The King's Mercy

by Lori Benton

  Looking for men? Had he been an officer in the Stuart army, a high-ranking clansman? Joanna thought they called them chiefs, as the Indians did. Alex MacKinnon seemed young for that, but what did she know about the wilds of Scotland and its people? She sighed, wishing the world were a kinder place. Wishing her place in it was other than it was. At least Mister MacKinnon would be his own master again, should he live out his seven years. With a fervency that surprised her, she hoped he would.

  She fetched a tin cup from the washstand and dipped it full, her mind crowding with other concerns. “Jemma, have you spoken to Charlotte since you started helping in the smithy?”

  She knew the answer. Jemma had rebuffed Charlotte’s attempts to speak to her. Her sister played alone with her dolls, with only the prospect of families with children soon to visit to enliven her.

  Jemma’s face shuttered. “No ma’am. Been busy.”

  “Speaking of busy,” Joanna said, eyeing the girl’s ratty breeches, “Azuba spared precious hours stitching that petticoat for you. Why aren’t you wearing it?”

  Jemma dodged her gaze. “Miss Joanna, don’t get mad at me asking, but why can’t a girl wear breeches?”

  Joanna opened and shut her mouth, then said, “It isn’t proper.”

  “I can get up on that block to reach the bellows lickety-split. Skirts get in the way of nigh everything, and I’m always on the move.”

  As if she’d planned it, Elijah called from the smithy, “Jemma, there’s a horse to shoe. I need your help!”

  She’d forgotten to tell Elijah the one guest already arrived, Mister Forelines, had mentioned his horse was on the verge of losing a shoe. The man had beat her to it.

  She nodded Jemma off to the yard. “Go on. I’m fine here.”

  Mister MacKinnon had grown restless, flexing those big hands at his sides. Seconds after Jemma left, his body jerked in a spasm, long back arching.

  Joanna’s heart thumped. At first she thought it some manner of feverish fit and was uncertain what to do. Administer the bark? She feared he would choke on it. Still, she’d reached for her pocket to withdraw the flask when Mister MacKinnon rasped out, “Cobhair orm! Na gabh air falbh. Uncle…”

  Uncle. Comprehending but the one word, Joanna leaned over him, touching his brow. He blazed beneath her hand. “Mister MacKinnon, you’re at Severn. No one means you harm. Please, wake up and be well.”

  We need you to wake up, she thought. The sentiment wasn’t nearly as startling as Alex MacKinnon’s eyes, which flew open and fixed upon her.

  “Mari…?”

  Joanna hadn’t realized he’d grasped her wrist until his fingers eased their hold. His eyes rolled, then closed. Tension spooled out of Joanna, leaving her limp and saturated as the bedding.

  He’d thought she was Marigold.

  Sounds from the smithy yard reached her. A ruckle from the horse being shod. The tap of hammer against shoe. Mister Forelines speaking to Elijah. She’d greeted the man but half an hour ago, having come to the study unaware he’d arrived, carrying the basin she meant to fill at the well, and overheard part of a conversation about one neighbor who wouldn’t be at the gathering.

  “There’s been another quarrel with Simcoe’s slaves?” Mister Forelines had inquired of Papa.

  Asahel Simcoe owned the plantation bordering Severn upriver. The Careys had had little but contention from him since the day they took possession of Severn because of a boundary dispute begun with the land’s previous owner. It had finally been settled in court—in Papa’s favor.

  “Apparently so,” her stepfather replied. “Word came about an altercation between my slaves and Simcoe’s in the woods at the boundary line. Phineas rode out this morning. May it prove a molehill, not another mountain.”

  Joanna made a tch of disappointment, revealing her presence. “Mister Forelines, I hadn’t realized you’d arrived,” she said when he turned her way. “Have you need of anything?”

  Henry Forelines, owner of a mill downriver, bowed in greeting. “I’ve deposited my kit in the bachelor’s cabin.” Others would be making use of the old cabin on the grounds, men who came without wives or who didn’t mind roughing it while their families enjoyed the comforts—if crammed quarters —of the house. “I’ve issue with my horse, though. Old fellow has a shoe come loose.”

