Shadowbrook

by Swerling, Beverly

  The path had been made wide enough for a small wagon so Big Jacob could break some of the horses to the harness and give them more training than the paddock clearing allowed. Now Big Jacob was dead at the hands of the most notorious Huron in Canada. How in Christ’s name had Lantak come to attack Shadowbrook? He’d told Sampson to find John. But perhaps John already knew.

  Sped on by Quent’s ceaseless demands, the mare had finally drawn level with the riderless gelding. Quent reached out and grabbed the mane of the second horse. For a few seconds he controlled both horses with nothing but his bare hands, then he hurled himself onto the gelding’s back, lying low over its head and urging it forward. “Go, you confounded bloody beast! Go!”

  The five braves had opened still more distance between Quent and themselves and were approaching the place where the path intersected the big road. Quent could see them and he was near enough to get off a shot, but he’d lose more precious time reloading, and the brave nearest him wasn’t wearing buckskins. If he couldn’t be sure of getting Lantak himself—on the first try—it was better to wait. Now everything depended on which direction the raiders chose when they reached the big road. If they went right they were heading for the big house. Left meant they’d decided to retrace their steps.

  The war party came to the end of the path and turned left. They were heading back the way they came, probably leaving the Patent for reasons as mysterious as those that had brought them here. God alone knew what was happening at the big house. Christ, maybe there was more than one war party and Shadowbrook was already in flames. He should get back there, back to his mother and his almost dead father, to a brother possibly more treacherous and evil than he had ever imagined.

  Fear rose in him uncontrollably. Lantak was a butcher, a bloodthirsty madman. He told himself there was no way Lantak could suspect that Nicole was hidden in the cave behind the waterfall, and no reason for the Huron to care. But nothing else that had happened this day made any sense. Once before, he’d left the woman he loved alone in that same God-cursed clearing and she died before he could save her. Not this time, by Christ. Not this time.

  Quent turned the gelding’s big head left and galloped away from the big house and after the braves. There was a rumble of thunder that sounded as if it rose from the bowels of the earth. Sweet Christ, if only it would rain. He turned his face up, praying to feel a drop or two, but the only moisture he felt was his sweat. Ahead of him Lantak and his renegades sped on, the wind of their passage the only movement in the heavy air. Quent urged his horse on, but the distance between himself and the Indians continued to widen. He was twice as big as any of the Huron; the gelding was willing, a big-hearted horse, but he simply had more to carry. Quent took his long gun from his shoulder and held it at the ready, even though he knew that by raising his body and moving he slowed his passage still more. If he was going to lose them anyway, maybe he could get off a single shot and make it count.

  John rode along the perimeter of the blaze, and dismounted a quarter league southwest of the sugarhouse. There was fire as far as he could see, a line of flames that filled the space between the horizon and where he stood. Jesus God Almighty. They were ruined. He was ruined.

  He thought of his merchant backers in New York City and a cold hand gripped his bowels and twisted. Nothing had been signed of course; he couldn’t sign anything as long as his father was alive. But there was an understanding. He’d given his word: the proceeds of this year’s harvest pledged as the down payment on the land in St. Kitts. Not just land, Goddamn it. Sugar land.

  How many years had he argued with his father about it? You didn’t have to live in the God-blighted Caribbean to profit from sugar. The islands were a living hell ruled by the lash and burnt by the sun, a place where no white man could thrive, much less a white woman. No one but an African could tend and harvest cane in the remorseless heat of the bug-ridden islands, and even they only did it under the whip. But these days the plantation owners lived in the colonies or in London and left agents in charge of their business. As for the trade between the cane lands and the northern suppliers of the produce that fed everyone in the Caribbean, it was controlled by the ship’s captains who ferried the exchange. But if a man owned both, the cane land and the land that produced the food, that man was set for a fortune. But most of those around him were either too stupid to see the opportunity or too land-poor to seize it. Even, God help them, Ephraim Hale. “Morris does it,” John had told his father repeatedly. “So can we.”

