Pink cried out, “Where’re you taking her?”
His scarred mouth twisted into an odd half smile, half snarl, and Blankenship called, “You can tell him I’ve taken her to the Provost Marshall in New York. The traitor Anne Merrick will answer there for her crimes.” Raising his hand in command, he led the company wheeling to the east and they galloped into the glare of the rising sun.
Sally clutched her middle, keening and sobbing. “There’s no savin’ our Annie… Blankenship will see that she swings…”
“Moans and wailings mend nothing…” Pink held out her hands. “Come on.”
“The monster has Annie in his grip.” Sally stumbled to her feet. “You can see it in his eye—his heart’s turned black and bitter as gall… There’s no hope.”
“There’s always hope.” Pink pulled Sally to the wagon. “Th’ man coulda kilt th’ three of us with a snap of his fingers—but he din’t, did he? No—he give us a message for Jack—and there’s the hope.” She hopped onto the driver’s seat, and pulled Sally up to sit beside her. With a click of her tongue, Pink gave the reins a snap and a tug, turning the horses back toward the road.
“Hold tight—for we’re goin’ to fly like a feather on the wind.”
NINETEEN
You have already equaled, and in many instances excelled, the savages of either Indies; and if you have yet a cruelty in store, you must have imported it, unmixed with every human material, from the original ware-house of Hell.
THOMAS PAINE, The American Crisis
AS BLACK AS HELL
Anne lay flat on her back, centered inside the Captain’s tent, staring up at the tin bottom of the lantern hanging from the ridgepole. Bound wrists resting on her stomach, she wiggled her bare toes to encourage circulation beyond her tightly bound ankles. With a groan, she rolled into a curl on her side, the movement of the items hidden in her pocket shifting to slide over her hip, giving her comfort.
Stretching her bound arms out, she inched forward, ever so slightly, toward the pair of saddlebags Edward Blankenship left behind. There’s a knife in there…
She lifted her head and looked out the wide-open tent flaps at the company of dragoons gathered around a cheery campfire, having their supper. With half his face covered in a black kerchief, Edward Blankenship sat on a campstool precisely positioned for a clear view inside his brightly lit tent, his eye never wavering as, machinelike, he shoveled in his supper, hand to mouth, as if synchronized to the beat of a drum.
Anne flipped to lie on her back again, preferring the bottom of the lantern to her captor’s unceasing gaze. “Always watching,” she muttered. “If I had a knife, I would cut his good eye out for relief.”
Huffing a sigh, she stretched her arms toward the lantern, clenching and unclenching fists. Her backside and legs ached from the full day’s hard ride astride in the saddle, wedged in the small space between the upward slope of the cantle and Edward Blankenship’s hard body.
He’d removed the awful gag when the company clambered aboard the ferry to cross the Delaware, saying, “One peep from you, and I’ll cut your throat.” Not wanting to do or say anything to trigger the rage he’d exhibited with Sally, Anne kept her mouth shut. Other than single-word, necessary directives, his threat was the extent of their communication during the whole long ride.
Entrusting her care to no other, astride or dismounted, Edward Blankenship was a constant at her side—to the point of giving only the slightest, gentlemanly turn of the head when she needed to relieve herself—and taking her along when he needed to do the same. There was no opportunity to enlist the sympathy of a compassionate bystander. No slipping away unnoticed. No screaming for help. No gnawing at the ropes keeping her hands immobile.
No chance to escape.
It was clear to Anne this man had spent the long months of his convalescence weaving and finessing a plan for wreaking vengeance, and she was certain it did not include fair trial for treason. His allowing Sally and Pink free was at once a relief and a worry—passing the news of her capture to Jack became her only hope, and her fiercest dread. Though she prayed Jack would not rise to the bait so carefully arranged, she knew he could do nothing else.
This Edward Blankenship is a monster of our creation.
The canvas trembled and Anne snapped her eyes open to see the Redcoat captain coming through the doorway to rest on haunches, setting down a tin bowl of stewed beans and a ship’s biscuit at her side. He produced a folding knife from his pocket, and flicked it open with a click to cut her bindings.
Anne sat up, rubbing wrists and ankles where the rough rope had chafed her skin raw, and eyed the soldier’s fare he brought with some suspicion. Blankenship settled in to sit tailor style beside her, and, tapping the bowl with the knife blade, he said, “Eat.”
At a loss with no utensil to use, Anne slid the biscuit from the bowl, and nibbled on the rock-hard edge.
Blankenship snatched the biscuit away. Crushing it in his fist, he sprinkled the crumbs onto the beans and said as if reading her mind, “I daren’t give you fork or knife, lest you put out my other eye.” His face twisted into his odd half smile, and he produced a horn spoon from his pocket.
Like a gentleman scientist studying the eating habits of the African ape, Blankenship sat watching her every move. Spoon in hand, Anne was sorely tempted to wolf down the meal—her first in more than twenty-four hours. She concentrated on feeding herself slow, dainty bites, determined this man would not turn her into a groveling beast.
“You must be thirsty.” Blankenship broke out a tin canteen from his pile of gear and handed it to Anne, saying, “This is like a picnic, isn’t it? Just like the ones we used to have.”