  Mister Forelines’s wig, perpetually in need of curling, hung slightly askew on his bald head. Joanna suppressed a smile. “I’m sure Elijah can see to that.”

  “He’s managing, then, your blacksmith?”

  “We’ve a new man in training,” Papa said. “A Scotsman serving out his indenture.”

  Mister Forelines’s brows rose toward his crooked wig. “A Jacobite?”

  “A fevered Jacobite at present,” Papa replied, reminding Joanna of her need of haste if she wanted to check on the man.

  “Before I forget,” Mister Forelines said as she turned to go, “I’m bound with a message from the reverend. He stopped over with Clan McGinnis, upriver, but should be arriving today—as will they all. You are forewarned, my dear.”

  He was right to call the McGinnises a clan. With twelve children, an uncle, and two aging mothers in tow, Joanna hoped they’d bring a canvas shelter to raise in the yard, else they’d be like prized tobacco in a hogshead barrel when it came to sleeping.

  From the smithy a new voice, clear and carrying, jolted Joanna from her reverie, flooding her with pleasure. Reverend Pauling had arrived. So, then, had the McGinnises. She’d need to change into something more appropriate for receiving guests than her plain muslin day gown.

  She slid her hand behind Mister MacKinnon’s head, placed the cup’s rim to his lips, and managed to get a few swallows of water down him. Leaving the flask with the bark tincture on the stand, she went into the smithy and found Reverend Pauling on his way to her. They met beside the forge.

  “Joanna.” The skin around his blue eyes crinkled as he grasped her hands. A friend to the Careys since before her mother’s death, the reverend was nearing sixty. He wore his natural hair tailed, and the faded hat he never could keep cornered.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, and to her mortification burst into tears. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why…”

  “It’s been a difficult season for you.” Still holding her hands, Reverend Pauling drew her near and spoke in confidence. “I’ve seen Elijah now, and I tell you, Joanna, all will be well. All things are working together for the good of those who love God, who are called to follow Him—as Elijah is called.”

  Joanna’s breath shuddered. “How can this be good? He’s in such pain.”

  “He is, and I don’t mean to call his loss good, but we serve a God who uses even our most crushing trials to produce in us a fragrance of His grace, as His own dear Son has been for us an example. Remember how Christ prayed the cup of suffering would pass from Him? But it pleased the Father He should drink thereof. And yet what came of that bitter draught?”

  “Redemption,” she said. “He drank it for us.”

  “Exactly. And He will work good for Elijah through this. In time.” The reverend’s sorrow over Elijah’s maiming was visible in his eyes. As was his hope. He squeezed her hands before releasing her. “What of this new man Edmund has acquired? Fallen ill, I understand. Not my particular thorn in the flesh?”

  Reverend Pauling suffered the intermittent ague, and the fevers didn’t always oblige him by the timing of their visits. Traveling yearly, holding meetings in homes, barns, or forest clearings, more than once he’d been aided by strangers who happened by a solitary camp and found the itinerant minister shivering in his bedroll.

  “I’d hoped you could tell. You knew of him already?”

  “Only what Edmund has told me. An exiled Jacobite, sentenced to indenture. Shall I look in on him?”

  Reverend Pauling was always quick to fold himsel
f into life at Severn. “I left a bark tincture there, but I must go and greet the McGinnises. They did come with you?”

  “Down to the newest babe born three weeks since.”

  “Thirteen?” Ann McGinnis had her hands full. “I must help Azuba see them settled.” She drew a breath, then let it out and said again, “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “As am I,” Reverend Pauling said and, with a lifting of beetling eyebrows, ducked into the back room.

