“Only by name, which won’t help you much. Wait a minute.” He stepped out from behind his counter and waddled to the shelves that occupied most of the shop. He squinted at the labels on bottles, moving from one shelf to another and muttering in a language that was not English. With a loud exhalation and a smack of his lips, he pulled four small phials from a shelf. He put them on the counter by the book. Each was filled with a grayish liquid and stoppered with a wooden plug. “Fifty for this too, if you want it. There’s enough in each to put you out of your mind for two to three hours. For another fifty, I’ll tell you what’s in it.”
“Fifty for the book and fifty for the phials,” Bel said. The money was on the counter as she spoke. “We don’t need to know what’s in it.”
• • •
By evening, Hal had read the stories several times. He had also read most of the rest of the book. He had to agree with Rodriguez. The four stories the man had marked read like accounts of events that had actually occurred. The rest were fairy tales.
“Now what?” he asked Bel. They were sitting in his room at the fort. The book rested on the small table between them.
“Tell me again about the cave you found. Describe the land around it, how high it was, the path you followed.”
“I’ve already done that. Twice.”
“Once more, please.” She stood by the window and looked out into the fading light. “Where you are consistent, from time to time, it will be accurate. If something in the description changes on re-telling, maybe it is not so sure.”
Hal sighed and started the story over. How good was his memory, really? He had been drunk. It had been dark. Then it had been pouring rain as well as dark. When he was done, though, Bel said she was satisfied.
“Which brings me back to my question,” Hal said. “Now what? Do we just ride out there and see if we can find it?”
“No. I could, but you cannot,” Bel said. “It would be too strange for you to just disappear from Nieuw Amsterdam. There needs to be a reason. Preferably, something that Verplanck orders to be done.”
“We call it a cover story.”
Bel looked at him, shook her head. “Well, the phrase is apt.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean it is going to happen. They are trying to put together a sensible government, and that’s fine, but everybody from Verplanck on is busy with that and they all want it done yesterday. They think if they give Massachusetts too long to think about it, they’ll try another invasion.” Hal took a breath. “He’s not going to send an expedition to find a cave at the Water Gap.”
Bel gave one of her twisted smiles. “Leave that to me.”
In the end, Bel had her way. How that happened, Hal was never sure. He knew that Bel went first to speak to Fons. She did that more than once. Verplanck wanted the roving woodsranger bands out of the woods and he needed ten Eyck to help with that, so Fons had opportunities to speak with Verplanck. What passed in those conversations, Hal never heard. Nevertheless, a week later, he was ordered to lead a force of twenty cavalry troopers out to the Water Gap. The purpose of the expedition was to explore the routes into the Trans-Delaware territory and look for sites where settlements could be established. Five woodsrangers were going along as guides. And Bel.
“The Swedes are out there,” Verplanck had said when he gave Hal the order for the expedition. “We know that. To the north, the French have gone far to the west. Rumor has it, the Spanish are farther west than anyone. I think we should see how far the land goes for ourselves.”
“You’ll see that it goes west for a long, long way.” Hal considered that for a moment, then added, “There are people living there, you know. The land’s not empty.”
“The savages, you mean,” Verplanck said.
“Not savages,” Hal replied. “They just live differently than we do.”
Verplanck raised an eyebrow. After a moment’s thought, he said, “Maybe doing things differently is a good idea now. Let’s see what we find.”
It was an impressive little troop: twenty soldiers in their bright orange coats, led by a young captain, Pieter van der Donck, with a string of pack mules to carry supplies. A boy who reminded Hal of Johnny Haines rode alongside van der Donck with the orange, white and blue Prinzenvlag of Nieuw Netherlands. The woodsrangers rode apart with their own pack mules. Bel rode separately from them on Belisarius.
The ride across Nassau was long, but uneventful. The countryside was quiet. Farmers tended their fields and townsmen their businesses. There was no sign that the country had been at war a few months ago. There was no need to push the pace, so it took three days for them to pass the market town of Nieuwmarkt. When they entered the forest west of the town, Hal was seized with a twisting sensation in his gut, a sense of foreboding that all was not well. Yet, for all his peering into the woods on either side of the road, no men were to be found waiting in ambush. There were no shouts, no muskets discharged. Those were only in his memory. The woods held nothing except trees.
At length, they reached Gap. Bel and the woodsrangers left them there. They would camp well away from the town, as there was no point risking long-held grudges. Hal and the twenty cavalry attracted plenty of attention as they cantered through the streets. The town looked brighter, more cheerful, than Hal remembered, but that might be because he had been there in the winter and it was summer now. He led the troop directly to the English Inn. John Slade was already running out the door to see what the cause of the commotion was before Hal had even brought the column to a halt. When he saw who swung off the lead horse, his mouth dropped open.
“So, young Mr. Slade,” Hal called out, his voice as cheery as his smile, “can you manage to put me and my men up for the night?”
“What?” John stared at the troop for a minute: uniformed men on horseback, Prinzenvlag flying in the wind. Then, he recovered himself. “Of course! The English Inn will always meet the needs of any traveler in these parts. We will provide for the horses and men. You will pay as cash?”
