“Hear my man yonder,” said Fenniver. “He seems to mislike that part of your terms.”
“I speak to you, not to him,” said Grace, again formally. “To just such agreement do we demand that you adhere.”
“Demand, is it?” said Fenniver, more sourly. “Are you in case to demand of us?”
“Why, so I believe,” she returned readily. “Thus far, we have not lost a single defender. We have beaten you off twice, and we count seven of you who will fight no more.”
“The third assault may be the charm, my lady,” said Fenniver, scowling. “Freely I’ll own that you’ve had the best of it so far. Yet we’ve hardly yet made a true trial, and I give you assurance that if we return to the fighting there’ll be no more talk of terms or mercy or quarter to the vanquished.”
Grace kept her eyes from Zack. She faced Fenniver, standing as straight and bold as though she herself commanded stark troops.
“In such case,” she said evenly, “I’d best go back and tell my friends the truce was of no profit.”
“Nay, wait,” said Fenniver. “As I apprehend your offer, you will cease to fight, and every man within yonder house will give up his gun and swear faithfully to bear no arms henceforth against the English flag and cause. On our part, we are to let them go free as under parole, and leave your house unburnt and unpillaged.”
“That is the true way of it, sir,” agreed Grace. “And under that same parole, do you also set Captain Harper free.”
Now she smiled at Zack, as though in happy triumph. But Zack shook his head vigorously.
“I don’t give my parole, Grace,” he said.
Fenniver turned a questioning gaze upon him. “Come, Captain, have sense and practicality,” he urged, in a friendly tone. “You’ll be well out of it, free to go as you will.”
“Not to go as I will,” Zack demurred. “For I will to go in arms against you and all your British force in America. I cannot give a parole that swears me out of the fight.”
“Od’s mercy, sir, I but seek to do you a favor. Here you bide, a captive in our hands—”
“I’ve been in Tory hands ere this, and out again,” Zack interrupted without ceremony. “I count on escaping again.” Fenniver pursed his lips. “Now here’s a stubborn, brazen upriser against his rightful liege lord and ruler,” he said. “Come, won’t you hear this fair lady plead?”
“Zack?” said Grace.
He shook his head. “I say I give no parole, for I cannot accept freedom under such terms,” he said flatly. “Do not include me in your agreements.”
“Well, Miss Prothero, he’s beyond fair words and assurances,” said Fenniver wearily. “To the rest of it—your garrison to hand us their guns and swear themselves out of their Rebel service, we to spare the house and march off— I’ll say ’tis a bargain on our part.”
“Then,” said Grace, “I’ll ask your name signed to those articles.”
And from under her cloak she produced a paper, a basswood inkstand and a pointed turkey quill. Fenniver stared at the things.
“You don’t doubt my word as an officer and gentleman?” he asked, half-plaintively.
“Sir, your pledge may be solemn, but when you’re gone there may come others of your side, ready with shot and steel and torch. We ask your word and hand, to discourage any such attentions.”
“Zounds, ma’am, you’re a shrewd demander,” sighed Fenniver, “and one would think ’twas we who made submission, not you.”
Taking the paper, he read it quickly. “You’ve penned out in substance just what you said were your terms. Aye, and written in a good round clerkly hand, too. Who drew up these articles?”
“I did,” Grace informed him.
“Ma’am, I give glad thanks you weren’t born a man to marshal troops against us, else the King’s cause would be in sorry plight.”
Fenniver set a booted foot on a stump and spread the paper on his knee. Grace held the inkstand, and he dipped in the quill and signed his name with a flourish.
“There, we make you sure of your part in this matter,” he said, handing the paper back. “Now summon forth your garrison to lay down its arms.”
Grace walked quickly back toward the house, waving the napkin in one hand, the paper in the other. Again the front door opened, and out stepped Alan Harper, his rifle in his hands. He came into the yard, and after him John Prothero, then Abel Starrett, then the dusky butler Cassius. Each bore a gun, and in single file they marched to meet Fenniver.
“How!” cried out Fenniver. “Where are the others of you?”
“We here are all the men who fought you,” said Alan Harper shortly. He looked at Zack. “My boy, how came you here?”
“Pm a captive of these British,” said Zack. “Take it not hard, sir, you’ve known that to be my case before.”
