Shiloh

by Lori Benton

  They buried them so, where Ian’s kin rested on the ridge overlooking Mountain Laurel. Judith’s mother would have taken their remains into her keeping and seen them buried at Chesterfield, but Ian wouldn’t hear of it.

  The day of the burial was the first he had seen Lucinda Cameron since Mandy’s first birthday, when the woman had descended upon them like a crow bearing baubles, with nothing but disdain for the state into which her youngest daughter had sunk—living in the cabin once relegated to Mountain Laurel’s overseer, with no domestic help save Naomi. The only thing the woman approved was Mandy, but the gleam in her eyes as she dandled his daughter on her lap had not pleased Ian. Mandy was her only living grandchild, the union between Rosalyn and Gideon Pryce, Chesterfield’s master, having thus far borne no fruit.

  Anticipating conflict from the Chesterfield contingent, Ian set Charlie Spencer as guard over his daughter. While Lucinda was permitted to visit with Mandy, Charlie wasn’t to let the pair out of his sight.

  Ian lingered at the gravesite with Malcolm after the others began the long walk down the ridge, then descended the trail with the old man, aiding his way. Catching Charlie’s raised voice as they reached the cabins, Ian sprinted ahead.

  “No, ma’am! I ain’t lettin’ go this child. I got my orders, which don’t include you taking her off her daddy’s land.”

  Ian came panting up the track past the stable. Gideon Pryce had departed, taking his mother and sister in one of their two coaches. The liveried driver perched atop the remaining coach—Jubal, Mountain Laurel’s former stableman—appeared to take no notice of the attempted abduction playing out below. Charlie held on to Mandy, frocked in a gown Judith had sewn, while Lucinda attempted to pry the child from his arms. Mandy screamed in fear of their raised voices, their clasping fingers. Ally and Naomi hovered nearby, the latter looking furious enough to attack her former mistress should she prevail in the tug-of-war.

  “Unhand my granddaughter,” Lucinda demanded. “I have every right to her.”

  “That ye do not!” Ian thundered over his daughter’s crying, shouldering Lucinda back from Charlie and taking Mandy into his embrace.

  Overwrought and bewildered, Mandy sobbed into his shoulder. “Mama . . . Mama!”

  Lucinda stepped back, grief and fury pinching her features. “The child needs a mother. And a decent providing. Judith’s sister shall raise her—at Chesterfield,” she added, casting a look of loathing at what was left of Mountain Laurel.

  Rosalyn’s pale face peered from the coach’s window. Earlier, Ian had been startled at the change in her when she had alighted from the coach. Though still golden-haired and lush of figure, the gloss had worn off her beauty in the two years since she wed Gideon Pryce, leaving a more brittle version. She had not spoken during the burial, though more than once he had caught her chilling stare.

  Rosalyn said nothing now. Her blue eyes burned with jealous longing as they fastened on Mandy.

  “My daughter,” Ian said with emphasis, “stays with me. And I’ll ask ye civilly—the once—to get into your coach and go home. Both of ye.”

  To his surprise Lucinda did so, sweeping her black skirts into the conveyance before Jubal could climb down to assist. She made no threats. No promises to wrest Mandy from him by other means. “For today” was all she said.

  Far from reassured, Ian closed the coach’s door and gave Jubal a nod. An instant before the man snapped the lines and urged the horses forward, Rosalyn leaned nearer the coach’s window, her voice cold and clear.

  “You never deserved her, Cousin.”

  “Aye,” Ian whispered against his daughter’s head as the coach wheels rattled on the drive. “In that we are agreed.”

  10 May 1796

  To Ian Cameron

  Mountain Laurel

  Your Mama says it is fine for me to write. No one here will read this but me, and I will seal it and post it my own self. Give my regards to Miss Judith if you will and tell her.

  Gabriel is walking good. Talking too. Mister Robert says he will not take my Baby from me. He will take us both into his Family if I want, or just Gabriel. I wish the choice was No one is making me do anything. Is that what you wanted to hear?

  It is a Wonder I can speak to you from so far distant. I admire the sight of words put down by my hand. That is all I have to say.

  Seona

  “It’s dated two days after Judith died,” Ian said, staring at the well-creased letter in John’s hand, his own lying restless on the Reynolds’ table. John passed the letter to Cecily, seated beside him, who held it to a nearby candle’s light to better read.

  Ian clenched his hands, going over in his mind all Seona had not said, the things she had begun only to scratch out—not well enough to disguise the words beneath. What had she wanted Judith to know?

  He glanced aside to where Mandy played on a rug with Robin, a pile of whittled farm animals between them. No word had come from Chesterfield in the fortnight since the ugly confrontation with Lucinda and Rosalyn. Still the threat of interference lay like a shadow across his mind.

  His son in Boston. His daughter here. He ached to protect them both. Provide for both. Raise both—a prospect too raw to risk examination.

