The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles (47 page)

“At least thirty miles, give or take a few,” she said. “Where you from?”

“Virginia.”

“You bound to the forks alone?”

“That’s right. I’d hoped to arrive by the first of May.”

“You’re two weeks late.”

He touched his hat brim again. “Then I’d best not delay. Thank you—”

“You—”

He turned around at the sound of her voice.

“—you wouldn’t want to stay a while? I could use help with the planting.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“All right.”

He started on along the fresh-turned furrows, hearing a faint rumble in the gray sky to the west. The woman wiped her forehead with her forearm, pointed toward the ramshackle cabin surrounded by stumps at the edge of the field:

“There’s a spring out behind if you want to fill that canteen.”

“Thanks very much, I will.”

He said it quickly, his tone matching the impatience he felt. The clock in his head beat its warning.
He’ll be gone
—

HE’LL BE GONE

As he bent to hold the mouth of his canteen under the stream spilling from the rock ledge behind the cabin, he wished suddenly that the earth could pour forth more than water. The old craving hit him, thickening his tongue.

Near the spring, an upright slab of wood bore a man’s name carved out with the point of a knife. Evidently the father of the two small girls he heard chattering and giggling in the cabin. Perhaps he should stop; help the woman in return for a few meals and a few nights of rest. Then turn around and go back east. He felt too incredibly tired to travel one more mile if, at the end, he failed to find his friend—

Now listen,
he reprimanded himself.
You’ll find him. You’ll find him if you have to go all the way to the shore of the Kentucky country alone
—

But he had scant confidence.

His throat burned as he capped the canteen, walked around the cabin, waved to the woman at the slow-moving plow and set off through the forest while the May sky rumbled.

Judson assumed that what had spared his life was the clean passage of Lottie Shaw’s pistol ball in and out through the flesh of his left side. That and the cowardice of Carter, the man who was living off her diminished earning power following their flight from Richmond.

He had no way of knowing whether Carter had deterred Lottie from putting another ball into him and seeing him surely dead. In fact he had no recollection of anything in the hours immediately after the shooting.

Lottie and Carter had evidently left him where they planned: in the damp autumn leaves along Plum Creek. Somehow he’d stumbled up and away from there, guided by an instinctive sense of direction, until he reached the road that wound to the Rappahannock near Sermon Hill. He learned later that a field black spied him staggering along the road and summoned help.

He was borne to Sermon Hill in a wagon. There, according to Donald’s subsequent report, he was looked at by Angus Fletcher.

The old man recognized that his son might be bleeding to death. He sent for a physician—and told Donald that Judson would be permitted to remain at the plantation until he recovered or died.

But Angus insisted Judson be put in one of the slave cabins. His principles would only bend so far.

Judson did remember waking in the cabin, thrashing and yelling and feeling thick bandages wrapping his chest under an itchy nightshirt.

Flushed of face, Donald perched on a stool beside Judson’s pallet. Gently, he tried to push his brother down:

“You’ll kill yourself for certain if you flop around that way.”

“I promised to meet George Clark in Williamsburg!” were Judson’s first words.

“You
what?”

Breathing hard, Judson explained in labored sentences. At the end Donald shook his head:

“You’ve been lying here the best part of two weeks. There is no way you can make that rendezvous.”

“Send a message, then. You’ve got to!”

Donald agreed, and arranged it. But the black messenger returned in three days with the news that George Clark had already departed.

“Then—” Speech and even breathing still cost Judson considerable pain. “As soon as I’m up—a week or so—I’ll follow him—”

Donald rubbed his gouty leg, shook his head a second time:

“It’ll be more like a month before you’re well enough to hobble. The wound was clean but quite deep.” An ironic smile touched Donald’s lips. “Father said you were to be given the best possible care. Do you know he summoned a second doctor all the way from Richmond because he felt the local sawbones didn’t know enough? I’ve never seen him so shamefaced as when he told me he’d done it.”

