The King's Mercy

by Lori Benton

Looking exhausted, Papa said, “Let us sleep on it, Joanna. MacKinnon will keep another night.”

  Only he hadn’t. Sometime during that second night, Alex had vanished, guilty of desertion, if not arson and the death of a valued slave. But this talk of Jonahs was too much.

  On her feet, Joanna demanded, “What proof is there that Alex’s presence brought about any of the losses we’ve suffered? If anyone is a Jonah, I rather think it’s you, Mister Reeves.”

  “Joanna!”

  She heard warning in Papa’s tone but pressed on regardless. “Think about it, Papa. Our misfortunes began before Alex was brought here. Elijah’s accident began it. If you can believe it of Alex, why not Mister Reeves?”

  The overseer stared at her, oddly dispassionate. “Pray tell, Miss Carey, are you in love with MacKinnon?”

  She was cornered. Not so much by Mister Reeves’s scrutiny or Papa’s darkening gaze, but by Alex. His desertion had left her vulnerable, all her wounds exposed.

  “I did think so. It turns out I didn’t really know him.” She looked away from Mister Reeves, repelled by the satisfaction flooding his gaze.

  “None of us knew the man,” Papa said.

  “How could we, sir?” Mister Reeves asked. “A rebel, a prisoner of the Crown. A traitor. That is the man I brought among us. I beg your pardon for ever choosing him.”

  That brought Papa to his feet, looking aged with weariness. Joanna gazed at the two men, one young and vital, the other diminishing before her eyes.

  What man wouldn’t be diminished after the string of losses they’d suffered this past disastrous year?

  She was grasping the folds of her gown, twisting them in her distress. The very gown she’d worn the day she first set eyes on Alex. Gold, as he’d seemed to her in the candle’s glow. How subtle it had been, her coming to depend on him, to hope in him, not just for herself but for Elijah. Jemma. Perhaps even Papa. Had she loved an illusion? The man she wanted Alex to be?

  Watching Papa and Mister Reeves now, she saw the same dependency mirrored.

  “Every indentured man aboard the Charlotte-Ann was a Jacobite,” Papa said. “If blame is to be laid, let it be at my feet. And MacKinnon’s.”

  Joanna was stunned at how easily Mister Reeves had solidified the notion of Alex’s betrayal in her stepfather’s mind. The only crime of which they had proof was that he’d escaped his confinement and run.

  “Yes sir,” Mister Reeves was saying. “I see your point. And please, Miss Carey, do not again defend a man who has so misused you. It’s beneath your dignity.”

  “Misused?”

  Mister Reeves looked pained. “I suspect you thought he returned your misplaced sentiments, yet he abandoned you. Are you not as well rid of him as we?” When she couldn’t speak for the lump lodged in her throat, Mister Reeves gentled his tone. “I wasn’t blind to the striking qualities of the man, how he must have seemed to you, who have so little experience of the world. Your infatuation with MacKinnon may be excused, Miss Carey. I’m willing to overlook it, if you will once again consider me. For I am here, still waiting, where MacKinnon is not.”

  Thunderstruck, Joanna watched the man leave his place beside her stepfather, advance toward her, reach out and take her hand in his.

  “How we’ll salvage these dire circumstances I cannot see, but there must be a way.” His breath enveloped her, scented of stale pipe smoke. “I’m not asking you to love me, only help me save what we both cherish. Help me save Severn—as my helpmeet. My wife.”

  I’m not asking you to love me, Alex…

  Joanna caught her breath. Papa was watching, hope written on his face—hope that one thing might go according to his plan, that she, and Charlotte with her, would be covered and protected.

  Her heart beat heavy, hollow as a gourd.

  There came another beating, urgent on the study door. It opened and Azuba peered in. “Master Carey, beg pardon. There’s something you need to know.”

  The door opened wider as Elijah entered.

  Joanna pulled free of Mister Reeves. “Elijah? What is it?”

  “It would seem tools are gone missing from the smithy. A hammer, tongs. Some scrap iron, I think.”

  Silence clapped before Papa demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me of this sooner?”

  Elijah flinched at the accusation in Papa’s tone. “I didn’t notice sooner, sir. It’s not as though I was working the forge.” He made no move to hide his crippled arm when all eyes went inevitably to it.

