Ambrose ring? What the blazes was that?
Stoddard snorted. "We've examined what you call 'evidence.' A parasol and veil. Bah. No secret rebel messages hidden in those. The lady is willing to surrender the letter to Colonel Brown on the morrow in Augusta."
He caught her eye above Fairfax's shoulder. "I shall escort you back now, madam." He strolled around to face Fairfax and granted the Givens property a magnanimous wave. "Have at it if you like, sir. You've still eight hours, fifty minutes. And were I you, I wouldn't harass Mrs. Sheridan. She's performed admirably as the King's witness, and Captain Sheffield thinks well of her."
***
No breeze cooled the stuffy bedroom, even though it was near eleven o'clock. The servant, Mary, was asleep in the tiny room across from Betsy's room, and Susana had gone home to her family, but Clark hadn't yet returned. Fretting, Betsy shoved the window open further, undressed to her shift, and hung her clothing on pegs. Then she set her pockets and the lantern on her mother's desk and withdrew Arriaga's letter and Clark's cipher. Blue letters and numbers reappeared on the message from the boot when she passed it near the heat of the lantern. While its cipher faded to invisibility, she pushed the boot message aside and opened Arriaga's letter.
Almost afraid to confirm her suspicions, she waved the letter above the heat. A shiver scurried down her backbone, and she whispered, "Gods." The familiar, bluish cipher-scribble appeared between the lines of Arriaga's script, too.
What she knew of Clark barely brushed the surface of the life he led. Even worse than her confirmation that he concealed so much was her certainty that he was in the thick of a multinational plot. She clamped down on her fear. Without a level head, she wouldn't be able to help her husband.
The Portuguese were supposedly neutral in the war. Sheffield had suggested the Portuguese captain's letter might have been intercepted before it left Havana. After exhaling a deep breath, she passed the letter over the heat again. The cipher portion was, indeed, written by a hand other than Arriaga's.
Without knowing the key to the cipher, trying to decode it was almost impossible. She studied the cipher on the letter, set it aside, and reheated the message from the boot, searching for something in common between the two. 402. Say, hadn't that been a number from the letter, too? After she'd refreshed the letter's cipher, she saw the number 402 written there twice. What was the significance of 402?
Clark must have kept everything from her thus far to protect her, but she was through carrying the burden of what she'd discovered alone. She doubted he'd confess if she confronted him directly. No, she'd have to trick him or convince him he could trust her. 402. She'd wait up for her husband, and perhaps she could find out what it meant.
To pass the time, she copied Arriaga's letter with the stationery, quill, and ink on her mother's desk. By the time she sprinkled fine sand over the finished forgery to help dry the ink, she'd grown so sleepy she had difficulty holding her head up. She nodded several times, folded the cipher and both letters, slid them into her pockets, and extinguished the lantern. She'd stretch out on the bed for a few minutes and wake up when Clark came in.
She never remembered falling asleep, but early Thursday, a thunderstorm trundled over Alton and awakened her. Oblivious to the tempest, Clark snored beside her. When had he returned?
Rain spattered the floor beneath the window. Fuzzy-headed, she rolled from bed and shoved the window shut, and after using the chamberpot, lay abed listening to the assault of rain on roof and pane. Alton needed the rain. So did Augusta to the north.
Clark's snores deepened. Intermittent lightning flashes cast his skin blue, almost the same hue as the cipher message. When the storm abated, she reopened the window and crouched in the cool moisture, reveling in raw scents of predawn, her hand stroking her belly. Several roosters crowed. In the east, the sky had blanched.
Clark coughed, and his murmur sounded groggy. "Betsy?"
Glad for the cover of darkness, she slid back in bed and began stroking his chest. Sweat dampened the sheet beneath him. "Hush. Go back to sleep."
He yawned. "Too much on my mind."
No doubt. She whispered, "Then let's play our game. Tree."
He sighed in deep contentment, eyes closed. "Sunshine."
"Wine."
"Purple." He yawned again.
"Bucket."
He nodded at the edge of sleep. "Mmm. Water."
"Four hundred two."
"Cornwallis."
