The Randolph Legacy (51 page)

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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy
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“West?”
“Yes, there are several begun. Quaker settlements in the new state of Indiana, along the banks of the Ohio River.”
Judith saw the women from her dream and vision again, pointing. Her hands shook. “Ohio?”
“Yes. But I am determined not to leave without resolution of our invaded, disrupted time together, Judith. Of thy father’s murder.”
Judith fought the remembrance of the blood, all the blood. Eviscerated. Like what Ethan had done to the rat. “Perhaps there can be no resolution.”
“Why not?” He stepped closer. “Does it not haunt thee?”
“It does,” she admitted. “As did the slaughter of my mother, and her babies. But I went on, after that.”
“Yes. Touched by God. Who touches you now, Judith Mercer?”
Ethan paced the small, chestnut-paneled room.
“Sit,” Jordan commanded.
He slammed himself into the chair, rocked back on his heels.
“Still!”
“I don’t like it here, Jordan. It’s so dark. Why is the window so high? How will I get out?”
“The door is customary.”
“I will not be put on trial again.”
“That was a hearing. You’re not on trial now. I’m telling you, Ethan, Seymour Hess sounded … remorseful.”
“Remorseful? Why? He and the other two magistrates did not hang me. They only took my brothers’ bribe and depended on Winthrop and Clayton’s promise to keep me locked away at Windover.”
“That is speculation. Don’t mention bribery. Damnation, Ethan, I don’t know why he wanted this meeting! That’s for us to discover. So behave yourself. Stifle that caged-convict head of yours. And keep that Randolph arrogance in check, too.”
Ethan smiled. “What will be left of me?”
“Be Judith’s devoted husband and protector,” his friend suggested. “My dedicated assistant.”
“Assistant? I thought I was your associate!”
“What did I say about arrogance?”
Ethan sighed. “I should have seen that one’s approach.”
“Yes. Your mind would be quicker if you weren’t so worried about being locked up.”
“It has foundation. I have not been the most fortunate of men here in Pennsylvania.”
His friend smiled sadly. “Perhaps you’re due for some more favorable winds.”
After a soft knock, a tall, steel-eyed man entered the room. Ethan recognized him immediately as the middle magistrate he’d had listening at the hearing, then had lost. Seymour Hess was followed by Elder Oakes, whom Ethan remembered from Harmony Springs. An old man, but strong, one of the hard-shod farmers who’d kicked him into blackness the day of Eli’s death. Could he and Jordan get past these two and out that small door, if they needed to? Were there any on the other side, waiting to take him captive again?
“Friends,” Elder Oakes said quietly and stepped back, becoming a silent mass in the room’s shadows.
Then Seymour Hess offered his hand. He even smiled. “Ethan Randolph. Judith Mercer’s sailor home from the sea has returned.”
“Her husband now. Devoted,” Ethan blurted, making Jordan cringe.
The towering man laughed softly. “It’s been brought to my attention that your name is on the papers of a pair of brothers who were destined for hard labor in the iron mines as branded runaways.”
“I did not steal them,” Ethan protested. “I bought them free and clear and legal!”
The magistrate crossed his arms before his chest. “Then sent them north with your wife’s stitches to keep out the cold. You are a most peculiar slave trader, Mr. Randolph.”
Ethan realized that this man was not meaning to lock him up again. His mouth twitched. “I couldn’t have my wife’s fine sewing buried in a mine, sir.”
“Nor have our Captain Atwater buried on land or at sea just yet.”
Ethan frowned. “He’s buried, Mr. Hess. As sure as I was thrown to the sharks a dozen years ago.”
“Fellow Lazaruses, you and the finest captain in our little fleet.”
“Our fleet?” He was not the only lawbreaker in this room, Ethan realized, glancing at Jordan as Seymour Hess continued.
“The network now thrives, in part, because a child—a third son of a Tidewater planter—secretly taught slaves to read many years ago.”
“Aaron and Martha helped you?” Ethan whispered.
“Along with many others they and theirs have taught, now spread up
and down the River James. There, then. Enough information to send us both to prison for the remaining years of our lives. If it’s earned your trust, tell us how we can help you, friends of Friends.”
Jordan Foster nodded his full assent, so Ethan began. “Judith and I, we left Harmony Springs in haste.”
“So I understand.”
“Eli’s death remains unresolved.”
“That is true.”
The Quaker in the shadows finally spoke. “Have you returned, then, bent on finding the killer and vengeance, Ethan Randolph?” he demanded.
“No … . I mean, yes, I have a powerful need to find Eli’s murderer. Judith and I have been in hiding under another name, aided by Dr. Foster. But our circumstances have changed. Our name is Randolph once more, and so my wife is vulnerable to her enemies again.”
