Columbine (23 page)

“I’d like to see the shooting if we—’ But as she turned, the words dissolved into a stunned gasp. In the doorway stood two Indians armed with muskets and tomahawks, their bare chests painted red and their faces striped fiercely with black and white.

There was no time for Dianna to think or plan, only react, as the first Indian came toward her. As the man reached for her, she swung the peel as hard as she could. The wide paddle caught him flat across the face with a smack, and though he stumbled backward from the impact, he was still able to yank the peel from her hands. Desperately Dianna longed for her rifle, tucked beyond reach behind the cupboard across the room. But the paring knife still lay on the table, and she lunged for it just as the Indian grabbed her around the waist.

As he shoved her back across the table, she turned and twisted in his grasp to face him. His long black haft flicked across her chek, and she could smell the bear grease that glistened on his skin. She raised her feet and kicked him hard in the stomach, glad today that she wore shoes. But though she felt her hard leather heels strike against his muscled flesh, the Indian only grunted and tightened his fingers on her waist as he arched her back against the table. She clutched the little knife convulsively at her side, breathing a prayer of thanks that he hadn’t noticed it in her hand. She must kill this man if she could. She had to. She jerked the knife upward, aiming for his chest.

But the Indian sensed her movement before he saw it and deftly rolled away from her. The knife slashed instead across his upper arm as he caught Dianna’s wrist and squeezed it until she cried out from the pain. Her fingers sprung open and the knife dropped harmlessly to the floor.

For an endless moment he held her hand forced overhead, her body pinned beneath his as the warm blood dripped from the cut in his arm onto her bare shoulder. Panting, Dianna struggled to control her fear and panic. Desperately she reminded herself that she was still Lady Dianna Grey, and Greys were never cowards. She swallowed hard, and forced herself to meet his gaze. The Indian’s eyes were dark, almost black, and so bright with undisguised hatred that Dianna shuddered.

Roughly he pulled her to her feet. She winced as he twisted her arms behind her back and held her wrists together with one hand, his fingers as tight as an iron band.

“Dianna!” shrieked Mercy pitifully, her face white with terror as she clung to the ladder, Lily straggling in her arms. The cat broke free and scrambled back up to the loft just as the second Indian reached up and plucked the girl from the ladder.

Mercy wailed with anguish, tears streaming down her cheeks as she stretched out her arms toward the lost pet.

“Lily will be fine, sweetheart,” said Dianna unsteadily, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.

“God gave cats nine lives, and Lily hasn’t squandered one of them yet. She’ll be fine.”

Far better than we will, thought Diauna miserably.

Through the open door she saw they’d set fire to the barn, the flames ate greedily at the dry thatched roof, while squawking chickens ran foolishly back and forth across the yard. The second Indian shoved Mercy at Dianna, and as the girl buried her sobs in Dianna’s skirts, he retrieved the peel from the floor.

He tore the linen curtain from the window, wrapped it around the peel’s blade, and thrust it into the hearth fire. Immediately the gauzy linen ignited. Holding the improvised torch before him, the Indian methodically set fire to the remaining curtains, baskets and the rush-filled mattress of Asa’s bed.

“Nay, stop!” cried Dianna, her voice wild with emotion as she watched the flames begin to curl and lick at the house’s wooden beams.

“You heartless rogues! You have us! Why must you destroy our home as well?”

For answer they shoved her and Mercy through the door and away from the burning house. They paused by the fence while the Indian with the brand returned to light the roof shingles, dry from the summer’s heat and quick to burn. The other man contemptuously let go of Di’s hands, confident now that she would not flee. She sank to her knees and wrapped her arms protvely around Mercy. The Indian took the tomahawk from his waist, pantomimed striking with it and nodded meaningfully as he slipped it back into his belt. The simple gesture chilled Dianna’s blood more than any words of warning.

God in heaven, What had they done to deserve this?

Dianna held Mercy more tightly as she watched the orange flames twist through the door of the house. Her house. In these past months, in a thousand little ways, she had made it her own. She thought of the herbs she’d hung to dry from the rafters, the musket Hester had given her, the pumpkins and Indian corn and turnips she’d grown herself for the coming winter, all lost forever by the hand of one vengeful savage.

