And Menotomy was not to be spared.
Deirdre, huddled at the window with Delight, Mrs. Foley and several neighbors, felt her companions’ hot breath stirring her hair, warming her neck; she smelled the sweat of their fear and heard their sobs of terror, a terror that was reflected in her own heart as the sharp crack of gunfire and the boom of cannon heralded the approaching arrival of the fleeing British forces.
With a sound like rising thunder, they came around a bend in the road, nearly two thousand men running as fast as their legs could carry them. Officers galloped past, their coattails flying, shouting desperately for order. Wagons toting the dead and wounded rumbled by, their wheels lodging in mud and spinning free once more. Musket fire cracked around them, and Deirdre saw a soldier fall, only to be trampled by the river of red-coated regulars. A horse reared up and plunged over backward, crushing the officer who had been so proudly mounted on its back. Minutemen, mere shadows in the haze of gun smoke, darted from behind trees, their muskets spurting flame and smoke.
Mrs. Foley cried out as she saw her husband and Captain Locke dive headlong over the stone wall that bordered the house, popping up to train their muskets on the fleeing troops. Thunder cleaved the air, and more redcoats fell, some wounded, some dying, some already dead. Flames and roiling black smoke burst from the windows of a nearby house as the soldiers ransacked the building and then set it afire. People ran screaming out into the road. Minutemen raced into the nearby house of Jason Russell, and Deirdre saw the old man die on his front steps as a wild-eyed redcoat cut him down, savagely bayoneting his body.
“Lock the windows!” Joanne Foley cried, and sobbing, they slammed the shutters shut against the carnage outside. Deirdre and Delight clung to each other. The windows rattled in their casings with each thunderous reverberation. One blew apart as a musket ball burst through, flinging the shutters wide and slamming into the mantel just above their heads. Fists pounded on the door and angry curses rent the air. Joanne Foley hefted the musket, swung it toward the door and fired, the thunderous blast exploding in their heads. Outside, a man screamed in agony and another hurled himself through the open window, only to be brought down by the musket of an old man who took careful aim at the redcoat from his place on the stairway. Blood exploded against the wall. Flashes of red drove past the window. Horses screamed in fright, bellowed in agony. Smoke tainted the air, and the cries of those who had been shot, those who had been bayoneted, those who were dying, pierced the walls of the little house.
Gunfire roared from the house of Jason Russell, where the minutemen had made their stand, and with each hollow boom, each crack of a musket, the women sobbed and cried and huddled together. The horror seemed to go on forever. Then the thunder began to fade as the fleeing soldiers raced on toward Boston, leaving the wounded and dead in their wake.
Like a land savaged by storm and just opening its eyes, Menotomy began to stir. The fields were strewn with bodies, some clad in the king’s colors, some in the ragged wool and homespun of local farmers. Outside, in the muddy road where puddles of water were now stained crimson with blood, the dead and dying lay. A few last shots rang out as minutemen fired upon straggling British troops who, carrying their wounded and dead, were too exhausted to fight back.
Long, keening wails came from the townspeople as, here and there, someone recognized the corpse of a loved one. Women comforted screaming babies and sobbing children, began to stagger out of the houses in which they had barricaded themselves. The wounded and dying lay in the road, in the fields, draped over fences and walls. A red-coated figure stirred in the yard outside and reached for his musket, only to fall back, his legs jerking, as a single shot cracked out.
And then, from the east, Deirdre heard the hoofbeats of a single, approaching horse.
She knew. She knew, even before she ran to the door and flung it open, who it was. She knew, even before she saw him, that he had come looking for Roddy. And she knew, even before her mouth opened in a desperate scream of warning, that it was already too late to save him.
The glistening, foam-flecked hide of the big chestnut stallion swept around the bend and burst into view. And though a cloak covered his fine uniform, it was all too obvious that the figure who sat so tall and straight in the saddle was a military man, no less British than those who had slashed a murderous swath through the helpless village a mere ten minutes before.