Judson was too astonished to say anything immediately. He gazed at the cabin’s dirt floor, listened to the voices of blacks moving in the street outside, experienced alternate pangs of bitter mirth and exultation. Finally, he spoke:

“I can’t conceive that I’d even be allowed at Sermon Hill. I’m surprised Father didn’t order me floated in the river immediately, to save possible funeral expenses.”

“Stop that,” Donald said, angered. “He’s a narrow-minded, vile-tempered old devil, and no one knows it better than I. But he’s not a monster, just a man. And you
are
his son. So let’s have no more vituperation. There’s been enough hate on both sides too damned long.”

Judson lay back, hurting. “Yes,” he murmured. “Yes, I guess that’s right—”

A moment later, he re-opened his eyes:

“When I am able to leave, I still intend to follow George.”

“By yourself? That’s insanity.”

“Maybe, but I’m going. I’ll settle with that Shaw bitch first, though.”

Donald waved. “You’ll be spared. She’s disappeared, along with the flash gentleman who arrived with her while you were in Williamsburg. They either left you for dead or feared to finish what they’d started because they could guess the consequences. Father sent drivers searching for them. With pistols and muskets.”

“Nigra
drivers?”

“Three of his most trusted. He armed them personally.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am.” ‘

“I’ll be goddamned.”

“Why should you be so surprised? Blood outlasts everything. Overcomes everything—including hatred. Blood and time are the world’s two great healers.”

Judson repeated it, bemused: “Blood—” He shook his head slowly. “Odd you should light on that word.”

“It’s common enough.”

“But the old man thinks I’ve a bad strain running in me. Devil’s blood, he calls it.”

“He has the same kind.” Again that ironic smile. “Don’t tell me you’ve never noticed. Of course, I don’t doubt he softened somewhat because you were shot. That made you vulnerable, you see. It’s easier to forgive a wounded creature than one who’s raring up to snap at you. I wouldn’t question it too much, I’d just be thankful. The hate’s ruined both of you for years.”

Sleepy, Judson sighed. “I feel too stinking rotten to hate anyone but myself. Yes, I—I’m grateful he relented. Would you tell him?”

“Of course. I doubt he’ll have any reaction.”

“I’m not looking for a reaction, just tell him.”

“I will.”

“Also tell him I’m going to follow George. It’s the only way I can turn my life around. Even if I don’t catch him, or—if something should happen to me on the way, I have to start over. Do you understand?”

Donald answered quietly, “I do. And that’s a great virtue of this country. One of the things which makes a disheartening, tiresome war worth fighting.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’ve much to win besides all those lofty principles declared in Philadelphia, Judson. I’ve heard Tom Jefferson speak of it time and again—the country in the west. The chance it offers for people to begin again. Lord—” A brief sigh. “I sometimes wish I could go.”

His eyes sought his younger brother’s. “But I hope you haven’t conceived this venture only to prove something to Father.”

“No. As I told George, I tangled my affairs so badly in this part of the world, I have to leave or I’ll die here.” Donald tried to joke, pointing at Judson’s left side: “I agree—it damned near happened, didn’t it?”

On a bright morning in late March, Donald walked down to the river road with his younger brother.

Though still pale, Judson looked fit. He carried a haversack and the Kentucky rifle Donald had sent to Richmond to procure. Misty March afternoons when he could manage to keep his powder dry, he’d practiced loading and firing in a remote field. His target was a chunk of log set on top of a tree stump. Before too many days had gone by, he could hit the section of log, six inches high and four across, nearly every time.

Donald looked ponderously heavy and tired as he leaned on his cane at the point where the main road intersected the one leading from the great house. At sunrise, Judson had packed his haversack, tucked away the pocket money Donald had loaned him, dressed for his departure and left the cabin. Not once during his recuperation had he entered the main building at Sermon Hill, nor seen his father, except to catch glimpses of him riding the fields.

“I still think you are absolutely lunatic,” Donald said. “But I also have come to the conclusion that with a spot of luck, you might find what you’re seeking.”

“I don’t know what that is, Donald.”

“Yes, but when you find it, perhaps you’ll recognize it.”

“You’re more confident than I am.”