“Sir, I prefer to say that your son is my guest, nor am I eager to bid him good-bye,” said Fenniver, not quite sarcastically. “Even now he refused parole and said he would escape3 and so we’ll keep a sharp double watch of him. But I see only four of you, and there were at least eight guns babbling at us but now.”
“Four only,” spoke up John Prothero. “But we had a plenty of guns, and brave women within to load as we fired.”
“Had we but known that—” complained Plum.
“Had you but known that, still we’d have stood you off,” put in Abel Starrett coldly.
Grace was coming back toward them. In her hand she bore the hat that had been peeled from Fenniver’s head.
“Yours, sir, I think,” she said, and Fenniver took the hat and poked a rueful finger into the bullet hole.
“An inch lower, and my business had been done,” he commented. “Who shot it off my pate?”
“I did, sir,” said Grace, and he stared at her anew.
“We go no further in this business unless you, too, make your parole to bear no arms against us,” he said, with no trace of humor.
“Willingly,” nodded Grace. She held out a second paper. “Here, hold the inkstand while I put my name down with these four others, signed to an oath of neutrality.”
While she wrote, Alan Harper leaned his gun against a tree. The others set their weapons next to it.
“Stay,” said Fenniver, “you have other firelocks to give us.”
“These terms you signed and accepted have provision that the men of our garrison yield up but the arms in their hands,” reminded Grace. “And so they have done, Lieutenant Fenniver.”
“We’ll keep the others, lest some other Tory chooses to flout the terms made here,” added John Prothero.
“Pink me, sirs,” said Fenniver earnestly, “but any who try their luck against you are fools, and deserve what hurt may befall them. Now, Captain Harper, yet once more; will you not swear to cease your rebellion and stay happy with your father and friends? See, Miss Grace Prothero longs for you to say yes. In your stead, Pd speak the word of peace, only to make her smile with joy.”
Zack saw that Grace watched him closely, hopefully. But once more he shook his head.
“Grace, I have made up my mind as I must,” he said. “Trust me, Pll see you soon, without giving parole.” “Until then, Godspeed,” she told him softly.
“Come,” Fenniver urged him. “I must see if we can find, perhaps, a better field on which to face your other friends.” They walked away together. Zack tried not to look to where he knew that his father and Grace watched him go.
“Captain Harper,” Fenniver was saying, “if ever I scorned or disliked you, I own my feelings altered. Would that our politics so ran that you were on my side, or I on yours. Since we are on different sides, I must say only that you’ve acted the brave man and stout soldier through this matter. You have my esteem, and my careful attention lest you slip away from me.”
“I take your words to mean what they say,” replied Zack, with equal honesty. “Thus far you’ve been a generous enemy. When I leave you—and so I intend to do, ere long —’twill be with a trifle of sorrow.�
��
“Plum, watch this prisoner well,” Fenniver bade his man. “If he hoodwinks you and runs off, you’ll bewail the day and hour.”
Swiftly the Tories gathered up the bodies of their comrades, put them across horses, and formed for departure. They rode back toward the river, when the men in advance gave a sharp cry of warning.
“Rebels, friends! Here come the Rebels!”
“Do they so?” called back Fenniver. “Quick, lads, in among these trees. Dismount and form for battle. This time we aren’t surprised or tricked, we’ll give them as hot a sauce as—”
Up ahead came cantering two mounted men, and one of them bore a pole from which fluttered a long white scarf.
10 A Trade and a Respite
FENNIVER leaned forward in his saddle and gazed fixedly at the two approaching horsemen. “Look at them, Harper,” he said. “Are they men of yours?”
“Aye, so they are,” Zack told him. “He with the white flag is Captain Prothero, the man you met at my home. The other—true enough—’tis Lieutenant Mawks, who commands our fierce mountain volunteers.”
“Bless my soul, I feared one of them would be your friend Enoch Gilmer. Still I ask myself how he bested me at conjuring tricks before those Indians, and still I cannot give myself an answer. Were he coming with that flag to make terms, Pd dread another such gulling as I suffered at the hands of Miss Grace Prothero less than an hour ago.” “Surely that was a fair bargain,” Zack argued, watching as Godfrey and Seth trotted closer.
