Authors: Julie Doherty
Chapter 50
Henry sat outside on a step while Sarah nursed John. A pigeon strutted down the empty street, bursting up from the cobbles when a wagon clattered through a distant intersection. He saw the wagon long enough to recognize the figure hunched in its bed.
Abraham, the slave from Lafferty Hall.
Henry sprinted off the step and ran up Arch Street and down Second, passing Christ Church, then crossing over Market. He paused at a print shop to catch his breath and watch the wagon rattle through the intersection of Front and Market Streets. At a coffee house there, the driver halted the horse.
Henry approached the wagon when its driver, presumably Pratt, leapt off the seat to join a group of seamen standing on the docks across the street.
Henry gripped the horse’s harness and leaned toward the wagon bed. “Abraham,” he whispered.
“I sees you.” The slave stared straight ahead.
“Why did ye not tell me Mary was wi’ child?”
“You never asked.”
“Is it his?”
“Mmm-hmm, it dat.”
Henry leaned his forehead against the sweaty horse. The animal looked back at him and nickered.
“Is she alone wi’ him now?”
“Mmm-hmm. Me and Mister Pratt, we goin’ for casks of salt.”
“When will ye be back?”
“’morrow night, maybe a day more if the salt ain’t there just yet.”
“Who’s at the hoose wi’ Mary?”
“My wife and daughter and the devil who own us.”
Henry heard the seamen laugh and saw Pratt break away and gesture farewell.
“Ye have my thanks,” was all Henry managed to say before sprinting across Front Street and into an alley.
He ran all the way back to Sarah’s to deliver the news.
Chapter 51
The thicket behind Sorley’s mansion was a tangle of broken trees, briars, and grapevines.
Henry jerked his sleeve off a bramble and climbed toward what he hoped was the back of Sorley’s kitchen. He inched through a grove of cedar saplings, his thoughts of Mary temporarily suspended by the glorious fragrance of the trees. His delight ended at the far side of the cedar grove, where stench and a cloud of flies hung over discarded carcasses and fermenting scraps cascading into the hollow.
The kitchen dump.
He turned and whistled down into the hollow to get his father’s attention, then pointed at the rubbish.
Father, a stone’s throw away, rubbed his hip and nodded.
The folly in discarding scraps so close to the house was evident in the network of trails made by scavengers and the predators hunting them. Some of the tracks pressed into the mud were large, too large to have been made by a dog. Had wolves stalked here, watching Mary as she tossed kitchen waste into the woods? Henry flattened his palm over the torc and said a silent prayer of thanks to God for sparing her.
A woman’s silhouette glided into view at the tree line above them, sending Henry pitching for cover behind an outcrop of hawthorns. She swung a basket, and apple peelings fluttered into the hollow and settled onto fallen leaves.
“Ouch!” She batted a briar with her basket. “Stickin’ your jaggers in folk.”
Henry smiled. “Mary,” he whispered. He stood, craned his neck, and sought a path through the hawthorn.
She’d been turning to leave, but she stopped and cocked an ear toward the forest.
“Mary, do nae scream. It’s me, Henry.” He stood on tiptoe so she could see his face above the barbed twigs.
Her basket fell to the ground, and she stepped back. “God’s grace . . . Henry, go away. He’ll—” She glanced over her shoulder, and her voice turned shrill. “I’m begging ye, Henry, if ye e’er loved me at all, ye must go, and go now!”
Her panic would betray them. He had to get to her, calm her down, or at the very least, clap a palm over her mouth.
“Be quiet, ye eejit. Bide there for me.”
There was no easy way around the hawthorns, so he charged through them. Thorns ripped at his hair and cut his face and arms as he pushed through the undergrowth.
He was still fighting his way through when Mary picked up her basket and turned to leave.
He scrambled after her, clawing at the crumbly bank and impaling his palms and shins on chestnut burrs.
“Mary,” he shouted at her back. His hair was in his eyes. Blood seeped onto his sleeves.
She looked back once, terror skewing her features, and ran for the kitchen.
He started through a patch of broom sedge when something hauled on his shirt and sent him sprawling to the forest floor.
Beside him, on hands and knees, his father panted, his hair disheveled and his cheeks streaming blood.
“Use your . . . noggin, son,” he gasped, his face backlit by the sky. “We canny . . . go marching oot into the open like . . . a Hessian regiment.” Sweat mixed with blood and trickled down his forehead. He looked as if he’d just survived a Mohawk gauntlet.