“Again?” Elder Oakes prompted.
“Yes. I believe Eli’s murderer has attacked her family before. Judith remains, the last of the Mercers. I would have my wife safe,” he told both men. “I am determined to find him.”
“You know of the Loyalist raid,” the magistrate said.
“I do, sir.”
“Who told you the story?”
“Eli Mercer.”
“Perhaps he is directing you now.”
“I am not good at directions. Not on land, Mr. Hess.” Ethan turned to the Quaker elder, and appealed to both men. “Please help us. Help Judith, who has served her people and Pennsylvania so well. She follows her Light, still. I have not prevented it. We are innocents in this. As is the child growing within her body.”
“Child? A child?” the Quaker demanded now. “Announced? Apparent?”
“Both.”
“Where is your wife now, Mr. Randolph?”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “Safe,” is all he would allow.
He wanted to shake the men. But he sat quietly, though on the edge of his chair.
“That Loyalist took a stand after the raid on the Mercer farm,” Seymour Hess said, finally. “He was killed.”
“But one of the party was never found.”
“His brother. Younger brother.”
Ethan bolted upright. “How do you know this?”
“Recent, very recent communications, I assure you.”
“You have picked up the trail again, yourself, Mr. Hess. Why?”
“Because of a little boy disturbed by everyone calling his friend, a friend who taught him how to catch minnows with a handkerchief, a liar. Once the frozen ground thawed, this boy dug up a small stake buried next to a dead rat and brought it to me. Here in my chambers.”
“Hugh. Did the stake bear a message?”
“Only bloodstains. Indiscernible scratches. But it planted a seed,” the magistrate admitted. “And I had never gotten over the … the ring of truth to your testimony, sir. I began inquiries. To Canada. I knew the Mercers, watched Judith’s flowering. We all took a great pride in her, Mr. Randolph. I could not believe she had left her work for her father’s murderer. Then when I heard from Captain Atwater, of this herbalist seamstress and her work for our slavepath north, I knew she had not.” He glanced beyond Ethan. “Is it not time, Elder Oakes?”
The Elder hesitated. “This is happening so quickly, and is a matter I should consult others on.”
Ethan turned, ignited with suspicion. “What have you done?”
The Elder finally came fully out of the shadows. “But, the woman who wrote to Harmony Springs Meeting—she said he’d beaten, then abandoned Judith. That she was sick of heart, and sought to return to us. She asked for our help.”
“Good God. Who?” Ethan breathed. “What woman wrote this?”
“Thy brother’s wife, Clara Randolph.”
Ethan nailed the man still with his gaze. “You know that other brother, don’t you? The brother of the Loyalist, who came down from Canada on the raid twenty years ago. He returned. He became one of you. He’s been waiting, watching, for years. Still bound by a promise. One that allowed him peace, while Eli Mercer remained a widow, while his daughter lived her celibate life. But Elder Oakes, the Mercer line is growing again.”
“Judith. She is on your father’s plantation now, is she not?” Seymour Hess prodded gently.
“Yes,” Ethan said, from a mouth dry and tinged with the metallic taste of his own fear.
“You must go, Ethan Randolph, and you, Dr. Foster,” the elder said in a ragged remnant of his powerful voice. “The Meeting, we will help you get home the fastest way possible. I fear we have delivered Eli Mercer’s murderer to your doorstep.”
The three men were still dressed in mourning there on the dock.
Ethan didn’t like the feel of black on his shoulders, directing the sun’s heat to his skin. Grieving black, biding its time, waiting to have its purpose. His Quaker wife’s aversion to the color had seeped into his being. Captain Atwater offered his good hand. Ethan took it.
“My mother and I sail on the next tide. Maine, I think you stipulated.”
“Requested. Captain. You’ll be welcome at our home.”
“Mother, too?”
Ethan managed a smile. “Even her chickens.”
“Spoken like a courteous Virginian.”
“Don’t tell Dr. Foster. He believes he’s turned me into a coldhearted New Englander.”
“I will repay you, for your purchase of my cargo.”
“The cost was in something I have no use for.”
Ethan released the hand of this man who loved Judith. He did not wonder at it, only at how there were not legions more.
Ethan hesitated only once, on the ship’s gangplank. In heading out on the open sea, he was breaking his promise to his mother to remain landed.
Jordan shoved him gently. “I will defend you for taking this fastest route home,” he said. “She will understand, and forgive.”
“Thank you, sir.”
They walked to the port side of the schooner, where none of the other passengers seemed willing to brave the salt spray. Ethan tapped the ship’s rail nervously.
