Paxton's War (45 page)

“Are you sure?” the pig farmer asked.

“As sure as I am that snakes crawl. The man's poison. When he comes, you'll say you've neither seen nor heard of us.”

“Where will you go?”

“We'll find our way,” Billy Hollcork said bravely, holding Rianne's hand.

“Solitary will be safe,” Joy said.

“Will you take a bigger wagon?” Happy asked. “At least the five of you riding in the back will be able to breathe.”

“And provisions. You'll need food,” Pamela said. “I'll get something ready right now.”

“Would you have any fabric?” Rianne asked. “No matter how coarse. And a needle and thread? Our gowns and fancy suits are hardly made for traveling through the swamps. As we go, the girls and I will put together something a bit more commodious.”

“Aye, you'll get what you need,” Pamela informed her, “that and blankets as well.”

“Just hurry!” Jeth urged, his one good eye looking outside.

“We'll prevail, my friend,” Robin said to a frazzled Piero, putting his arm around him, a gesture of affection they had never before publicly shared.

“That we will,” Rianne echoed as she rose from her chair, holding her tall frame perfectly erect.

Sweet Peter
, Joy cried silently to herself,
if only we could find one another again; if only we could escape this world of misery and misunderstanding. Find me, Peter, and keep my brother safe
.

Dear God
, prayed Colleen,
protect my Jason. Return my Jason to my arms
. All during their hurried preparations to depart, Colleen held the image of her one true love constant in her mind.
Jason
, she said to herself, over and again,
how I love you! Oh, how I will always love you!”

“Does the name Happy Coltin mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“Didn't think it would.”

“Then why in hell are you asking?”

“‘Ask,' says the good book, ‘and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.'”

“Ask all you like,” said an irritated Buckley Somerset. “You wasted half the night leading us on a wild-goose chase.”

“Wild indeed,” Pall replied, delighted again to be dressed as a man and enjoying breakfast in the splendor of Somerset Hall. Only in Europe had he seen a structure of such palatial proportions. Ah, the comfort of fighting on the winning side! “The night,” Frederic continued, “was of no small value. We know the route they took out of the city and the general direction in which they're headed. There are but a few places in the nearby countryside where they might have stopped—farms owned by people not suspected of being rebels.”

“Where are these farms?” Buckley asked impatiently.

“Would you be good enough to ask your boy to bring me a drop more juice?”

With one sudden movement of his arm, Somerset swept Pall's juice glass from the table. It smashed against the wall, juice splattering on the actor's clean white blouse, which he had borrowed from Buckley.

“'Tis a shame,” Frederic said calmly as he wet his cloth napkin with water and dabbed gently at the juice stains. “Such fine silk. I do hope the damage can be repaired.”

“Damn the damage, you insufferable clown!” Buckley screamed, his eyes aflame as he grabbed the actor by the collar. “Take me to those blasted rebel hideaways—now!”

“My dear Mr. Somerset, if you'll grant me the courtesy of removing your hands from my throat—my skin's most delicate and irritates easily—and place twenty pounds sterling upon this magnificent mahogany table, I shall be more than willing to describe the course of action that I suggest you and your brave men may want to pursue today.”

“You're a blackmailer, Frederic Pall, and a black-hearted thief to boot. I'd just as soon cut your delicate throat as look at you.”

“Cutting my throat will not get you your beloved Colleen and her devoted musician.”

Reluctantly, Buckley reached into his waistcoat and threw the money on the table. Instinctively touching the bone of his broken nose, he watched Pall silently count the coins.

“Splendid,” the actor said, smiling. “As soon as you provide me with a fresh blouse and full glass of orange juice, we can leave straightaway on our rebel hunt.”

It was a risky gamble, but it worked. Jason had driven the carriage back to the stables behind his mentor's home, reasoning that it would be the last place in the world the Redcoats and Tories would look. He suspected that the elegant town house would be pillaged and burned, but not this night. They'd be too busy chasing after him, Darney and the others in every quarter of the city. Therefore, he was able to tend to Peter's ankle, wrapping it in a nine-tailed bandage. A bullet hadn't lodged in the skin and the wound was superficial.