  “Something else, Miss Joanna.” Azuba drew their attention again. “Jemma either sleeps in Mari’s cabin or the smithy. I checked both. Her blanket’s gone. She’s lit out again.”

  “With MacKinnon?” A flush darkened Mister Reeves’s countenance, suffusing it with anger. “I was hasty in suggesting we allow him to go his way, sir. I’ll organize a party to begin the search. If you’ll permit?” He swung back to look at Papa.

  “Where would you begin? Downriver toward Wilmington?”

  Mister Reeves scowled. “It’s the world he knew. That of ships. He’ll make for the sea.”

  Joanna was less certain. She recalled Reverend Pauling’s letter, the one she’d shared with Alex, mentioning that fellow Jacobite he’d known aboard the prison ship. Hugh Cameron. What had been the name of the plantation?

  Mister Reeves started for the door. She opened her mouth, knowing she must speak of the letter now. But she shut it again, saying nothing.

  The Fugitive

  SPRING — AUTUMN 1748

  And His Kingdom shall have no frontier.

  —LUKE 1:33 (OLD MORAVIAN VERSION)

  25

  APRIL 1748

  Not until that morning, the fifth since fleeing Severn, did Alex suspect pursuit. Now, with the sun setting and forest shadows lengthened, he was certain of it; one too many snapping sticks had given it away. With no small bewilderment he wondered who would track him such a distance without attempting capture?

  With no intention of being taken, he grabbed the hatchet from beside the knapsack and slipped into the pines. Hunkered low, mosquitos whining about his ears, he watched the clearing where he’d paused to skin a rabbit snared at midday. In minutes a figure stumbled from the wood, small, disheveled, filthier than himself, gaped at the knapsack and rabbit, turned a circle, and burst into sobs.

  “Mister Alex! Where you at?”

  “Jemma?” He sprang back into the clearing. She stumbled backward at his appearance. He caught her by the shirt and hauled her to her feet. “Ye followed me? What—how did ye manage it?”

  “Being little and fast, and sneaky with it!” She twisted in his grip. “I ain’t letting you leave me behind in that place.”

  “Your home, ye mean?”

  “Severn ain’t home. Home’s elsewhere. I aim to find it.” Tears tracked the grime coating her face. She’d a little bag slung across her shoulder, a blanket tied to its strap. How had she survived all these days?

  More to the point, what was he to do with her?

  That first night he’d run as far as he could, carrying a pack weighing six stone at least, forced to leave the river and its rough wagon track for stretches to avoid farms, always veering back to it, his only guide. In the stretches of pine barrens, he’d seen deer aplenty. He’d scared a bear up a tree, heard more than one panther’s scream, been bitten by every insect known to man, and seen too many snakes to number, one that rattled its tail at him in passing.

  On the second day he’d spooked someone’s dog into barking and got chased into a tract of swampland where he’d lost himself for a day, emerging muck-covered and ravenous, provisions gone. Yesterday he’d caught a straying chicken. Today the rabbit. Now he was a mile from Cross Creek—he recognized the stretch of river from the time they’d hunted Jemma. On the morrow he planned to risk going among people to get word of Hugh Camer
on, or the plantation Pauling wrote of in connection with him.

  “What I ought to ask isna how but why? Why’ve ye come after me?”

  Jemma thrust out her small chin. “Why you running?”

  “Ye ken why. Carey thinks I burnt his mill, killed Jim. Who kens what else they’ll lay to my blame?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know the minds of white folk. How’d you get free?”

  “Ye didna see?”

  “I seen you outside the smithy, filling that pack.”

  “I didna mean to take anyone with me.”

  The lass’s defiance melted. “Please, Mister Alex. Let me come along.”

  “Have ye the slightest notion where I’m bound?”

  “Away from Severn. That’s all I care. For now.”

  “Have ye plans for later?” She looked away. “Spill it, lass, or ye get nothing from me.”

  Her amber eyes flashed. “I aim to find my people.”

  “Ye’re still fixed on that notion? Running to the Cherokees?”

  “Yes! And you my best chance. Reckon my only.” Jemma narrowed her eyes. “I can’t stay no more at Severn. You neither, else you wouldn’t up and leave everyone—leave Miss Joanna.”

