Judith E French (23 page)

“Too long have I forgotten my honor,” she whispered into the night. “Nibeeshu Meekwon, Moonfeather of the Shawnee, is going to war.” Only after she’d taken her revenge on the men who had kidnapped her and tried to murder her husband, after she’d repaid Mother Witherberry for her insults—only then could she go home to America. Only then could she tell Brandon’s child what had happened without shame. Charles, she would leave to Brandon. It was her husband’s right to confront his cousin and redeem his own honor. Charles was Brandon’s, but the others were hers.

 

Cal and Maggie’s camp under the bridge was deserted as Leah had expected. Only rats prowled through the meager belongings they had left behind. Leah had only come here because she guessed they might move into the empty house where she and Brandon had hidden from the assailants. Much of London was still a maze to her, but she knew she could backtrack from the bridge to the house.

The streets were as foul-smelling and danger-filled as Leah remembered, but, armed, she feared none of the hulking figures in the mist. Most never saw her. She would flatten her body against a wall, or merely stand motionless. Once, a drunken sailor collided with her in the darkness, but she threatened him in Shawnee and nicked him with the tooth of her knife when he tried to hold her. He staggered away—more frightened than she was.

The fog was the worst she had seen, but it didn’t matter. When Cal and Tomkin had carried Brandon from the empty house, they had made only five turns. One was at a public well; another at a spot where fire had destroyed two houses at an intersection. If she couldn’t remember three turns in pitch blackness, she might as well take a cup and sit in the London streets and beg for a living.

When she reached the wooden fence that ran along the back of the empty house, she crouched and waited. In minutes, she heard a cough on the other side of the fence. “Tomkin,” she whispered.

“Who’s there?”

“Tomkin, it’s Leah—Maggie’s friend. Can I come over?”

“Are ye alone?”

“Aye.”

“Come on, then.”

She dropped down lightly beside the young man. “I need to see Maggie. Is she inside?”

“Naw, she ain’t here. Ain’t ye know? They got her back at Mother’s again. We was attacked the night ye left with thet gentleman. The mute an’ Giles an’ a dozen or so street rats. They killed Gemmy and Charity’s babe, and carried off Maggie an’ Charity to sell to Mother.”

“Cal?”

“He’s here, inside. He was all fer goin’ after them, but Spots has got a broken arm. We ain’t got much hittin’ power.”

“Take me to Cal.”

 

The public room of Mother Witherberry’s was littered with the sprawled bodies of snoring men sleeping off the effects of raw gin and Jamaican rum. Dawn was still an hour away, and even the spit dog lay curled into a tight ball beside the smoldering embers of last night’s cooking fire. A blackened joint clung to the iron spit, roasted to the consistency of old plaster, and a broken cask lay on the hearth, dribbling away the last dregs into the matted rushes that covered the ancient wooden flooring.

The dog stirred and whined in his sleep as chicken feathers began to float down the soot-covered chimney to land on the glowing white-hot coals. The dog sneezed and opened his eyes. Another clump of feathers drifted down and began to smoke as they touched the banked fire. The dog gave a series of short, puzzled barks, and Ben raised his head from the trencher table and threw a leather jack toward the noise.

The mug glanced off the animal’s hind leg. He uttered a sharp yip, put his tail between his legs, and ran from the room into the adjoining shed kitchen. A three-legged table, heaped high with dirty wooden plates, leaned against the far wall. Under the table was a rat hole just large enough for the spit dog. The animal wiggled through the opening and trotted off across the backyard.

Tomkin emptied another sack of chicken feathers down the chimney, covered the top with a wide board, and slid off the roof on a rope to hang just outside a second-story window. He whistled once to signal Cal that the chimney stack was blocked and braced both feet against the crumbling windowsill.

Inside Mother’s public room, smoke was billowing from the fireplace. Ben raised his head again and opened his eyes. The smoke stung them, and he began to choke. He tried to shout an alarm, but his muffled groans only angered the sleeping man beside him. The man struck out with his fist and overturned a pitcher of ale.

Ben blundered toward the barred door. By this time, other men were choking and stumbling in the darkness. Someone yelled “Fire!” and the room exploded into chaos. Ben tripped over a body on the floor, and two men climbed on top of him. A chair struck his head, and he smashed his nose against the floor. His nose began to spurt blood as he scrambled up and knocked a woman out of his way.

Outside, Tomkin and two of the boys in the yard took up a shout of fire. A girl screamed from an upstairs room, and through the house walls Tomkin could hear Mother Witherberry’s cursing.