Anne gulped down the water, nodded, and whispered, “Yes.”
Blankenship threw his head back and announced to the peaked canvas, “She speaks!” He pulled the seemingly bottomless flask she’d seen him sipping from throughout the day from his breast pocket, proclaiming, “This calls for a celebration! Scots whiskey?”
With a slight shake of the head, Anne said, “No, thank you.”
“Ahhh… I recall now—you aren’t one for strong spirits, are you? A woman who likes to keep her wits about her, aren’t you?” Blankenship threw back a gulp. “I enjoy drink far more than I should these days. Medicinal. I find it helps to purge the melancholia.” Lifting his flask in toast, in a voice growing overloud, he recited:
For valour the stronger grows,
The stronger the liquor we’re drinking.
And how can we feel all our woes,
When we’ve lost all the power of thinking?
He drained the flask dry, set it aside, and dug another exactly like it from his saddlebag. Flipping up the lid, he sniffed, and informed Anne, “Rum.”
Anne reached for the water canteen, asking, “May I?”
“Of course. I only wish I had something more suited to your taste—Champagne, or the citrus punch you are so fond of…”
“I’m fine with water.” Anne took a drink, and plugged the cork back in.
“That fop André’s Meschianza business was quite the spectacle, was it not? The masquerade added a certain dramatic dash to my purpose, don’t you think? I have to admit, it was most amusing, playing you with your own game. The look on your face…” Blankenship inched closer. “You must tell me—were you really there? On the Hudson with Burgoyne?”
Anne kept her eyes on her bowl, scraping up the last few beans without answering his question.
Blankenship slapped his knee. “You were there!” He laughed and took a drink of rum. “You are a clever one, and Washington is nobody’s fool for putting you in service. It makes me feel better, knowing I am in good company within the web you spin.”
Anne set her bowl aside. “Thank you for the supper.”
“Oh, fye!” Blankenship sighed. “No need for thanks—we’re old friends, are we not?” He shifted over to sit with an arm thrown around her shoulders. “I’m glad we have this time together. You�
�ve been so often in my thoughts, dear Anne.”
Anne drew her knees up, hugging them to her chest, and whispered, “I didn’t want to shoot—I wish…”
“Pfft! If wishes were horses, beggars might ride…” he said, with a wave. “Put it out of your mind. The bullet didn’t do much more than dent this hard skull of mine—too weak a charge in your pistol, I’m afraid, much to my good fortune. The saber slash did give me some trouble. It festered badly. Cost me the eye…” His arm dropped from her shoulder, and he began toying with the hinged cap on his flask. His voice grew quiet. “It was the unseen wound to my heart that almost killed me. A wound most grievous… more difficult to cure, I’m afraid.”
Anne resisted a sudden urge to touch him, and whispered, “I’m not that woman, Edward. I might not look like one, but I’m a soldier, like you, fighting for my cause…”
Blankenship nodded. He sat sipping his rum, draining the flask dry, staring beyond the tent flaps into the darkness beyond the campfire. After some time he spoke.
“I was out of my senses for that woman. I loved her so much…” He smiled. “I even recited poetry to you—do you remember?”
Anne nodded. There was a marked change in his voice. No longer filled with bitter bravado, it was the voice of the handsome, caring man she had betrayed so terribly.
For liberty, for freedom…
“You filled my dreams,” he said, slipping his arm about her waist. “I dreamed of having you in my bed—of taking you home to Devonshire to marry—to raise a family… But you’re right—you aren’t really the woman of my dreams… are you?” Pulling the kerchief from his head, his scars grew vivid in the lantern light, and his voice suddenly harsh. “But look at me. I’m surely the stuff of your nightmares.”
He slammed his forearm across her throat, pushing her flat to her back. Keeping one arm crushed against her windpipe, Blankenship grabbed her flailing wrist, and twisted to lie on top of her. Pinning her to the ground, he began to recite:
My love is as a fever longing still,
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please…
Gasping for breath, Anne struggled against his weight, feeling the arrhythmic pulse of him growing hard against her leg.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except…
Struggling for air, her lips unable to even form the word “please” as Blankenship pressed his face so close to hers, she could see faint hash marks beneath a thin layer of scar tissue grown over the black stitches holding the sunken hollow of his left eye shut.
Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed…
Blankenship’s knife clicked open and the blade flashed in the lantern light. With his forearm jammed against her chin, her screams were muffled, and her arms flailed. He sliced a diagonal gash from the inside corner of her right eye across to her jawbone, and ended his poem:
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
With those words, Blankenship released her, and, rolling off to sit up, he heaved a breath in and out. Clicking the folding knife shut, he tugged the kerchief back over his head to mask his scars.
Anne sat up, sobbing, trying to stanch the bleeding with her hands, tears mixed with blood to seep through her fingers, dripping down onto her chest, staining her hands and shift crimson.
With mask in place, Edward Blankenship reached for his saddlebags. “We need to see to your wound,” he said, his face twisting into a friendly smile. “I am a deft hand at dressing wounds, but I’m afraid a cut like that is bound to leave a scar.”
“Stop! Are you insane?”
