Sword of Vengeance (12 page)

Esther woke in her uncle’s arms as Kit led the rest of his family back to where they’d left the carriage, on the south side of the commons. She was ecstatic over the prospect of spending the night out under the stars. Many of the farm families shared her sentiments. Just being in the center of the bustling little town with its many shops and stores and taverns was a thrill. Tavern doors were propped open to permit a steady stream of traffic. Merchants who normally closed up at sundown kept their shops well lit to attract the curious customer with a penny to spend.

There were rooms to be had in town; Kate alone had several friends who had offered a place at their hearthsides for the widow of Daniel McQueen. But Kate had promised her granddaughters a night under the stars. And as tent after tent rose up, a great feeling of cheer and well-being spread throughout the families. Perfect strangers visited one another and chattered away like old friends. At last it was time for the pyrotechnic display, and though the assemblage of rockets, fire wheels, fountains, and flaring candles could not hope to rival the displays concocted in the larger cities, still, each starburst, each eruption of some miniature Vesuvius, was greeted with a hearty round of applause and cries of approval.

Kit watched the fireworks and marveled at how different from war these bomb bursts were, blossoming into flowers of iridescent fire and falling back to earth in a myriad of colors.
Nothing like exploding shells and grapeshot and shrapnel that could shred a man to doll rags
, he thought.

Yes, the struggle with Britain was going badly, despite the war hawks’ vain predictions. British troops were no doubt massed in Canada preparing to invade. By the time the next Fourth rolled around, these harmless pyrotechnics might be interchanged for the more real and utterly deadly display. The very idea of British troops marching up the Trenton Road filled him with dread.

He longed to do his part, to defend the country of his birth. And yet, for more than a year he had held himself in check. With Clayton Burgade gone there was no one to look after Kate and Hannah, no one to tend the inn and work the farm. He couldn’t abandon his mother and sister and two nieces in the hour of their need. So Kit leaned back against the wheel of the phaeton, and with Esther Rose riding his shoulders he pretended to enjoy the fireworks, all the while seeing through this grand parody of battle to the truth of the matter, where his duty lay like a hurled gauntlet waiting for him to accept its unstated challenge.

Kate noted the look on her son’s face. Even in the sharp, sudden glare of the rockets and the flash of miniature volcanoes spewing crimson sparks she recognized her husband, revealed for an instant in Kit’s features. And her heart raced at the thought of losing him to the war. He was as reckless and bold and quick-tempered as his father. There burned in him that same determined love of country that had dominated the life of Daniel McQueen.

Having Kit for a year had been a selfish happiness. She wanted it to continue. It seemed like only yesterday he had returned from Derna, haggard and weary, with only the buckskins on his back and a pair of horses to show for his privateering. He had been content to labor in the fields, to work his father’s forge, and to be a loving uncle to Esther and Penelope.

No, she wouldn’t let it end. Kate McQueen had buried enough of her family. But having her son again had eased the burden on her. Indeed, she had known peace these past months. And she would allow no one and nothing to interfere with her happiness. She drew closer to Kit and, reaching out, placed her hand on his arm. He looked at her.

“I’m just glad you’re here,” Kate said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” There, a simple gesture, an inflection of voice, and the web of her affection tightened its hold. Now if only she could lose the guilt, if only she could cast it aside like some threadbare, tattered cloak, buried in the bottom of a trunk and at last forgotten.

T
HE HOUND AND HARE
Inn looked much the same as it had in 1776. Its white oak plank facade wore a recent coat of whitewash. The stone walls of the courtyard were overgrown with ivy, and those same verdant vines had worked their way upward to obscure the wrought-iron arch beneath serpentine strands. Sunlight glinted on the windows along the front of the tavern that faced the east, and a gentle breeze stirred the branches of the apple trees that surrounded the two-story structure. Kit drove the phaeton onto the circular drive, leaving the wheel-rutted Trenton Road for the last fifty feet of their trip. He continued past the courtyard and around to the north side of the inn where the barn stood, closed and shuttered, and a gaggle of geese and chickens flapped their wings and scattered to the safety of their pens, whose gate stood ajar.