“Fair bargain, say you?” Fenniver cried out. “Lackaday, Captain Harper, here among your simple-seeming buckskin frontier folk are shrewder traders twice over than ever a Scots banker with an eye on your lands in pawn, or a gypsy rye with a lame horse to trade for your sound one, or a squint-eye packman hawking wooden nutmegs and glass rubies. I take oath to high heaven, I’d do better with surrendering mine own self and profiting thereby.”
The two riders had come up to Fenniver’s advance line by now, and the man in command there hailed them and called on them to halt. They did so, and Fenniver motioned for Deevor Plum to ride out and escort them into the heart of the Tory position.
“I give myself to doubt whether I should hold parley with your man Prothero, who was a King’s officer and deserted to your side,” said Fenniver to Zack as they waited together.
“He changed sides because his home was burnt and he himself insolently threatened,” replied Zack. “Until then he was a paroled prisoner, and honorably he had observed his parole. There, sir, is an example of the broken faith and wanton destruction that is commonplace here, and of what it can mean to an honorable man, be his side what it is.”
“You speak sense there,” said Fenniver seriously. “I can see why your fair friend, Prothero’s sister, would have my signed name to those written terms.”
Plum brought Godfrey and Seth to them. The two reined in and sat on their horses. They nodded to Zack, and he nodded to them, without speaking. Godfrey looked stiffly formal, Seth grinned tigerishly in his unkempt thicket of red whiskers.
“Give you good day, gentlemen,” Fenniver addressed them. “Have you come to surrender and take loyal oath to King George?”
“Never that, sir,” replied Godfrey. “We but offer you a fair exchange. You hold our captain prisoner, and we hold yours. We say that we’ll release to you Robinson Alspaye if you’ll give us Zack Harper.”
“If ye’d call that a fair exchange,” added Seth, and spat on the road.
“ ’Tis fair,” elaborated Godfrey. “The two hold equal rank, they are both captains of companies. They command forces that are equal in number, more or less—”
“But them forces won’t long be equal,” put in Seth. “Give us another hack at ye and we’ll cut down your numbers more than before.”
Fenniver drew a long breath. “If this were ancient days of war, the times of Agincourt or Crecy or the Crusades, we might do well by setting our two captains on open ground between us, and let them fight it out. Then we’d abide in submission to which won the day.”
“Huh!” grunted Seth. “There’d be a sorry time for ye, my gay friend. For Zack yonder has fit your Cap’n Alspaye these four or five times, and each time he’s tanned his hide fit to make moccasins out of. This very day it happened, and I seen it with these here eyes of mine.”
“Moderate your language,” Fenniver tried to snub Seth. “You forget you address a superior.”
“You my superior?” blared Seth. “I’m a Lootenant, and so are you, and that makes us even. Now, if ye think ye’re my equal as a man, why, let’s us do that fightin’ on open ground—”
“Enough, enough,” interposed Godfrey. “We’re here to treat under truce, Seth, not to brawl or brabble. Well, Lieutenant Fenniver, do you want back your Captain Alspaye badly enough to give us Captain Harper in exchange for him?”
“How shall we make such an exchange so that each man passes safely?” asked Fenniver. “If we’d let you take Harper back with you, and then you did not send on our Captain Alspaye—”
“Zounds and zookers, he thinks we’d cheat him,” muttered Seth. “Cheating and lying’s been mostly on your side, my rooster.”
“Hold,” spoke up Zack. “I’ve seen Lieutenant Fenniver conduct one treaty for terms, and he held honestly to the word he gave.”
“Aye, even when my end of the bargain was the small end,” Fenniver agreed ruefully.
“If you let Alspaye go, I’ll engage that Lieutenant Fenniver will let me go,” said Zack confidently. “The lieutenant’s somewhat nimble fingered at his juggling tricks, and he’ll fight us the best he knows, but his word given as an officer is a true word.”
Godfrey Prothero smiled briefly at Seth. “You hear that?” he asked. “Now you understand soldierly trust, and why I made you ride here with me instead of Lieutenant Gilmer.”
“Aye, facks,” growled Seth. “Cap’n Zack, the boys feared that if I was left back yonder in command I’d might want to cut Cap’n Alspaye open to see what color his haslet looked to be.”
