Cordelia’s head banged against the side of the carriage and she startled awake, fingers clawing reflexively at the small bag in her lap, pulling it closer. For one terrifying moment, she thought the jolt was the carriage being forced to a halt. That at any second the door would open and rough hands would reach in, drag her from her seat, and force her back to the Barrow and the horrors that would await her there.
But it had only been a lurch as the carriage wheel bounced through a pothole. Cordi heard the driver cursing the roads with language that might have made a fainter heart blush but only made her exhale a shaky laugh.
“Are you all right, dear?”
The only other passenger was an elderly woman with a lapful of yarn and knitting needles poised like tiny spears in her hands that had been clicking and clacking since the driver had helped her settle into her seat. Those needles were finally still as she watched Cordi with concern.
Cordi gave a wan smile, trying to keep her features hidden behind the uneven waves of her hair. “Yes, ma’am,” she said meekly, hating the attention she had drawn. “Just startled.”
The old woman clucked and went back to her knitting. “Bad dreams?”
Are there any other kind?
But the woman didn’t seem to need an answer. The door to conversation had been opened and she was apparently happy to fill the quiet while her thin fingers, the skin wrinkled and sagging with age, returned to her nimble knitting and purling. “I sleep like the dead myself. Suppose I’m getting practice in,” she said with a little chuckle. “Not too long till the grave for me. But I simply cannot sleep without a proper bed. Was never able to. And certainly not on a dusty road, jostling about like a package.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cordi said again, not wanting to be rude.
When she had first boarded in the city, she had imagined the eyes of the other passengers on her, scrutinizing her face even as she tried to keep it turned casually away. Surely they were memorizing her so they might later tell the constables what they knew. She had been certain at each stop that she would be arrested, and so had waited with bated breath and a pounding heart as each passenger disembarked and their luggage was handed down, pressed into a corner of the carriage in an effort to make herself as small as possible. She did not breathe until the wheels had begun moving again.
In these moments of uncertain limbo as she waited for the lurch of the carriage, Cordi’s hand would sink into her pocket and clutch her beloved talisman. The treasured fox, a gift from her brother carved from linden wood, offered her some small measure of comfort. Her thumb would stroke its smooth belly as a penitent’s fingers might slide over prayer beads.
When she had been forced to clamber down herself at the stops in order to make water or burst, she had shuffled through the people milling around the station. Men stood about in dark hats and coats, reading papers, checking watches, and guffawing at bawdy jokes. Ladies attended small children or tried to revive wilting feathers in their hats, noses turned up at the scent of horses and tobacco. Cordi had done her business and kept her head down, her collar turned up, forcing her gait to be steady as she wove through the crowd, her face a mask of casual annoyance. Just another passenger eager to be on her way. Just another poor, wretched girl among thousands.