“Brotherly intuition,” Donald smiled. “You’re not the same person I used to know—”

“Of necessity,” Judson said. “I guess we drive out our demons the best way we can, just to survive. I don’t really know where I’m going, but I know I can’t stay here. That’s a splendid declaration of purpose, isn’t it?”

And he gave Donald a wry smile that hid a very real ache. The melancholy had overwhelmed him, without warning on the slow walk down to the river.

“It’s an honest one,” Donald said. “By the way—I’ll take care of your request that Peggy McLean be told.”

Judson’s head lifted sharply. “Is she back home?”

“Why, yes. In all the bustle of preparation these past couple of days, I must have forgotten to mention it. I ran into Williams. He told me. He said she returned about a week ago. She’s been staying inside because her health is poor again, evidently.”

Concern stabbed Judson. “What’s wrong?”

“Williams professes not to know. It’s very odd—you realize she’s been away since last fall—? Williams said she let slip a remark about sailing home on a coasting vessel.”

“A
coasting
vessel? Why in God’s name would she risk a sea trip, north or south, when the British are everywhere?”

“So are the American privateersmen. But I agree, in wartime, a pleasure cruise anywhere is deuced peculiar—and a holiday the length of hers downright astonishing. Where could she go? Neither Philadelphia nor New York in the north, only Boston. Possibly Charleston or Savannah south of here—”

“I’m sure Peggy has no relatives in Charleston or Savannah,” Judson said, trying to puzzle it out. “It seems to me she told me years ago that her mother had kin somewhere up in New England. Maybe my memory’s faulty, though—”

“The sad truth is, the uprising is probably still affecting her. To the degree that wild jaunts offer the only release she can find. Williams said nothing about—” Donald sought the term he wanted. “—mental difficulties. But he’s intensely loyal, so he wouldn’t.”

I doubt the cause is solely the uprising,
Judson thought somberly.
I expect it’s also a certain event that happened afterward
—

For a moment he entertained the notion of stopping at McLean’s on his way out of Caroline County. But he rejected the idea. Nothing he could do now would ever make amends for the despicable act committed in the summerhouse.

His thoughts lingered a moment on an image of Peggy’s face. Not without effort, he blanked the image from his mind as part of the past he had to shut out forever.

“Well—” He couldn’t bear to protract the parting much longer. “—if you do have the opportunity, tell her where I’ve gone, and why.”

“Be assured I’ll do so. I know it will be months if not a year or more before we hear from you—”

“I promise I’ll write when I can.”

“Yes, but with the tribes rising, I doubt the post operates on any sort of regular schedule between here and Kentucky!”

And not at all from the British-controlled territory beyond,
Judson added silently.

“I don’t want to sermonize, Judson, but I do believe you’ve made the proper choice. I’m thankful that despite all the turmoil in the west, there’s open land to which a man can go if need be—”

Tears glistened in the corners of his eyes. He wiped them away quickly. “God keep you, brother.”

“And you,” Judson answered, starting up the road.

“Oh, wait—damme! I’m forgetting everything—!”

Judson wheeled around, startled to see his brother pull a small black-bound book from his coat pocket.

“I saw Father while you were putting your things together. This is a present—”

Judson’s jaw dropped. “Not for me—?”

“Don’t be too overwhelmed until you examine it. It’s what you’d expect of him, I think.”

“I didn’t expect anything.”

“No, I mean the nature of the gift.” Donald’s thumb bent around to the gold stamping on the binding. Judson smiled that old, brilliant smile that could light his face:

“A New Testament. I see what you meant.”

“Go on, open the flyleaf.”

Judson took the book. Something caught in his throat when he saw the familiar handwriting, a little shakier with age than he remembered, but still recognizably his father’s. The inscription read:

To my son Judson. Angus Fletcher March 29, 1778

Judson’s smile faded. His face grew almost stark as he stared at the words. Donald chuckled with false heartiness:

“Of course Father thinks you’re even madder than I do. Yet all the while he’s inveighing against your waywardness, I get the feeling that in some queer, perverse way he approves of what you’ve chosen to do.”