The public room door burst open, and three men staggered into the street. Unable to identify anyone in the darkness, the members of Cal’s band fell upon the escapees with wooden clubs, showering them with blows. Ben was the fourth man from the house, and he cut a swath around him with a knife. He slashed one of the club wielders across the chest, but the boy dropped to his knees in front of the mute, and two more children struck Ben in the back. He went down and stayed down when Cal landed a solid blow to the back of his head.

Tomkin lowered himself to the ground. He and a second youth ran to the back of the house at the same time that Leah entered the house by the lean-to door. Men were still fighting their way out the front, and Leah heard foot thuds on the stairs. An unclad girl burst from the smoke and ran coughing past Leah into the backyard.

“Charity!” someone cried. “Where’s Maggie?”

“I don’t know,” Charity wailed.

Leah took a deep breath and notched an arrow into her bowstring. She entered the smoky public room and crept cautiously around the overturned table, making for the stairs. Her foot struck a warm body, and she heard a man’s deep groan. Still holding her breath, she stepped over him and moved toward the staircase.

Swearing at the top of her lungs, Mother Witherberry crashed down the final flight of steps with Shanks shouting right behind her. Leah knew there was no mistaking her voice or that of her human spider.

Leah’s heart pounded as she drew back her bow. She wasn’t more than six feet from the drunken bawd, close enough to smell the stench of her foul breath. At this distance she couldn’t miss putting an arrow through Mother’s black heart, even in the pitch dark. In the last instant before she released the arrow, Leah hesitated.

The big woman stumbled past, kicked a stool out of her way, and ran toward the door, still cursing Shanks. Leah’s chest was aching for breath, but she followed the sound with her bow, holding tight to the arrow’s nock until Mother was out of range. I can’t do it, she thought. Not to either of them—not in cold blood. Choking, she raced up the stairs.

Halfway up, she met a woman leaning against the wall, coughing. “Help me,” she begged. “I don’t wanna burn.”

Leah grabbed her arm. “Go back to your room and open a window,” she ordered the girl. “The fire’s out.” Still coughing, the woman jerked free and continued down the steps.

At the second floor landing, Leah ran into the nearest room and tore open the shutters, letting a gush of fresh air into the house. A candle burned in a wall sconce. Leah shielded the flame with her hand and carried the candle into the hall. In the next room she checked, she found two sobbing women.

“The fire’s out,” she repeated. “Where’s Maggie?”

One girl stared dumbly, but the second pointed up. “Up there,” she squeaked. “Red room.”

As Leah started up the last flight, she heard Cal’s voice calling his sister’s name from the bottom of the steps. A man shouted, and then she heard a gunshot.

Leah reached the top landing. The door to the red room was unbarred. “Maggie?” she said. “Are ye there?” She threw open the door and raised the candle to illuminate the space.

A girl’s still form lay on the floor. One arm was thrown over her head, and tangled red hair covered her face.

“Maggie?” Leah cried.

The girl raised her head, and Leah dropped to her knees beside her. Maggie was naked to the waist, and the filthy gown around her hips was soaked with blood.

“Leah,” Maggie whispered. Her mouth was swollen, her eyes blacked. “Be thet you?”

Leah dropped her bow and took her friend’s head in her hands. “Oh Maggie . . .” A gore-stained knife lay a few feet away, a weapon with a leather wrapped grip. It was a knife Leah had seen before in Giles’s belt. “Ye’re sore hurt.”

“No nasty stuff,” Maggie whispered painfully. “Ye know I never allowed no nasty stuff.” She brushed Leah’s face with her bloodstained fingers. “Don’t cry, Peach,” she said. “We’ll get away again. We’ll go over the rooftops . . . just like before.”

Leah bit her lip to keep from crying and lifted Maggie’s torn gown to inspect her injury. Her stomach pitched as she saw the terrible gaping wounds, and she let the cheap material fall from her fingers. They’d come too late. By the looks of Maggie’s injuries, she’d been stabbed hours ago. “Ah, love,” Leah murmured. “What have they done to ye?” She blinked back tears and tried to focus on Maggie’s face. “Are ye in pain?”

“Naw, I’m cold, is all.” She touched Leah’s face again. “It ain’t too bad, is it?”

“Nay,” Leah lied. “Not bad.” She cradled Maggie’s head against her breast. “Who did it?” she asked.

“Thet egg-suckin’ Giles.” Maggie coughed, and a trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth. “He had his fun . . . but he . . . he hurt me jest the same. Why, Leah? Why’d he do thet?” Coughs wracked her thin body, and she began to choke.