She didn't miss a stroke, despite the fear that rammed her gut. Charles Lord Cornwallis ran the Crown's show in South Carolina. What business did a shoemaker from Augusta and residents of Spanish Havana have with a British general?
Clark stiffened, and she saw him stare at the ceiling, trying to decide whether he'd dreamed spilling the information. Then he pushed away and stood. "Damnation." He stumped to the desk, lit the lantern, and turned on her, his glare demanding an explanation.
She rolled up and sat. "Monday I received that box from a sea captain named Arriaga. His letter said he gave the enclosed parasol and veil to my mother while she was on his ship, and she lost them when the redcoats captured her in Havana. So he sent them to me. You and I didn't have time to discuss it Monday.
"Tuesday morning in the shop, I saw a piece of paper in the heel of a cowhide boot. When I held it close to the lamp, blue letters and numbers appeared all over it."
"Christ Jesus."
"And again I didn't have time to ask you about it because we had to clean 'Tory Scum' off our house. I woke in the middle of the night and overheard you talking with two Spaniards who were taking away the cowhide boots. Basilio, you named one of them. The dogs never barked at them. They knew them from previous visits, same way they know Sooty Johns."
"Ah." Clark rubbed his eyelids.
Betsy scrubbed her hands together, the rasp of nervous energy amplified in the quiet house. "Yesterday afternoon, Lieutenant Fairfax came here to the shop to post a letter. He recognized the parasol and veil from when he was in Havana and concluded that my aunt and I were spies. I denied involvement, but I'd swear he knew I had Arriaga's letter and your message."
Clark paced the length of the room in his shirt. Panic thrashed his expression.
"Husband, rebels write between the lines of letters with invisible ink that turns blue when heated, the way letters and numbers appeared on your message from the boot heel." She kept her voice low, conscious of the servant in the bedroom across the stairway. "The same way letters and numbers appeared on Arriaga's letter last night when I exposed it to heat. Between the two, I noticed the number 402 several times, so I knew it had to be significant.
"How many times have Basilio and his partner visited you in the middle of the night? Did they supply you with the Cordovan leather? What's a Loyalist doing in secret meetings with men from a country at war with Britain? To whom are you sending secret messages? Did Sooty paint the slur on our house, and if so, why? What has all this to do with Lord Cornwallis?" She drew a deep, shaky breath. "Are you spying on the redcoats for the rebels?"
He kept pacing. "I cannot tell you."
"Or you will not?" At his silence, she intercepted him, planted her feet, and braced her fists on her hips, her body quivering with betrayal. "How dare you conceal all this from me? Does this baby mean nothing to you? Think, man! Do you want me widowed, or —" She cringed, recalling Fairfax's threat to loosen her tongue. "Do you want all this half-knowledge tortured out of me? Tell me enough to protect myself and not betray you. Let me be your comrade and help you out of this." She hugged him. "I cannot raise this child alone. Stop what you're doing!"
"I tried to leave," he muttered, "when I found out you were carrying the baby. They won't let me go until it's over." He wrapped his arms around her. "It's gigantic, Betsy. It reaches the entire length of the Colonies, across the water, into Cuba, the Caribbean, France, Spain, and Holland."
"Rebels." Her voice emerged choked, the way hope felt in her chest. "A spy ring. Dear gods, y
ou're spying for the rebels."
"If I walk away, I'll be executed within days. After my attempt at backing out two months ago, I was marked as suspect."
She clung to him, her head spinning with horror and indignation. "What is your mission?"
"I swore on my sacred honor not to tell you or anyone else."
What did fanatics who raided farms and ravished women and girls know of sacred honor? "When will it be over?"
"Another six weeks. And then I'm out, I promise."
"Six weeks is a long time. The redcoats aren't stupid."
"Yes, I know." He disentangled himself and headed for the desk. "And we've a seven-hour ride today in the company of one with a fiend's love of interrogation." He laughed without mirth. "I'd the good fortune to meet Mr. Fairfax last night in the Red Rock." He ran his hand over his face, as if to banish memory of the encounter. "Where are the letter and note? I must destroy both."
