The King's Mercy

by Lori Benton

  Jemma peered up at him, furrowing her brow. “What’s that you calling me?”

  “It means lass.”

  “Little girl?” she asked warily, as if ready to take offense.

  “Or young woman.”

  “That’s fine, I guess. Call me that.” Jemma peered out from the smithy as if checking for threat, then squared her shoulders. “I show you the way.”

  She led him past the sprawling gardens, along the hedged walk that gave the Big House and lawn a sweeping berth and separated it from the kitchen, shops, and slave quarters. It was the nearest Alex had come to the house since his arrival. He studied it with interest as they passed the occasional spot in the dense hedge low enough for him to see across. On the ground floor a back door opened onto a terrace lined with flowering borders, overhung by balconies on the upper story. Coming round to the front, he glimpsed the colonnaded portico he’d seen only from the river in passing before his attention was captured by Reverend Pauling, midstream in his sermonizing.

  He’d expected shouting. The reverend’s voice was lifted above casual speech, yet his cadence was more akin to a man conversating with friends. Impassioned but not fierce.

  Jemma left the walk, which veered toward the front of the house where the hedge terminated. On the lawn between house and river, under a canopy to shield the gathering, the people sat on benches, stools, chairs brought from the house. As Jemma led him to a fringe of poplars at the yard’s edge, a few on the periphery glanced their way. Mainly slaves, spilling out from the shelter, unshaded from the sun. At the back of their number, Moon stepped away to meet him, brow knotting. “What’s amiss?”

  “Nothing. I finished the rods. Thought I’d come find ye.”

  Moon crossed his arms, hiding his wrist-stump, and nodded.

  Pauling’s congregation was a tightly packed cluster of caps and wigs. He searched the caps for Joanna, finding her nearer the back of the gathering, gowned in blue, unaware of his arrival. The lasses who had ogled him at the smithy noticed. Seated two rows forward of Joanna, one nudged her companion, who craned her neck at him. That caught Joanna’s attention. She followed their gazes only to pivot forward again, a flush rising up her neck.

  “For in the Gospels,” the preacher was saying, “does He comfort with these words, ‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ What He gives us to bear is often the means to free us from clinging to the things of this life that needlessly weigh us down. For even our afflictions are, in light of eternity, that very thing…light.”

  The relentless sun was no match for the indignation burning Alex’s chest. He was staggered by the gall of a man who could speak baldly of such things to a crowd half composed of slaves. Or such as Moon.

  Would Pauling call his exile and forced indenture an easy yoke?

  Wishing he’d kept to his place at the smithy, he was on the verge of retreating when he spotted Marigold coming along the walk. She reached the point where the hedge began its curve and hesitated. When she spotted them, he elbowed Moon, who turned, saw Marigold, then pretended he hadn’t.

  Looking both affronted and distressed, the lass hurried to the rear of the gathering and touched Joanna’s arm, bending to whisper. Joanna rose, and the two drew off for a murmured consultation.

  “But how then do we cast off those burdens that are not Christ’s?” the reverend continued. “How do we cast off that yoke that rubs us raw and take on His yoke in its place?”

  “There is no casting off,” Moon muttered, turning to go.

  Alex fell into step. At the same instant Joanna and Marigold started for the walk. He and Moon gave place to the women. As she passed, Joanna lifted her gaze to him.

  He was struck by the color of her eyes, different in full daylight than they’d been by a candle’s glow. He’d known they weren’t dark, but he hadn’t thought them so blue. Not the clear blue of an autumn sky. A stormier shade.

  The color of the Hebridean sea before a gale.

  * * *

  Joanna emerged from the stifling kitchen with the conflict Marigold had brought to her attention sorted. A minor squabble between Sybil and a girl Ann McGinnis had brought to serve had escalated into an altercation, exacerbated by the heat, which had shortened tempers and loosened tongues. One of the McGinnis’s brood had lately attached himself to their slave, his mother’s attention being taken up with his youngest siblings, particularly the newest. The boy was underfoot in the kitchen, but Ann’s girl hadn’t the heart to shoo him away. Joanna had promised to send the eldest daughter straight to the kitchen to round up her brother.