“Easy, easy,” Leah whispered. The horror of her friend’s dying made her feel as though her own blood had turned to ice.

“If . . . if we was near water . . . I’d be scared,” Maggie said, “but . . . but I’m to drown, so I can’t die now—can I?”

“Nay,” Leah crooned. “Soon we’ll be off over the rooftops, laughing back at Mother and Shanks and the whole pack of them.”

“We will . . . won’t we?” She began to choke again. “Bring the candle closer, Leah,” she gasped. “I don’t like the dark. I—” A gush of blood poured from Maggie’s mouth, and she went limp in Leah’s arms.

The ominous click of a pistol hammer sounded above Leah’s sobbing. She turned toward the open doorway and stared into the steel muzzle of a gun.

“Couldn’t stay away, could ye, ye red bitch?” Giles taunted. “Had to come back.” He extended his arm and leveled the pistol at her head. Leah dived for the lighted candle as Giles pulled the trigger and the flintlock roared.

T
he room was plunged into darkness. Leah crouched low and held her breath, waiting for Giles to make the next move. Under her knee was his bloody knife—the blade he’d used to murder Maggie. It repulsed her, but she dared not move and reveal her position. She had a pistol in her belt, but she was afraid to fire for fear she would hit Cal or one of his people coming up the stairs. Below in the street, she could hear shouting and the sounds of fighting.

Giles rushed into the room. Leah drew her knife and waited. Fear tasted like cold ashes in her mouth, and gooseflesh raised on her arms.

“Where are ye, sweet?” he demanded mockingly.

She could hear him reloading his pistol in the blackness. Suddenly he lunged at her. She rolled away and he fired again. A second explosion followed the first. Giles cried out and slumped forward onto the floor. Leah rose shakily to her feet.

“Leah?”

She recognized Brandon’s voice. “Here,” she answered. “Be careful.”

Cal’s face appeared, illuminated by a lantern. His grin at seeing her safe contorted into a grimace of pain as he caught sight of his sister’s sprawled body. “Ahhh, Maggie,” he groaned. “Little Maggie.”

Leah looked at Giles. He lay still, a neat round hole in the back of his blue wool shirt.

Brandon lowered his smoking flintlock pistol and held open his arms. Leah ran to him. “Brandon! How did ye know I . . . Your wound . . . !”

“Shhh,” he soothed, holding her tightly. “Did you think I’d let you get yourself killed?”

“Ye shouldna be out of bed.”

“I’ll do well enough if you don’t crush me to death.”

She pressed her face into his chest and closed her eyes, willing herself away from this terrible room and the thick smell of blood.

Cal set the lantern on the floor and knelt beside his sister. Leah heard him weeping brokenly as she and her husband made their way down the crooked stairs.

Outside, the street was growing light. Armed men in her father’s red and white livery stood in small groups. On the ground near the horses, Leah saw Shanks and Mother Witherberry tied and gagged. Mother was struggling, but the cloth around her mouth made her protests faint mumbles. By the doorsill, Ben the mute lay sprawled, obviously dead. There was another body, a man with a striped shirt and tarred pigtail. To Leah’s relief, none of Cal’s people were dead in the street.

Cameron rode toward them on a bay horse. His strained expression eased when he saw Leah. “Ye’re safe,” he said. “I’d have drawn and quartered the lot of them if you’d come to any harm.”

Leah looked up at her husband and swallowed hard. Brandon’s face was pale, but he’d kept step with her, and he hadn’t let go of her hand since they’d left the red room. “Thanks to Brandon,” she said. “He killed Giles. A few moments later and . . .” She squeezed Brandon’s hand. “He belongs in bed, nay here hunting murderers.”

“He does all right for an Englishman, this husband of yours,” Cameron scoffed. “He ran that one”—Cameron indicated Ben’s body—“through with a sword. The bastard tried to knife one of my men.”

“How did ye know where I had gone?” Leah asked as her father dismounted and lifted her onto his horse.

Cameron waved to another servant, and the man led forth Brandon’s mount. “You both belong at home. I’ll have my master-at-arms escort you through the city.”

“I know I wasna followed from the house,” Leah insisted.

Cameron scowled. “I went to your bedchamber shortly after we parted and found you gone. When I went to Brandon’s room and realized you weren’t there either, I tracked you from the side door to the spot where you went over the fence. It didn’t take me much longer to find you’d taken a bow and arrows from my collection.”

“You tracked me?” she asked in disbelief.

