Isle of the Seventh Sentry

by Fortune Kent

  At his knees slay a brown lifeless object, coated with excrement, wet with slime. The only sound was the whine of circling flies. A heavy wire was twisted about the dog’s neck.

  Beth felt the color leave her face and the strength drain from her. She slowly sank to the ground. The taste of bile was in her mouth. She turned her head away and, gasping and choking, vomited onto the grass.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rent Day—Tuesday, October 25, 1842

  Jonas Weeks, the Worthingtons’ estate agent, had begun bringing the ledgers up to date two months before—noting tenant charges, computing arrears in rent and adding interest and penalties, deducting partial payments made during the year, sending notices of rent due to the more than two hundred tenants.

  Each was assigned a time to report: the first at seven in the morning, the last at six in the evening. On the afternoon of the day before, Jonas had moved into the large back room of the village store with his cot, desk, and the stacked cartons of records.

  Sawdust covered the floor. Jonas had placed his desk against the wall next to the door to the store itself. A cuspidor sat to one side, a safe squatted on the other. Hardware was stored in racks on the rear wall—axe handles, harness fittings, barrels of nails. On the floor and the shelves on the other two walls were boxes of tea, tubs of cheese, barrels of flour, and casks of rum, cider, and molasses.

  Jonas was dressed and waiting at six thirty on Tuesday morning, a short thin man as neat and precise as the columns of numbers in his account books. He had receipts at hand, ink and pens ready, records at his fingertips, and a wagon in the yard to transport payments of wheat and corn to the storage sheds. This was Jonas’s day and he meant to savor every minute. He tilted back his chair, crossed his feet on the desk, and inserted a pinch of snuff under his upper lip. Jonas Weeks had labored long and hard and now he was ready.

  Nobody came.

  “How many so far?” Charles asked when he arrived at seven thirty.

  “Not a one,” Jonas replied.

  Charles raised his eyebrows and thereafter sat without expression at a side table, his hands folded before him.

  “Where are they?” Jeffrey inquired when he entered a half hour later. “Haven’t even the valley farmers come?”

  “No one has come,” Jonas told him.

  Beth rode Lady Barbara to the village shortly before nine and after looking at cloth in the store, entered the rear room. The three men rose. “No one came?” she asked.

  “No, no one,” Jeffrey said. “Two hours gone by and not a dollar in the till. They’ve thrown down the gauntlet.” He told her of their preparations and their vain wait. He seemed resigned.

  She felt a thrill of anticipation and remembered the time when, as a girl of ten, she lay guiltily hidden in the bed of the old wagon, where they were forbidden to play. The other children, pretending to prepare for an Indian attack, pushed her to the edge of a long hill where they unknowingly gave one shove too many so the wagon tilted on the crest. For a moment she had known the same excitement while she lay looking up into the blue sky, suspended in time, helpless and waiting, knowing she could do nothing to change what was about to happen.

  Beth shook the memory from her mind. Jeffrey was speaking, taking her arm. “Walk with me,” he said. “We so seldom have a chance to talk.”

  Despite her suspicions and distrust of Jeffrey, she found herself eager to go with him. “We could walk back to the house,” she suggested.

  “Good. I’ll send the boy back down here for the horses.”

  The trees were almost bare, and the wind was cool with intimations of winter. The fallen leaves covering the path were old and brittle and crunched under their feet. Across the street the innkeeper looked up from sweeping down his steps and smiled a greeting at Beth. At the corner two men interrupted an arm-waving discussion to stare at them with frank, yet friendly, curiosity. In the smith’s shop behind the men Beth could see the forge glowing a dull red.

  “You know I’ve never been satisfied with your story,” Jeffrey began. “I was skeptical when we first heard from Mrs. Jamison, and I still can’t believe you are my sister.”

  Beth remained silent. A woman in a heavy black wool dress and an outsized bonnet passed them and nodded. “Good morning, Mrs. Gerken,” Beth said.

  “We’ve begun making certain inquiries,” Jeffrey went on. “Here, in New York City, especially in Ohio. They take time. Eventually, of course, the truth will come out.”