  She’d missed Reverend Pauling’s finishing thoughts on casting off burdens not of the Almighty, leaving her with the pressing question—how did one define light when it came to burdens? She didn’t fear hard work, but there was no denying a heaviness weighed on her, making the daily tasks she’d applied herself to since the age of twelve feel more onerous with each passing year, not less so. One couldn’t simply cease living, nor abandon those who depended upon one. Surely that wasn’t what Reverend Pauling meant.

  Joanna paused on the path between the vegetable gardens, overtaken by a longing to hide herself among the twining pole-beans, even as a contrary longing for fellowship sought to pull her down the path. She’d found scant time to enjoy the company of Elizabeth Martin and Lucy Woodard, the two young women present near her age, nor any of the women, aside from sorting their issues and fulfilling their needs. Despite her best intentions she was playing the part of Martha again when she longed to be Mary, sitting at the preacher’s feet.

  “Martha, Martha…,” she murmured.

  Laughter floated on the bee-buzzing air. Lucy Woodard’s. She and Elizabeth had plied Joanna with questions about Mister MacKinnon when last they’d spoken. Joanna had hoped her sparse answers satisfied, but she’d caught their straying glances during meeting. She’d been glad to see Alex MacKinnon join the gathering, but more thrilled to spot Elijah at the back of the crowd, though she’d sensed his discomfort when she drew aside to speak with Marigold. Mister MacKinnon had seemed ill at ease as well, a glower carved into his lofty brow.

  Was everyone out of sorts this day?

  She drew a breath scented with garden earth and shook herself into action. Reaching the walkway as a cluster of slaves trudged by, returning to work, Joanna halted the last in the group, Severn’s head carpenter. “Gideon, bide a moment.”

  The man raised a hand to doff his cap. “Miss Joanna?”

  “I’d meant to speak to you of a need at the smithy. When I tended Mister MacKinnon, I noticed his bed is far too short.”

  Gideon smiled, tight-lipped to hide jumbled teeth. “I ’spect no bed frame on this plantation be fitting him. You want us to build a new bedstead?”

  “Or add a few inches to the one he has.”

  “More’n a few.” Gideon scratched his gleaming brow before settling his cap in place. “We get on it directly, ma’am.”

  Parting with the carpenter, Joanna reached the lawn where guests still clustered, some speaking to the reverend, others waiting to, still others directing slaves setting up tables soon to groan beneath another meal. Out of the bustle Azuba emerged, beelining for her, features set in a look Joanna recognized. Something broken needed mending. Something lost found.

  Not another McGinnis child, she hoped.

  9

  Pauling’s eyes betrayed fatigue after a week of preaching, praying, exhorting, baptizing, and whatever else his flock required of its shepherd. He nevertheless offered greeting to one and all before retreating into the smithy’s back room for, Alex supposed, one last go at Moon. The Careys’ neighbors had dispersed to their homes along the river. The reverend would depart tomorro
w astride a mare from Severn’s stable, hitched now to the rail upon which Jemma perched, while Alex shoed the mount. Though most of Severn’s guests had arrived by river, those come by road or bridle path seemed to have had at least one horse in need of attention. He’d grown reasonably proficient at shoeing.

  “This one comes near,” he said, setting down the hoof he’d been matching to various finished shoes Moon kept on hand, giving the mare’s shoulder a caress as he straightened. The oak shading the yard murmured in the breeze that had sprung up. The sun was dropping west in a cloud-feathered sky. Compared to the blanketing heat he’d endured since the Charlotte-Ann dropped anchor, it was downright pleasant.

  “Bide ye here,” he told Jemma. “Fire’s hot enough.”

  At the forge he put the shoe to heat and waited, catching snatches of conversation from the back room. Pauling’s voice, clear and carrying. Moon’s gruff, indecipherable replies.

  “It’s true we’re promised suffering,” he heard the reverend say, “that our faith will be tested. But we’re promised also that all things work together for good, because the Almighty Himself is good. All things, not just those which seem good.”

