Dominion (17 page)

The rest of the spring and summer the road was filled with regular troops going out, and after that a party of allied Cherokee from
the tidewater, who had licensed on to fight their sworn enemies. When that particular conflict was over, the flow of people across the road would be much larger, but its increase brought death down its whole length.

They were working the August harvest as usual at Stonehouses when one of the hired men yelled out “Fire!” at the top of his voice. Magnus looked into the western distance, where he saw thick oily smoke rising up. He climbed a tree and saw that a farm down in the far country of the valley was all ablaze.

He ordered two of the men to go over to investigate. When they returned both of them shook with fright, as they reported that their neighbors were well beyond helping.

That night the sky was still lit with the smoldering embers from the farm that had burned down, when another one, even closer to them, went up in flames. No one had to climb anything to see the resulting inferno, as it reflected ethereally off the clouds and stars, it was so bright and near to them.

Merian himself went over this time to see what help could be offered, and on the way a boy climbed out of an embankment of weeds and stood in the middle of the road when he heard the sound of wheels. Merian stopped the carriage and lifted the child up. When he had had a drink from Merian's flask, he told of being attacked by a band of Catawba warriors. “They killed everybody where they slept,” he said. “The only reason they missed me is cause I climbed into the well and hid.” The bottom of his feet were bloody and raw from where he had pressed them against the rock, scrambling out.

When he heard this story, Merian turned the carriage around and went back to his own place, where he gave the child to Sanne to look after until more permanent shelter could be found for him. He then assembled all the men working there for the harvest and handed out what weapons there were to the most trusted among them. One group he sent on patrol to keep lookout, others he posted as watchmen from the edge of the land to the front porch. Everyone else he barricaded inside, where they passed the night in vigil and fear of death.

Merian, Purchase, and Magnus each kept watch on horseback at a different corner of the yard out front of the house, coming together every once in a while to report anything they had seen. This went on until
morning was well advanced and they finally decided they were safe for the time being, as the Indians were known to attack only at night. They then went to take breakfast.

As they sat and ate they suddenly heard a great thundering of horses' hooves off in the distance. Purchase jumped up and led Magnus and two other men up a rise to see what it was. What they saw was yet another detachment of soldiers marching out toward the valley.

That night another farm was put to the torch, and from his porch Merian could see just how much of the county had been brought under cultivation since the time he moved there, so that one would hardly know it for the same land. “This used to be a peaceful spot,” he told his two sons. “Not so, now that the governor aims to have full war with the natives and drive them right off of it.”

In the morning, Magnus and Purchase went to see what damage had been done during the night. Three farms lay in complete ruin and all their inhabitants dead. Neither of them said anything about what they saw at the time, but as they rode back to Stonehouses they came upon a long spike that had been driven into the ground. At the top of it was a half-rotten human head.

“His name was Lacey,” Magnus said, examining the work that had been done to it. “He had made almost enough money to go back to Scotland.”

Purchase asked how he knew this, and Magnus told him of meeting the man almost a week before. “He tried to reach for too much,” was Purchase's only reply. “He might have made it to where he was headed instead of back down this road if he hadn't tried to go for so much.”

They were quiet then, from the thickness of tobacco smoke that clung in the valley air, sweet and oily, like the inside of a colossal pipe bowl. Smoking was a luxury Magnus had scarcely been able to afford in his previous existence, and the few times he tried it he coughed violently upon inhaling the smoke and never found any pleasure in the experience. Purchase, though, closed his eyes and breathed deeply of the fragrant air, relishing the taste, now of old tobacco carefully cured; now of bitter green leaves just off the stalk, both of them suffused with the headiness of that plant's hypnotic powers. He inhaled again, savoring the taste and sensation of the smoke in his lungs, then exhaled and eased back into the gentle ride they were on. He laughed, however, when he
turned and saw how sickly Magnus looked. “You're not a big one for pleasure, are you?” Purchase asked him.

“Not this kind. Not especially,” Magnus answered, quelling the nausea that was sweeping over him and yoicking his horse toward the high ground above the smell of smoke.

When they arrived at Stonehouses, Content and the chandler, Pete Griffith, were there on the front porch with Merian, as Merian told what had been happening out where they were. At first Magnus was greatly concerned to see the two strangers there, as he had made it his business to avoid contact with anyone outside of Stonehouses, and thought at first to run, but, when Merian bid him, he entered in the circle with the other men.

Content was friendly and relaxed with him, and warm in the way he was well known for, but he also studied the new man intently, trying to see exactly what sort of character he had. He was tall and well made—only a half head shorter than Purchase—and seemed to keep his mind to himself. On the whole, Content was reminded not unfavorably of Merian when he had first met him all those years ago, but the younger man was not so bold as Merian himself had been. This last thing, though, was not necessarily negative. He sensed the man was capable enough but thought in general that men, especially those born in the colonies, were becoming less hardy than those who had traveled the ocean to get here, whether from England or from Africa. He did not attribute any of this to the fault of Merian's grown sons, both of whose strength and vigor was obvious, but simply notched it as the sign of his own years.

“The governor has sent a party to sue the Indians for peace,” he said, going back to his conversation with Merian and giving the news he knew they would be most anxious to hear. “Some of the frontier people pushed deeper than the treaty permitted, and the Indians grew irate at it. But everyone thinks they'll take new terms, so things should get back to normal soon enough.”

They all looked at Merian, waiting for his reply, but he made none, and Content could see then how the last several days had made his friend's age show in the lines of his face, especially about the eyes. “It will never get back to what it was,” he said finally, moving to the window. “This used to be a quiet country, Content.”

“I know,” Content answered. “No one can argue there.”