The men slept for a few hours, and in the morning, after Jason warned the servants and sent them on their way with as much money as he could spare, he put on one of Robin's wigs and cloaks and set out for the Fierce Lion Inn. There he was able to convince Dan Greenely, the tavern's rebel owner, of his true identity.

“My situation's desperate,” Jason said. “I presume you know Jeth Darney.”

“As well as my own father.”

“Well, I've got to find him. Where would he have gone?”

Having heard the news of last night's free-for-all and excited to be approached by the real Will-o'-the-Wisp, Greenely scratched his head and thought long and hard.

“We've a good friend a bit out in the country. A pig farmer. Darney may have called on him.”

After receiving directions, Jason went back to Robin's, where, with sundry headbands and work clothes, he did his best to disguise Peter, whose longing for Joy was matched by a sickening feeling in his stomach of acute self-loathing.

“I've conducted my entire life according to the code of the British Crown. Do you understand what it means to desert that code? There's no facing my father or my uncles. There's no returning home.”

“What you did, Peter, is of higher purpose than any code. You followed the dictates of your heart. You've seen that this is a country founded by people whose very moral obligation is to break a code. To break one and establish another—all in the sacred name of freedom. Whether you accept the fact or not, Peter, you've become an American.”

By the time Jason had dressed himself and Peter, they both had the look of farmers or frontiersmen—coarse trousers, torn shirts, animal fur hats that Piero had collected as amusements. Jason loaded a large square cart with food, blankets, two rifles that Robin had owned for years and never used, and a supply of ammunition. In addition, he had three other pistols—Peter's and two of Jeth's. He tied the cart to Robin's two strongest horses and buried his friend beneath the supplies, giving him just enough air to breathe. With a great deal of makeup changing the complexion of his face and a coonskin hat lowered over his head, an unrecognizable Jason breathed deeply before setting out through the streets of Charleston. Ducking into alleys at the sight of any sentry, he managed to weave a circuitous course and make it to the outskirts of the city where a patrol of four greencoats blocked the road. Still several hundred yards away, he whispered to Peter without turning his head, “You're going to have to take the two on your left. I'll contend with the right side. Start loading. I'll cough and you'll shoot first.”

From the back, Peter surreptitiously scrutinized his targets. He loaded both rifles, having already experimented with the accurate American weapons. They resembled a Swiss-made variety with which Tregoning was familiar. He fired at the sound of the cough. One man fell. The other started to run away, but Peter's second shot caught him from behind. With that, Jason whipped the horses and charged close enough so that, within pistol's range, he took out both his men, one in the groin, the second directly through the stomach. He silently thanked his father for years of training.

A while later, they knew, from the sounds of squealing pigs, that the Coltin farm was just around the bend. Their pulses quickened. Hope entered their hearts. But when they made the turn, it was the mad scramble of animals running wild that first hinted at disaster. A little farther up the road, smoke entered their nostrils, then a putrid stench. The farmhouse had been burned, the roof collapsed, the walls fallen in. Inside, bodies of men, women, and beasts were strewn about, charred beyond recognition. Obviously, they hadn't been able to get out. Neither man could bare to look. They put cloths over their noses. Breathing was painful. The only objects at all recognizable were a few scattered remnants of what appeared to have been gowns. Jason remembered Colleen's pale blue fabric, just as the hobbling Peter recalled Joy's muted pink and flowery lace. For a few seconds, the men stood there, choked, unable to move, too stunned to cry. They couldn't—wouldn't—accept the fact that their women were dead.

Jason realized how much Colleen meant to him—all her contradictions, her charms, her beauty, her poetry, her soft and fragrant skin, her courageous soul. He saw his life as empty and futile without her. No, she wasn't gone … it wasn't possible. His heart was overflowing with his love for this woman. He wanted to scream, to cry, to bring her back somehow. Yet, in spite of the painful emotions racing through him, he knew that he and Peter had to keep on moving, and that there was only one place left to go.