Henry sat up and rubbed a painful rib. “Ye could have just said.”
“I did. Three times.” Father plucked a thorn from his brow. “Let’s do this the right way.” He helped Henry to his feet. “Ye bust anything?”
Henry shook his head. “Only my pride. I thought she’d be happy to see me.”
“I’m sure she is.” Father untied his neckerchief and used it to mop his face. He pulled up his stockings, now torn and full of beggarticks. “She’s probably protecting ye. God knows what threats your uncle made.”
Henry looked at his father and wondered how two brothers could be so different. It was a question for another day, when Mary’s nightmare was over and they were all safe under one roof.
They crept into a patch of goldenrod to crouch and watch the house. Nothing moved but a few cabbage white butterflies fluttering from rose to rose.
At the kitchen, with its smoking chimney, piles of apples lay outside the open doorway. A woman inside paused her singing to say something he could not discern.
They sneaked along the forest’s boundary, past the broom sedge where some of Mary’s fragrant apple peelings littered the ground.
Father pointed at an open window on the kitchen’s west end, and they aimed for it, scuttling across the yard like water skippers on a puddle. They rested for a moment beneath the windowsill, then eased up to peer inside.
A slave stirred one of two great cauldrons straddling low fires on three-legged supports. They were large enough to hold a man, and on another day, they probably heated Sorley’s wash water. Today, they boiled apple butter, a spiced sauce Henry had yet to try.
The cook dabbed her forehead with a corner of her apron. “So hot,” she said to Mary, who sat peeling apples at a table. “Shoulda did this outside, but it gonna rain.”
Five baskets of fruit surrounded Mary’s skirts. Dread lay on her face like a ghoulish blanket.
“You unwell, Miss Mary? You look pale as new snow.” Without waiting for an answer, she abandoned her paddle to cross the room and press the back of her hand against Mary’s forehead.
Mary smiled feebly and shook her head.
“Just you make sure you drink plenty o’ water or dat baby dry up on you.”
The cook lifted a ladle out of a bucket sitting on the table and sipped from it before returning to her work at the cauldrons. “Lands, it sure enough is hot.” She hummed a solemn tune.
Father squatted, pulling Henry down with him.
They returned to the weeds to discuss their plan.
“Go in,” Father said. “See if ye can talk some sense into her. If ye hear me hoot like an owl, get oot as fast as ye can. Dive into the woods and meet me back at the Quaker’s barn.”
“Right.”
He started at once for the kitchen, but his father stayed him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Now, listen to me son, and listen good, if something happens, go on wi’oot me. If I am nae there by nightfall, take the women and go. I’ll meet ye at hame, ye hear me?”
“But Father—”
“No buts about it, Henry. Promise me right now.”
“I promise.” He hoped it didn’t come to that. “What about the cook?”
“I canny think she has any loyalty to so cruel a master. She’ll say naught. Be quick now, go.” He pushed Henry forward.
Henry’s next breath was taken in a sweltering, apple-scented kitchen.
The cook dropped her paddle and jumped back from the bubbling cauldron.
“You dat boy who come for Miss Mary.” Her grin revealed teeth that looked shockingly white, though they were probably as yellow as anyone’s. “I told you he come back for you, Miss Mary.”
Mary’s knife clattered to the floor as she stood. “Henry, go away. He’ll kill ye. Ye do nae know—” She tripped over a basket of apples.
Henry caught her by the arm as spilled fruit rolled across the floor.
“I do know, Mary, I do. I know he’s my uncle, and he’s been using ye to lure us in. I know he says I have something he wants. Well, he has something I want!” He pulled her to him.
She tried to wrench free.
“Nay, Henry, let me go.” She wriggled out of his embrace. Her face was flushed, her eyes full of shame, and her voice rising in volume. “Can ye not see that I’m wi’ bairn?
His
bairn!”
The cook shuffled through spilled apples to join them. “Miss Mary, simmer down now, this here boy wanna take you away from all this. He know you ain’t gone and got yourself stuffed with a baby out of love, ain’t dat right?” She looked at Henry, who nodded. “Listen to him, chile.”
Henry hooked his finger under Mary’s chin to lift her face to his. “I’ll take care of ye, Mary, just like I promised your father I would, just like I promised ye on the brig. We’ve come for ye. Father’s ootside. We are nae leaving wi’oot ye.”
The cook pushed Mary in the small of her back. “Go, chile, go with the boy. Do as he say.”