  Jaw clenched, he stared through falling darkness at Jemma. She was the last thing he wanted, a soul dependent upon him to stay alive and whole.

  “What have ye been eating all this while?”

  She eyed the half-skinned rabbit. “I find my way to the slaves on some farm. They feed me.”

  That surprised him. Had Severn’s slaves aided runaways from other plantations? They’d kept it from his knowledge, if so.

  “But you,” Jemma went on. “How you going do better than scrawny ol’ rabbit looking like you do? You too big and white, ’cept where the skeeters got you. But I’m little and brown and—”

  “Sneaky with it?” he interjected, scratching at a swelling above an eyebrow.

  “That’s right. But ain’t no hiding you in a crowd.”

  Which was plain truth. He’d stood out for his height even among his MacNeill clansmen, and Cross Creek wasn’t a town like Wilmington, where he might have a small hope of going unremarked. It was no more than a trading post with a stretch of docks on the river, a few warehouses smelling of tar and hides. A crude inn served backcountry planters come to sell crops and livestock or transfer them to rivercraft bound for Wilmington. A scattering of cabins for those who made their living thus completed the hamlet. “I’ve no intention of taking ye to the Cherokees, Jemma. I’m bound for a certain place, can I find it. I aim to go into Cross Creek tomorrow and try.”

  “This place you want to go,” Jemma said. “It in the backcountry?”

  “Aye. I dinna ken where exactly.”

  “It got a name? Let me see can I find out where it is.”

  “And if someone takes ye for what ye are, and ye’re caught?”

  “Then you be rid of me. But I find out what you want to know, you take me along?”

  He was more than half convinced to let her try but wasn’t ready to let her know. “We’ll neither of us be doing anything tonight. Settle down for now. I’ll cook the rabbit. As for tomorrow, and Cross Creek, let’s sleep on it, aye?”

  “Ain’t gonna make for a comfortable bed,” Jemma muttered, but she slipped her bag and blanket off her shoulder.

  They slept on it. Or Jemma did. He lay wakeful in the sandy loam thinking of Joanna. He was sore tempted to ask the lass had Joanna spoken of him before the night of their escape, and if so, what she’d said.

  Somewhere in the buzzing, croaking, howling night, he decided it was better he didn’t know.

  In the haggard gray before sunrise, they tidied themselves as best they could. “Ye need to let this mop grow,” he’d admonished, giving up fingering her locks into order. “Stop hacking it off so ye can braid it up out of your eyes at least.”

  “Maybe I mean to now,” Jemma said, evasive with her gaze.

  They covered the mile to Cross Creek and reached the settlement as first light showed the figures of slaves moving about scattered buildings, tending ovens and kettles, chopping wood, emptying chamber pots, feeding stock. Armed with the names Hugh Cameron and Mountain Laurel, Jemma crept in among them. Alex settled himself in a vine-entwined copse to wait for what she’d return with. If not news of Cameron, let it be bread.

  Beyond the scents of earth, water, and pines, he smelled it baking.

  * * *

  “Mister Alex?”

  Jemma’s whisper jarred him awake, back against a tree. He sat up straighter. Morning had deepened. Sunlight slanted bold through the treetops. “What…?” Then he saw it. Whatever else she may have scavenged, she’d brought bread. A groan escaped him.

  Jemma giggled. “Eat some. I already did.”

  He took a portion of the crusty loaf, still warm from the oven, crammed his mouth full and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Jemma sat watching him. “Had ye trouble?”

  “Like I told you—”

  “Little and sneaky, aye. Tell me.”

  Sounding pleased with herself, she related how she’d met the woman doing the baking for the folk in the inn, out back of the place, and spoke of her master looking for a friend. “I say, ‘His friend called Hugh Cameron,’ and she say as how a man by that name be there now. Right inside.”

  “What?” Alex nearly choked on his next mouthful. He forced it down. “Cameron’s in Cross Creek?”

  “Been here two nights. That baker tell me, ‘Go fetch your master, girl. Take him my bread, maybe he stay over too. Make my master happy.’ I took the bread, said thank you kindly, and here I am.”