  Ephraim always gave the same answer: “Cane’s a filthy business. I want no part of it.” Never mind that without the sugar plantations to buy his flour and his vegetables and his beef, he’d be just one more farmer with dirt under his nails eking out a subsistence living.

  John Hale did not intend to be that kind of farmer. And by Christ he wouldn’t doff his cap to the New York City lords, to the Morrises and the Livingstons and the Van Cortlandts and the like, with their education at Yale or Princeton and their fancy houses and besatined women. Money was the great equalizer. With enough of it a man could be as important as any other, whatever his name or his education. With land that produced cane as well as land that produced wheat, he would be … No, he would not. Not now. John shaded his eyes and gazed into the flames that were destroying all his dreams.

  “Master John!” Six-Finger Sam had run the full distance from the gristmill. He was soaked in sweat and his no-longer-young legs were trembling with the effort. “Master Moses, he be sending me.” The slave was breathless and these were more words than he’d spoken together in as long as he could remember. But this was a perilous day. A bad, bad day. “Master Moses, he say to tell you we be soaking the mill and the sugarhouse and the rest until they can’t be holding any more water. He say maybe we should cut’”

  John turned, and his hand cracked Sam’s cheek so hard he felt the shudder up to his own shoulder. “I’m not interested in what Moses Frankel thinks we should do, you God-blighted fool. I told you to stay put and make sure those buildings were safe.” His hand hurt, but he felt better. John started to loosen his belt. “I’ll teach you to dis—”

  Lightning crackled overhead, followed by a huge boom of thunder. The skies opened and blinding rain—salvation—poured from the heavens.

  If the brown robe tried to tell Lantak he would not get his second payment of two hundred livres because the rain put out the fires, he would kill him. Better, he would kill him anyway. Best would have been to kill Uko Nyakwai. By the time he realized who it was who had set the trap for him in the paddock, it was too late to get a dear path for his gun or his tomahawk. Now—Lantak glanced quickly back over his shoulder—he could no longer see the horse carrying the Red Bear. The rain was so heavy he could see little beyond the length of his arm. And the horses were tiring. If more whites came after them on fresh horses it would be bad.

  These thoughts were so much in Lantak’s mind that he did not see what was ahead of them until one of the other braves drew level and spoke. “There, beside the road.” He pointed a short distance ahead. “Two blacks, a squaw and a man. I will get their scalps.”

  The brave started to turn his horse toward the man and woman kneeling in the bordering woodland. Lantak watched, uninterested. Then, after a few more strides, he saw who the woman was and he remembered the singing. “Wait!” he called out. “Do not touch the squaw. She has a spirit.” He glanced up at the sky. Perhaps it was she who had sung the rain into being. “Kill the man if—No, don’t kill him. Take him captive.” It was this man or no one. Despite the presence of the squaw who had the spirit, Lantak’s need drove him. “He is big. He will endure many caresses.” The brave didn’t turn around, but he raised his hand to signal that he had heard.

  Quent had started to slow the roan some ways back, well before Lantak and his renegades drew level with the pair of mountain ash that marked the path to the glade. By the time he made the turn that led to the clearing and falls, the Indians were too far ahead to see where he w
ent.

  He thundered forward, urging the horse to go as fast as it could on the narrow path, but he was still short of the clearing when he slid off the animal’s back. Quent turned the roan around. “Go on, boy. Go on home. You’ve earned it.” More than likely the gelding would find his way back to the paddock, or whoever John sent to round up the animals would find him between here and there. John … Sweet Christ, it wasn’t possible. When he thought of all the destruction that had been wrought on this day, Quent felt sick. To imagine that John would have caused such havoc made no more sense now than it had earlier.

  Nicole was safe, though. There was no sign of any hostile’s passage on the path to the glade, and when he got to the clearing it looked exactly as he’d left it. His eyes examined every tree and every square of moss before he left the protection of the encircling trees. Thank God for the empty glade. Thank God for the rain. There had been no trouble here. At least not this day.