She fought back the tears that stung her eyes, blaming them on the grey, acrid smoke, if only Asa had returned an hour before, she thought bitterly, then they would have been safe with the others in Wickhamton. How long would it be now before Asa came to find them gone, and how long before he could gather men to follow after them? By then she and Mercy would be on their way to Quebec and irretrievably lost from the English world. She pictured Kit waiting for her at dusk by the burying ground, wondering impatiently why she didn’t appear.

Oh, Kit, my dearest, I may never see you, kiss you, love you again’t The second Indian rejoined them, and together the two men motioned for them to leave. Dianna kissed Mercy on the forehead, and with the girl’s fingers clutched tightly in her own, she followed their captors.

Her last glimpse of her happily ordered life was distorted by the waves of heat from the fire: an apple pie on a windowsill silhouetted against orange flames.

For Kit, the best part of the training day came last with the shooting competition. Even though as colonel he’d long ago had to disqualify himself, he enjoyed watching the other men vie for the ten-pound prize and the praise of the young women so willing to be impressed. Greybeards from the east grumbled to Kit that more lime should be given to proper exercise with pikes and musket volleys, but Kit disagreed.

Against an enemy that could vanish at will among the trees, battles would be won by a single man’s marksmanship, not a synchronized volley by a line of musketeers.

Kit grimaced as one over-eager apprentice’s shot went wildly awry to the jeers and whoops of his friends, and he wondered if the hard cider, ale and rum that traditionally ended militia day had already begun to appear. He wished the men would take the practice more seriously. Most were too young or too new from England to have seen action in King Philip’s War, and in the absence of obvious danger, crops and harvests still claimed their first attention. Perhaps what he’d told them today about the raw desolation he’d seen at Deerfield and the dozens of missing women and children would make them practice a bit harder.

Kit shook his head as another woeful shot missed the target. Fro TM what ster had told him, Dianna could outshoot them all It surprised him how much he liked the idea of heI small, straight figure there at the line, aiming and firing better than the men. Once again he impatiently scanned the crowd of spectators, searching for her familiar face.

Damnation, she and Mercy should be here by now!

He should have insisted on bringing them himself instead of relying on Asa. For all Asa’s pious cant about family duties, the old fool had no sense of time or responsibility, and an unseasonable fondness for the bad French brandy he got from trading. Likely that was where he was now, sleeping it off somewhere, Kit fumed, but his irritation at Asa was only a part of the growing uneasiness he couldn’t shake off.

He left the competition and went striding off to where the older women were preparing the evening meal. He recalled Dianna was baking pies. Perhaps she’d come here first. Again his gaze swept over the women, seeking the one that wasn’t there. That morning, for Dianna, he’d taken special care with his red uniform coat, polishing the gold buttons and retying the silk sash across his chest a dozen times before he’d been satisfied, yet now he was oblivious to how even grandmothers turned to gawk with open admiration at him in his sword and plumed hat.

“She don’t be here, lad,” said Hester before he could ask, “and it don’t be like Dianna t’be late. Ye didn’t have words yesterday, did ye?”

The way Kit’s face changed at once into a blank, emotionless mask was answer enough for Hester.

“Then like as not, it be Asa that’s kept her,” she said hurriedly, “an’ they’ll be here directly.”

“I’m going back for them.”

Hester’s forehead furrowed with concern.

“Take some of’ the others with ye, then. It’s likely nothing, but then ye can’t be sure …. ,” Her voice trailed off, with what was left unspoken still painfully clear between them.

“It will be quicker if I go alone.” He knew she was afraid of what he would find and what it would do to him, and he hated her concern, for it mirrored his own.

“Kit, ye can’t go alone, not again,” pleaded Hester anxiously.

“Ye leave now, an’ the whole town’ll be talking, they will!”

“Let them,” he called back as he headed for the horses.

“I’ll be back with Dianna and Mercy, and God help Asa Wing when I find his shiftless old hide!”

Kit let Thunder have his head on the Wickhamton road, and they soon were near to the Wing house.

Kit drew the horse in as they cut through the woods, but even though the last light of day filtered through the trees, the stallion was unusually skittish, his pointed ears swivelling to hear Kit’s reassurances.