  * * *

  The fever was a scarlet thing, the color of his enemy. Day and night. Past and present. Dream and waking. They rolled across each other like mist over the flanks of Ben Tangaval, clashed and splintered as a ship gale-driven onto rocks, an unholy stramash permitting no respite. His bones burned. His flesh cracked with heat. He couldn’t find his clansmen. The English in their red coats rose up from the heath, and he fought them until his blade ran scarlet too. Still his men died, and he couldn’t reach them, couldn’t find them in the dark of the ship’s hold. Cameron. MacKenzie. Rory MacNeill. He’d as good as killed the man who’d been to him a father. Only he hadn’t, for Rory bent over him, alive and speaking. Joy blazed. “Uncle…” It wasn’t Rory’s face but a woman’s, bonny and brown. She offered something bitter as gall to drink, then gave him water to chase it down, but he couldn’t lose that taste. He was hacking with his sword again, making a slaughter of his enemies on the freezing moor as his teeth rattled in his head. Only it wasn’t a moor. And it wasn’t a sword in his hand but a hammer. Cold vanished in a blast of heat. It wasn’t men he struck, but iron. He pounded it, forging something for himself…

  “Mister Alex, you take a little broth?”

  Marigold, that was her name. He swallowed what she spooned into him. It hurt. Everything hurt. Cold again. How could he be cold when he knew this place was hot as hades?

  Moon’s voice: “It cannot be like before, Mari.”

  “Haven’t you grief enough? Why heap on more?

  “Mari. Please.”

  “Did that fire blind you as well? You can’t see when a body cares for you.”

  Was it Joanna Carey of whom they spoke? Of course Elijah saw she cared for him, but no man wanted a woman’s pity.

  As if their talk had summoned her, Joanna was there, touching him, cooling him. Her voice soothed. Strength wrapped in gentleness. He floated on its cadence, buoyed as on a loch. A touch on his lips. Water…or a kiss? It was cool and lush, and he took it in, a groan escaping him.

  A heavier hand rested upon him. A man’s voice spoke, the words beseeching…Alex opened his eyes, but there was too much light. He felt unanchored in his flesh, without firm sense of who and where he was, only that he no longer burned.

  “Alex MacKinnon?”

  The name jarred soul and flesh together, as abrupt as a hurtling dog halted at the limit of its rope. He turned his head. Seated beside his cot was a man he’d never seen before, smiling at him, a smile at once gentle and spirited, above it a pair of intelligent blue eyes hung with shadows that spoke of weariness or…illness? Craggy features and weathered skin belied the impression. A man equally acquainted with sun and sickbed?

  He found his voice, or a rough approximation of it. “Ye ken my name. Might I have yours?”

  “David Pauling.” The man removed a shapeless hat to reveal graying hair pulled back from his brow. “A servant of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the grace of God made a minister of His peace.”

  The expected reverend. “How long…?”

  “Nearly five days, I’m told. I’m here at the wish of your mistress, who ministered to you in your illness. How are you feeling?”

  Joanna. He hadn’t dreamt her. She’d been there watching over him. Kissing him? That had been a dream, surely.

  The reverend had asked a question. “Weak as a half-drowned kitten, if ye must ken.” His belly tightened as he spoke, emitting a growl.

  “A kitten wanting its milk.” Reverend Pauling stood. He was somewhat below medium height yet managed to fill the small space. “I know where the kitchen is, and from what I smelled upon my arrival, I’d say you’ve timed your awakening well.”

  The man took a tin cup from the washstand and offered it to Alex, who pushed up on an elbow to take it, dismayed at the weakness of his grip.

  “I’ll be back directly with something more filling.” Pauling was gone before Alex could speak.

  Trembling, he’d lifted the cup to his lips when he minded something else he’d dreamt. Not the kiss. Not the fighting. Not his men or even his uncle. The glow of fire and metal, the showering of sparks. He set down the cup, then flexed his gaunt right hand, minding the hammer’s weight, the strength of his arm as he struck the iron—forging himself a sword.

  8

  There seemed no end to Severn’s need of nails, but Alex didn’t mind. Just as well he’d a task to occupy him, requiring nothing but muscle memory to undertake, being but two days since he’d risen from his sickbed—and considering the swell of folk bursting the bounds of Severn’s grounds with whom he’d no wish to mingle.

  Neighbors. The word had broad meaning on the Cape Fear. Some who’d gathered for the preaching had traveled farther to do so than most Barra folk would venture in a lifetime. For himself, he hadn’t set foot beyond the smithy yard save to use the necessary. Even so he hadn’t escaped notice.