  Quent wasn’t sure what had driven him to bring Nicole here. It had seemed so important, but now he couldn’t rightly say why. He’d lost one love in this glade, and almost lost another. There was a spirit here. Shoshanaya had called it a nawa, a ruling spirit. She said it was benign and wished them no ill. She was wrong. I’m done with you, nawa. You’re a deceitful witch. This place looks like paradise on earth, but it lies.

  He made his way to the stream, seeing nothing that caused alarm. He was so wet from the downpour he didn’t feel the water of the stream as he waded to the center, only the slight resistance of the swiftly moving flow. He checked the clearing and the surrounding forest one last time before he drew a deep breath and sank beneath the surface. It took some effort to swim against the current, but not a great deal. Another, stronger effort was required when he breached the falls, then he was at the mouth of the cave.

  He used both hands to give himself purchase on the cave’s edge and pulled his body inside. “Nicole. Don’t be frightened. It’s me.” There was no answer. “Nicole. It’s Quent. Where are you?”

  He blinked the water out of his eyes and pushed his hair off his forehead. “Nicole …” He could see plainly now. The cave was empty. It couldn’t be—she’d promised—but she was not there. “Nicole!” This time he shouted, and his voice echoed back to him from the depths of the underground passage. He hesitated, unsure whether to go back to the glade or deeper into the cave. Without light it would be pointless to try and track her in the endless blackness of the passage ahead, but she could be nowhere else. Nicole couldn’t swim. She paddled a bit, but not well enough to get herself out of the cave and through the falls and into the clearing. She had to have gone deeper into the tunnel. But why? God-rotting hell, who knew why women did anything?

  Quent battled his feelings of foreboding, his terror that the nawa had won again and taken from him the most precious thing he had. Rage boiled up inside him. What are you angry at, fool? He asked himself. A spirit? You can’t outwit spirits. Deal with what you can control. Nicole was frightened. You weren’t here. She couldn’t swim well enough to get out through the falls so she walked into the depths of the cave. But a few feet in that direction it was black as pitch. Blacker.

  Quent looked around, studying the rock walls. Years ago he and Shoshanaya had hidden tinder, and a lantern here, behind a stone. Which one?

  Quent thought for a moment. So much of that time had become a blank to him. He’d made it so, otherwise the grief would have killed him. Ah yes, the one that was shaped like a tepee. It was loose, and if you pried at it a bit … He used his dirk and the stone came forward. There was a small opening behind it, and in it the lantern and flint and tinder box he and Shoshanaya had put there a lifetime before.

  He struck a spark and coaxed the wick to kindle. There wasn’t much oil. Enough for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Sometimes they’d made love in this cave, and lingered until it grew dark outside. That’s what the lantern had been for, so he could see her smile when she stretched out her arms to him.

  “Nicole.” He called her name again and waited. There was no reply. Quent strode forward. In moments the lantern was the only light and everything behind him was darkness.

  Before he’d gone a quarter of the way in the tunnel, he found Nicole kneeling on the rock floor, upright, eyes closed and arms loose at her side. She didn’t react to the light of the lantern. “Nicole! Thank God. I was—Why didn’t you answer? Nicole …”

  She did not seem to hear him. Quent put down the lantern and went toward her. When he touched her she shuddered, and finally opened her eyes. He drew her upright into his arms and she made no protest, but she did not melt against him the way she had earlier. “I was so worried,” he scolded, stroking her hair. “Didn’t you hear me calling you? I told you to stay where I left you. Why did you come into the tunnel?”

  “I was following the light.”

  “There is no light. Not until you’ve gone a league and a half, and then you’re out by Swallows Children. It’s very dangerous if you don’t know—Nicole, I was so … I thought I’d lost you.”

  He gave up being angry and murmured the last words against the top of her head. She made no reply, unmoving in his arms. He decided it was the shock that had made her forget that back there, in the glade, before Sampson came crashing through, everything had changed between them. No matter; later, when things were normal again, he’d remind her. “It’s all right now,” he soothed. “It’s raining, pouring in fact. The fires are out and the Indians rode off the way they came. We’ve got to get back to the big house. I’ll be needed.”

  “I followed the light,” she repeated. Quent pretended not to hear.