  “I’m not afraid of the truth,” Beth said. Beside the road flames crackled from a pile of burning leaves making her eyes smart, and she wrinkled her nose at the pungent, nostalgic odor. A man leaning on his rake in the nearby yard tipped his hat to Beth, and she smiled and spoke to him.

  “Damn it,” Jeffrey said when they were out of earshot. “Who are these people? You’ve been here three weeks and you know more of them than I do after fourteen years.”

  “That man’s from St. Thomas’s,” Beth explained. They turned into the road along the creek coming off the mountain.

  “I’m digressing,” Jeffrey said. “As I told you, I think we can prove you’re not Beth, not my sister. In time. Because of these damn tenants we don’t have time. You saw their defiance this morning.”

  She nodded. What was Jeffrey up to? she wondered.

  First Charles taking her to the view point and almost pleading with her, and now Jeffrey leading to what?

  “You know, I’m sure,” Jeffrey said, “we—Charles and Grandmother and I—we want you to help us, not by taking direct action, no, rather by taking no action at all. Let us work out a settlement with the tenants. There will be a settlement and on our terms. We’ve been expecting this trouble for years, and we’re ready, not only the Worthingtons, all the landowners. We stand united; we have commitments to them and they to us. The others can’t allow a demagogue to choose us as the newest and weakest of the owners with one of the smaller estates. They can’t permit him to rise above the law, flout the law, flout us. You understand, don’t you?”

  “I know how you view the tenants and their contracts,” Beth said cautiously. “But demagogue? A strong word, isn’t it?”

  “Mild, for him. We’re not in the dark. We have information. Money buys information just as money buys so much else. We know what they’ve done and what their plans are. And who Big Thunder is. Perhaps you do, too. Not even a farmer, an outsider—here by invitation—and he repays us with revolt.”

  Yes, she thought, I was right. Matthew. Matthew must be Big Thunder. Yet she was puzzled. He was so strong, a leader of men. And so weak, unable to cope with his own emotions. Contradictory? Yes. A complex man? Yes. Or perhaps there was a completely hidden side to Dr. Matthew Smith.

  They were approaching the driveway to the house, and she noticed a couple from the village pause and gaze into the grounds before going on. Beth wondered what they could see from the road. She stopped in the same spot and realized that with the leaves off the trees, she could for the first time glimpse the house in outline through the woods.

  In that moment she saw the Worthington place as an outsider must, with awe and envy. They didn’t know, as she did, that beyond the towers, behind those imposing wings of many rooms, in a rear yard strewn with chips of wood, a round concrete lid covered the cesspool where her dog had been murdered a few days before.

  Jeffrey stopped her as they rounded the turn in the woods. “And you want something from us,” he said. “You want to be recognized as Beth Worthington and to take your place here as mistress of this house. You want acceptance. We need you, you need us. A simple equation. Reasonable men and women should be able to strike a bargain.”

  “And if we can’t?”

  His face flushed and he turned and looked down into her eyes, and she involuntarily stepped back. He grasped and held her chin between his thumb and forefinger, gripped so tightly her face ached and she winced in pain. He released her.

  “There will be war,” he said, “and we all will b
e the losers—the tenants, the Worthingtons, the lot of us. You, Beth, will lose more than anyone. Remember, you’re alone here. If you keep on you’ll alienate not only the landowners but the family and the townspeople too. Mark my words, you will lose more than anyone.”

  Alone. Thunder was dead and she was alone. Why had the dog been killed? Revenge by the farmers who had been attacked by the dog when he was protecting her? Or was someone trying to frighten her away from the Worthington estate?

  She gasped. A more terrifying possibility came to her. Now that Thunder, who had protected her, was gone, she was defenseless. Was someone attempting not to frighten her but to actually injure her, remove her from the estate? Someone who had not hesitated to kill her only guardian?

