Shadowbrook (17 page)

She sat gingerly on the bench beside Hamish, keeping her weight more or less on one cheek. “I keep telling meself it’s not worth letting a man ram his cock up yer arse for a guinea, much less a shilling,” she sighed, “but I give in every time.” Groesbeck appeared and gave them each a tot of rum. Hamish put tuppence on the table and the landlord scooped it up and turned to go. “Hold on.” Annie reached between her breasts and extracted three sixpences. “Here’s your share of me day’s earnings, Peter. I’m done work until tomorrow. Got to give me poor bottom a bit of rest or they’ll be burying the whole of me by week’s end.”

Hamish waited until the landlord had left them before asking, “What about John Hale? Does he like to ram it up your backside, as well?”

Annie laughed. “Lord no. Wish he did; I’d hold my shit for a month if I thought I could bury that bastard’s cock in it. It’s other things John Hale likes.”

“What things?”

“None of yer business. I told ye afore I took yer poxed money, I’ll tell you anything he says, not what he does.” She was too ashamed to tell what Hale made her do the two or three times a month he came to see her. The Scot had offered her a golden guinea to loosen her tongue, but no amount of money would make her. “ ’Sides, I ain’t seen John Hale at all this past fortnight” And glad she was of it, much as she missed the shilling Hale paid her for each visit.

“When you did see him last, was he talking about the harvest? Did he say how—” Hamish stopped speaking. Nearly everyone in the taproom stopped speaking.

A huge redheaded man had walked in. There was a lassie with him, a wee scrap o’ a thing. Half undressed, she seemed, so tattered was her frock. The man sat at a table near the door and called loudly for a pint o’ ale for himself and a glass o’ Rhenish wine for the lady; if he noticed how quiet the taproom had become, he dinna let on. Hamish felt a cold hand grip his bowels and damped his teeth tight shut to keep from groaning aloud.

“Only drinks wine.” Annie didn’t seem to have noticed Hamish’s distress. “Lady is she? Don’t look like it to me.”

Hamish wasn’t interested in who or what the lassie might be. “That’s Quentin Hale, isn’t it?”

“That’s him,” Annie confirmed.

People had started speaking again, rather more loudly than was normal. And making a point of not looking at the newcomer or his companion. “The Red Bear. That’s what they call him, isn’t it?”

“Uko Nyakwai, the savages say. Practically one of ’em hisself, if the truth be
told. Married a squaw, and in a proper Christian church, if you don’t mind. And when—”

“I thought he was gone. I heard after the squaw died, Quentin Hale left Shadowbrook for good and went to the Ohio Country.” To Hamish’s ears his voice sounded hoarse and unnatural.

“Not right away. Stayed up there on the Patent for maybe a year, then he had a huge fight with his pa and left. Doesn’t matter anyway. Shadowbrook was never going to be his. John’s the elder brother. That’s how rich folks do things, isn’t it? The first one gets the best of whatever there is, and the rest are left to squabble over the leavings.”

“That’s how it happens sometimes,” Hamish said.

God-rotting hell! He’d been sure he wouldna have to deal with Quentin Hale. Leastwise not until long after everything was settled and he had the law and possession on his side. God-rotting hell, but sometimes a man’s destiny was a hard thing to live with.

Nicole was glad to leave Albany. The women of the town had looked at her in surprise, then quickly looked away in disapproval. Her dark hair hung in a plait down her back like a squaw’s, because she had lost all her pins. She had no petticoats and no chemise, and her dress was little more than rags. The lingering glances of the men were worse. She could tell what they were thinking. If Quentin Hale wasn’t with her she’d have been mauled like a common whore. “Where are we going now?” she demanded when they quit the town. “Where is Monsieur Shea? You said he would rejoin us.”

“He will, when he can.” She’d have to stop asking so many questions if she was going to be Cormac Shea’s woman. Not his worry, Quent reminded himself. Corm had claimed her; it was up to him to break her to his ways. “We’re going the same place we’ve been going right along,” he said. “Shadowbrook. We’ll be there before midday tomorrow if you’ll stop talking so much and keep walking.”

