The Horsemaster's Daughter (41 page)

P
assion, Eliza realized, was not a thing one could easily control. That must have been what Hunter meant about seeing a great need in her eyes. No wonder passion had inspired so many sonnets and stories. No wonder Charlotte Brontë had described it as a living entity with a will of its own.

Because of the way she felt about Hunter Calhoun, she saw the world differently. Nothing would ever be the same again. The light looked clearer. The stars brighter. Food tasted more delicious. A simple birdsong suddenly sounded so sweet it made her heart hurt.

And all because he had kissed her.

As she worked with the stallion—Finn had made amazing progress, and they were practicing racing starts—she kept lapsing into long moments of dreaminess.

Seated on a heartwood stump at low tide, she watched the nervous frenzy of the crabs on the mudflats as, one by one, they fell victim to hungry seagulls. On the long yellow-brown beach, Hunter rode the stallion.

Though reasonably cooperative, Finn was a strong-willed animal and probably always had been. He balked and pranced. From time to time, he reared. He backed into a brake of sassafras trees, trying to scrape his rider off. Sweating and cursing, Hunter struggled to regain control. He was thrown several times, and soon was covered in sand.

Eliza tried not to let her amusement show, but he caught her grinning at him. “You’re supposed to weep when you see me work,” he grumbled. “Isn’t that what the virtuous Miranda did when Ferdinand stacked the logs in
The Tempest?
”

She laughed aloud. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not the virtuous Miranda. And forgive me, but you’re no Prince of Naples.”

He took a long drink of water from the jug she had brought from the house. Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he looked off in the distance, where the tip of Cape Henry, on the mainland, melted into the sea. Three ships were passing through from Chesapeake Bay into the open waters of the Atlantic. Shipping traffic was a common sight, but one of the vessels caught her eye because it had a bright red topsail.

“I wonder what schooner that is,” she mused. “I wonder why it flies a red sail.”

Hunter stiffened, drawing his shoulders up to his ears. Then he shrugged elaborately. “I imagine so it can be recognized from a distance.”

“You’ve seen it before?”

He hesitated, then said, “Yeah. I’ve seen it.” He hauled himself to his feet and got back on the horse.

Finn was born to run; she could see that clearly. And that had been the key to finding the way out of his madness. The horse simply needed to be urged to do those things that were in his nature. Finn was so filled with energy and exuberance that he returned quickly. He had a few bad habits. She suspected they had come about as a result of inferior training in far-off Ireland. But he was an exceptionally intelligent horse, and his training was a joy.

Shaded from the late afternoon sun, she watched Hunter and the horse, and let her mind meander lazily. Hunter Calhoun had a sort of madness inside him too, she thought. It was not so obvious as the horse’s had been, but she could feel it in him, seething, looking for a way out. He drank whiskey and rum to keep from feeling himself falling into the darkness, but drinking was only a temporary measure.

What had his life been like before the madness? His wife, Lacey, had been a true Virginia lady, a planter’s daughter, and to hear him tell it, she had given him every happiness—as long as he was a prosperous planter.

Eliza couldn’t understand why a change in wealth would turn a woman’s heart.

Especially against a man like Hunter Calhoun.

She might have sat all day and into evening in this dreamy state, if she had not heard Caliban bark. The stallion shied, and Hunter had his hands full trying to settle him. A heavy crashing sound came from the woods beyond the dunes on the leeward side of the island.

Instantly alert, she scrambled to her feet.

“What’s that?” Hunter asked. The stallion jarred him this way and that.

“Nothing,” she said, hoping she was right. “Caliban probably treed a critter, that’s all. I’ll quiet him down.”

As she left the beach, she tried not to hurry.

Following the sound of the dog’s frenzied barking, she wended her way deep into the tall forest behind the house. Long bars of sunlight slanted down through the fir and cedar canopy, falling upon a soft carpet of rusty needles and moist-lipped mushrooms.

“Caliban, enough,” she called out. “Hush now.”

The big dog gave a few more barks that trailed off to agitated whining. She found him sitting back on his haunches facing a slanted deadfall. Eliza followed the dog’s point and brought her hand up to stifle a scream.