‘‘Christian!”
The horse kept coming, the rider’s cloak billowing in the wind.
“Christian, no-o-o-o-o!”
She was racing across the lawn, her skirts flying, before anyone could stop her. She stumbled once, fell, picked herself up, and kept on running, even as his alarmed gaze found hers, even as she saw a minuteman rise up from behind the shelter of a stone wall and carefully, deliberately, bring his musket up to bear on the lone rider.
“No-o-o-o-o-o-oooo!”
The explosion seemed a thousand times louder than the mightiest of Bold Marauder’s broadsides. In horror, she saw smoke and fire burst from the gun in a brilliant cloud of color. She saw the minuteman raise his fist in triumph. She saw the rider jerk in the saddle, a streak of blood ripping along his thigh, his hand going for his sword a moment before another shot sent his cocked hat spinning away into the mud.
He tumbled from the horse, his bright hair glinting in the sunlight.
Screaming, she raced to him and plunged to her knees in the mud where he had fallen. The big stallion bolted, thundering back down the road, the irons of the empty saddle slapping his sides. Somewhere behind her, Jared Foley was yelling, and the boom of cannon and gunfire was far off in the distance now.
Christian lay still and unmoving. Blood seeped from the hair at his temple.
“No!” Deirdre screamed, grabbing his hand and falling over his body. “No, no, no, you can’t die!” Sobbing bitterly, she pressed his hand to her heart, to the cross, her tears dropping upon the insignia on his sleeve that marked him as a king’s captain. “Please, Christian, don’t die on me. Oh, dear God, don’t take him from me, please, God, don’t take him . . .”
Shadows stamped out the sunlight. Concerned hands grasped her shoulders, tried to gently pull her away. She heard Delight’s voice, saw someone poke a musket at Christian’s chin, and, satisfied that he was no threat, move away.
“Don’t die, Christian . . . oh, please, don’t die.” She crushed his hand to the cross, never seeing the little drops of blood that the sharp points raised, never feeling them trickle down her wrist to stain her own sleeve as she bent over him. “Dear God, please, don’t take him, he was just doing his duty, oh, God, oh, God, please—”
Jared Foley was there beside her. He knelt down and grasped the captain’s other wrist, his thumb pushing up the sleeve to find a pulse. “He’s alive,” he said, straightening up. “Merely a flesh wound. Lucky he is, too, for he will live to see many tomorrows.”
“Don’t know what the tarnal hell a sea officer’s doin’ way out here,” muttered another, peering down at the gold lace of Christian’s coat where the cloak had fallen open.
“Aye, ’tis rather strange, eh?”
But Deirdre, clutching his lifeless hand, knew why he had come. In that brief, awful moment when their gazes had met just before the minuteman’s musket had felled him, she had seen the truth.
He had come for her brother.
Her throat constricting, she took off her kerchief and pressed it to the blood that trickled through the pale hair where the bullet had grazed his temple. Bitter shame coursed through her. She had tried to make him choose between his promise to her and the principles by which he lived his life. How could she have thought he would abandon his values? How could she have thought he would turn his back on the Navy, on his duty to king and country? In his eyes Roddy was a traitor, an enemy of the Crown.
It was unfair of her to expect him to abandon his principles, just for the sake of love. It was unfair to think that the two of them would ever have a chance to be happy t
ogether.
But the fact that she loved him would never change.
Slowly, Deirdre O’Devir reached up and removed the chain that had kept Grace O’Malley’s cross against her heart for so many years.
The cross that she had sworn never to take off for as long as she drew breath.
She shut her eyes, her lips moving in silent prayer. Then she enfolded it in her palm, and pressed it to her lips for a long, tremulous moment. It was warm with the heat of her body, and before it could cool, she lifted Christian’s lolling head, drew the chain over his hair, and carefully eased his head back down, her lips lowering to touch his skin, his parted lips, in a final kiss of farewell.