Kit frowned and glanced around for Miles Grauwyler, the handyman he had left to watch over the place. Kit had taken a liking to the young immigrant and hired him to help give the Hound and Hare a fresh coat of paint. Kit had given Grauwyler an extra two days’ wages to watch over the grounds and keep the tavern open for business. The Trenton Road was a heavily traveled thoroughfare, and Kit had anticipated showing a goodly profit despite their absence from the inn. The absence of any patrons and the fact that no one stepped forth to greet the phaeton’s arrival implied the Hound and Hare had been left untended.

Kit halted the carriage, and as Esther leaped out and scampered off to play, her uncle headed straight for the barn, where he had glimpsed a fluttering piece of paper tacked to one of the barn doors. Off to his left, he heard Abigail, their milk cow, bellow her greeting. The animal had managed to knock down a section of the knee-high picket fence that separated the family garden from the pasture and was busily eating her fill.

“My carrots!” Hannah exclaimed as she noticed the intruder. “Oh, no. And the peas. Not the peas!” She lifted her skirt clear of her ankles and ran off to save her garden. Penelope started to follow, but Kate called her back to help unload the bolts of cloth Kate had purchased before leaving Springtown.

Kit didn’t bother calling out. If Miles Grauwyler was on the premises he would have heard the clatter of the carriage on the cobblestone drive. He reached the barn and found the crudely scrawled note Miles had tacked to the door with a nail.

I am gone to seek my fortune elsewhere. A wagon has came by bound for the Ohio country and there is a place for me. I taken some food.

Your obedient servant—Miles G.

“I’ll be damned,” Kit said with a wag of his head as he tugged on the door and pulled it open. He walked back to the carriage and led the mares by their reins into the barn. He unhitched the horses from the singletree and led the animals out the side door to the corral, working quickly, going through the motions from habit.

Using the pitchfork he shoveled out a mound of hay for the hungry animals to feed on. Flies circled a puddle of fresh manure, and a crow on a nearby fencepost cawed its raucous cry, informing the wild things that man had returned. Kit had a special fondness for crows. It was something his father had once told him, that crows could not be tamed. Nature burned too deeply in them. They would never relinquish their freedom and live caged and subservient to man.

Years ago, Kit, as a young lad, had found a crow with a broken wing and carried the injured bird to his father. Daniel McQueen had set the wing and kept the poor, frightened creature in a cage to speed the healing process. Once, when Daniel was chopping wood, he brought the cage along, thinking to give the injured creature a little fresh air and sunshine. He had barely begun at the woodpile when one crow after another began to dive at the cage and strike it. The other birds were willing to sacrifice themselves in an effort to kill the caged bird rather than allow it to remain imprisoned.

Kit, just a boy and as stubborn as his father, spent day after day with the bird, feeding it, trying to win the creature’s trust. But when the wing had healed, the crow began to refuse its food. No matter what young Kit brought the bird, from captured insects to bread soaked in milk, the crow remained resolute, impervious to temptation and slowly, irrevocably dying.

Kit continued to stare out into the corral and beyond the fence to the grove of apple trees, where he had at last carried the cage and freed the bird he had wanted so badly to keep. Despite his tears, young Kit had felt elation surge within him at seeing the valiant little bird rise to become a black blur against the steel blue dome of sky, swirling, diving, soaring in ever-widening circles and scolding the clouds. Suddenly Daniel McQueen was there, standing alongside his son, his hand upon young Kit’s shoulder as he gently said: “This is what it means to be free. This is how it feels. Don’t ever forget, son.”

Kit could still feel the pressure of his father’s hand here in the familiar stillness of the barn. He crossed the interior to stand by the cold forge where Kit had watched his father, mallet in hand, standing like some demigod, bathed in the glare of the fire as he pumped the bellows and sent a column of sparks whirling up the blackened chimney. He closed his eyes, touched the stone-cold ashes, and shuddered as if some ghostly hand had reached through his body. Was that the rustle of a mouse in the straw or a spirit whispering in his ear? The wind’s song or his father calling in the stillness? “
Never forget
…”

K
IT FELT ESTHER’S HAND
clutch at the sleeve of his hunting shirt as he steadied his rifle against the tree trunk they had used for a blind. The hunter sighted on the whitetail buck, aiming at a spot just behind the shoulder where the animal’s matted coat darkened. Esther had insisted on coming along. Three days after the Fourth of July celebrations and weary of helping her mother tend to the garden, the little girl was eager to escape the duties of home life for a walk in the woods with one of her favorite adults. But she hadn’t counted on this. To her, the whitetail was a creature of magic, appearing miraculously out of a shadowy grove to drink from a sweet, clear stream.