High on the lichened trunk perched a man. A furious, terrified man, brandishing a baling knife. She had a swift impression of dusty black skin, shiny dark eyes, tattered clothing, bare feet.

“Who are you?” Eliza called up to him. “What do you want?”

No reply. The shining eyes narrowed and glinted with danger. The strong hand tightened on the knife sheath. Yet Eliza felt no fear of him because the fear she felt emanating
from
him was so powerful. He had the furtive posture of a man fully aware of danger.

And then she knew. He was a runaway slave, and what he wanted was as simple and as dangerous as freedom. But how had he come to be here?

“You can come down,” she said. “I’ve called off my dog. He won’t hurt you.”

The man sent her a measuring glance. He didn’t move.

“You can’t stay there forever,” Eliza pointed out. “And believe me, Caliban can, and will, if need be. He’s a stubborn one. But you have my word. He won’t hurt you.”

The man hesitated, then clamped the blade between his teeth and started to descend. As he inched down the slanted tree trunk, distrust seethed from his every pore. She felt the same but tried not to let it show. “Do you think you could put the knife away?”

He shook his head. The dog growled, and she shushed him urgently. “I won’t betray you,” she said. “I won’t…tell anyone.”

He glared at her obliquely and took the blade from between his teeth. “How’m I s’posed to know that?”

“You’ve got the knife.”

“You got a real big dog, missy.”

This was the first time Eliza had encountered a runaway slave. His speech was strange, his manner frightened and volatile. Desperation sharpened his features. “I was told to come here,” he said, mumbling the words at the ground. “Told there’d be a safe cove for waiting, and a ship in the night.”

Eliza frowned. Who would have said such a thing to a man looking for freedom? Who would have made such a reckless promise? Suddenly realization swept over her.
This was something her father had done.
So many things became clear to her in that moment. Her father’s habit of spending hours on the lookout walk on the roof. His occasional disappearances at night, when he must have thought she was asleep. His habit of laying in more food than the two of them could eat. His keen interest in news broadsheets from the mainland. In secret, he must have been helping slaves to freedom.

“You were supposed to meet my father, Henry Flyte,” she said.

The use of the name seemed to calm the man, and he came down the rest of the way, all the while keeping his knife at the ready and his eyes on Caliban.

“My father was—he passed away,” she said.

The man’s shoulders drooped. She could see the spirit going out of him like a slow exhalation.

“Tell me what you expect,” Eliza suggested. “Perhaps I could help you.”

He shot her a dubious look. “I been told there’d be a deepwater cove, north end of the island.”

“I know the place.” Excitement tingled in her chest. This new awareness of her father made her feel closer to him than ever. “There’s only one proper cove with a view out to sea.”

“I been told to build a fire on the beach.”

“To signal the boat.” She tried to keep her voice low, but it was hard. After all the months of fearing her father would fade from memory, she suddenly felt very close to him. She could picture him clearly now, his movements assured as he led fleeing men and women to a place of safety. Dear God, he must have been helping fugitives for years. How could she not have known? “I can do this,” she said, praying she could be half as encouraging as her father must have been. “I can help you.”

The man leaned back against the fallen tree, exhausted. He was young. Most of them were, she supposed, for how else could someone endure the terror and hardship of this secret journey? His bare arms and hands bore the scars of work and whippings. His hair was cropped short, one side infested with hayseed. He had probably passed the day hiding and sleeping in a hayrick on the mainland before making the low-tide crossing to the island. He was dangerously thin, and his skin had a deep bluish cast to it. The leg of his homespun trousers had been shredded, and sticky blood stained his ankle.

She stepped back, wondering what to do next. She knew instinctively that she must be careful to give him space, not to threaten him.

He gingerly raised the injured leg, and she feared the wound was even worse than it appeared.

“I’d better have a look at that,” she said quietly.

He froze, narrowing his eyes at her.

“If you get an infection, you’ll be in no shape for the rest of your journey,” she added.

He gave one curt nod and followed her through the woods. But he kept his knife out.