Relieved that she'd had the prudence to forge Arriaga's letter, she withdrew the original and the boot message from her pocket and handed them to him. While she crawled back into bed, the quilt of despondency settling over her, Clark ignited the note and dropped it into a metal dish on the desk. Arriaga's missive he first warmed to expose the cipher and silently translate. Then it, too, was fed to the flames.
The bitter stink of evidence permeated the room and shivered premonition through Betsy. Fire, the beginning and the end. Clark blew out the lantern, crawled into bed, and took her in his arms. "I'll be out by September, I promise. Trust me."
Did she have a choice? Her soul writhed with foreboding over the chasm her husband straddled between two battling Olympians: punitive parent and recalcitrant child. To them, the life of one mortal named John Clark Sheridan was of no consequence.
Chapter Eight
NEITHER BETSY NOR Clark slept while dawn brightened the sky. She withheld knowledge of the Givens murders from her husband, uncertain how to tell him. Perhaps he'd heard the news in the Red Rock before coming home and hadn't mentioned it to her because he didn't want to alarm her further. The possibility that he already knew of it from plans made with Spaniards made her want to shrink from his touch. Was Clark capable of plotting murder? On Monday, she'd have scoffed at the suggestion. But with each passing day, she'd gained greater discernment that she didn't know the man in bed beside her at all.
Mary rose at five-thirty and thumped downstairs to revive the cooking fire. When Susana arrived half an hour later, Betsy pulled from Clark's embrace without a word and dressed. He did the same. Then they descended the stairs together to the aroma of coffee and cornbread and met Susana's grim visage in the shop.
The older woman thrust mugs of coffee at them. "I hate bearing ill news first thing, but the Givenses have been murdered."
Clark coughed coffee, so Betsy surmised it was news to him. "How dreadful, Aunt. When? How?"
"Last night about nine-thirty or ten. Lieutenant Stoddard saw a Spaniard on horseback gallop away from the house, and so he investigated."
Clark coughed again. "A Spaniard?"
From the magnitude of his gape, either he was an excellent liar, or knowledge of the murderer's nationality had unsettled him as much as news of the crime. Susana sighed. "Yes, a Spaniard. Another Spaniard. Unfortunately this rascal wasn't caught, either. After the horrific murder of that Spaniard here last month, I hoped we'd seen the last of Spaniards. It's just as well that you're headed back to Augusta today. I fear Alton is no longer a safe place to live. Now, let me see whether that lazy servant has finished preparing your breakfast."
Betsy studied Clark's peculiar fenced-in, wary expression over the rim of her coffee mug after Susana walked away. "You visited the tanner yesterday, did you not?" she said low, keeping her face neutral.
"Yes, but you don't think I had anything to do with his murder, do you?"
"Did you?"
"Good god, he was my friend!"
"And the Spaniard who murdered him?"
Clark looked away. "I don't know who he might have been."
The coffee soured in Betsy's mouth. From the horror and suspicion in her husband's eyes, she suspected he did know something about the murderer. That he was unwilling to confide in her about it filled her with more anxiety. The least Clark could do would be to tell her how the tanner's murderer figured into his mission.
Upstairs after breakfast, while Betsy was cleaning her teeth, she heard the jingle of spur and harness outside in the front yard. She rinsed her mouth and looked beyond the porch overhang to see Lieutenant Fairfax dismounting his horse while five other soldiers remained in their saddles out on the road. Will's hounds rose from the front porch, their toenails scraping the planks, and trotted over to greet the visitor. Halfway out, both dogs changed their minds and dove beneath the porch. Not a reassuring gesture.
The clock in the shop struck seven, followed by a rap on the front door. Betsy slung her tote sack over her shoulder and left the bedroom. Susana gave her a matronly hug downstairs in the shop, handed their wrapped dinner to Clark, and hugged him. "I may have the biggest mouth in Alton, but no one ever walked away from my table hungry."
As soon as Betsy opened the door, Fairfax glared in at them. Without a word, she walked past him, Clark behind her, to where Clark had tied their saddled horses, noting the stiff expressions on the other five soldiers, none of whom had accompanied Stoddard to fetch them from Augusta. She and Clark sure weren't going to supplement any soldiers' rations with homemade goodies during dinner this trip.
