Excerpt

    Jemma heard the sound again, a low moan coming from across the bog.  She had previously dismissed it as the groan of a live oak branch rubbing against another in the breeze, a common enough sound in the wetlands.
     This time she inclined her head toward the fan of palmetto leaves and listened intently. Moonlight penetrated through ghostly fingers of Spanish moss draped above her head, limning the trees in black against the starlit sky. She could smell the scent of decaying vegetation and feel the damp, cloying bayou air like a wet blanket on her skin.
     A night owl hooted softly, but Jemma didn't spook easily, even though she had slipped out of quarters without permission. The master's wife knew she needed her herbs and roots to do her work. An outbreak of yellow fever could wipe out the entire population of slaves currently living on the plantation. Jemma was becoming known for her healing arts, and that's why the barn door was usually left open. She could come and go as she pleased ever since she had successfully treated slaves on the neighboring plantation for the deadly disease.
     There it was again. Definitely a human voice, moaning in pain. She hiked up her skirts and waded into the black waters, mindful of the risk of snakes and alligators, but unwilling to leave a fellow human, possibly a runaway slave, in trouble.
     Slogging through the knee-deep bog, she reached a shelf of dry ground and found the man lying on the grass, his knees drawn up to his chest.
     Jemma lifted the shutters of her lantern, letting out more light in order to see his face. The eyes were closed tightly. A grimace stretched his lips into a gray mask of suffering.
     Jemma gasped, startled that she knew that face all too well. Master Alex. He had ridden away five months earlier, handsome and daring in his gray uniform, confident that he would soon be returning to his bride after defeating the Union army military jacket was now soaked with blood, dirty with gunpowder surrounding the open wound, the breeches caked with mud to the knees.
     "Masah Alex!" She exclaimed, putting one hand over her mouth as her heart leaped within her, a leap of sudden fury.
     The soldier opened bleary, fever-bright eyes. "Don't shoot me," he muttered.
     She bent down and lifted his head to peer into his face. "It's me Masah Alex. It's Jemma. It be Jemma that's found you." She wanted him to know who had found him.
     He moaned again. "Jemma?"  His eyes cleared momentarily with vague recognition. "Jemma?"
     She didn't speak. Her hands were busy tearing the fabric away from the wound. Examining the skin beneath the bloodied jacket, it was bad, maybe even gangrenous from the smell of him. She knew he wouldn't live until morning if she didn't get him back to the manor at once. She also knew that she was holding in her hands the life of the man who had ordered her flogged for the very thing she was doing now--slipping out the barn door left open to the swamp-land side of the sugar plantation, the swamps where she went to gather herbs, roots, and grasses for her poultices.
     This was the man who had accused her of consorting with the devil after she had gone to Congo Square in New Orleans to seek advice from Marie LaVeau. Jemma thought the voodoo priestess might indeed be a witch, but the woman could conjure up remedies to cure a hundred illnesses. It was from Marie that she had learned how to treat swamp fever. That skill had increased Jemma's value.
     Master Alex blinked up at her with a look of sudden clarity. "Am I home then?" His yellow eyes rolled wildly in hope.
     "You be in the swamps, Masah." Jemma whispered, suddenly certain of what she must do.
     At the time of her flogging, she had vowed to herself that if she ever got the chance she would kill Alex. She had dreamed up ways to torture him while she lay face down on a rough, straw-filled mattress for days, unable to rest on her flayed back. The old women had tended to her as best they could, but the scars of that flogging were permanently branded on both her flesh and on her soul.

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Harriet Ford is a veteran news reporter, formerly a high school English teacher, and a longtime leader of a home Bible study group. She has authored a book, "Shadow in the Rain," based on an actual murder case in Rockford, ILL, which she investigated as a journalist and became convinced the wrong man was in prison and is in prison still.  On her website, www.deniedevidence.com there is a form letter to petition the governor for a second look at his case. She sincerely hopes her  readers will click on it.

Ford resides in Saddlebrook, Missouri and is member of the Ozark Writers League, Sleuth's Ink and Springfield Writer's League.