  Pauling’s message never wavered. Present suffering didn’t mean the Almighty’s promises were void. He’d the best planned for His children, and that best would include trials. Affliction. But understanding His ways wasn’t the path to peace. Peace was always with us, because He is peace.

  Could such baffling verbal thrusts do anything but further wound?

  Alex took the shoe from the fire and commenced hammering, drowning the reverend’s voice. Sparks flew off glowing metal as his mind rankled over his and Pauling’s last encounter. Two days ago the man had caught him during a break in his work and attempted to engage him in conversation about the state of his soul.

  “Save your breath, Reverend. Ye’re wasting it with me,” he’d interrupted. “I shed the rags of my religion in the dark of a prison ship. I’m of no mind to don them again.”

  Pauling hadn’t flinched. “You’re right to label your former religion rags. All man’s efforts at religion are as rags in the Almighty’s sight. It’s in His righteousness we must be clothed if we would enter His kingdom.”

  Alex slammed down the hammer, driving out the man’s voice—past and present—then forced himself to stop and examine the shoe. Another blow and he’d have likely bent it too far. He plunged it into the cooling bucket, sending up a vaporous hiss.

  As it faded, the silence in the back room swelled. Curious and disturbed, he stepped to the doorway, just as Pauling’s voice rose again.

  “We give You thanks and praise for the fellowship of suffering, for the consolation of Your Holy Spirit, the comfort of Your steadfast love.” Seated on Alex’s cot across from Moon, Pauling leaned close, a hand to Moon’s shoulder. “Even as we tremble at the awesomeness of Your power and sovereign might.”

  A shudder went through Moon as a tear rolled down his scarred cheek. Anger swelled in Alex’s throat. He would stop this, physically remove the man if need be. Summoning the nerve to do so, he looked closer at Pauling. Tears coursed down the reverend’s face as well.

  “Kindle another fire, Almighty God, a fire of faith in the heart of my brother. Comfort his soul. Grant him patience while he awaits Your guidance. I ask this believing that nothing is impossible with You.”

  Alex made the sign of the cross before he could check the reflex, ingrained in him since childhood. Though Moon sat with eyes closed, Pauling had caught the gesture. He nodded, as if to include Alex in their intimacy. Face shot through with heat, Alex stepped back into the workshop, took up the shoe, and returned to the yard, to the clear air and the breeze he hoped would scour from his mind the words overheard.

  He brushed the mare’s shoulder, letting his hand travel down chest and foreleg before he lifted the hoof and secured it between his aproned thighs. He’d arranged the needed tools on a block within reach. While Jemma fondled the mare’s nose, he drove in the first nail. Satisfied with the angle at which the point emerged, he clipped it and reached for the next. He was on the last nail, the light in the yard gone golden with the sun’s setting, when Pauling emerged from the smithy.

  “How do you find her, Mister MacKinnon? Sound enough for a trek through the backcountry?”

  “I dinna ken what hazards might present, nor the nature of the land past that creek yonder.” Alex nodded westward, though the smithy blocked all view of Severn Creek, which flowed beyond the orchard and the slave cabins. “Are there roads ye’ll be following?”

  Fitting the nail, Alex glanced at the reverend. Maybe it was only the deepening shadows beneath the oak that underscored his haggard pallor, but just now he didn’t seem the sort to go adventuring in remote places.

  “There’s a road of sorts upriver as far as Cross Creek. From thence various trade paths cut across the colony. Eventually one strikes the old Warrior Path running north.”

  “Warrior Path?” Alex tapped in the nail and clipped it, then reached for a file. “Indian warriors, d’ye mean?”

  “He talkin’ about the Cherokees,” Jemma said from her perch on the rail. “You ever run across them, Reverend?”

  A smile lit the man’s eyes, pale in their shadowed settings. “I’ve met a few of that tribe, as well as Catawbas, and what I believe was a band of Tuscaroras, though they may have been Mohawks ranging south.”

  Alex’s estimation of the man rose a notch, hearing him speak so matter-of-factly of people he’d been led to believe were warlike and savage.

  Jemma wrinkled her nose. “Tuscaroras sold my grandma for a slave.”