“I’ll tell you what’s insane, David—” Jack swung his saddle onto the sheepskin he’d laid over the gelding’s back. “It was insane for me to leave them there alone.” He bent down to reach under the horse’s belly and grasp the girth strapping.
“You think I wanted this to happen? She’s my sister…” David grabbed Jack by the arm. “Goddamn it, will you just wait and let us think this through…”
Jack jerked away. “The bastard has two days on me. There’s no time to waste. This is a now-or-never business.”
The scouting party had been at their supper when David and Alan galloped up. The ill news of Anne’s arrest at the hands of the risen-from-the-dead Blankenship sent them all moving to help Jack ready for the long ride to New York. David was alone in questioning his sanity.
“I filled your canteen,” Ned said, securing Jack’s bedroll and pillion bag with the leather straps at the back of the saddle. “There’s three days’ rations—pemmican, jerky, johnnycakes, some coffee and sugar.”
“Keep the coffee,” Jack said. “I won’t be taking the time for it.”
Alan McLane dipped up a cup of the coffee bubbling on the campfire. “You may not need the rest, Jack, but your horse will.”
“He can always get another horse,” Isaac said, slinging two full feed bags connected with a single length of rope over the gelding’s rump. “It’s not so easy to find a good woman.”
Titus slapped a sheathed knife into Jack’s hand. “I just put a sharp edge on it. Nothing as quiet as a knife in a pinch.” Jack slipped the weapon into his boot.
David shook his head. “Why is everyone encouraging this madness?”
“Because Jack’s got the right of it,” Titus said. “This here’s a one-man job.”
“Alan, will you tell them?” David implored. “If we just take a minute, we can come up with a better plan.”
“There’s no planning a mission like this, David.” McLane set his mug down. “The chances are slim, but I agree that a single man moving quick and light has the better chance in this situation. Once Jack gets in the city, he can figure the best plan to suit the circumstances.”
David sank down on a log, head in hands. “This is all my fault. I should have never put Annie in this kind of danger…”
“Stop talking nonsense.” Jack sat beside David. “It was Anne who led Blankenship in a merry dance. Then I came along to rub his nose in it and near cleaved his face in two—she put the bullet in his head—and we left the man facedown in a pool of blood. This is not your fault.” He threw an arm over David’s shoulders. “Listen to me. I know we don’t always see eye to eye, and I know you’re worried to death, but I love your sister more than I can say in words. I’m going to bring her home, or I will die in the trying.”
“Here…” David swiped at his eyes, and fumbled under his jacket, pulling forth his pistol. “I think small arms are better suited for this mission. Your long rifle cries ‘Yankee.’”
“You’re right.” Jack stood and shoved the pistol in his belt. “Thanks.”
McLane handed over his pistol as well. “Always good to have a spare string for your bow.”
Jack drew the strap of his pouch over his head, and found his hat. “That’s it. I’m ready.”
“Keep your mind on the main chance,” Ned said, shaking his hand. “Worry tends to blunt the edge of your blade.”
Isaac grabbed Jack by both shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. “Use what you’ve learned here. Approach like a fox. Fight like a lion. Disappear like a bird.”
“You might need this.” Titus came up and dropped a small sack of coin down Jack’s shirtfront. “Remember this Redcoat bastard is lying in wait—best go through the back door, even if it costs you some time.”
“It feels odd leaving without you, brother.” Jack pulled Titus in for a hug.
“You’ll do this, Jack,” Titus said into his ear. “I know you’ll bring A
nnie home.”
Swinging up into the saddle, Jack fit hat to head and, with a wave, headed toward the darker sky.
* * *
At every bend in the road, at every stop to water the horses, or feed the troops, she expected—prayed—wished Jack would come swooping down like Perseus with his winged sandals, and rescue her from the monster’s grip.
Every one of the four days she shared a saddle with Edward Blankenship, Anne watched the sun moving lower on the horizon, willing it to stay put with all her might. The sun paid her no heed.
Every night Anne shared a tent with Edward Blankenship, and watched as he dosed his madness with liquor, and she endured his drunken attempt at a lover’s spoon, curling to press up against her back. Though she could feel the tickle of his breath moving the small hairs on the back of her neck, and his ardor grow and ebb, never once did he attempt to force himself upon her.
Yet.
Come morning, her captor would bring breakfast and tea, and shades of the Edward Blankenship she knew in New York would rise to the surface. He was very kind and tender cleaning and applying a soothing salve to the wound he first inflicted, then stitched, all the while telling the same story about a seaman named Abner, who cared for him when everyone else had called his cause a lost one.
Then he would bind her wrists and hoist her up into his saddle, and she would spend the long hours pondering what day she would change if given the opportunity to spin back time.
The day I met Edward? The day I agreed to quarter him in at the Cup and Quill? The day I first encouraged his kind affections? The day I shot him? Anne glanced down at the arm wrapped round her waist. If I went back to that day, I’d be certain to load my pistol with plenty of powder.
When the dragoon company approached the fort at Paulus Hook and readied to board the ferry to Manhattan Island, she couldn’t help but voice her surprise. “We’re really going to New York?”
The Turning of Anne Merrick Page 40
