant wear of the pants and I had not realized the minimum amount of food and the long walks had caused me to drop a significant amount of weight. Too thin? Ha! The belt I had worn ended up being moved to the tightest hole. I regretted not using it to wrap around Jumonville or Bouchard’s neck. “You bought me clothes? Who undressed me?” I threw my hand over my chest and looked down at my covered body and felt exposed.
“Mistress Lovett and Ruth took care of all of that. She had some of her daughter’s old clothes stored away. They were in good condition, but you are much smaller than her. Ruth has been busy taking care of you, so I took them to a local woman to get them altered to fit you. You needed new shoes,” he said as he pulled a pair of shoes out of the package. “And I know these are not new, we did not have time to order you a new pair. We found a pair that should be suitable.” He held up pieces of clothes, pulled from their wrappings.
“This is a bit surreal for me, you see. I am afraid with everything that has happened and me being so weak, I may need some assistance getting dressed.” I had not expected assistance from the captain, but I was not sure how to put together all the different types of dressing layers that women wore in 1754. There would be multiple layers of clothing, in order to not look like a fool, I decided it was best to ask for assistance and use my weakness as an excuse.
“Of course, Mistress Murray. I will send Ruth in.” He turned around and held the doorknob. His hesitation told me he wanted to say more. He would have questions about Jumonville. Maybe he expected more gratitude for delivering me to safety or providing clothes.
“Thank you,” I shouted to him as he left. His ears raised when he smiled and closed the door behind him.