“Of course.” Hal and the younger Slade looked at each other. What was the protocol? Hal decided he did not care. He opened his arms, embraced John and slapped him on the back. “It’s good to see you, John. You look well.”
“Thank you. My Lord and Savior, you look more than well, Hal, or must I call you Colonel? If even half the stories about you are true, you’ve had a crowded life since you left us.”
Hal’s grin took up his entire face. He had liked John, and was discovering that he had missed him. “Call me Hal,” he said, “although maybe not in front of the troops. And what sort of stories are you hearing?”
“Oh, like the one that you led the French charge into the Lobsters’ flank and killed their general with your own sword.”
Hal felt the blush rise in his cheeks. “Well,” he said, “I may have led the French for a bit, but their Colonel Ligny led the charge and, no, I didn’t kill the Lobster general. Plenty of other killing that day, but not that one.” Images of the desperate fight at the wall flashed through Hal’s mind. He shook his head to clear the visions and saw John looking quizzical. “Never mind that,” Hal said. “Let’s get settled in.”
Jack Slade was out the door by that time, his limp worse than Hal remembered from the winter but otherwise looking unchanged. He was all courtesy to Hal, no mention of the sudden manner of his departure with Gustavus. That only made sense. Slade had always been all about business and, right now, Hal was bringing a lot of business, not to mention that he rode at the head of a cavalry troop. He ushered Hal in and showed him to the same second-floor room that Gustavus had occupied in the winter.
Inside, the inn was the same as Hal remembered it. So was Mrs. Slade’s stew when it was time for dinner. Mary was gone, though.
“She took up with a farmer from two day’s ride north of here,” John told him. In her place worked a stick-thin girl of eleven or twelve years whose face wore a perpetually unhappy expression, although that might have been linked to Mrs. Slade never fin
ding anything she did to be satisfactory.
Tewes was still in town. He had turned his coat successfully again and continued to represent the authority of the new government, whatever form it might eventually take. He arrived for his free meal with one of his men, just as Hal had been accustomed to him doing in the winter. With regard to Hal, though, he was all obsequious courtesy with flattery mixed in, although Hal heard from John that he was the same bully and thief he had been. It occurred to Hal, as he watched Tewes across the table, that if he told his men to take Tewes outside, put him against a wall and shoot him, it would happen just like that. The idea was tempting. It would be easy. So, this is what happens when people have power. He shuddered and pushed the daydream away.
But at the end of the meal, he beckoned Captain van der Donck over. “You saw that captain from the local guards?” Hal asked.
Van der Donck nodded.
“When you make your report to General Verplanck, see to it that the general learns that this man is a thief who causes people here to lose respect for the law. Tell the general he needs to be replaced.” With that, Hal felt that he could go upstairs and sleep.
Hal was up at dawn the next day. A short familiar walk brought him to the church and the graveyard behind it. A simple wooden cross with the lettering “Tom Pyke” marked one of them. Hal stood silently for a minute, thinking of what he owed to chance and the kindness of one man. Then he went back to join the troops.
When they rode out of Gap, the notch of the Water Gap rose on the horizon in front of them. They were into the Gap on the day after, picking their way along the river with steep, wooded flanks rising on each side. That night they camped along the river. It was early August, but the air turned chilly as the sun set. Even so, Hal walked away from the fires to stare at the last line of deep blue sky over the ridge above them. Even without hearing a sound, he knew Bel had come up beside him.
“What if I can’t find it?” he asked.
“If we can’t, we can’t,” she said. “But you gave me a fair description of where it was and the ridge line is relatively open, so we shall look. Van der Donck will send his men and the other woodsrangers into the Trans-Delaware and they will be gone for some time. There will be time to search.”
Still, the next three days of searching were frustrating and fruitless. Now that he was back at the Gap, nothing looked like what he remembered. He went over again in his mind all the reasons the quest was hopeless. It had all happened nearly a year ago; he was a lousy woodsman even now; he had been drunk then and it had been raining at night; when it was daylight and he was sober, he had been too scared to pay attention to details. Even stranger, his mood oscillated from despair to happiness.
The morning of the fourth day, however, Bel came galloping back into their camp while Hal was still eating breakfast. She leaped off Belisarius and ran to where Hal sat by the campfire.
“I was walking along the slope,” she said, “and I saw a strange flash from below. It was like sunlight reflecting off water, but there was no water there. Look what I found!”
Hal looked at the object in Bel’s hands. He could feel the thump of his heart in his chest. It was a small, thin rectangle, smooth metal on the back and edges, black glass on the front, with two large cracks through the glass. He took it from Bel, rubbed his fingers across the cracked glass surface to brush off dirt. Instinctively, he pressed the button on the side. Nothing happened, of course.
“It’s my cellphone,” he said.
Bel looked at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Hal nodded. “I mentioned these things the day I told you about . . . me. There’s no way you would recognize it. Nobody here would.” Nobody except me. “Can you show me where you found it?”
Bel had no trouble backtracking to the exact spot. It was at the base of a steep, wooded slope, the ridge high above. He looked up the slope, amazed that he had survived the tumble with nothing more than bruises and scrapes.