  Despite the lass’s smug grin, Alex didn’t hide his relief. “That’s all there was to it?”

  “Told you I’m useful. Now you going to take me along or—”

  “Wheest.” Alex clamped a hand over her mouth. Above his fingers her eyes rounded. She’d heard it, too, footsteps coming through the wood, their owner making no attempt to conceal approach.

  Dropping the bread, Alex scrambled to his feet, groping at his belt for his dagger. Jemma darted behind him. He’d drawn the blade but halfway when a pine bough swept aside. Into view stepped a man in a long fringed shirt, whose measure Alex took in the span of a blink. Young, tall—though well shy of Alex’s height—hair ablaze as he stepped into sunlight, a coppery shade Alex had last seen on the deck of the James & Mary.

  The man halted, fixing him with incredulous eyes. “I dinna ken whether to believe what I’m seeing, but it canna be anyone else—Alastair MacKinnon.”

  Alex shoved the blade into its sheath. “Hugh Cameron.” He uttered the name rough with emotion. “Aye, man, it’s me. And glad I am to see ye.”

  Cameron came fully into the open, gaze fixed on Alex’s right hand, still resting on the dagger’s hilt. “Expecting trouble?”

  There was knowledge of him in Cameron’s gaze that went beyond the few words exchanged. Reckless or not, he decided on full disclosure. “Aye, Hugh. I’ve broken my indenture.”

  Behind him Jemma gasped.

  Cameron’s gaze dropped to her level. “I was in the necessary out back of the tavern and heard myself named. I followed her back, never thinking ’twas ye she meant. Did ye steal her away, then?”

  Jemma stepped out and faced Cameron. “I stole my own self.”

  Sight of the lass attempting to deflect Cameron’s probing brought a swift mix of amusement and warmth. “Ye’ve naught to fear, mo nighean. Hugh’s a friend.” His gaze swung back to the red-haired man still taking their measure. “Aye?”

  “Aye,” Cameron agreed. “But ye need beware, MacKinnon. The hunt’s up for ye.”

  “They’ve been this far upriver?”

  “Only word sent of a runaway blacksmith, your rather unmistakable description, what ye sto
le—what they say ye did.” He leveled a look at Alex. “I’ll ask ye the once and take your answer for truth. Other than the thieving, did ye do any of it?”

  “Burn a mill and kill a man? I did not.”

  “All right.” Cameron crossed his arms, considering. “What mean ye now to do? Where will ye go?”

  “I’m going to the Cherokees,” Jemma said.

  Cameron’s mouth quirked. “Are ye now, lass? Is MacKinnon here going with ye?”

  Jemma pursed her lips, looking up at Alex. “I hear they take in white folk, sometimes.”

  Cameron laughed. “Oh, they do. Sometimes. But they’re as likely to kill such as him. Ye wouldna want that on your conscience, would ye?”

  “No.” Jemma hesitated, then asked, “They kill me?”

  Cameron regarded her. “Ye’ve their blood, aye? I can see it.”

  Alex watched the exchange, willing to let it play out, giving Cameron time to debate his course.

  “My grandma was full-blood.” Jemma’s face lit up so vividly that she actually looked like what she was, a lass. No, a very young woman. He’d thought she must be eleven, twelve at most, puny as she was in stature. Now he was thinking older. Thirteen?

  Cameron turned his attention back to Alex, who said, “I mean to make my way in the backcountry if I can. I thought of heading north into Virginia. Out of North Carolina, at any rate. I’d be lying if I said I wouldna covet your help. Or do ye mean to hinder me?”

  No doubt there was a reward for his and Jemma’s capture.

  Hugh Cameron drew his ruddy brows low. “Hinder ye? I’m tempted to take offense ye’d even think it after the James & Mary. Of course I’ll help ye.”

  Alex felt a squeeze on his hand, surprised Jemma had taken hold of it, but when Cameron reached toward him, he stepped forward, releasing Jemma to ignore the proffered hand and instead pull the man into his embrace. When they broke apart, Cameron’s face was screwed into a grimace.

  “Aye,” Alex said. “I need a proper washing.”

  “Never mind stink,” Jemma cut in. “Mister Alex, what he meaning to do with us?”