“I love ye, Christian,” she said brokenly. “Dear God, I love ye . . .”
There the cross lay, against his heart, the proud buttons and lapels of his coat. Deirdre got to her feet, her hand coming up to touch the strangely empty, naked area at her throat. But she had done the right thing. She had given him a symbol of her love, a precious part of herself so that he would never forget her. Her eyes streaming, she turned to Jared Foley, knowing that he and his family would take care of her captain until he recovered.
There was nothing left in America for her, and the colonists’ fight was not her own. If she and Roddy stayed here any longer, her brother would surely be caught and hanged—if not by Christian, then by someone else.
She had come here to find her brother, and she had found him. She had come here to fulfill a vow to her dying mama—and now it was time to honor that promise.
Find my son, Deirdre, and bring him home to Ireland.
It was time to go home.
“Mr. Foley?”
He was kneeling down beside the English captain, helping his daughter try to stanch his bleeding. He looked up at Deirdre.
“Please take me to me brother,” she said quietly, her proud, Gaelic face shining with courage and misery beneath her tears.
“What?”
At her feet, Christian was beginning to stir. She looked down at him through the blur of tears, her heart breaking. “Christian will only hunt him down again, ye see? He’s smart and determined, Mr. Foley. He’s the finest officer in the king’s Navy. He’ll find Roddy and take him from me, only this time, ’twill be forever.”
“What are you saying, girl?”
She looked up, turning her face toward Boston, and Ireland beyond. A gust of wind came up, carrying the smoke of battle and tugging at her hair.
Brokenly, she murmured, “That it’s time for me to go home.”
###
She stood on the shore at Boston Harbor, her eyes seeking the British men-of-war anchored there. Her gaze moved over each of them until it finally settled upon the one that was different from the rest . . . leaner, lither, somehow more beautiful than the all the others. The one with the pointer crouched beneath its proud bowsprit, the one that had brought her here to America, the one that she would never, ever forget.
HMS Bold Marauder.
The wind blew from the east, making the frigate’s pennants snap. It continued on toward shore, dancing over the waves and making them crest with merriment, playing across the glistening blue waters of the harbor, pulling at her hair and tugging at her clothing.
She threw back her head and opened her arms, embracing the wind for a final time.
And then she uncapped the glass flagon, letting the Irish air escape to be forever mated with its American cousin. She allowed the flagon to fill with wind, then tightly capped it once more.
Her brother stood nearby, uncharacteristically quiet, and solemnly waiting to take her out to the little brig he had hired to bring them home. His face was a mix of conflicting emotion, his heart in turmoil, for only he knew of the unspoken promise he had made to the man who had once been his enemy.
A promise he now considered breaking.
Roddy stepped forward, biting his lip.
And then he stopped, his eyes tragic.
He couldn’t do it. For he had made a promise, and Roddy O’Devir always kept his word.
Chapter 33
Connemara, Ireland
The press gang was in.
One could tell by the way a thick pall had come over the land, like mist snuffing out the noonday sun. One could tell by the way the little village that clung to the sea’s edge grew quiet and seemed to huddle within itself, the people slamming shut the doors of their whitewashed cottages and watching the roads from behind slitted curtains. One could tell by the way the taverns emptied and the young lads fled into the hills that climbed toward the majestic purple ridge of the twelve mountains, where they would hide until the threat was past.
And one could tell by the big, three-masted men-of-war that filled the harbor.
This time, England was at war with America . . . and not everyone wanted to fight.
It was an infrequent threat, the Royal Navy seeking its unwilling recruits from this bleak, storm-tossed area of western Ireland that even God seemed to have forgotten. No able-bodied young man was safe from the press gang. And so it was that Deirdre O’Devir solemnly watched her brother sigh with exasperation and leave, grumbling as he headed into the hills where the others had already fled.
Then Deirdre locked the doors and waited.