The Sheridans waved goodbye to Susana. On the road, their escort of six spoke little. Attempts at chitchat between Betsy and Clark withered in the ambiance that they were a mere liability to the soldiers.
They stopped at nine and again at eleven. Betsy, at last grown to understand the complaint of "pregnant bladder," trekked through foliage west of the road to relieve herself. Wandering out into the brush far enough for privacy made her feel like an escaped prisoner. And to think they had several more hours in Fairfax's company.
Her return was curtailed by pistol fire and the appearance of a dozen bandits descending on the escort.
At first she gaped in shock. Horses skittered and neighed through black powder smoke. Fairfax whipped out a pistol, blew a bandit's face away, and vaulted into his horse's saddle. Clark discharged his fowler into another bandit's midsection, sending the man screaming and thrashing in agony.
A volley erupted from the soldiers' muskets. The arc of sunlight on the lieutenant's hanger made Betsy flinch in horror, too late to avoid seeing the spurt of blood and the bounce of a bandit's severed head.
She crouched behind a tree, shaken, nauseated, Stoddard's words hammering her memory: I was the target, sir. Had the men not performed commendably, I'd have been assassinated. So this wasn't indiscriminate highway robbery and murder, then. Was she witnessing part of a conspiracy to assassinate British officers?
More pistol shots, more screams from dying men, the thud of someone running toward her — she gasped at a bandit fleeing into the woods and huddled lower in the brush. Best to stay concealed.
Her gaze followed the retreating man and widened when a Spaniard emerged from the brush thirty feet from her, the reins of his horse in one hand. He studied the bandit's noisy flight before looking toward the road, his expression as full of purpose as it was devoid of warmth. Betsy's stomach lurched, and she almost lost her breakfast. He was the Spaniard who had murdered the Givenses.
When he spotted her, menace and recognition condensed in his piercing, black eyes. He tossed the horse's reins over a branch and lunged. Betsy bolted for the road and blundered straight into the arms of a second retreating bandit.
He hauled her around and, with one arm pinning her to him, faced the soldiers, a knife pressed to her throat. Dark specks rotated through Betsy's vision of stunned soldiers and a horrified Clark. Clark faltered forward a few steps. "For the love of god, please let her go!"
"Stay there, you hear me? All of you. Or I'll cut her!"<
br />
In the background, moribund bandits moaned. One began a death rattle. Clark spread his hands, beseeching. "I haven't much money with me, but it's yours if you let her go."
"I'll take your money, all of you, and I want every horse. After all, it's what's due us for our efforts. Drop your weapons and keep your hands where I can see them. Lieutenant, drop that pistol, I say!"
Betsy's gaze riveted to Fairfax, who'd dismounted. He finished reloading one of his pistols and replaced the ramrod with the calm and ease of a preacher reviewing a popular sermon for a familiar flock. Then he lifted the pistol and took aim with a steady hand. "Drop the knife and let her go unharmed by my count of five, and I shall grant you a thirty-second lead before I hunt you down."
"Does your lordship think me a fool?"
Agony bloomed on Clark's face. "Lieutenant, didn't you hear him? Put that pistol away, or he'll murder her!"
"Stand your ground, Mr. Sheridan."
"You've lost your wits! Pistols aren't accurate enough!"
"Stand your ground."
Betsy's gaze yanked back to Fairfax. Angelic radiance suffused his face, and a half-smile teased his lips, as if he agreed with Clark's assessment of his pistol's accuracy. Again, she almost vomited. The pistol was aimed right for her. Did he have no regard for her life at all?
"Ensign, if Mr. Sheridan interferes, restrain him."
"Sir."
She darted a glance around — from edginess on the four privates' faces, to discipline on the ensign's face, to terror on Clark's face, to the radiance that transfigured Fairfax in such a breathtaking, preternatural way. Gods. The only time she'd seen such virility imbue Clark's expression was during lovemaking.
The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution Page 6