“I canny.” Mary shook her head. “He’ll beat her. He’ll beat all of them. And ye . . . ye’ll be wanted for sheltering a runaway. I canny do it. I
will nae
do it.” She shrugged off his embrace, then pointed toward the door and shrieked, “Go!”
An owl hooted outside.
Henry’s stomach lurched. “Mary, ye must come at once!”
She covered her face with her hands and wailed. “What’s to be done? Will ye not just go, Henry?”
The owl hooted again, louder.
Henry lost patience. “Listen, lassie, ye’re coming whether ye want to or not.” He clamped his hand over her mouth and dragged her to the doorway.
“Henry, run! Take her and run!” Father stood halfway to the house, braced and wielding his knife as Uncle Sorley charged like an angry bull.
“What is this treachery?” Uncle Sorley shouted. “I knew it!”
Mary screamed at him, “Do nae hurt them. I’ll do whate’er ye—”
Henry grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Straighten up! If ye do nae run right now, ye risk all of us!”
She stared blankly for a moment before shooting a sympathetic glance at Ruth, who nodded.
They were running then, sprinting through the weeds and down over the bank into the protection of the forest. Henry pulled Mary through the hawthorns, hearing the rip of her petticoat behind him, knowing she’d be bloody when she came out the other side.
He had her. He had Mary at last!
“Your . . . father,” Mary shouted behind him between gasps. “What about . . . your father?”
“Keep running, Mary. He’ll handle himsel’.”
It sounded believable. He hoped it was true.
Chapter 52
Sorley sneered at Edward’s knife.
“And what are ye gonny do wi’ that?” He took a step forward. “Stab me? The pious Edward McConnell, a murderer? Come now, we both know better.”
Edward retreated a few steps, his knife quivering in his grip.
“Make no mistake, Sorley, I am nae the same man ye knew in Ireland. Stay back or, as God is my witness, I’ll—”
“Ye’ll what?” Sorley laughed and swaggered closer, his shirt untucked and his wig messy and askew.
Edward felt faint. The last thing he wanted to do was kill his brother.
“Come now.” Sorley wiggled his outstretched fingers. “Gi’ me the knife, brother.”
Edward planted his feet and roared, “Brother? How dare ye call me brother?”
Sorley halted mid-stride, seemingly stunned by Edward’s tone.
The sight of his fine garments against the backdrop of his mansion intensified Edward’s rage.
“Not a year went by wi’oot ye racking my rent and decreasing my tillage,” he shouted. “Ye whittled away at my wealth until I had naught o’er my head but the leaky sod of a pig byre!” His limbs trembled, and his ears pounded.
Sorley flattened a hand over his heart. “Edward, let me explain. I—”
Edward was too far gone to care what his brother had to say. “What, Sorley, ye what? Ye sat scheming next to a blaze in your grand hoose, sipping tea oot of my dead wife’s cups while her son shivered next to the only sow left to us. Is that how a brother behaves? Brother indeed! Ye have some neck on ye, using that word.”
Sorley opened his mouth to speak, but Edward wasn’t finished with him.
“Ye connived wi’ the sheriff to raise our taxes and saw that the church collected our tithes. I would nae be surprised if ye paid God Himsel’ to send the drought that ruined me. And so I ask again, sir,” he thrust the knife with each of his final words. “How dare ye!”
Sorley dropped his arms to his sides and turned to face the distant river. He straightened his wig, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose.
His fury sufficiently spent, Edward lowered his weapon. On the river, men rowed boats out to a stalled brig. He watched them and remembered a time when he and Sorley stole a curragh to go fishing on Lough Swilly. Had it not been for Sorley’s strength, they would have been sucked out to sea that day.
Edward’s anger shifted to regret. “What happened to ye, Sorley? Ye were a good lad. I looked up to ye, thought ye could put no foot wrong.”
“Ye know fine well what happened to me.”
“For a few ounces of gold ye’d starve your brother and his son, leave your wife to sail across the sea, and rape your own daughter—”
“Aye.” Sorley faced him like a gravestone.
Edward stared openly, looking for any sign of the brother he once loved. “Your greed will be your undoing, Sorley. Oh, how I wish Father had gi’n the torc to ye instead of me.”
Sorley licked his lips and leaned closer. “Ye can right that wrong. Gi’ it to me now. By Jaysus, Edward, ye canny know how much I need it.” He rubbed the creases on his forehead. “I’ll pay handsomely. Ye would nae want for anything.”
