Cold Cruel Winter

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Jesus, he thought, he’d believed them when they called this a road. It was no more than a track winding up the side of the valley to the rock edge above, barely wide enough for a cart, the ruts frozen and slippery as man’s sin. His boots, thin enough already after the walk from Liverpool, could feel every hard, awkward step, and his breath plumed abruptly around his mouth. With a short sigh he drew the coat around himself, even though it wouldn’t keep him any warmer in this raw winter cold, and hitched the pack high on his back.

In every manner it was a long way from the Indies. There the heat had prickled his skin every day and his sleeves had been sodden from wiping the sweat out of his eyes. For a moment he almost longed for that again. But then the ache from the scars on his back stopped his mind from playing him false. That was the true memory of those years, along with the screams of men in the wild delirium of yellow fever before they died. Freeborn, convict, soldier or slave, few came back from the Indies.

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