So many years ago, this same scene had enacted itself, just as it was happening now. She pulled a chair up to the fire—a good, Irish peat fire that glowed warmly in the hearth—and sat staring into the flames.
A flagon sat in a revered spot on the table before her and she reached out, touching the cold glass, staring into its seeming emptiness and remembering that last day in Boston, so many months past.
She would never uncap the flagon and let the American air out.
Just as she would never empty the vial of American water scooped from that same harbor, toss away the felt pouch containing Boston sand and seashells, discard the tuft of hair combed from the Foley’s plow horse, or eat the bread—made of corn grown in Massachusetts pastures and milk gleaned from the Foley’s cow, and baked over a good, American wood fire—that was carefully wrapped in a square of linen and tucked away in her bedroom.
Home was where the heart was, Christian had once said. Home could be any place on earth, as long as it was with the one you loved. And it wasn’t until Deirdre had returned to her beloved Ireland that she realized the place of her birth was no longer her home. It wasn’t until her heart began to pine for a handsome Englishman she could never have, that she realized her heart belonged not to Ireland, but to Christian.
The fire had grown too warm, and she stood up, the heat fading instantly from her face to leave her cheeks cold and empty. She hugged her cloak to herself and stared morosely into the smoking fire. There was a decided nip in the air, and in America, or so Roddy had told her, the leaves would be starting to take on glorious colors of scarlet, orange and gold . . . colors unknown to the trees of Ireland.
She walked to the window and looked off toward the sea, where she could see the towering masts of the men-of-war silhouetted against the western sunset. Over thirteen years ago she had seen masts very much like these, from this same window, and had gone to see for herself just what was so terrible about the English and their Navy that everyone so hated and feared.
Now she knew there was nothing terrible about the English, nothing terrible about their Navy.
She had learned a lot in these thirteen years.
Outside, the wind began to rise, moaning around the little cottage as it had done for centuries. The clouds grew thicker, heavier, darker. She thought of Roddy, hiding up in the hills with the others. She thought of her neighbors, terrified of losing their loved ones to the dreaded press gang. And she thought of the new horse in the stable, a gift from Roddy that she had named Booley in honor of Christian’s pony from his childhood.
A desire to relive painful memories finally got the better of her. Huddled in the cloak, she hurried across the garden, saddled the horse, and, once away from the cottage, sent him gal
loping off toward the sea.
Night was coming on; mist was filing in from the ocean, and the shadows of dark clouds trailed over the land. Recklessly, Deirdre urged the horse faster, not pulling him up until they had crested the last rocky hill.
There she sat, a pale, ethereal beauty, her hair whipping around a face dominated by the haunted eyes of a grieving soul. Far below, the sea swapped kisses with the base of the hill, thundering and booming and sending up great sheets of spray. She licked her lips and tasted salt, and drew her cloak more tightly around her.
Then she clawed the wild snarls of hair from her eyes and gazed out over the ocean.
A half mile out in the bay, a British warship lay, majestic in all its dread, frightening in all its beauty. And another, its pale sails furled upon its yards, its anchor cables stretching down into the sea. And still another, sloop-rigged and nimble, and all but dwarfed where it lay in the shadow of the fourth and final ship, a mighty, towering wall of wood pierced by the snouts of what had to be a hundred guns.
Its mastheads seemed to scrape the bellies of the low-hanging clouds themselves, and from one of those masts flew the broad pendant of a commodore.
Not just a single warship this time, but a squadron.
Behind her, a stone, loosened by the horse’s hooves, skittered down the hill, the sound cleaving the stillness. Deirdre gave a start and spun around, her skin crawling with the uncanny feeling that she was being watched.
But there was no one there, and the wind, peppered with rain, was suddenly cold and damp.
Beneath her, the horse began to fidget. Then his ears pricked forward, his head lifted, and Deirdre’s breath caught in her throat, for a boat had been lowered from the flagship, and was plunging through the breakers toward shore.
Master Of My Dreams (Heroes Of The Sea Series) Page 36