“For seven years I lived among the Shawnee, Leah. Do you think me a complete idiot? You told me of Mother Witherberry and her filthy business. I meant to see her punished, child. Did you think your honor meant so little to me? Going back there on your own was a foolhardy thing to do—but something your mother might have attempted. I didn’t think Brandon was up to riding, but he’s as stubborn as you are.”

Brandon reined his horse close to hers. “It took time for your father to form up his retainers, and it wasn’t easy to find this place in the dead of night. If we had come sooner, perhaps we could have saved the life of that poor girl.”

“It pains me that you couldn’t come to us—to one of us, at least,” Cameron said.

“I was wrong not to trust ye,” Leah answered softly. “Maggie was my friend. She died in my arms, but she had no chance. She was lost before I ever left your house. Her murderer—the man Brandon shot—was the same man who kidnapped me and tried to kill him. Giles was an inhuman monster. I only wish he could ha’ died slower.”

“Hush that, child,” Cameron replied. “It’s your savage Scot’s blood talking. Dead is dead, and he’ll harm no more women.”

She nodded and looked back toward the house. “What will ye do with Mother and her cur, Shanks? Turn them over to the authorities ?”

Cameron’s eyes were hard. “I think not. From what you say of Mistress Witherberry, she’s used to dealing with the law. If I give her to them, she may bribe her way out of jail and be back in business before we reach the Colonies. No, I have a better idea. There’s a ship in the harbor bound for the West Indies. The plantations there are always in need of indentured servants to cut sugar cane. Seven years in the fields—”

“Can ye do that, Father? Sell them like animals?”

“It’s better than they deserve. With luck, the fever will take them before they earn their freedom again.” He put the mare’s reins into Leah’s hands. “Go home now. See to her, Brandon. I’ll finish here. You’d best get back to the house before the city is awake and someone recognizes you.”

“Could ye see that Maggie is given a proper burial?” She touched her father’s cheek. “Cal has no money. He and Maggie saved my life. I want to—”

“Trust me in this, child. Off with you before the city watch comes. They can only stall so long.” He signaled to his master-at-arms, and a half dozen men on horseback fell into position around Leah and Brandon. “I place the welfare of Lady Brandon in your hands,” he said.

In single file, the horsemen trotted down the narrow cobbled street. Leah glanced back over her shoulder and saw her father standing over Mother Witherberry. Then her mare followed the master-at-arms around a corner, and she lost sight of Mother’s.

 

Leah didn’t ask Cameron any more questions about Mother Witherberry when she saw him at dinner that afternoon. She could tell from the expression on his face that he had finished the matter. The only other reference she ever heard him make to Mother was after Maggie’s funeral two days later.

Cameron and Leah were leaving the small churchyard near St. Bartholomew’s where Maggie had been buried. Since he wanted to “play dead” long enough to expose Charles, Brandon had stayed home.

Cameron stopped by the church door and shook Cal’s hand. “I will be forever in your debt,” he said sincerely. He glanced over at Leah. “I offered young Cal a position in my household,” he explained, “but he said he prefers to enter the world of commerce. He wants to make a decent tavern out of Mistress Witherberry’s establishment.”

“Yeah,” Cal said. “Maggie an’ me was never used t’ takin’ orders from nobody.” He crumbled his new hat in his hands. Cal, Tomkin, Charity, and the rest of Cal’s “family” were all decently garbed in plain new clothing—clothing Leah had suspected her father had purchased.

Cal cleared his throat in embarrassment, clearly overwhelmed by the honor of receiving so much attention from a nobleman. “His lordship has generously offered t’ lend me money t’ buy ale an’ get started. He said as long as the house was standin’ empty, wasn’t no reason why I shouldn’t use it.” He grinned. “They’s room enough fer all o’ us in the band. We scrub the place up a bit, you won’t know it.”

Leah said her good-byes to Cal and the others and walked away toward the waiting coach. As hard as it had been to see Maggie laid to rest, she knew it would wound her deep in her soul to take her leave of Brandon.

She paused and ran her hand along the low crumbling brick wall and stared down at the hard-packed earth, bare of grass. Not even weeds, it seemed, could grow here in London. Tears clouded her eyes, but she knew they were not tears for Maggie. Her sorrow was for the end of her marriage—for the parting that must be.

Brandon had kept himself strangely apart from her since the morning he had saved her at Mother’s. “My father is taking me home to America,” she had told him on the ride home. She’d expected him to berate her for saying so, or even to be angry with her for going off alone to seek revenge, but he hadn’t.

