Acadia Song 04 - The Distant Beacon (23 page)

Then he heard the sound again from next door. The young man destined to hang with him the following morning, the hungry soldier convicted of stealing a lady’s purse. He attempted to swallow his sobs.

“Harry,” Gordon whispered. “I say there, Harry.”

There was a moment’s silence, then the young man’s whimpered, “Sir?”

Gordon slid off his bedding and moved as close to the side wall as his chains allowed. “No need for titles here, lad. They’ve all been stripped away. The name is Gordon.”

“G-Gordon.” The swallow was so loud it sounded through the wall. “I’m . . . afraid.”

“Aye.” He leaned back against the wall. “You know I’m to hang with you.”

“I know.”

“That makes us brothers of a sort, wouldn’t you say?” Gordon rubbed a sore spot on his shoulder against the rough mortar, his chains clinking with each motion. He had accepted with the coming of night that there was nothing Nicole or anyone could do to change the course of events. Were he held for months or years, then her sway as a viscountess might have altered things. But military justice during wartime was as swift as it was merciless. “It helps to know we’re not going to climb those stairs alone.”

“I . . . I suppose.”

The silence was a comfortable one now. Gordon took a long breath. It seemed to him as if he stood at the apex of something utterly new. A door opened before him, one that the chains could not keep him from entering. Not these chains, nor even this earth. “Would you like to pray with me, lad? One brother with another?”

Gordon’s senses had been trained by years of constant vigilance while at sea. A shift in the wind, a change in the tide’s running, these and many others marked time for him as precisely as the ticking of a clock. Even though it was still black as ink outside his window, the sky blanketed with thick clouds and the air filled with a stationary mist, he knew that dawn was not far off. Young Harry had drifted to sleep hours before. He, however, hadn’t budged from his spot against the wall. He found comfort in listening to the young man breathe as he slept. But more than this, Gordon found a rightness to it, too, as though the act of praying with him had brought them so close he could care for him as he might a son—a son he would now never have.

Moments later, while the mist crept in and obscured what little light might have entered from the torches and campfires, Gordon’s own internal vistas remained brilliant and clear. He sat there with his eyes opened wide and stared straight ahead. But what he saw was far behind, all the way back to his early days on the open sea.

He recalled the moment when he stood on the quarterdeck as captain of his own vessel for the very first time. It had been a magnificent day. He had risen with the dawn watch and ordered the men to send aloft all sails. The rising canvas had snapped and caught the wind and drawn up tight—billows of white that ascended ninety feet and more. Leaping forward, the ship cleaved the sea like a great wooden ax. An albatross then appeared as if from nowhere and hung there alongside his head, its wings motionless. The sun had emerged behind him, turning the great bird into a phoenix of flames and eternal beginnings, and the sea into crimson and gold and white. From the mainmast’s pinnacle, the watchkeeper had piped with his pocket fife a merry salute to the break of day, to all new days everywhere. And it had seemed to Gordon that this was as fine as life could be, sailing toward a boundless horizon, aboard a ship filled with jolly Jack-tars, with nothing ahead of him but a wealth of adventure.

In his cell Gordon detected a whisper of sound, but he resisted releasing the vision. Instead he lifted his eyes toward the roof.
I have never thanked thee for that dawn
, he confessed.
In fact, I have never acknowledged thy place in it at all. But I see thee there now, Father. And I thank thee
.

The sound drew closer still until soon there was the sibilant rustle of metal on metal, and his cell door was pushed gently open. Two shadows flitted inside without benefit of torch or lantern. Gordon watched them with the calm of one who had already taken his leave and observed, “It is not yet time.”

“Quiet, you. For all our sakes,” hissed a stranger’s voice. “Where’s the latch to your wall chains?”

Chapter 30

Not even after his ankle chains dropped away and he took his first free step in days could Gordon believe it was actually happening. Not even after the jailer thrust a moth-eaten red coat into his hands and rasped out, “Put this on.”

But then he stepped outside the cell to see Carter grinning there before him and heard the man breathe, “God bless the lady, sir. God
bless
her.”

Gordon felt his heart grow wings and leap from the gallows. “Nicole?”

“Who else? We—”

A hiss silenced them both. They were pressed over to the stockade’s east wall, where the cluster of men grew one by one. Soon all Gordon’s mates were there with him, smiling and rubbing wrists and ankles, barely able to take in the fact that they might be making a run for it.

The jailer came by once more and handed out ragged soldiers’ coats to each of the prisoners. Gordon stepped forward, grasped the jailer’s arm, and whispered, “There’s one more.”

“Ten plus you. That was the—”

“Eleven,” Gordon said and drew him over to the door next to his own. “Here.”

The jailer seethed but then did as he was bidden. It was dreadful entering death’s cage again, but Gordon steeled himself and moved forward with the jailer. The clink of chains signaled that Harry was awake. This was followed by the soft cry of terror.

“Quiet now, lad.”

“Gordon?”

They waited by the stockade’s inner gates for what seemed eons, but in fact was less than an hour. The morning gathered slowly, as though night itself were trapped within the heavy fog’s grip and kept there long against its will. The air clogged tight with a cold wetness, and several men buried their heads in their borrowed greatcoats to stifle coughs.