“Wait for me,” he said.
He clambered up the slope, no easy feat even in this fair weather. A path at the top ran along the ridge. Just to the side of the path, he saw something else that was out of place. Something that did not belong there at all.
His heart was racing and his breath was short as he went to pick it up. It was the plastic rings that held a six-pack of beer together. He turned it over in his hands. A few yards farther along, there was an opening in the ridge wall above the path. It was just big enough for Hal to fit into. It had to be the same cave where he had taken shelter from the rain. He pushed his way past the narrow opening and looked around.
It was the same cave; he was sure of it. Nothing happened as he stood there, though. There was no tingling, nothing. Maybe it was a one-way passage. Maybe he just needed what was in that phial. He nearly fell down the slope again in his hurry to get back to the camp.
• • •
Once there, he changed quickly into the buckskin leathers and moccasins he had brought along. The only thing more ridiculous than wearing his uniform in the woods would be wearing it where he intended to go. The four phials of liquid and his cracked cellphone went into a small pouch at his belt. His weaponry he left in the camp. It would be worse than useless.
Bel came back while he was changing. She watched him in silence with an odd look on her face. Hal waited for her to say something, then thought that he should be the one to speak. Words did not come, though. It struck him, all of a sudden, what it meant for him to leave. What it might mean to Bel.
As she saw him look at her, she turned her eyes to a corner of the tent that held nothing. He did not go to his horse. Instead, he walked out of the camp and into the woods.
Hal did not go far before he stopped. He heard, as though he had not heard it before, the gurgling of the water below, the chirps of the birds, the sighing of the wind through the trees. The sounds filled his ears. A lacy white cloud drifted past a tree above his head. It was all so peaceful. Why didn’t he feel at peace?
“There you are.”
He turned at Bel’s voice to see her emerge from among the trees.
“I just want to say goodbye,” she said. “That’s all.”
Hal thought he heard her voice catch for a split second before she said ‘goodbye.’ Maybe he’d imagined that. No.
“Maybe I won’t be going after all.”
“What?” There was a tremor around her mouth.
“I said, I’m not sure that I’m going.” Until he had actually said the words, the feelings had been vague, had not quite made sense. But now he understood. “I have a place here,” he said. “A place I made for myself. And, Bel,” he hesitated. “I think I’m in love with you. I don’t want to go.”
At first, he thought she was going to smile, but then her face turned sad and somber. She turned away from him, but could not hide the quaver in her voice. “It is an odd sort of thing that only now, when you are going, that I can say how much . . .” The words stopped for a moment. “How much I like you. Dear Hal. Don’t you think I wish we could be husband and wife like a normal man and woman? I do. But it cannot be. I am what I am, the remains of a person. You are what you are. A Magical. You must go, and it must be now. You know the story we had from the alchemist. The only Magical known to have gone back did so within a couple of days. There is no way of knowing how long the way will stay open. I know what will happen if you stay today and then, later, you find that you can never leave. You will regret your lost world. You will damn the choice you made. You will resent me for being the cause of that choice. And all we have that is sweet and loving will turn sour and angry. I would rather keep only the memory of what we have had this summer than allow that to happen. If I am lucky, I will have your child as well. That will be more than I have dreamed I could have for many years. It will be enough for me. Now you must go.”
Hal felt tears on his cheeks. He made no move to brush them away. “You said the way may not always be open. It may be closed already. I�
��ve been here almost a year.”
She turned back to face him, her cheeks wet with tears also. “If that is so, then at least you will have tried. Come.”
She held out her hand to him. Together, they rode back to the hillside and then made their way up the slope to the little cave.
A little while later Hal sat alone in the cave, the memory of Bel’s last kiss lingering in his mind. He looked at one of the phials clutched in his hand. Well, he thought, it has come to this. Bel was probably right. He cut the seal and pulled the stopper from the phial. The odor suggested garlic. With a convulsive move, he flung the contents into his mouth. The liquid burned his tongue and throat. Immediately after, his stomach wanted to retch. Then his head began to throb. The rocks seemed to melt and flow, with faces inside them in phosphorescent blue and green. The voices of a hundred clamoring people rang in his ears, but none of them were in any language he understood. Then the dark came and he neither saw nor heard anything.
• • •
Hal awoke some time later. He heard an odd noise, a ringing in his ears. Some leftover effect of that vile potion, he thought. Shakily, he made his way to the entrance of the cave. The noise was louder there, a low-pitched growl. Down below him, he saw moving lights, red lights moving westward. It was the interstate highway.
36
School Days: Coda
HAL MADE HIS way back down the slope to the highway. There was no worry about direction; the continual roar of the traffic was as good as a guidepost. Once there, he stood on the eastbound side and stuck out his thumb. There was a time when the idea of hitching across states would have terrified him. Now, it was just something he had to do in order to reach his destination.
It took half an hour before a long-haul trucker with Idaho license plates and the logo of a grocery chain on the trailer stopped to pick him up. The driver, a beefy man with hands to match, thinning hair and a double chin, took a long look at Hal’s buckskin clothing.
Accidental Warrior: The Unlikely Tale of Bloody Hal Page 41