“That’s your family’s home, isn’t it? I have heard you and Monsieur Shea talking about it.”

“That’s right.” He said no more and they walked in silence for what remained of the day.

At dusk they descended a steep hill to a shallow cove beside the broad river. There was a narrow strip of sandy beach that ended in an outcropping of rocks, the whole protected by a half circle of willow trees growing at the foot of the cliff. Quent waited and kept watch while Nicole bathed. “Stay this side of the rocks,” he told her. “There’s an undertow.” When she came out, refreshed and ravenous,
he had already stripped to the waist and taken off his moccasins. “I’ll bring back supper,” he called over his shoulder as he moved off. He dropped his breeches, stepping out of them, and bent forward to gather them up. Nicole’s cheeks grew hot and she quickly turned her head. By the time she turned back, the bare backside of the Red Bear was nowhere in sight.

Nicole wondered why he hadn’t made a fire for her to cook the fish he clearly intended to catch, but when Quent returned he was carrying a basket woven of willow reeds. He came clambering over the rocks, wearing his breeches, droplets of water still clinging to his shoulders and chest and red hair. “Supper,” he said, depositing the basket at her feet. It was full of rough-shelled oysters, each almost as big as her palm. “Biggest and sweetest you’ve ever tasted,” he promised. He bent over to reclaim his dirk from the things he’d left on the shore, pried open the first mollusk, and handed it to her.

Nicole downed the shimmering oyster. “Delicious,” she agreed. “I love oysters. Maman did not approve. Not fit food for a lady, she said. Only for common folk.”

“What would your maman say if she saw you now?” Quent asked, slurping down two oysters and opening two more for her.

“She would wag her finger,” Nicole admitted. “But she would understand after I explained that it was oysters or nothing, and that I am very hungry. Where did you get that?” She nodded toward the willow-reed basket, grayed with age and long soaking.

“There’s a cave beneath those rocks. The entrance is underwater and it’s hard to find unless you know where to look. The basket was in there.”

“You knew where to look.”

“Yes. We’re on Shadowbrook land now. I’ve been swimming here since I was a boy.”

“You and Monsieur Shea?”

“That’s right.” Damn the woman. Every conversation he had with her ended with Cormac Shea.

In the morning they left the riverbank and cut inland. “Straight up the bank would get us there faster,” Quent said, “but there’s a stretch of marshland between here and the house where the mosquitoes are the size of your fist. Better if we avoid that.”

Nicole was grateful for the shade of the woodland route, and Monsieur Hale seemed to enjoy pointing out various landmarks and features of the Patent as they came into view. More for himself than her, Nicole thought, as if he needed reminding.

“That road there leads to the sawmill. Used to be only half as wide, but we broadened it some years back. This is the back road to the mill. Round the other side there’s what we call the big road, the one my grandfather built when he first
got here.” Quent squatted and studied the rutted track. “Doesn’t seem to have been scraped or graded for the last couple of seasons.”

A league or so further on there was another break in the trees, and another path wide enough for a horse and wagon. “That’s the back way to the gristmill and the sugarhouse,” he said. “But if you’re not driving a wagon, quickest way’s to take the cutoff by a pair of white pines. Takes you by way of Big Two.”

“What is made at a sugarhouse? And what is Big Two?”

“Sugar’s how you make rum.”

“And Big Two?”

“Pair of hills.” He didn’t explain that the hills had gotten their name because of their resemblance to a woman’s breasts.

A bit farther on they climbed a rise that gave them a view over what appeared to be an inland sea, or perhaps a lake. Only when she looked more closely did Nicole realize it was a field of wheat, the tall stalks rippling in the early morning breeze.

They stood for a time while Quent shaded his eyes with his hand and gazed at the crop. “Almost ripe by the smell of it,” he said after a few seconds. “But there’s far too many weeds been allowed to take root. Can’t think why—” He broke off.