  The reverend looked as surprised as Alex by the statement. The horse shifted. Alex took a firmer grip of the hoof, filing as he asked the preacher, “Can that be true? Indians are in the slave trade?”

  “Some are, I’m grieved to say. Those living nearest the colonies sell their captured enemies to the English—or the Spanish—in trade for guns and cloth and metal tools.” Pauling studied Jemma, thoughtful and intent. “From what tribe was your grandmother taken?”

  “My granny was Cherokee, called Looks-At-The-Sun. Tuscaroras took her in a raid, a girl.” Jemma sat straighter, gazing into the horse’s gentle eyes. “Cherokees is my people.”

  Maybe that explained the look of her, Alex thought. She’d African blood as well, though. Perhaps white. He felt around the hoof, making sure all was secure and smooth. “Do these Tuscaroras live near enough the white settlements to trade their captives? Somewhere along this river?”

  “Once, but no longer. They and the Carolinians went to war thirty years ago, after which most of the Tuscaroras migrated north to join the Iroquois.”

  “Iroquois? That’s another sort of Indian?”

  “Several, actually.” Pauling squeezed his eyes shut and seemed to sway, but recovered himself to add, “They live quite far to the north, a confederation of tribes. But some Tuscaroras lingered in this colony…isolated bands.”

  “The Iroquois live to the north, ye said? How far?”

  “A long way,” said Moon, who’d come to the smithy doorway, his face betraying no sign of the emotion that had beset him earlier. “The Warrior Path runs north along the mountains into Virginia and Pennsylvania. Iroquois lands stretch farther still, into New York.”

  “Mountains?” Alex set the mare’s hoof to the ground and straightened, taking in these new place names. “So the whole of Carolina isna like this, swamp and mosquitoes?”

  Jemma giggled, slipping off the rail to join them. “No, Mister Alex. Carolina rolls up higher ’til you come up against them mountains. That’s Cherokee country.”

  Alex reached for a rag to wipe the file clean. “And there’s folk settled between here and there?” he asked Pauling. “People ye mean to preach to?”

  “Yes, though the farther west one travels, the smaller and more scatte
red grow the settlements. You might find Lawson’s account of his travels through the colony—A New Voyage to Carolina—of interest. His description of the backcountry holds true. Perhaps Edmund has a copy he’ll lend.”

  That likelihood seeming remote, Alex asked, “How far are the mountains from here? Has anyone settled them?”

  Alex worried he’d asked one too many questions when Pauling’s brow puckered. “Very few…”

  “Why, then, d’ye not keep to settled places like Severn?”

  “It’s what the Almighty calls me to do,” Pauling replied, throat convulsing. “And by the King’s mercy, I will do it.”

  Though the reverend looked as if a stiff wind might knock him flat, Alex bristled, annoyance eclipsing concern. “Dinna speak to me of the king’s mercy. What power has he to ease your path, an ocean away?”

  The reverend started to shake his head but curtailed the motion with a wince. The look that crossed his face was eloquent of alarm, shifting swiftly through comprehension, distress, and lastly, resignation.

  “I speak not of England’s king…” With that, Pauling’s eyes rolled back and he fainted in the yard.

  10

  For days Joanna had sought solitude to ponder what snatches of Reverend Pauling’s teachings she’d heard, finding only the seconds between lying down each night and sleep claiming her. With Charlotte readying for bed, she’d wandered into the sewing room to catch up on her stitching before losing the light. If only her thoughts could be marshaled into neatly stitched rows instead of scattering like peas spilled from a shelling pan. Her parting with Lucy Woodard skittered across her mind as she bent over a petticoat’s hem. Joanna had apologized for having found so little time to spend with her.

  Lucy had seemed more puzzled than disappointed. “I cannot fathom,” she remarked before boarding the flatboat that would convey her family downriver, “why you don’t allow Azuba more charge over domestic matters. She’s capable, yet you seem determined to have a hand in every little thing that must be done, letting your slaves and their concerns pull you hither and yon all day long. You’ll wear yourself threadbare before you’re twenty.”