“I wish I was as clever as Daedalus and could make us both wings,” Jordan offered.
“No need. Prescott Lyman will wait.”
“When he’s got Judith defenseless? Why?”
“She is never defenseless. He will make one more try for her. He was her suitor in Harmony Springs. He would have been her celibate husband,
were it not for me. It was I spoiled his last chance to fulfill his promise to his brother without blood.”
“You and Eli.”
“Prescott Lyman must have been listening that day, when Eli gave me his permission to court. A madness came over him then, I think.”
“A calculated madness. To use your knife, to desecrate Eli’s body so even Judith was paralyzed by the sight …”
Ethan turned into the breeze. Revulsion soured his stomach, sending bile up his throat. When would they set the sails? He would feel better once at sea, he was sure.
“Ethan?”
Get it out. Get the rest out, before it poisons. “I left Judith full of doubt about me. He will prey upon that. Jordan, where was my sense? I should have trusted her with the knowledge that Captain Atwater lived, should have listened to her pleas not to be separated. Just as I should have known from the hatred in Prescott Lyman’s eyes when I came for her, there in Harmony Springs. I should have known that he was the one.”
“You had other objectives then.”
“I am now the father of her line, and so, even more, the spoiler of his plans.
J’ai espérance …” What is the English, Fayette?
his mind asked through its fear.
—
Hope.
“Hope. I hope he waits for me.”
Jordan Foster smiled. “That thought sustains us both.”
Ethan’s eyes traced a gull’s flight. “Jordan. You must have a care, stay safe. My mother loves you.”
“And I love her. I have all my life.”
Ethan turned to his friend. “All your life? Is that why you couldn’t love the dulcimer woman, the way she loved you?”
“Yes.”
“Your Maggie, she knew this?”
“Yes.”
“She had a great heart, I think, to have taken you to husband just the same.”
“Ethan, there is so much I have yet to tell you.”
“I know. I’m slow, a poor student.”
“That’s not what I mean! Listen. What you said to Captain Atwater … it was about your brother’s loan, the one you made against your inheritance, wasn’t it? Does that inheritance truly mean nothing to you?”
“The Randolph one?” Ethan snorted softly. “Jordan, this avarice of
my father and brothers, the conniving of their wives and this wealth that slips so easily through my fingers—it is based on the sweat of bondsmen and -women. Now a small portion of it has gone to free others, black and white. Perhaps these three, the brothers I bought back and Judith’s captain, they will go on to free more. That from my small investment—that has value, yes? The money was not nearly enough, after generations of Randolph slavery, but it is all I am likely to lay my hands on.
“I have no further interest in that legacy, believe me. My true inheritance is of my second life—Fayette and Judith and you. I treasure your gifts beyond measure. And I cannot lose you or Judith, or the child she carries. I am still a selfish boy, a brat. I am so unfinished.”
His friend looked at him long and hard, searching. For what? He was so hopelessly transparent, was he not? “I cannot—” Jordan Foster finally whispered. “I cannot do this without her.”
“Without who? Do what?”
“Your mother, damnation!”
“You will not blaspheme that lady’s name, sir!”
Jordan merely sighed in response to the hot flash of anger. “Oh, keep your dueling pistols in their box, Virginian,” he said. “I’ve done worse to that woman.”
“Not while sober.”
“What in hell do you mean?”
Ethan laughed. “Has your memory tripped again? How else could I have tolerated you making her a whore?”
What was the source of the rage filling Jordan Foster’s face? Ethan wondered. Did he not remember his insult to his Annie when drunk? But Ethan had barely time to open his mouth to ask before he felt the hard slam of the doctor’s fist at his jaw. That and a launching sea swell unbalanced him, sending him sprawling to the deck, dazed. And Jordan Foster was still coming at him.
“You know nothing about it!” the doctor shouted.
“Know nothing? I was there when you called my mother a French whore! I did not challenge you then, I carried you home!”
Suddenly, Jordan’s face filled with discovery. “My God,” he whispered. Ethan crawled backward until his head hit the railing. Jordan’s voice was a whisper. “You meant what I said in the tavern.”
“Of course. Why did you hit me?”
Jordan crouched on the deck beside him. “Ethan, forgive me.”
“Bloody hell! Not this time! Why did you hit me?”
“I misunderstood.”
“What?”
“Your words.”
“What words?
Dîtes-moi!”
“‘Dîtes’?”
“Tell me! Damnation! I am not stupid, addle-brained, empty-headed! I am not an imbecile!”
“No,” Jordan soothed. “You are Annie Blair’s clever boy. And mine. Ethan, you are my son.”
“What?”
“I loved your mother, and she returned that love. I am your father.”

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