phantom knights 04 - deceit in delaware

by Amalie Vantana

  At once Arnaud motioned toward a small gap between two houses. Dudley and Hannah ran into the gap and I followed with Leo and Arnaud coming in behind me. As we leaned against one of the houses, I watched across the street and down three houses to where the men were talking.

  “Is that them?” I whispered to Arnaud.

  “It is zee house, not zee same men,” Arnaud responded softly.

  We began to make plans to attack, but when we looked back toward the house, the men had disappeared and the carriage began to move.

  “Hannah, Dudley, and Guinevere, stay here,” Leo said. “Arnaud and I will check the house, but if you see anyone return, give the signal.”

  Slowly, Arnaud and Leo stepped out of the narrow pathway between the houses. They started toward the house that was still lit. I heard boots scuffling a second before arms wrapped around my chest, locking my arms at my sides. Throwing my head back, it clipped the chin of my captor. Before I could take a breath, I was swept sideways and my legs were carried by one man as another carried my upper body while keeping a hand firmly planted against my mouth. They carried me through the end of the alley and along the back of the houses, with four other men guiding a gagged Dudley and Hannah behind us.

  Confusion covered me as my captors placed my boots on the ground and told me to walk.

  The moon shone through the clouds above, lighting the small path that ran along the backs of two rows of houses. The moonlight allowed me to see my captors, who were both as light as cream. I obeyed their order to walk, more out of a desire to discover what this was all about than to be conciliatory.

  Dudley walked beside me but he was not being forced. None of the men touched him.

  They directed us along two more paths until we were entering the very house that we had been watching from the alley.

  It was a small, narrow place, but it was comfortable in its feel. There were chairs instead of the normal furniture to be found in a regular house. It was a meeting house.

  They directed us to take a seat. Our captors stood about the room as a different man came in to speak to us. He was shorter than the others, not much above my height, and he was well dressed. His suit was of fine cloth, his vest was excellently cut, his boots shone brighter than Jack’s—making me wonder what he used to achieve such a shine—and he wore a fine timepiece on a gold chain. He was a man of importance if I had my guess, though he did not look much older than one and twenty.

  He picked up a chair and sat it before us. Once he was seated, he crossed one leg over the other and smiled. His white teeth were even brighter against his dark skin that was the color of freshly turned earth. At once I was struck by his good looks. If Rose were here she would have used his smile and kind dark eyes as a lead for speaking with him. I said nothing. My approach to gaining information and my sister’s were not always the same. Rose believed in tactics and reading people, the same as most of the Phantoms. I believed in allowing them to tell me why they wanted me and then I would make my decisions from there.

  “I give you good evening,” he said kindly, with a distinct northern accent. I would guess New York. “You may be wondering why we requested this little meeting.” He looked directly into Dudley’s eyes. “You see, when we see our brothers being oppressed, we find that we do not look too kindly upon that.”

  Dudley gulped quickly. “I assure you, my fine sir, that I have never oppressed anyone, be they man or woman. I am a man of peace.”

  Says the man who shoots arrows in the middle of a green surrounded by family homes.

  The man across from us smiled in earnest. “Is that so?” He cast me a brief glance.

  “Allow me to present myself.” Dudley stuck out his hand. “I am Dudley Stanton of Philadelphia, and this is my wife, Mrs. Hannah Stanton, and my cousin, Mrs. Guinevere Martin.”

  The man across from us shook Dudley’s hand. “James Percy Wilson of New York.” He leaned back with ease. “We do apologize, Mr. Stanton, for the misunderstanding. We meant you no harm, you understand.” The undercurrent of his words assured me that it would be in Dudley’s best interest to say that he understood. They were not a violent group, but they took care of their friends.

  “So,” he said to me, “you are the infamous Guinevere.”

  Surprise colored me silent for a moment before I smiled kindly. “Have we met, sir?” I asked, though I was sure I would have remembered.

  “That we have not, Mrs. Martin, but we have a mutual acquaintance.” His smile never faltered, but mine did, turning into a scowl.