  The previous afternoon a man had needed an axe blade mended, a task Alex undertook with Moon’s supervision. Trailing the man were two lasses Joanna Carey’s age, capped and pink-cheeked with the heat. Lingering at the doorway while he worked, they’d whispered behind their hands—about Moon, he’d assumed. He’d glanced their way with hammer raised, meaning to scowl them off, and caught the dark-eyed stare of the taller lass. Her raking gaze left him in no doubt as to the object of their interest.

  “They talking about you,” Jemma confirmed, waiting in the smithy when he and Moon emerged that morning.

  “They?” he asked, not wanting to know.

  “Folk not from here.”

  While Moon watched, he laid the fire. “How d’ye ken what anyone’s saying?” Yesterday she’d manned the bellows while he hammered out nails. She’d hardly left his side.

  “I was in the kitchen afore sunup, fetching your breakfast. The help come along to this shindy got ears—they hear their folk talk. Want to know what they saying?”

  “I can guess,” he muttered.

  “They saying you seven foot tall, ain’t got a lick of proper English, you killed half the king’s army afore they caught you, and…”

  Alex shut his ears. The smithy doorway faced east. The sun was rising, with it the temperature. So be the iron. Bend with the heat. Let exile hammer him as it would, he’d emerge reshaped, of use to himself on land as well as sea. He’d still much to learn, about the forge, about the land of his exile.

  “And many a nail to make,” he muttered as Moon deposited a bundle of rods on the forge’s counter, then crossed to the bench beneath the open shutters to set out what Jemma brought from the kitchen. Pone drizzled in honey, cured pork, biting cider to wash it down. They made short work of it and settled into the day’s labor.

  Sometime after noon Moon went out, leaving Alex with Jemma manning the bellows. Countless finished nails later, he hadn’t returned. When the last nail thudded on the packed earth, Alex went to the water barrel, dipped the ladle, drank, then poured the rest down his face. “Have ye winters in this place?”

  Jemma, gulping water from her hands, spat droplets as she laughed. “Comes round every December. Lasts all of a week.”

  “Good to ken,” he said wryly, and poured another ladle-full over his head. Dripping water off chin and hair, he removed his leather apron, hung it, and stepped into the yard, pulling the sweat-soaked shirt away from his chest. The sun beat down from a sky hazed with clouds too meager to shade. Beyond the smithy yard the lane dividing t
he slave cabins and the shops was unusually quiet. He’d met few slaves as yet and could match but a handful of names to faces, but he’d grown attuned to the rhythms of the place. It was all but deserted.

  “Where’s Moon got to?”

  Jemma fetched up beside him, her head barely topping his waist. “Gone to the preaching most like. Up at the Big House.”

  Set back with the other shops well behind the kitchen gardens, the smithy was too far removed to catch any sound of voices, preaching or otherwise. Still, he’d doubted Moon would be found among those gathered for the religious meeting, judging by what he’d overheard during Pauling’s last visit to the smithy.

  After a day at the forge, he’d been drained as a squeezed sponge, unable to budge from the block chair outside the room he and Moon shared, where Moon and the reverend had retreated. He’d leaned his head against the wall, half dozing, only to jerk awake in time to hear Pauling quoting, “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.”

  To which Moon said, “I never fathomed why God let such calamity befall a man who pleased Him.”

  “That’s hard to accept, that a loving God can be more concerned with our eternal good than our earthly comfort. But as the apostle Paul wrote…”

  Not wanting to hear whatever the apostle said on the matter, Alex had staggered out to the yard and lowered himself against the brick wall to sit, knees drawn, head cradled on aching arms. When the scuff of shoes paused beside him, he pretended to sleep until the reverend departed.

  Had something the man said made a difference to Moon? Drawn him to the gathering Alex had thought he meant to avoid?

  He glanced down at Jemma. “Why are ye not away to the preaching yourself, then?”

  She flashed her amber eyes at him. “On account of helping you.”

  “D’ye want to go?”

  “Maybe…”

  Joanna Carey would be among the listeners. Would she be glad to see him on his feet? The fire was dying down. He thought it would be all right to leave it so. “Show me to the meeting, mo nighean?”