Thirty yards away from the deer, Kit’s finger curled around the trigger of his long rifle. He had the animal dead center. He could already picture the deer’s carcass draped over his horse. Hell, he could already taste the hindquarter roast, fresh from the oven and ready to carve. His stomach growled.
Steady, now
, he cautioned,
take your time. This buck isn’t going anywhere but to the smokehouse. Slowly, squeeze the shot off, squeeze—

“Run! Run! Run!” Esther shouted, bolting to her feet. She jumped and waved her hands, and the startled deer bolted to the right as Kit fired to the left. He watched, helplessly, through the billowing powder smoke, as the whitetail bounded back into the forest. Kit wrinkled his nose. He’d traded the imaginary aroma of a venison roast for the acrid smell of his wasted shot. It was hardly a bargain.

“Yep … you missed,” Esther said, as if criticizing his marksmanship. “Here, Uncle Kit, you better wear these.” The little girl brought out a pair of spectacles she had fashioned out of vines. She slipped the woven green strands over his ears, the lens part resting on the bridge of his nose, and he peered over the wildflower rims.

“That’s much better,” he said. There just seemed no way to lose his temper with the child. Her smile thwarted him at every turn. He looked back at the forest and the trembling underbrush the whitetail had cleared as it escaped to the safety of the pines. Kit stood and proceeded to reload his rifle, ramming home another charge of powder and shot and priming the weapon. Esther Rose watched him with interest.

“When I get bigger, I’ll hunt, too,” she said.

“You’ll have a lean diet, my pretty,” Kit muttered. “Better marry a storekeeper or a butcher or any wealthy man, eh? Then you’ll always have something to eat and will not have to rely on the harvest of your compassion.”

Esther frowned as she tried to make sense of this latest comment. Then she tsked-tsked and climbed up on the log, the better to face him.

“Uncle Kit. You are always saying things I don’t understand. And besides, I’m gonna marry you when I grow up.”

“Is that a fact, young lass?” Kit chuckled.

“Yes.” Esther nodded. “I’ve already told my mother, even.”

“And what did she say?” Kit brushed a leaf from her moppet’s cap of curls.

Sunlight surrounding them forced a continuously changing pattern of shadows and light here in the forest. Another child might have been overawed by the immensity of the woods. They were a good hour’s ride from the Trenton Road. But Esther did not seem worried in the slightest. The blood of the McQueens flowed in her veins, to be sure.

Kit’s niece struggled a moment to remember. Then her expression brightened. “I remember. Mama said we deserved one another.” Esther pursed her lips and turned serious. “Is that good?”

“Sure it is, my pretty,” Kit said, scooping the girl into his arms. He started back down the trail to the grove where he had left his dun mare. It was easy enough for Kit to retrace his path through the forest. After all, now he was wearing his “spectacles.”

Kit and Esther reached the Trenton Road in the waning hours of the day. He urged the dun into a gallop, much to Esther’s delight. The girl loved the feel of the wind in her face and the spring of the horse’s powerful muscles beneath her. She squealed with delight as Kit kept a reassuring hold on her and guided the mare onto the cobblestone drive. Immediately he saw there were three extra horses tethered to the corral fence. On closer inspection he noted the military saddles the animals wore. He reined the mare to a slow walk and rode up alongside the new arrivals. The mounts lowered their heads to the water trough and after a perfunctory glance at Kit resumed drinking.

“Oh, my,” Esther said. “Maybe somebody has come to stay. I better go help Mama.” Esther squirmed free of Kit’s grasp and dropped to the ground. “Good-bye, Uncle Kit. Thank you for taking me hunting,” the girl called over her shoulder as she hurried across the yard and disappeared through the back door of the inn house. Kit dismounted, unsaddled the dun, and led the animal into the corral. He gave the mare a slap on the rump, and the animal trotted through the gate and headed straight for the mound of hay beneath the shed roof overhang Kit had attached to the outside wall of the barn. The low roof protected the hay in inclement weather.