He also knew, however, it was possible the two of them had merely been fortunate enough to be born in a time that had not known the full pressures and deprivation of war.

Merian was so shaken by the last week, wherein he had nearly lost everything, that he told them all he no longer wanted to speak about it but instead began to relate the story of a heroic ancient king who blinded himself and went into exile because of crimes he had unknowingly committed. They were crimes he could not help, he explained, because they were in the design of his people's gods. “In ancient times was a king who the gods marked for greatness,” he said. “It was a terrible thing.”

When he had finished the story, Magnus and Purchase were both very still and pensive. Content, meanwhile, had grown cold at his fingertips and looked through the window with a grievous expression on his face.

“I would have named my own house Colonus,” Merian said, as he stood and went to the window that Content peered through. “But I thought by now they surely must have heard of that place. I called it Stonehouses instead, in hopes it might keep them off us awhile.”

It was several weeks after the Aborigines' siege that Magnus was in town on an errand and met Purchase afterward to go to Content's. As the two of them sat there looking out onto the square, an uncovered wagon drove up to the door and stopped directly in front of it. Two men then climbed out from the front and came into the bar. In the bed of the wagon was a cage, where another man was tied and bound.

When the men entered the bar they made it loudly known that they were out on official business: one of them a bailiff for the court in Edenton, the other his assistant. “We'll take two whiskeys,” the bailiff commanded, as they sat down and began to talk about how unruly that part of the world was, and the dangers of their work.

“Why, the one out there is wanted for murder, sorcery, and a whole host of other crimes. There is a bounty for him big as a king's ransom.”

Purchase and Magnus said nothing to either of the newcomers, but continued to drink. When Purchase later turned and looked out at the man in the wagon, he found the other man also looking at him steadily, as though he had been awaiting his attention. What passed between them then was the recognition of kindredness, if not necessarily kinship. There was no witness to anything that happened after that, but the man was gone from his jail before midday and the cage left untouched as if the key holder had let him out himself, which was not possible since the bailiff had the only key and he carried it in a pouch around his neck. Both, the key and his neck, were still upon him as he went about cursing that afternoon.

Late that evening, the one who had been released from the cage showed up at Stonehouses. Merian was very happy to see him, but Sanne, when she saw what state he was in, was alarmed almost to the point of despair.

“You don't have to live your life like this, Chiron,” she said. “Merian, tell him he doesn't have to live like this.”

Merian agreed with what his wife was saying but knew his old acquaintance was on some path that none could sway him from. Still, he offered him the same spot for a house he had offered once before.

“I would accept if I could,” Chiron told his friend, as the men drank from the cask Content had given Merian on his birthday, which seemed never to reduce in the amount that was present. “Tell me anyway how everything has been with you here, besides that the liquor has gotten better.”

Merian talked of the hostilities with the Indians, boasted on how Purchase was the best smith in the colonies, how Magnus came upon the land, and how he himself had once set out to grow rich but settled for more modest expansion when he learned the cost of labor. He also showed Chiron the sword Purchase had forged, and Chiron alone among men who were not in that family was able to lift it up. He was also the only one, even among those who were its owners in the future, who could see everything that the legend on the blade contained. It was marvelous to him, as he held it aloft and examined the finely balanced steel.

“Aye, it is the right one,” he said to Purchase, who had not known who he was when he saw him earlier that day, but only that he was a man who was being held as no man ought to be. Then he put the sword down and said to Magnus, “You don't remember me, but I knew you when they called you Ware and you lived with your mother in a room at Sorel's Hundred.”

He looked at the marks on his wrists and bid Magnus follow him outside, where they went a short way into the woods. There the older man pulled a spiky weed from the ground and broke the stem open until it oozed white with nectar. He rubbed this onto the scars on Magnus's arms, and took a rock to slough away the dead skin, then added another anointing of the nectar. “It will heal the scarification,” he said, “so you
will not be so vulnerable.” When he finished they went back to the house, where everyone talked until late into the night, because, other than perhaps Content and Dorthea, he was the most welcome visitor Stonehouses ever knew.

In the morning he was gone again when the house awoke, and Merian did not look to see what he had left or taken from the storerooms. He only hoped his friend would not be hunted down out there in the frigid wilderness but would make it to wherever he was headed on that path only he knew.

Nor were these the only disturbances that autumn on the land. The other, Magnus was first to see, as they sat in Content's the day after Chiron had gone. It was then that the woman from the gambling house in the woods, and her partner, entered and took seats at a table. Instead of drinks, though, they asked only that supper be brought out to them immediately.

Jannetje, one of the lasses who worked for Content and Dorthea, brought the pair plates of stew and mugs of cider, and they began eating and talking together calmly, though it was strange to see a woman in the bar. When they had finished eating, the two stood and left to go back out, never once having acknowledged Purchase or Magnus. At the door, however, the woman turned to them and brazenly winked at the two men. When they asked Content later who the two were who had just left, he replied that they were traveling preachers, unattached to any kind of formal congregation. “It is scandalous to have a woman preaching, and even more than that for what the two of them have to say,” he opined, which was unlike him, because he usually tolerated or suffered all equally.

That night Magnus and Purchase went again to the roadhouse in the outlying country, Magnus only to keep Purchase company, Purchase because he was intent on finding the woman.

When they entered the room it was unchanged from how they had last seen it. The card players were arranged around the tables, and those there for other pleasure lined up against the bar as the women came in and went out in their costumes. There was a subterranean quality to the light that made it seem later in the night than it actually was, and the din from the crowd when someone either won a large amount of
money or when a familiar customer came in, gave the room a depressed feeling that made Magnus uncomfortable. Purchase, on the other hand, enjoyed this about the place, finding that it built up whatever sensation he was already feeling.