  “If you have harmed—”

  “None of my brothers have touched you or your friends, so there can be no reason for complaint.” His smile, I realized, was as calculating as my own usually was.

  “None whatsoever, Mr. Wilson,” I said, for it was the truth. “We have not been harmed, have we, Dudley, Hannah?”

  They both shook their heads.

  It was a law that no man of color could strike a white man. It did not matter what was happening to him, he would be the one found guilty. The men who had grabbed us were as fair skinned as we were.

  Mr. Wilson turned his attention to Dudley once again. “Could I have a word with you in private, Mr. Stanton?”

  “If I agree no harm will come to my family?” Dudley asked suspiciously.

  “None at all. You have my word,” Mr. Wilson said, and Dudley agreed.

  Dudley walked out of the room and Hannah and I were left confronting five curious, unconcerned, or suspicious faces. They did not all keep their gazes fixed on us. Two of them sat down at a table in the back corner and picked up cards that had been deserted. Another poured himself a tankard of something, leaving only two to watch us.

  The man who had grabbed me came over to sit before me in Mr. Wilson’s chair. “James means your cousin no harm, Mrs. Martin.”

  “How long have you been an abolitionist?” I asked him conversationally.

  He scratched his lightly bearded chin. “You got a problem with abolitionists, Missus?”

  I held up my hands. “Not at all. My brother by marriage is one. He sought manumission for all of the slaves on his family’s plantation.”

  “I reckon I’ve been fighting for the cause for as long as I can remember. My mama, God rest her soul, fought a hard campaign with my pa to have her childhood servant freed. That was James’s mother. We formed this here meeting where we help newly freed men to find a safe home and gain employment.”

  “An honorable task indeed,” I said, to which he smiled and held out his hand.

  “Bill Whitby.”

  I shook his hand. “Guinevere Martin.”

  The front door opened and Bill turned in his chair. “That will be Horace and Earnest with your friends.”

  Horace and Earnest entered the house slowly, with their hands raised. At once I felt a sense of what was to come. They entered the meeting room and Bill called out to them, and then he saw Leo and Arnaud holding pistols.

  All of the men were on their feet at once, followed by me and Hannah.

  “Leo,” I said, “lower your weapon. They mean us no harm.”

  “Then where is Dudley? Where is Betsy?” Leo demanded in a stronger voice than I had heard him use in ages.

  “Dudley is in the other room with one of the leaders. They are freed men,” I said, hoping that would convince him to lower his weapon.

  “Betsy?” came Bill’s voice, clear and unmoved by a pistol being pointed toward him. “Betsy Coles? She’s upstairs with my Sally.” Bill turned toward me. “She was the one who told James who you be.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” James demanded when he and Dudley entered the room.

  I stepped next to Arnaud. “I believe that an explanation is in order. We are the Phantoms, and we have come in search of one of our own, whom we have heard that you are keeping here.”

  Everyone stared at us as if they had no notion of what I meant, and then James stepped forward. “The masked men who run around the cities doing good
deeds?” When I nodded, Bill released a loud laugh and slapped his leg.

  “We’ve heard of you, sure enough,” Bill said as he moved forward and grasped Leo’s hand, shaking it vigorously. “James’s cousin was one of the girls who was freed when the Phantoms stopped the Midnight Pearl in Charleston.”

  It was my turn to look my inquiry. I had not heard of this mission. Leo was the one to inform me, even though he had not been one of the Charleston Phantoms. He would have learned of this mission from Rose, I did not doubt.

  “She was an illegal slave ship bound for the West Indies. Her captain was known for capturing only the freed men, women, and children.”

  “He got me,” said a voice from the doorway and everyone turned to look. Betsy was standing there, looking beautiful and unharmed. I noticed that James’s shoulders went back and his chest expanded while he watched her in awe, and something more. “We were able to take the ship before the captain could make sail. There were some fifty prisoners. Once we discovered from where they hailed, Sam sailed them home personally.”