  Lost in her thoughts, Beth almost ran into John Price who was pushing a wheelbarrow heavy with building stones. The muscles in John’s bare arms stood out large and strong. He smiled and Beth nodded. He made her uneasy, for she sensed his deference concealed a feeling of complete superiority to her and to all women. How can you resist me? his look seemed to ask. Despite the fact that she often felt attracted to strong, massive-looking men, she was repelled by the thought of John touching her.

  The pillars soared above her head, and she paused on the front steps when she heard a horse on the drive. Charles was shaking his head when he drove up in the buggy. “Still no one,” he said. “I decided I was being no help at the store so I came home.” Beth and Jeffrey entered the front door after Charles.

  Dr. Smith was waiting for them in the hall. He was dressed in black as he had been the first day she met him. She had seen him only briefly in the last week. He called on Mrs. Worthington daily and when he spoke to Beth, he was polite and distant. Preoccupied, she decided.

  They walked to the library where the doctor declined a sherry. He spoke to Jeffrey and Beth.

  “Your grandmother is better,” he said. “You should know, however, she will never be completely well. She’ll have recoveries followed by relapses. Each relapse will be more severe than the last, each recovery less complete.”

  “I think we suspected as much,” Jeffrey said. He held his hand to his face and looked guardedly at Matthew, seeming to take his measure as he would a rival swordsman before a duel.

  Jeffrey asked a question about his grandmother’s condition and Matthew elaborated. Beth studied them, three generations of men, Charles, Matthew, Jeffrey.

  Charles—weary, likeable Charles. Had he been involved in the attack on her the night of her arrival? Connected with Mrs. Jamison’s injury? The dog’s death? Not personally, she was sure. He had, though, a. strong motive to force her to leave—the continuation of the Worthington estate as he knew it. He appeared more concerned with the family than did Jeffrey himself.

  Jeffrey—dark, volatile, exciting. She could believe anything of Jeffrey. He could, she knew, be tender and loving. Or he could react with violence and without thought. She remembered the dog’s violent fate and told herself that Jeffrey seemed genuinely fond of animals and that his shock and dismay when Thunder was killed were believable. He had, however, the most reason for wanting her gone.

  Matthew—warm, reserved, needing her. A man beyond her ken, beyond her experience. Could he be only what he appeared, a bereft man who channeled his energy into the cause of the tenant farmers? Could he be more devious? He was the one who actually benefited from her suspicions of the Worthingtons. He stood to gain the most if she turned her back on the family.

  Matthew was leaving. He bowed formally to the two men before walking with her to the door. “May I call for you tomorrow?” he asked. “About ten?”

  “Of course,” she said, surprised. He pressed her hand and was gone.

  Beth was waiting the next morning when he arrived. She had been up early and had seen Jeffrey and Charles leave at seven with Jonas Weeks. Not one of the tenants had paid his rent the day before. Jeffrey, though, was calm, as if he had expected this and now knew exactly what he must do.

  Matthew took her hand and helped her into his gig. “Beautiful,” he said. She was wearing a full ecru silk dress, really a Sunday dress, with circling red and orange stitching. The neckline was square and deeper than on any of her other dresses.

  They rode to the doctor’s house. “I have a surprise for you,” he said. She followed him inside to the bedroom door. He smiled at her hesitation.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I know I acted foolishly the other night.” He opened the door and she looked in. The sunlight from the three windows showed her an empty room. No bed, no dresser, no furniture of any sort. The outline of the mirror and the pictures showed on the wall, but the mirror and pictures themselves were gone. The room seemed much smaller than she remembered.

  “I’m going to use this as a box room,” Matthew said. He went to the window and pushed it open and looked across the overgrown garden to the creek.

  “Listen,” he said. She joined him at the window. A horn sounded in the distance. Another sharp blast, closer this time, then another and yet another.

  “What do they mean?” she asked.

  He sighed. “I was afraid Jeffrey would do this.” The air was filled with the sound of horns. “I’m needed out there,” he told her.

  “Let me go with you.”

  He faced her and placed his hands lightly on her arms. She recalled Jeffrey’s rough hand on her face the day before. He bent and kissed her tenderly on the lips. “All right,” he said and led the way from the empty room.