Edward caught the scent of brandy on his brother’s breath. “Upon my word, Sorley, curse or no, if I still had it, I would gi’ it to ye for naught, just so ye can see what a bloody pox it is upon a man.”
“What do ye mean?” Sorley’s face blanched. “Where is it? Tell me ye have nae sold it!”
“Nay, but it is lost to me just the same. It was in my trunk one day and gone the next. I blame customs, for they were the only ones wi’ access to it, other than me and Henry.”
Sorley lunged for his throat. “Liar!”
Edward rallied quickly, returning the knife to eye level and retreating in the toe-heel-toe-heel manner of a practiced swordsman. It was a scene played out countless times in their youth, when they dueled in the meadow with sticks.
He caught his heel on something and stumbled, smelling apples as he recovered his balance.
Shite! The kitchen.
In the margin of his vision, he noticed the cook standing alone. Henry and Mary were not in the room.
Sorley, evidently seeing his relief, seized the opportunity to charge. Like a raging bull, he struck Edward’s torso and rammed him against the kitchen wall. The knife popped out of Edward’s fist and skidded across the floor.
The cook tossed it into a cauldron.
“Bitch!” Sorley shouted at her. His eyes and veins bulged as he tore open Edward’s shirt. “Where is it?”
“Where is what?” Edward rasped, the air slow in returning to his lungs.
Sorley spat brandy-scented saliva as he shouted, “Ye know fine well what, ye bastard, where is it?”
“I do nae have it.”
“Ye do, I know ye do.” He punched Edward’s sides and pinched his clothes, feeling for the torc.
His air fully restored, Edward heaved against Sorley’s chest. “I said I do nae have it!”
Sorley took a swing at Edward, who ducked.
“I’ll have ye in front of a magistrate before the day’s oot, sir,” Sorley shouted.
This time, it was Edward who laughed.
“And how, pray, are ye gonny get me there? Your clerk has gone for salt, and your man wi’ him.” He gestured toward the cook. “Ye reckon she’ll help ye?”
“She will, aye, she will!” Sorley grabbed the back of the cook’s neck before Edward could object.
“Lawd, no! Please, suh!” the cook shrieked, as Sorley thrust her face toward the boiling apple butter.
Edward gasped. “For the love of all things holy”—he took a step toward the cauldrons—“let her go, just let her go.”
Rage glittered in Sorley’s eyes. “I’ll let her go when ye gi’ me what I want.”
“Mama!” a girl shrieked from the doorway. She raced for the cauldrons.
“Naomi, get out!” The cook twisted out of Sorley’s clutch as he prepared to strike the girl racing toward him.
Before Sorley could fully cock his fist, the girl shoved his chest with both hands and knocked him sideways.
He flailed his arms to recover his balance, but it was too late. He slipped on one of Mary’s spilled apples. Confusion crossed his face and then panic as he twisted and fell headfirst into the boiling apple butter.
“God’s mercy, Sorley!”
Edward hopped through the hazard of fallen apples, past the stunned maid, to the cauldron.
Sorley had already extricated himself and writhed on the brick floor as the sugary liquid split his skin and exposed the layer of fat underneath. His cries shook the kettles hanging on hooks above their heads. The wig that protected his skull from burning slipped off his head into a soggy heap beside his face, a bubbling mess that matched the red of the apples scattered around it.
“Oh mercy, Sorley. Sorley!” Edward knelt and reached for his brother, hands quivering, not knowing where to touch or what to do. “Send for a doctor!” he shouted to the cook, who stared down at her master with her hands cupped over her mouth. “Go!”
“I’ll go.” Naomi sprinted toward the door. “You be needin’ Mama’s help.”
The day was dying and so was Sorley and the maid had yet to return. Sorley whimpered, shivering in spite of his hotness, as Edward cut away his clothes. He was frightfully injured. Sugar, like oil and melted wax, held its heat long after removal from the fire.
The cook brought a bucket of cool water. Edward dipped scraps of linen into it and draped them across Sorley’s burns.
“Ed—” Sorley’s tongue was swollen, too swollen for speech. It rolled helplessly behind lips resembling two bloated slugs. He turned his head, seeking Edward, though his eyes were useless slits in his face.
“I’m here.” Edward laid a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. Skin slid away and set Sorley to howling. “Dear God! I’m sorry!” Edward jerked his hand back. “I do nae know what to do for ye.” He looked toward the door. Dusk closed in on them, and so did ants, drawn by the sweetness of the apples. “I sent the maid for the doctor.”
