Chapter 4 Escape (4)
"Miss Irene, stop laughing, the lady is looking at you!"
Hannah walked behind Irene and reminded her quietly, with a slight dissatisfaction on her pretty face. She looked like a serious teacher who saw students laughing and joking during the flag-raising and national anthem. She was so adorable.
Irene also just found out that Hannah is only fourteen years old this year, about the same age as her sister. Her sister is still rebellious and doesn't want to do her homework, but Hannah is already well-behaved and sensible, like a little adult.
Who wouldn't love such a pretty girl!
"I know, little Hannah," she couldn't help but pinch Hannah's face, which looked very soft. After getting a puffy little Hannah, Irene was satisfied and tried her best to restrain the smile on her face.
How can you blame her? Anyone would find it funny to see the character dressed as Jesus in the Via Dolorosa procession being fatter than the Roman soldier next to him.
It is even funnier when the cross that should have been carried by the actor playing Jesus alone is carried by several black slaves.
Irene endured the Via Dolorosa procession for as long as it lasted, her face almost frozen, until everyone returned home exhausted.
After returning home, there was another round of prayer.
The hosts knelt around the table, and the soft light shone on the prayer book in the middle.
Irene and Lily knelt together. Opposite them were the Brooks Brothers. The two boys who were always carefree looked particularly solemn at this moment.
Even the youngest child, Old Five, knelt quietly in front of the table with his fingers crossed on the surface.
Irene had never seen such a scene before. A strange religious atmosphere surrounded her for the first time. She glanced at the people around her curiously.
Everyone was very pious, especially Hannah, who knelt upright on the floor, her hands clenched into fists on her chest, gazing at the prayer book affectionately, muttering something, her eyes sparkling with crystal light.
With the rustling sound of prayer books being opened, an indescribable sense of tranquility and peace spread in the usually noisy living room, and everyone began to confess.
——Confess first, then ask God for forgiveness.
Except for Irene.
She had no religious beliefs and this was just a novel ritual for her.
A staunch materialist fighter does not believe in religion.
Although she traveled through...
There must be a physical reason for that too!
Moreover, Irene had always held an attitude of misunderstanding and disrespect towards confession.
If criminals could really obtain forgiveness through confession, then society would be in chaos. After killing someone, if they obtained God's forgiveness, they could pretend that nothing had happened.
The police should stop looking for clues and just ambush in the church confessional. Catch every single one that comes and catch every pair that comes.
Irene pouted.
Tina started the prayer. The hostess spoke in a low and gentle voice, praising God for bringing them food, health and happiness.
The others answered in unison, and Irene took advantage of the situation. The ups and downs of the prayers made her drowsy.
The slaves knelt behind their masters. Hannah's responses and prayers were the most emotional. She even choked up several times, as if she had too much unspeakable pain to vent.
Everyone was focused on the prayer at hand, except Irene.
Irene lowered her head and rested it on her crossed hands, as if she was praying to God to forgive her sins with all her heart, but in fact she was yawning secretly in her arms.
She stayed too long at Leo's last night, and was woken up to attend the parade less than two hours after going to bed. Now that she was back in the house, an intense sleepiness enveloped her nerves, and her eyelids felt heavy as if a heavy weight was hanging on them.
So much so that she didn't even notice that a crack had been quietly opened in her room on the second floor.
When people are extremely sleepy, taking a nap is a very useful thing. Although it only lasts for a few minutes, it is enough to wake up the tired body.
After the prayer, while John, who usually stayed in the study, was slumped on the sofa and talking with Tina about the situation in the North and the South, Irene lifted her skirt and quietly went to the study.
The study is John's secret space. Even the hostess Tina is not allowed to enter. Usually, only John and his personal butler Leo, who is responsible for cleaning the study, can enter and leave the study at will.
Ever since she came here, Irene has been looking for an opportunity to sneak into the study, and only today did she succeed in seizing the opportunity.