  “Some half part of the wheat crop is destroyed.” Ephraim avoided meeting the eyes of the forty or so people looking at him. “And all the hay. The sawmill is burned to the ground. Most of the saws are completely useless; one, High Josiah, may be salvageable.” All the saws had come from England with his father and all had names. High Josiah was the pendulum saw that hung on leather thongs from the topmost rafters of the mill. There were no blades anywhere in the colonies to equal those that had been ruined. He’d have to send to London for replacements, and build a new sawmill to house them. It would take upwards of a year before they were back to the place they’d been just this morning, before the disaster of this day. And all these poor devils, white and black alike, gathered here in the great hall of the big house as if it were the church Lorene tried to make it Sunday mornings, they were all staring at him as if they expected some pronouncement that would make the horror of it disappear.

  God-cursed savages. May they burn in eternal hellfire. Every one of them. Even the one he’d thought he couldn’t do without. Mostly her. He thought of her dainty bones, picked clean of flesh long since, lying in the earth up there at Squirrel Oaks. It was Lorene who had insisted a Potawatomi whore be buried with the dead of the Patent. For Cormac’s sake. And by then it was Lorene who truly grieved for her. Not him, not then and not now. He hated her.

  It was because of Pohantis that his youngest son, the best he’d produced, was someone other than the man he’d been bom to be. If it hadn’t been for her, for the fire she kindled in both of them, him and Lorene, Quent wouldn’t have been sent to live with the Indians every summer during his boyhood, wouldn’t have turned out more red than white. Ephraim tried to push the thoughts away. The household, men and women, slaves and tenants, his flesh and blood, all of them were waiting for him to say something that would give this terrible day some meaning, make it something they could understand.

  This ought to be the moment when I tell them Quent’s in charge, that he’ll take over the Patent when I’m gone and they’ll all be out from under John’s stupid, bloody fist. They respect Quent. Hellfire, most of them love him. He could say it right now, but God help him, he dare not. No matter what Lorene said, he could not be sure that Quent had changed.

  Damn the past. Damn the Potawatomi for making Quent more like them than his own kind. Look at him, standing over there in th
e shadows. Talking to one of the slaves as if she were an equal. Granted, it’s Sally Robin and she’s the equal of any woman ever bom. Hell, the better of most. But I would never allow her to know I think that. Quent lets it show. As if the coloreds, red or black, are the same as whites. Stupid to blame the Indians. It’s my doing. Because of Pohantis, and Lorene, the way we all were back then. Damn the past, bury it in everlasting hell. It’s now that counts. Quent’s wearing buckskins again; he’s got his long gun and his tomahawk. Could be he’s simply prepared for more trouble … But I know he’s bloody well planning something, and that it’s not good for the Patent. Or at least, that the Patent doesn’t come first.

  Ephraim shifted his focus to John, who was sneaking curious glances at his brother when he thought no one would notice. Ephraim caught something in John’s eyes. Pure hatred. He felt the weight of it all. So much loss and grief. So many wrong turnings. And God help him, standing here this long was killing him. His arms were on fire and the two sticks felt as if they might be flaming swords. He didn’t have much longer, he knew that. This business would likely speed the end. No bad thing that; he was tired, ready to go. And the sticks weren’t going to hold him up much longer. He’d best get on with it.

  “Ephraim,” Lorene appeared at his shoulder. Her voice was a murmur, loud enough only for him. “Let me tell them to bring you a chair.”

  “No. I’m fine. Go on with your business.”

  Lorene and the big house slaves were busy. As if doing would keep them from feeling. Kitchen Hannah had stirred up her fire hours before, the moment she knew there was trouble. Now there were bannocks and biscuits and salt-rising bread hot from the bake oven built into the wall beside the hearth. Stacks of johnnycakes had come off the griddle stone. Lorene was overseeing the passing of the food along with mugs of ale. “Johnnycakes for the slaves as well,” she’d told Runsabout a few minutes before. “And ale if they like. Buttermilk if they prefer.” The blacks were as soot-blackened and blaze-weary as the rest.