“Sh-she’ll not . . . be back.” Sorley sputtered saliva and ooze.
Edward sat on the bricks next to his brother. A handful of images crossed his mind: Sorley making silly faces across the dinner table; Sorley pushing him on a rope swing; Sorley giggling behind him on Seamus, their father’s ornery plow horse.
Where is that maid?
He had to do something.
“I’m gonny see what’s taking her so long.” He rose to his feet, his hip sore and his heart hurting worse. In truth, he needed air and a good cry. “I’ll be right back.”
He left before Sorley could object or witness his tears.
He found the maid swinging her legs on a garden bench thirty feet from her dying master. In the last rays of sun, she pulled petals from a daisy.
“Did the doctor say when he can come?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
She smoothed her gown to accentuate a bump in her belly. “He done this to me. I say he get what he deserve.”
Jaysus, Sorley.
“I’m begging ye, lassie, fetch a doctor. He was nae always like this. Have mercy, if not on him, then on me.”
She plucked more petals from the daisy.
It was useless. He couldn’t force her to go. She’d only find some dark corner in which to hide until Sorley died.
Edward jogged back to the kitchen, where Sorley’s quaking had given way to an ominous calm.
“E-Ed . . .” He groaned as a wave of pain sliced through him.
“Sorley, ye should rest. Your tongue is very swollen.” He could no longer close his lips because of it.
His shallow breaths lessened and then ended altogether. He arched his back and tore his mouth open, breaking blisters and sending rivulets down the sides of his face.
“Oh my,” Edward thought he heard him say.
Sorley shuddered once, then fell limp.
Edward stared at his brother’s lifeless face.
“What you gonna do now?” someone asked behind him.
In the doorway, the cook embraced the maid.
“I do nae know.” His hands shook as he tried to process the horrid turn of events.
“You gonna tell ’em my Naomi done this?”
The maid whimpered and pressed her face deeper into her mother’s side.
Edward rose on feeble legs and mindlessly brushed at a sticky spot on his breeches.
Apple butter, his brother’s murderer.
“I’m sorry, him bein’ your brother an’ all, but if you tell what my Naomi done, they’ll hang her afore any of us can blink, an’ she don’t deserve to die on account of dat man.” Tears tracked down her cheeks, already wet with perspiration. She pushed the girl an arm’s length away. “Look what dat devil done to her! She was tryin’ to save me. You can hardly blame her.”
“Nay,” he said quietly. “This canny be blamed on anyone. Sorley slipped on an apple. It was an accident. Just an unfortunate accident.”
The cook sighed. “Thank you, suh.”
“There’s just one thing,” Edward said. “No one can know my son and I were here.”
The cook offered a knowing smile. “I understand, suh. Miss Mary tol’ me you don’t have no papers in your own names. You’d be found out if folk called on you to tell what you saw.”
“Aye, it would be very bad for us to be deposed.” He narrowed his eyes. “It would be worse for your daughter, since I would have to testify that she pushed her master.”
“Well, then, it just real good it was only us women in the kitchen today.”
She left her daughter sobbing by the doorway, glided across the kitchen, and with a pair of tongs, fished his knife out of the apple butter. She wrapped the weapon in a thick towel before handing it to him. “Now, if I was you, I’d head for them hills.”
Edward looked again at his brother’s corpse. “He should have a funeral.”
“He’ll have a funeral, I can promise you dat, and prolly a big ol’ stone to make sure he don’t go crawling outta the ground again. Just you go on. I’ll scatter some jugs and go for the doctor. It’ll look like what it was.” Her gaze turned intense. “An accident. Nobody’s gonna think nothin’ of it. Mister Pratt know Mister Lafferty be in his cups more often than not.”
“They’ll want to know where Mary is.”
“I’ll say she took off in a terrible fright when she seen what happened. Maybe wolves got her, since I hear ’em howlin’ now and again down by the dump. Now if I was you, I’d get goin’ and I’d make sure dat boy of yours get some space between Mary and this place afore Mister Pratt start lookin’ for her.”
Edward walked to the door, then turned. “What will happen to ye, now that he’s gone?”
“I imagine we be sold on.”
Edward felt sorry for them and remorseful about the veiled threat he’d made to her. “To a worse fate, perhaps?”
It was the maid who answered. “Suffer no guilt on our account, suh. They is no worse fate than hell, and we already been there.”