  Cecily set the letter on the table and reached for his fisted hand, covering it with her own. “It is good to see these words from Seona—such a bright soul to have learned so well, as she did the français I once taught her. But, Ian, does she truly not know what it is she wants? Or does she hesitate to own to it?”

  For two days, since the letter’s arrival, Ian had wondered the same, trying to read between those few lines. Is that what you wanted to hear?

  He wanted to know her heart on the matter.

  “Did I do wrong, sending her and Gabriel north? I wonder if it only made it harder. Now she’s being forced to make decisions for herself she’d no way to prepare for.”

  “What other way could she learn?” John countered. “Besides, you had little choice. They couldn’t stay in North Carolina.”

  “Don’t forget Lily is with her,” Cecily said. “I think it would take a great deal to frighten Lily into seeing Seona do anything against her will. I cannot imagine your parents would do such a thing as to pressure them so. Can you?”

  “No,” Ian admitted, but there was only one way he could learn these things to his satisfaction, and it wasn’t from eight hundred miles away with weeks or months between letters that obscured more than they revealed. “But I think I must return to Boston. As soon as I can manage it.”

  John’s brows rose. “To see this situation sorted?”

  Ian’s glance flicked to Cecily, whose open dismay showed her quicker grasp of the truth. “Not a visit, John. I think it best to divest myself of Mountain Laurel and return north. To stay.”

  The depth of disappointment on their faces was, in its way, a comfort.

  John cleared his throat. “I cannot say the notion hasn’t crossed my mind, but, Ian, let me counsel you not to do anything hastily. Judith’s passing has changed things but—”

  “John,” Ian interrupted. “I’ve no intention of shrugging Judith off like an ill-fitted coat . . .” He put a hand across his lips, ears ringing with the silence at the table. They hadn’t seen him grieving, not since they witnessed his son’s baptism, then watched the bairn follow his mother out of this life into the next. They hadn’t seen a tear since. Only one other had.

  When everyone else had left them at Judith’s grave, Ian had knelt, Malcolm beside him. They had wept together and talked of Judith, of the bond she and Mountain Laurel’s oldest slave had formed in those trying weeks before Gabriel’s birth. It had been Malcolm as well who guided Ian to a place of surrender to the Almighty, a yielding of his willful heart. Only with Malcolm had he shared the depth of his grief or the guilt he struggled to release.

  “I’m not ready to think beyond doing what’s best for my children,” he said now. “If I remain here, I risk losing both. Rosalyn Pryce will raise Mandy
over my dead body, but I can hardly suffer the notion of Gabriel calling another man father any better now that . . .”

  Cecily wiped away a tear. “Now that there may be another way?”

  Ian nodded.

  John looked at him across the table, head tilted as though listening. After a moment, he reached to grasp Ian’s wrist. “We are going to miss you. All of you. Terribly.”

  “Ye’re not rid of me yet,” Ian said, needing to lighten the moment. “I’m going to need your help.”

  “What help, my friend? I’ll do what I can.”

  “My uncle’s land was precious to him. Too much so. Still, I’ll not see it entrusted to just anyone. In fact, I’ll not sell it at all unless it be to ye and Cecily.”

  4

  He should have waited until after their dinner to broach the topic that had them letting Naomi’s good ham soup cool in their bowls. Cool being a relative term in the kitchen at midday, even with the door propped wide to let in breeze and sunlight. Naomi had paused in feeding Mandy, spoon suspended, when Ian cleared his throat and asked, “What would ye three think of no longer being enslaved to me? Or to any man,” he clarified.

  While dumbfounded surprise marked his mother’s and grandfather’s faces, Ally sputtered, “M-mister Ian . . . you aiming to sell us to a woman? You don’t mean Miss Lucinda! No, sir. I would not like that. She one mean white lady.”

  “Ally!” Naomi batted his meaty arm. “That ain’t what Mister Ian means.” She eyed Ian, suddenly wary. “Is it?”

  “It is not,” Ian said.

  Gazing at the spoon still hovering inches from her face, Mandy smacked her lips. With a trembling hand, Naomi popped it into her mouth. “We’d take our freedom, Mister Ian, if that’s what you offering. But then . . . where we to go?”

  “Go?” Ally blurted. “But them horses. This their home—and mine.”

  “Mister Ian,” Malcolm cut in with considered calm, “might ye share what it is exactly ye have in mind to do wi’ us?”

  “Aye,” Ian said, relieved for the chance. “Though I’m not yet certain what I mean to do—with myself, I mean—once Mandy and I get there. But I won’t hold ye in slavery any longer.”

  To his consternation, tears welled in Naomi’s eyes. “Get there? You taking this baby away?” She put a hand on Mandy’s head, as if expecting him to sweep his daughter out of the kitchen and make off for parts unknown.

  “Aye. To Boston.” Ian set down his spoon and tried to say it plain. “I’m asking whether ye three want to go with us. Ye’d be free in the north. Free to stay with me, and welcome, or to go your way.”