The door of the room was closed, the light in the room was dim, and dark curtains were hung on the French windows, probably to protect the paper books from turning yellow and fading in the sun.
She closed the door gently, leaving only a narrow gap so that she could listen to the noise coming from the corridor outside.
Irene looked around. There were four brown bookshelves against the wall, filled with brand new books. Some of the pages had not even been cut. It was obvious that John didn't touch them often.
In the other corner are two double-door cabinets with huge iron locks, which seem to be used to hide things.
The Kentucky rifle that John used for hunting suddenly appeared in Irene's mind.
She had helped clean John and his wife's bedroom before, but couldn't find where the gun was hidden. It turned out that John had placed it here.
If she had a gun, she would have more say in front of Leo.
It doesn't matter how much damage a weapon can do; what matters most is its deterrent effect.
Irene licked her dry lips and her eyes flickered for a moment.
In the only corner of the room that could get sunlight, there was a rocking chair and a footstool covered with thick and soft velvet cushions. On the low table next to it were some red wine and cigarettes. John might usually sit here because the entire cotton garden could be seen from the window.
——At this time, scattered in the white sea of cotton were a dozen hunched figures bending over to pick cotton. The sun was at its brightest, and the scorching sun was baking them.
Some of them were transporting cotton in baskets on their shoulders, while others were picking cotton with white cloth bags tied around their bodies. The cotton bags, which were longer than their bodies, hung behind them like deformed tails.
There are even quite a few children - they are born slaves and may never leave this small village for the rest of their lives.
Black laborers were forced to burn their own bodies, and the cotton flowers that bloomed from their flesh and blood all went into the white people's warehouses.
Irene had mixed feelings. She raised her hand to close the curtain, but her fingers were frozen on it.
What's the point of pulling it up? If you can't see it, does it mean it didn't happen?
She lowered her hands dejectedly, and could only comfort herself that the world would be very different two hundred years from now.
A beam of light shone into the dark room, but the warm light made Irene even more depressed.
Let’s find a map first.
Irene perked up and tiptoed through the various maps scattered around the recliner.
John's map gave her some comfort.
Mountains, streams, terrain, and even country roads are marked out.
This was much more detailed than she had imagined.
Logically speaking, most ordinary families should not have maps, but John was an ardent supporter of slavery. Ever since the North had been clamoring for abolition, he began to study the topography and situation of the North and South, and finally came to a ridiculous conclusion - if there was a war, the Confederacy would win.
Yes, he only studied the topography and paid no attention to the fleets and new rifles built after the Industrial Revolution in the North.
Perhaps he didn't know, or perhaps the old man's eyes seemed to only see details that favored the Confederacy.
It was also from his daily bragging about the various details of the southern terrain that Irene deduced that there must be a map in John's study, at least a topographic map, but the reality was much richer than she thought.
Irene took two maps, one was a more detailed map of the surrounding area, and the other was a map of the United States, which marked many ports. She would pass through these ports to get to Rochester.
She stuffed the folded map into her corset—the safest place on her body.
After hiding the map and pulling up her skirt, Irene took a deep breath, trying to slow her heartbeat, and gripped the wooden door handle, pressing down hard with her wrist.
Suddenly, there was a burst of chaotic footsteps outside the door. Irene was startled and her heart beat faster and faster, almost jumping out of her chest. She hurriedly hid in the innermost side of the bookshelf, squatted down, gathered her dress, and covered herself with the curtain - this was an emergency measure she had thought of when she entered the door, and she didn't expect it to come in handy.
Irene was extremely depressed. She knew that she was unlucky, but she didn't expect that her luck would still be so bad after traveling through time.
Well, what lucky person would encounter such an unfortunate thing as time travel?
My mind raced. Was it John? Or the cleaning boy?
But no matter who discovered her, it would be a disaster for her.
Her head was buzzing and her heartbeat was roaring in her ears. Irene was so nervous that she raised her hands to cover her mouth and nose, and pressed her back against the wall, wishing she could embed herself into it.