  “I met this Sam,” James said with a faraway look in his brown eyes. He focused on me then. “He too is a Phantom?”

  “That he is. And he is my cousin, as well as Guinevere’s brother by marriage,” Betsy said.

  “The man who freed his servants,” said Bill with a nod.

  When James began speaking with Arnaud and Leo, I moved to Betsy’s side.

  “How do you come to be here? Where are Nell and Charlotte?”

  Betsy shook her head. “I do not know. We stopped in Baltimore first because Nell said that she wanted to collect some things from her house here. Charlotte wanted to do some shopping, but I was tired from the journey so I remained at the house. When I awoke, they had not returned. I waited for them to return for a full day. Then I ventured out to search for them. It was when I was going from shop to shop that I noticed some men following me. They were royal guards.”

  That caused ice to prick my insides, spreading a chill throughout my chest.

  “James got to me first, and he brought me here, to safety.”

  “It was nothing more than being in the right place at the right moment,” James said as he joined us, having been listening to our exchange.

  Betsy smiled with so much fondness that I tilted my head to watch the way they spoke with one another.

  “You did far more than that, James. You saved me from a terrible fate. When Abe arrives, he will be only too pleased.” Betsy turned her effervescent eyes upon me. “Where is my brother?”

  Oh… Why did I not think that she would ask about him? Dread began to build. I did not want to be the one to tell her, to shatter her world.

  “Sam and Bess went with Jack to Washington,” Hannah said, joining us and drawing the conversation away from me.

  “Of course, my brother would go with Sam,” Betsy said with a sweet smile cast at James. This was the most that I had ever heard the girl speak to anyone other than Charlotte in the course of a few minutes. She was at ease with James, that much was certain, but what their relationship was, I did not know.

  “We searched the town for Charlotte and Nell but we never found them, and the ship that we sailed on was gone as well. I do not know where they have gone, but I was hoping that they had returned to Charleston,” Betsy said.

  “They did not, but I have no doubt that Jack discovered something in Washington,” I said, and Betsy smiled.

  We spoke for a few more minutes as Betsy went upstairs with Hannah and Dudley to retrieve her trunk, and then James and Bill said that they would escort us back to our house. Leo and Arnaud went to fetch our horses, which Bill said that he would return for us as Hannah and I were invited to ride in James’s carriage with him and Betsy.

  It was an open carriage with two benches. Hannah and I took the back seat while Betsy sat beside James. As he tooled the carriage down the street, we told him the direction. Betsy explained that she had not known that Jeanne was in the city. She did not know Jeanne that well, having only met her when Bess moved to Charleston.

  The streets were all dark, with only lanterns from houses and at the ends of the streets to light our way. It was not until we were nearly upon a man that we saw him. I shouted out a warning and James veered the carriage sharply to the left to avoid hitting him. Hannah was tossed into me as my arm hit the side of the carriage. James had his arm firmly around Betsy, keeping her from being thrown from the seat.

  My first glance toward the road sent me half over the seat, shoving James as hard as I could. He was not expecting my sudden attack and so did not have a chance to prepare before falling from the carriage. Leaping into Hannah’s lap, the explosion came a moment later, splintering the wood of James’s seat and striking mine where I had been sitting. A man grabbed Betsy and pulled her down onto the road. Hannah and I scrambled across the carriage, away from the attack. I had the door open when I heard Hannah grunt. She was pulled backward from the carriage. Waiting for nothing else, I jumped from the carriage and moved along the backside. James was standing there, dusting himself off when I bumped into him.

  “What is the meaning—” he said nothing more as my hand slapped against his mouth.

  “Say nothing and we should both get out of this alive,” I whispered. “Do you have a weapon?”

  James shook his head.

  “In the carriage?”

  His white eyes widened and he nodded.

  “Get it, while I cause a distraction. As soon as you get a chance, grab Betsy and run.” He began to shake his head, but I stomped my booted foot and he stopped. “You get her and you run, and you do not stop until you have her to safety. Do you understand?”