“I won’t try to keep you in England any longer,” was all he’d replied. “I’ve done enough of that.”

Since then, Brandon had been polite to her, even kind, but he’d not spoken of their marriage again or of his child she was carrying. He’d not made any attempt to change her mind. Sorrowfully, Leah wondered if perhaps he was relieved that she was going home and leaving him to his own life. In spite of everything they had meant to each other, maybe he, too, realized that they were just too different to be happy together.

She closed her eyes as vivid memories flashed across her mind . . . She and Brandon in each other’s arms at the waterfall. Their wild passion in the game room at Westover. Brandon kneeling before the fire pit in her wigwam. Brandon throwing a giggling Kitate into the air and catching him. She and Brandon charging the bear. And then, superimposed over those precious images of what had been was the enchanting face of a baby girl—a laughing infant with dark hair and startling blue eyes.

Lightly, Leah touched her swelling belly, knowing instinctively that she’d been given a glimpse of the daughter she would know and love, a daughter who would grow up without a father, as she had . . . But I had memories of Cameron, Leah thought sadly. This child won’t even have memories of her father.

Memories . . . Soon, that would be all she had of her blue-eyed English husband. Heedless of where she was, or who could see her, Leah covered her face with her hands and wept.

“Enough of that, child,” Cameron said. “It’s hard to lose friends, but life is for the living.” He waved to a footman, and the servant opened the coach door with a flourish. “You’ve had enough sadness,” Cameron murmured as he helped Leah into the coach. “Now let us think of the voyage home and the new life inside you.”

“I want to see Kitate so bad,” she admitted. “Will he remember me, do you think?”

“I doubt that his remembering you is anything you need to worry about, Leah. If he’s anything like you, he has the memory of an old woods bison.” Cameron leaned from the coach window and signaled the coachman.

Leah took a deep breath and tried to picture her son’s face. If she kept remembering Kitate and how much he meant to her, maybe leaving Brandon wouldn’t be so hard.

 

“Leah, we have to talk.”

Leah looked up in surprise. It was the day after Maggie’s funeral, and she was outside in her father’s garden, kneeling on the grass. She had kicked off her red slippers, rolled down her silk stockings, and tossed them away just to feel the grass against her bare feet and legs. “Brandon?”

He was coming toward her, tall and broad, his handsome face set in hard lines. Behind him, neat rows of red and yellow roses were coming into bloom. Leah inhaled deeply of the sweet fragrance. Whenever I think of England, she thought, I’ll remember this moment . . . the scent of those budding flowers and the way the sunlight glinted off Brandon’s golden hair.

“I’ve been thinking this all out,” he said gruffly, “and it’s time we talked about it.”

“Aye, if ye wish,” she murmured. “Lady Dunnkell’s roses be beautiful, aren’t they?”

“Don’t talk to me about roses. To hell with the roses! Stop pretending to be an English lady. Yell at me. Throw something.”

“Ye’ll be better off without me.” Leah bit her lower lip and deliberately looked away. “Ye can have the annulment your parents wish,” she whispered in anguish, “and marry someone who can make ye happy . . . someone like Anne.”

“Damn it, Leah, you can’t do this!” He caught her hand in his and turned it to place a lingering kiss at the pulse on her wrist. “I love you, woman.”

She shook her head, unable to speak for the emotions that choked her. She wanted to tear her hand away from him, away from his touch, but she couldn’t. Her lower lip trembled, and she blinked away tears.
You still want him,
her inner voice cried urgently.

“I’m not asking you to stay here,” he said. “I just want you to give our marriage another chance.” He kissed her wrist again, and a sweet aching spread like fire from the pit of her stomach through her body.

“Nay . . .” Her voice sounded strained and throaty. She drew in a deep, ragged breath as her throat tightened.

“If I come to America with you,” he persisted, “if I come for good—will you forgive me?”

Leah moistened her lips and stared into his face. “It canna be, Brandon. There is too much . . .” She sighed and tried again. “When I told ye that I was carrying your child, ye were angry with me. I feared ye didna wish a son or daughter with Shawnee eyes and skin the color of copper.”

Brandon flushed. “That was never the reason I was upset,” he said. “I was afraid of losing you in childbed. Your mother died that way, and someone . . . someone I knew a long time ago.” He exhaled softly. “There was a girl, Leah . . .” He shut his eyes. “Cecily. She was the parson’s daughter. We were both very young, and . . .”

Leah scrutinized Brandon’s features in silence as he slowly related the story of Cecily and her tragic death. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his lips whitened as he described the stillbirth of her infant.