“And I’d have feared the same,” said Zack. “I say again, you may believe Lieutenant Fenniver’s promise as you’d believe my own.”
There was a moment of silence. Godfrey and Seth glanced at each other. The dismounted Tories around them watched and waited expectantly. Then Godfrey spoke again:
“Zack, I venture that you’re right about Fenniver’s faith and honor, but if we sent Alspaye here, he’d then be in command. And here and now, among these men of his who call him their captain, I’ll say that I wouldn’t value his word.” “Not if he kissed the Bible sound and smacky,” vowed Seth. “I say the same. Was Alspaye here, and ye still held, he’d never let ye go.” He shook his head at Fenniver. “No, no, Lootenant, ye can let us take our Cap’n back and we’ll send yours to ye right honest.”
“ ’Ware this wild man, sir,” half-whispered Plum to Fenniver. “I’d sooner trust a hungry wolf or a sore-nosed bear.” “Ugh!” exploded Seth, and glared so fixedly at Plum that the little man reined his horse back and away.
“Hark you,” said Zack, hoping to ease the tension. “If we are exchanging captain for captain here, be it understood that I take my horse to freedom with me, and Alspaye may keep his in return.”
Fenniver eyed Jonah with calculating approval. “Sir, I had thought that I’d keep that fine chestnut as a memento of our acquaintanceship.”
“Never,” Zack assured him stoutly. “If this exchange is made, then Jonah and I depart together. Say no, Fenniver, and I’ll refuse to be exchanged. Then Jonah and I will escape from you, and not the first time we’ve escaped from British hands.”
“Nor the second or third time,” said Seth heartily. “Do ’ee hark to me, masters, whatever box Cap’n Harper gets into, he can get out of. We’ll swap cap’n for cap’n, horse for horse, even all ’round.”
Fenniver sighed, almost moaning. “If it’s to be so, then give me one advantage. After the exchange is done, let there be a truce of
twenty-four hours between us.”
“Twenty-four hours,” echoed Seth, and glanced up at the sun. “It’s drawing on to end of day. That’d be more like a truce till morning after tomorrow.”
“Since Captain Harper is so steadfast to keep his horse, I’ll be steadfast for the twenty-four hours of truce,” said Fenniver stubbornly.
“Well, sir, done with you,” granted Godfrey. “Now, if we’re to see these prisoners pass safely each to his own men, let’s agree on how ’twill be done.”
Fenniver puzzled a moment, then suggested that each main force hold its position. Godfrey and Seth would return to their own company and start back, escorting Alspaye. He himself would wait for ten minutes, then ride forward on the road with Zack and one other man. Thus the two parties would meet well between the lines, make the exchange and then each return.
“And Captain Harper will explain to you that your fort yonder is no longer your fort,” Fenniver wound up. “It surrendered to us, and henceforth will be a neutral place, with only neutral men and women to dwell in it. Let me say that any of you who so much as visit there will be considered by us to have left fighting and sworn out of the service.”
“That’s fairly said, and fairly we agree,” said Zack.
Godfrey Prothero and Fenniver saluted each other. Then Godfrey and Seth rode off the way they had come, at a smart trot.
“Be ready to ride with us,” Fenniver ordered the man in sheepskin. Then, to Zack: “Captain Harper, I congratulate you that you’ve so soon gained your freedom again.”
“I beg you, congratulate Captain Alspaye,” Zack said.
“Aye, and so I will. That hairy fellow in buckskin— Mawks is his name, eh?—he looked sunk in woe that he couldn’t take Alspaye’s scalp like any Indian on the warpath. But Alspaye keeps his hair, you keep that splendid horse, and let’s hope we can all come at last to peace and safety and good neighborly friendship.”
“Amen to that, sir. Yet I conjecture that there’s plenty of this war to be fought, and many of us may not see its end.”
“Alack that this war ever started,” said Fenniver earnestly. “Mayhap the King and his advisors at home could have fended it off had they treated you and your folk as you deserved—like honest Englishmen. I’ve learned a many truths since I began my campaigning in these colonies, and I dare hope I’ll be given long years of life to profit by them.”
Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1963 Page 8