“I’m not alone on this island,” she said quietly. “The other person who is here with me won’t betray you.” She hoped she was right, but she didn’t intend to test Hunter by telling him about the runaway. “I’m going to ask you to wait for me here while I fetch some things from the house. Then we’ll see about getting you to the north shore.”

She showed him where he could sit on a low flat rock about fifty yards from the house. Cedar branches swept down, concealing him from view.

“Will you stay?” she asked. When he gave no answer, she said, “Please. I only want to help.”

“I’ll stay.” His reply was a weary whisper. He slipped the knife into his belt.

She patted her leg so Caliban would follow, and went to get some water, soap, bandages and liniment. Hunter was nowhere to be found; he was probably still working with the stallion. She set out some corn pone and freshly churned butter in case he came back early. She prayed he wouldn’t question her absence or come looking for her.

She returned to the runaway, pleased to see he had not left. She gave him some cider, corn pone and a jar of beach-plum preserves, which he devoured while she examined the wounded leg. The gash was horrible. Something had encircled his lower leg and sunk deep.

“What happened?” she asked.

He took a swallow of cider. “Mantrap.” He winced as she teased a thread of fabric out of the wound.

Eliza gritted her teeth. She wasn’t squeamish, but the cruelty of a steel-toothed trap made her ill. Of the many things she had heard about the outside world, the custom of slavery was the most incomprehensible.

Slave, whom stripes may move, not kindness!
She had read it in
The Tempest,
but who would ever think such an atrocious thing could really exist in a sane mind?

Her father had explained that slavery was legal, but unjust. He must have felt morally obligated to help defeat it by assisting the runaways.

She was amazed that she hadn’t guessed the secret sooner. Her father had told her that in years long past, pirates had made use of the north shore, concealing their swift schooners offshore and racing to the mainland to plunder supplies. She should have realized that Flyte Island was ideally suited as a stop on the route to freedom. It had a deepwater moorage not far offshore, and was protected from view of the mainland by the tall rise of the leeward forest. A cove, gouged out by the sea and sheltered under the curve of a cliff in the dunes, created a secluded place to build a signal fire and wait.

She finished cleaning the wound, coated it with liniment and bandaged it. The man finished all of the food she had brought. She wished she had given him more.

“It’s about a mile to the cove,” she said. “Can you walk?”

The man nodded.

“It’s nearly dark,” she said. “We’d best go down to the water and wait.” She led the way through the high parts of the forest, moving north and east over the dunes to the remote, storm-carved cove. The runaway followed slowly, stumbling now and then.

“Here,” she said, putting out an arm. “You must lean on me.”

He hesitated, his thin shadow tense. “You just a little bit of a thing.”

“You’re pretty skinny yourself.”

He put an arm across her shoulders and leaned in close, his hip alongside hers. She took care to let him favor his injured leg as they walked together. His sweat smelled of the fear of a man pushed to the brink of his endurance, and his breathing sounded loud, almost frantic, in the stillness of nightfall.

Eliza felt almost overwhelmed by the closeness. The physical contact startled her. After months of being alone, she had encountered two men within the span of a few days. Curiously, both men were wounded, each in a different—but undeniable—way.

The runaway’s touch was impersonal, even reluctant, that of necessity. Hunter’s had never been impersonal, not even the first time he had touched her.

Twilight had fallen by the time they reached the cove, but Eliza knew the area well. “We can wait here.” She indicated an ancient twist of driftwood. One side of it had been charred by fire. When? she wondered. When had her father last helped a fugitive?

“You got to go back,” the man said.

“Shouldn’t I stay with you?”

“Best you don’t see this. Less you knows, the better,” he said.

Conceding his point, she handed him a tin of lucifers for making the fire.

“Godspeed,” she said, walking backward, watching him.

The fugitive said nothing. His eyes were the eyes of a dead man. He lifted one hand and then sat down on the sand to wait.

Eliza lay abed that night and tried to sleep, but she could not. Her thoughts were filled with Hunter Calhoun. He had been exuberant at supper because of the progress the horse had made. He’d grown merry with the rum and had not noticed her silence or the glances she kept aiming at the door. Pleading fatigue, she had gone to bed early, and he had taken his flask to the hammock on the porch.