  Her mind returned again to the summer when she was ten, and she once more felt the wagon lurch over the crest of the hill and careen out of control toward the creek bed far below.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “In here,” Matthew said and led Beth to the parlor where he opened the closet and handed her a bundle of clothes. She recognized the calico she had worn during the night of the bonfire on the mountain.

  “Put this on,” he told her, “and you’ll be able to come and go as you please.”

  Beth hesitated. “Pins,” she said, deciding. “Have you any pins? My dress is too long.”

  Matthew hurried from the room and returned with a handful of clasps. “I use them for bandages,” he explained. He left and shut the door. She undressed and raised her hem by twelve inches, left the petticoats on a chair, put on the dress, and slid the calico over the silk. She examined the results in the mirror.

  “Good, good,” Matthew said impatiently from the doorway. He was hooded and costumed in white. She paused. The dress bulged beneath the calico. Probably no bulkier than some of the farmers’ clothes, she reassured herself.

  “Hurry.” Matthew held the door, and she left the mirror. They went through the hall and into the yard. Horns sounded sporadically. Horses’ hooves thudded by on the road, and she heard a man shout in the distance.

  “Let’s go,” Matthew said and trampled over the dried stalks of the garden. Three hooded, calicoed figures trotted past on the road beyond the creek. Were those muskets in their hands? Beth’s breathing quickened.

  The seven stones crossing the water looked dry and firm in the daylight. Matthew grasped her hand and stepped quickly from one to the other, and in a moment they were on the other side climbing the bank to the road.

  Footsteps thudded toward them. Matthew pulled her to the top of the bank, and the running man saw them and slowed. He motioned with the pitchfork he carried at his side. “The Lewis farm,” he panted. “The sheriff and five deputies. Lewis is being evicted.”

  “We’re coming,” Matthew called after him.

  “Charles Lewis’s place,” Matthew said half to himself. He pulled her along by the hand. “Not far,” he told her. “To the left over the bridge, maybe a quarter mile.” She ran to match his pace, legs struggling against the cumbersome dress and calico robe.

  Horns, horns, horns. Ahead and on both sides of them. And the farmers came, from the south and north and west, along the road and across the fields, singly, in pairs, in groups. Dressed i
n calico and brandishing clubs, rakes, pitchforks, scythes.

  A peddler had pulled his wagon to the side of the road, and before he swung the wooden panel shut, Beth saw assorted kitchen wares displayed inside—graters, dippers, spoons, ladles, strainers. The peddler latched and locked the wagon, all the while muttering under his breath.

  “What did he say?” Beth asked Matthew.

  “‘Bad for business, bad for business’,” he told her. Matthew’s hand was tight on her fingers, and her hand was sore and her breath came in gasps. “There’s the farm.” Matthew lengthened his stride. Beth held her aching side with her free hand.

  The road filled with men in flowing robes, going forward, resolute. More joined from a road intersecting on the right. Two horsemen galloped by along the edge of the field.

  The Lewis farmhouse was a wooden saltbox with a barn, a wagon shed, and a privy behind. A buggy waited in the yard, the horse pawing the dirt. Other horses neighed restlessly. Hooded men milled about the yard, shouting and blowing horns. There were three or four boys and a few women, too, Beth noticed, relieved. She wasn’t as conspicuous as she feared.

  A short, white-robed man left the throng and held out his hand to Matthew with two fingers extended. They shook hands. The man glanced at Beth, back to Matthew. “Doctor,” he said, recognizing him despite the hood, “I’m glad you’re here. The sheriff and his deputies are inside.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Four or five. They’ve been here for about ten minutes.”

  “Let’s get them out,” Matthew said. The hooded men who had gathered around them murmured approval. “Bring in as many men as you can.”

  He walked to the stoop. Beth had expected him to take her with him, but he did not—he seemed to have forgotten she existed. She ran to follow him and pushed between two men into the house. The front door opened into a low room with rough-hewn beams across the ceiling. Four men and a woman were inside, two men sitting at a table before the fireplace, two standing to one side with long-barreled rifles held in front of them.