“Why what?”

“Nothing.” No point in telling her that it was perishing strange that the sun had been up for nearly four hours and there were no slaves pulling the weeds from the field. He didn’t look forward to telling Nicole about Shadowbrook’s slaves.

It disturbed him that he’d seen no one on the sawmill road, or heading to or from the sugarhouse or the gristmill. More than fifty people lived in this southern part of the Patent; if you counted the folks up north at Do Good, there were close to three times that many on the place. But they hadn’t passed another human being since they set foot on Shadowbrook’s land. The hairs on the back of his neck were prickling. Quent took his gun from his shoulder and began pouring powder down the muzzle while they walked.

Nicole watched him, her dark eyes nearly black with concern. Quent said nothing, and for once she didn’t ask any questions.

An hour or so later, when the sun was directly overhead, the house appeared. “That’s Shadowbrook,” Quent said softly.

Because of the detour they’d taken to avoid the marsh, they approached the house from the side, but that wasn’t much of a disadvantage. Like most houses she’d seen here in the New World, it appeared foursquare, planted solidly atop a rise and fronting on the river. As far as she could see, Shadowbrook was without wings, though it seemed to sprawl out the back for some ways, as if bits had been added on year by year. It was built of wood and gleamed white beneath a slate
roof, with shutters the same dusky blue-gray color. She counted four chimneys, though she expected there were more. “It looks to be a fine house,” she said.

He heard her voice as if it came from a far distance and raised his hand to silence her. Quent listened hard, trying to hear the danger. He knew it was there—the hot July breeze carried the stink of fear along with the smell of the river and of rampant summer growth. He heard nothing but silence at first, then a shift in the currents of air brought a whisper of something that sounded like moaning.

For a moment he wondered if his father had died, if he was hearing Ephraim Hale’s mourning song. No, if it were, everyone would be up by the burying place at Squirrel Oaks. This sound came from the vicinity of the house.

The sound grew louder. It was a keening, a collective misery. Now Nicole heard it, too. “
Mon Dieu,
what is that?” She made a hurried sign of the cross.

“I’m not sure. Could be—” He stopped because there was another sound, a whooshing and cracking, and a second immediately after. “Sweet Jesus Christ! Sweet Jesus! Stay here.
Don’t move.”
He took off, his long strides burning the distance between himself and the house.

Nicole watched him for a moment, felt the loneliness of the woods at her back; then, ignoring his words, she went after him.

The grass around the house was usually close cut and bright green. Now it was browned and britde and long enough to flatten as Quent ran across it. The moaning had stopped; and he heard only the whoosh and crack.

There was a flat piece of earth on the far side of the house; they called it the Frolic Ground. It got its name after Quentin Hale survived to see his first birthday. His father gave a great dinner, a frotic, to celebrate.

The Frolic Ground was a hundred fathoms long—it would take a tall man two hundred strides to cover its length—and nearly as wide. It was surrounded by ornamental posts from which lanterns could be strung to light the darkness. There was an enormous fire pit to one side, big enough to roast a couple of oxen and many, many fowl, as Ephraim had done on Quent’s first birthday. Over a hundred local Indians were there that day, along with every single soul who lived and worked on the Patent, whatever their color or religious persuasion. Even the Quakers of Do Good came, standing primly to one side and not joining in the dancing or whooping and hollering that marked the occasion.

A seventh whoosh and cracking cut through the midday summer silence. Quent winced. In a moment he had covered the last twenty strides.

Fifty men and women huddled together in the Frolic Ground, black slaves and the white tenant farmers who worked on the Patent. They stood in a semicircle around one of the big wagons used to haul felled trees to the sawmill. The wagon’s traces were empty and staked to the ground, and guylines had been
fixed either side to keep the whole thing steady. The wagon wheels were nearly as tall as Quent himself, sturdy enough to carry the weight of four or five massive tree trunks. Plenty strong enough to support even the huge man who was tied to one of them.