Two jailers stood with them, the ones Carter had pointed out the previous day as having aided in talking to Nicole. They were a brutish pair, and it left Gordon with a foul taste to have to put himself in the hands of soldiers who could be bought.

Harry turned out to be a goodly enough fellow, lean in the way of many foot soldiers who didn’t have enough coin to add to their meager diet. Tall, he had the reddish blond hair of good English stock. In the faint light Gordon could see how his eyes had retreated back into dark caves, from which they now watched the dawn with feverish intensity. Clearly he still feared he would more than likely be cut off from breath and life in but an hour’s time.

The morning’s first thrush chirped in the distance. Gordon took this as a signal of hope. Beyond the wooden stockade walls came a faint murmuring, sleepy men reaching the end of a cold night’s watch. The jailers exchanged anxious looks. Gordon then gave a single nod and a flicker of hand motions, and the men moved with haste into double file. Prisoners they might be, with limbs weak as water, but they had lived and breathed military precision all their lives. Their hats and coats were the dregs, taken from the military mess. Not even the poorest soldier would be inclined to try to repair the many holes, most of which were surrounded by dark stains. Two of the hats were missing corners. But in the murky half-light, with the mist draped over everything, hopefully they could pass unnoticed.

They stepped forward, marching in weary unison. One of the jailers called, “Open up, you!”

“Who goes down there?” The mist thickened until it was almost impossible to make out the figure who peered at them from the stockade parapet. Gordon knew that with the sun rising behind him, it was unlikely the man would see anything at all.

“That you, Derek?” asked the jailer.

“Who else would be out in this gloom and cold?”

Try as he might, the jailer couldn’t keep his voice from skittering up and down. “Open the door and let us get to our beds.”

“There’s a good half hour left to the watch.” The figure overhead shifted to one side. “Light the torch, will you? I can’t see my hand before my face.”

“Couldn’t. Everything down here is wet as rainwater. Open the door, I tell you.”

Reluctantly the guard moved toward the latch, then suddenly stepped back and said, “Where’s your officer of the watch, then?”

Gordon felt the night press down, the gloom holding them tightly in place. Their way forward was blocked, and he could do nothing to break free. Nothing, except . . .

His heart thundering, he slipped back a few paces and then came stomping forward. In his sternest quarterdeck voice he rapped out, “What’s the holdup here?”

The two jailers jerked backward in surprise, and the soldier overhead snapped to attention and said, “Begging pardon, sir. But it’s not time yet for the watch change.”

“Indeed not! But we have a nasty business ahead of us today, and I want the graves dug and the preparations in order before the prison comes to life!”

“Right you are, sir.” The soldier ran down and unlatched the inner gates. Tugging on the rope, he swung the door open wide. He then turned and barked, “You there, open the outer gates! Officer and his men coming through.”

Chapter 31

The stockade was situated on the boggy terrain that separated the marshland from the pasture now housing the British garrison. As light strengthened to the east, the hills of Boston rose up like islands in a distant golden sea. The mist clung tight to the earth yet lifted with each footfall, surrounding the marching men with mystery and safety.

They passed by the first cluster of houses, inns, and taverns that catered to the foot soldiers. Then, where a narrow lane split and led to some farm dwellings, a man stepped from behind a tree and whistled once.

“That’s our man,” the jailer said. Relief and the tense march caused his breath to catch in his throat.

“Make haste, men,” Gordon murmured. “Double time.”

The men trotted over to where the stranger stood waving urgently. They turned the corner to find a rope line holding the reins of fifteen horses. The stranger counted swiftly, then hissed, “We’re one horse shy!”

Gordon demanded, “Who might you be?”

“John Jackson is the name. In the employ of the finest woman I have ever had the honor to meet.” He offered his hand. “And you, sir, are a most fortunate man.”

Gordon accepted the man’s grip. “Aye, I can’t argue with you there.”

Off in the distance behind them could be heard the tinny trumpet sound of alarm. “Fly!” John Jackson leaped into the saddle of the nearest horse. “For the sake of the Lady Nicole, fly like the wind!”

Gordon mounted his horse and then pulled Harry up behind him. “Can you ride?”

“Since I was eight.”

“Then hold tight and lean into me!”

They careened out of cover and thundered down the empty road heading west, away from both Boston and the soldiers. Over the sound of pounding hooves, Gordon thought he heard musket fire, though it might well have been his imagination. John Jackson was ten lengths ahead and pulling away fast. Carter and two of the other men slowed to stay apace of Gordon’s doubly laden horse, but then Gordon waved them forward. “Hold hard to our guide!” he shouted.

They raced through a fog that seemed to part before them and close up behind. Three times Gordon glanced behind them and could make out nothing but a brilliant white veil. Then he stopped looking back, for it caused his laboring horse to falter. Instead he leaned down till his chin rested on the horse’s nape and shouted, “Hyah!”

They galloped on until he could hear the horse’s breath rasping raw and he could sense the legs carrying them begin to weaken. The closest man to them was now so far ahead Gordon could only see but a faintly shifting shadow. John Jackson and the front-runners were lost to the fog and the distance. Gordon was about to call to the men and order them to continue on without him, when the man ahead reined in and turned sharply to the left, leaving behind the river and marsh. Thankfully Gordon did the same. A narrow track opened and began snaking through the trees. His horse was stumbling heavily now. Harry slipped off the back and said, “I’ll run from here.”