  James nodded.

  Turning my back to James, I lifted my skirt and pulled my dagger pistol from one garter and a small knife from the other. Pulling back the hammer to the small pistol attached to my dagger, I stepped around the carriage and into the middle of the street.

  The man had been joined by three others. They had Betsy and Hannah on their knees, with weapons pressed against their heads.

  “You are to come with us,” one of the men said.

  “If I refuse?”

  “We kill your friends.”

  If that is how they wanted this to go, so be it. Raising my dagger pistol in one hand, I pressed the trigger while my other hand threw my knife.

  The knife lodged in the chest of the man standing behind Hannah while the ball struck the chest of the man behind Betsy.

  James charged around the carriage with a long military sword and slashed the air between him and one of the remaining men. The man jumped back and James grabbed Betsy’s arm. He pulled her up and they ran as Hannah leapt to her feet, pulled the knife from the chest of the man now laying on the ground, and charged straight into one of the two men. I ran forward with my dagger, prepared to fight, but the only remaining man aimed a pistol at me. I slid to a halt, and slowly raised my hands in the air.

  “If only I could kill you,” he said to me. “It would be the best for everyone.”

  “No,” hissed the man who was dodging Hannah’s slashes. “We are to keep her alive.”

  The man smiled toward me. “Though not unharmed. We could say it was an accident. We could not halt it from happening.” He aimed the barrel toward my arm that still held the dagger.

  Pulling back the hammer, I sent a silent message to Hannah to forget the man she was fighting and to stop the other from shooting me. Hannah charged on, swinging the knife at the man and slashing his coat, his arm, his cheek, and his thigh as he danced around her attacks, but not well enough. She was not paying any heed to the other man.

  Even if he only meant to graze me, it would still hurt, especially if he was a poor shot.

  Bracing myself for the pain that would come, I clenched my teeth, and prepared to jump out—

  The shot exploded before I was prepared. On instinct, I dropped down to the ground in a crouched position and began to search my arms for a wound, but
there was none. There was no sting of pain.

  A loud crack met my ears and I looked toward the man who had held the pistol. He was on the ground, with a hole in his chest.

  “Guinevere!” came a shout from behind me, and my heart burst with relief. Jumping up, I spun and ran straight into Jack’s arms.

  CHAPTER 14

  JACK

  When we arrived in Baltimore, we rode straight to the house that Bess, Freddy, and the rest of the Phantoms had lived in during the war. They had spent their days gathering information against the British and passing that information on to me. My general never asked where I received the information because he knew my father. I was never certain if he knew about the Phantoms, but I had my suspicions.

  After uncovering a valuable piece of information about British movements, we were able to stop an attack that could have destroyed a flank of our troops. After that, I was made a captain, at sixteen years of age. I had been in many battles and skirmishes, but none stayed with me like the battle for Baltimore. I was at the battle for Fort McHenry and never would I forget the pounding of the rockets and shells that shook the ground for hours. When we raised our flag and saw it proudly standing against the morning sky, I knew we would be victorious. We had lost much in the war, but I knew that we could recover. Our people proved themselves resilient, and never had I been prouder than standing on the wall watching the British tuck tail and sail away. It was at that moment that I felt that I was a true American, no matter what my history was.

  We arrived at the house to find a note from Leo stating where they were to be found. I left Bess and Sam at the house and went to find my wife. When I arrived and learned from Jeanne that Betsy was in the city, I felt a quick relief. She would know where my mother was.

  Freddy and I reached the house just as a carriage was turning the corner at the end of the street. One of the men from the house told me what I needed to know. We followed and saw when the carriage veered left. We were dismounting when my wife and Hannah engaged in a fight against their attackers. When that foolish fellow pointed a pistol at my wife, I nearly lost my calm. Freddy’s hand on my shoulder was the only thing keeping me from shooting then. He told me to wait for my opportune moment. Moving closer, I was able to get off a shot before he had time to harm my wife.