Chapter 15

All day they had slept restlessly, troubled by one graphic nightmare after another. A light drizzle falling upon their faces gently awoke them. They opened their eyes to a remarkably various and streaked sky. A simultaneous sun-shower and sunset had created a triple rainbow of such beauty and magnitude that, for several seconds, both men weren't sure whether they were awake or dreaming. If paradise existed, surely it could be no more spectacular than the sight before them. Suddenly all the horror they had seen, the mutilation and death, was overshadowed by this radiance of natural wonder. Blue and pink, orange and gold, lavender and yellow—rainbows to end all rainbows, glowing and wide, a thousand times more vivid than colored oils painted on a canvas, a thousand times grander than any church, basilica, temple, or shrine. The arcs seemed as if they were but a mile away. So fabulous were the formations that Ethan and Roy actually forgot their condition—that they were without food or supplies, cut off from civilization, hunted by an army of ruthless plunderers. What difference did it make in the light of such beauty? Neither man could speak. They merely sat up and gazed upon God's immense creations like worshippers in a cathedral. Their hearts were lifted, their souls refreshed. There was no doubt they were witnessing a miracle.

Suddenly through the center of the three rainbows, directly beneath the highest point, they saw two horses pulling what seemed to be a wagonload of passengers heading toward them. Amazingly enough, the men weren't alarmed. Ethan didn't grab his gun. Roy didn't start to run. They assumed that this, too, was part of the miracle. They may have wondered again whether they were indeed hallucinating, and for a second they looked toward one another to confirm the fact that they weren't seeing things. They weren't. They stood up as the glowing colors of the rainbows intensified, dominating the sky, and waited as the wagon drew closer and closer. They could almost feel something from its passengers—a longing, a sadness, a hunger, a love.

Closer and closer came the cart. Faces came into focus, and Ethan and Roy again silently questioned their senses. Could they be staring into the faces of their daughters? Had the men been murdered in their sleep and were they joining their children in another sphere? No, this was Solitary, Ethan understood, and there, only a few feet from him, among the others, was his Joy Exceeding. Helped down from the cart by Robin and Piero, she ran into her father's arms and together they held one another for dear life, weeping. Never before had she seen her father weep—not even when her mother had died.

Seconds later, Rianne and Colleen stepped down. The seamstress allowed her niece to greet her father first. Colleen and Roy embraced with an intensity strong enough to defeat whole battalions of men. Then Rianne also hugged her brother with considerable might, whispering the words, “Miracle, miracle … 'tis a blessed miracle.”

The fact that the women, their long hair free of wigs, were dressed in smocklike robes of coarse cotton gave them a strangely angelic appearance, adding to the sacred mystery of the moment.

Jeth and Hollcork alighted from the riding board and strolled off to allow the relatives a private reunion. They, too, were touched by the spirit in the air, the sweet moisture of the rain, the dazzling rainbows. As soon as they had spotted the old men, they had taken up their guns, but were told by the women not to shoot. Even before Colleen and Joy had seen their fathers' faces, they'd felt their presence.

Respectfully, Robin and Piero, dressed in makeshift monk-like robes, walked their own way, disappearing for a moment into a dense grove of oak trees. As they gazed upon the wondrous arcs and silently thanked the forces of good for this precious moment of holy respite, Piero's arm nestled into the crook of Robin's elbow.

It was another fifteen minutes before the rainbows faded, fifteen minutes before any of these extraordinary human beings—Colleen or Roy, Rianne or Billy, Jeth or Robin or Piero—could say a word. All together now, they found they were each touching one another, as if to confirm their own fleshly existence.

Blankets were spread upon the ground as night descended. Realizing how important it was to conserve, Jeth distributed a small bit of food, doling out substantially larger portions to Roy and Ethan, who had forgotten the last time they'd eaten. Robin and Piero had not met Roy before, but they were well acquainted with Ethan Paxton. Their previous encounters had not been pleasant. This time, though, it was as if they were meeting another man—someone whose humanity had deepened immeasurably.