But at the clearing near the stream, Thunder suddenly snorted and balked, then reared back as a score of crows rose like a noisy black curtain from the tall rushes before him. While the crows danced and chattered in the branches overhead, Kit fought to calm the horse, and then, reluctantly, dismounted to investigate.

A dead deer, he told himself automatically as he stepped through the swaying rushes. Animals often came to die at the same places they drank, but the carcass should be moved before it fouled the water.

With the long barrel of his gun, he parted the rushes and found Asa’s body

The dead man lay: face down in the marsh, felled by the bullet wound in his upper back, and though his wispy grey hair still fluttered in the breeze untouched, his murderer had looted and stripped his body before abandoning it to the crows.

Kit reeled back, his knees suddenly weak. He had seen worse things, far worse, and yet now when his eyes squeezed shut, it was not poor Asa that he saw in his mind’s eye but his parents and his sister, and Dianna and Mercy.

“Nay, not Dianna!” he rasped out loud. He steadied himself against a tree, the blood still pounding in his ears, and cursed his own weakness. Not Dianna, not Mercy. He had no proof they weren’t still waiting on the other side of the hill. Quickly he swung himself up onto Thunder and urged the horse across the stream. But as soon as they crested the hill, Kit smelled the smoke and his last fragile hope shattered, The Barnard farm had looked much the same as the scene now spread before him. The fire had burned itself out, leaving the charred outline of the house, the thick, blackened beams still upright around the chimney. Of the less substantial barn, nothing remained but smoking rubble.

Kit drew closer and called Mercy’s and Dianna’s names on the slim chance that they might have escaped and be hiding nearby. He tied Thunder to the fence and forced himself to search the ruins for bodies.

To his grim satisfaction, he found none, but near the doorway he did find footprints, two sets of moccasins and two smaller, heeled shoes. His spirits rose to know that they had been taken from here alive. In their arrogance, the Indians hadn’t bothered to sweep away the tracks, and the footsteps across the dusty yard were a trail a blind man could follow. Until, of course, they had reached the forest. Then Kit knew it would take every bit of tracking skill he possessed to follow them.

And he would follow them. There was no question of staying back this time. From the warmth of the timbers, he guessed they had at most six hours lead on him. He’d lose another hour returning to Plumstead to change his clothes and gather provisions and leave word where he’d gone. Two Indians were manageable odds, odds he could accept. A dozen militiamen might panic the Indians, and Dianna and Mercy would be the ones to suffer. Besides, by now there wouldn’t be a single man in Wickhamton sober enough to be worth the delay. No, Kit would go alone. He owed it to Dianna, and he owed it to the two men who dared take her from him.

As he turned to go, something round and half-blackened caught his eye in the rubble, and he knelt to look closer. The pie had cracked when it had slid to the ground, but the two pastry hearts were still intact. Lightly he traced their outline and crossed the filling that trickled from the crack. On his fingertips the cooked apples were sweet and spicy to taste, and still warm, and the sense of loss and desolation that swept over him was almost unbearable.

Something brushed against his leg, and he started and jerked his rifle to his shoulder. Lily mewed forlornly, her white fur singed and marked with soot she hadn’t been able to lick away. With one hand Kit scooped her up against his chest.

“We’ve lost them, haven’t we, catkin,” he whispered hoarsely into Lily’s fur as the cat rubbed her head against his fihumb.

“But I’ll bring them back safe, I swear it. This time will be different. I swear to God, this time I won’t fail them.”

For ten days Dianna and Mercy travelled with the Indians. The men were careful to avoid other houses and farms, keeping to hidden trails through the forest.

With the afternoon sun always over her left shoulder, all Dianna knew for sure was that they were heading north. She could not tell how many miles they had already walked or how many more lay ahead. She was thankful that both she and Mercy were accustomed to walking, for the pace the Indians set was rapid and their breaks for sleep only a few hours long each night. Dianna often remembered the evening she’d first arrived with Asa and how after months of inactivity on the Prosperity, even that short journey from the river to the house had left her aching and breathless. Her captors now did not have Asa’s patience.