The footsteps were getting closer and closer, the door was pushed open with a creaky sound, and a hurried male voice was heard at the same time.
It wasn't John or the servant. Irene breathed a sigh of relief. She was so frightened that her legs went limp and she had to rely on her hands to support her weak body.
The total number of frights she had experienced in the past two days almost exceeded the number she had experienced in a year in her previous life.
The male voice that sounded near the door was low, but the excitement in his tone was obvious.
He was mumbling something in a coaxing tone.
The woman's voice was sobbing and rejecting something, but Irene couldn't hear it clearly.
The man suddenly raised his voice.
"Stay with me, Hannah, I'll be good to you—"
Hannah! Irene frowned, and the maid's heart-shaped face with a shy smile appeared in her mind.
An ominous premonition came over me.
Suddenly, there was a sound of rubbing clothes outside. Irene carefully pulled aside the curtain and peeked out through the gap in the bookshelf.
Booker had his back to her, his tall and strong body pressing down on Hannah. Irene could only hear Hannah's panicked crying voice with a pleading tone.
Hannah said, "No, please, at least not here."
The more she begged, the more excited Booker became. "You're a black maid, it's your blessing that I like you, what right do you have to refuse?"
Irene understood what Booker was trying to do almost immediately, and she began to tremble with anger.
Isn’t this naked □□?
She didn't have time to think, she stood up suddenly, her mind was clearer than ever before.
"Let me go--"
"Bang--"
The dull crash swallowed up all other sounds, and the three people in the room fell silent.
Erin watched as Booker glanced back at her in horror, his tall, muscular body sliding down like some non-Newtonian fluid.
The man weakly squeezed out an unformed moan from his throat, which scattered into the air.
The body's reaction was far better than the brain's. Irene walked forward briskly and held Booker's still warm and soft body with both hands.
Wow, my sister is small but strong, she got a big one in the first wave.
but--
Erin swallowed and watched as Booker's eyes closed and his hands fell limply.
Buddy, you are tall and strong, you can't be a fragile person!
She used Booker's clothes to cover the palm-length cut on the back of his head to prevent the blood from spilling all over the floor and becoming difficult to clean up. She pressed on the man's pulse with trembling fingers.
There was no movement under the fingertips.
In her arms was a fresh corpse.
Irene closed her eyes tightly and exhaled, then looked up at Hannah, who had a confused expression on her face - the girl didn't know what was going on.
If nothing else, she had to at least protect Hannah. She was only fourteen years old, and her experiences in her previous life made her naturally protective of women, especially girls younger than her.
This desire to protect suppressed the fear that arose from holding a dead person in his arms.
She tried to clear her mind, pretending to be very experienced, and said in a deep voice: "Don't be afraid, wipe the blood off the back of the dictionary and put it back. Booker has brought this upon himself. You are acting in self-defense, Hannah."
Thank goodness for the backwardness of the times - fingerprint identification was not yet possible, otherwise they would both have been sent to the gallows together.
The black girl was shaking like a sieve, her clear eyes were filled with tears of fear. She was so scared that she couldn't think, and she kept saying in a trembling voice:
"I killed someone. I actually killed someone."
"I'm going to hell."
"No, you didn't kill him." Irene didn't expect that the religious knowledge she learned in the morning would come in handy so soon.
"It was Jesus who took his life. Otherwise, how could a weak woman like you beat a strong man like Booker? It was Jesus who helped you punish him."
"Do you remember what Deuteronomy 22 says? Anyone who rapes a woman must be put to death."
"You did nothing wrong. You were carrying out Jesus' orders. It was not you who killed Booker, but God."
Irene stood up and hugged Hannah tightly, gently stroking her back and repeating the same words in her ear over and over again.
After a long while, Hannah's tears slowly stopped. Although her face still looked extremely haggard, it was at least much better than before.
She said so, and Irene breathed a sigh of relief, repenting for her disrespect for God that morning.
Thank God, God saved another innocent girl.
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