  Understanding banished Naomi’s dismay but left her feathers ruffled. “Why couldn’t you say so to start with?” She popped another spoonful of soup into Mandy’s mouth, catching dribbles with its edge. “Ain’t kind to go scaring a body like that.”

  Ian’s face warmed. “I’ve said it poorly but . . . what d’ye think?”

  “Boston?” Ally looked from one face at the table to another. “Where that at?”

  “’Tis where Seona and Lily went,” his grandfather reminded him. “A long way from here.”

  “A world away,” Ian agreed. “But I hope ye’ll come.”

  “Ye dinna want us here, tending the place for ye?” Malcolm asked.

  “It won’t be mine to tend. I’m selling Mountain Laurel to John Reynold.”

  “Mister John gonna own this land?” Naomi said after another stunned silence.

  “We’ve agreed upon it.” His uncle’s solicitor would arrive on the morrow to facilitate the arrangement. “Here’s the thing about ye three, though. I’d see ye manumitted before leaving the state, but there’s reason for me to go as soon as may be.”

  “Miss Lucinda,” Naomi muttered.

  “Aye. And reason for reaching Boston quick as I can manage.” He told them of his da’s offer to adopt Seona and Gabriel, of Seona’s uncertainty. “I want ye to have free papers, but the time it’ll take to arrange them concerns me. Weeks. Maybe months.”

  Naomi and Malcolm shared a look. When she gave a nod, he said, “That’s all right, Mister Ian. Take us north wi’ ye, call us free. It’ll be enough.”

  It is enough. Judith’s dying words pierced him afresh. He denied them again with the force of conviction. He hadn’t done enough for these three either. But it was all he had at present. The promise of freedom and whatever support and protection he could lend.

  “Amen, Daddy.” Naomi leaned over to give Mandy’s head a kiss. “Like it say in the Bible, Mister Ian. Where you go, we go. Keep doing like we do.”

  Ian caught Malcolm’s gaze, sensing a transaction had taken place, one as binding as what would happen on the morrow. Only by the sale of the ground they had plowed with their sweat, sowed with their tears, reaped without possibility of gain, could he hope to give them something more lasting.

  “Right then,” he said, trying not to sound as choked as he felt. “We’ll go together. Though if ye change your minds down the road, I’ll help ye toward the path of your choosing, as well as I’m able. On that I give ye my word. And . . .” He swallowed, knowing the appalling inadequacy of what he meant next to say. “I want to thank ye—each of ye—for your service to my kin. It was never your choosing but . . .”

  “Mister Ian,” Naomi said gravely. “There been hard times in this place, plenty hard and mean. We bear the marks on body and soul. But ain’t none of us chafing under the yoke you lay.”

  When Ian could speak, he said, “I don’t mean to lay any yoke upon ye. Ever again.”

  “But you need us,” Naomi said. “You and Mandy.”

  As if to underscore her statement, his daughter made an urgent gurgle. Naomi spooned more soup down her.

  “’Tis the Almighty casts our lots,” Malcolm added. “I learned that long ago from the man first preached Jesus to me, back when Naomi here was a wee lassie learning to cook. I never expected the day to dawn I’d be a free man on this earth, to come and go as I pleased, but long ere ye lived to walk it, Mister Ian, I was set free in my spirit. I’ve told ye as much. No’ that I’m ungrateful for what ye’re doing,” he added. “My life is all but spent, but Naomi and Ally, they’ve a heap o’ living yet to do.”

  Ian reached to lay his hand over the old man’s, rested on the table. “I know.”

  “Well, I don’t know any such thing,” Naomi said, eyes gone moist with tears. “Daddy, you’ll outlive us all.”

  Ally had followed the conversation, a beat behind the rest. “So we going to Boston, we gonna be free, but . . . what about them horses? They going too?”

  “Ruaidh and Juturna for certain,” Ian said. “Perhaps her dam. And we’ll be needing a team with draft blood to pull a wagon.”

  Ally half leapt from his bench at that news. Naomi told him to sit and finish his dinner. The talk turned to travel, the long road north, finally to Lily, Seona, and Gabriel.

  “We gonna see them again!” Ally exclaimed.

  “Ye glad about that?” Ian asked, though the answer was plain.

  “Yes, sir. I miss their faces. Prettiest faces I ever see.”

  “Huh,” Naomi said in feigned offense, even as she and Malcolm chuckled.

  Ian laughed with them, sharing their anticipation, though a pang shot through him, double-edged. Hope cut as deep as sorrow, it seemed. Joy as deep as regret.

  With the air on the ridge warm and clinging, alive with flitting birds, Ian stood on the small parcel of Mountain Laurel containing his resting kin. All was settled, everything drafted, fair-copied, signed, and witnessed. Ian, John, and Charlie had climbed the ridge to bid more than a few farewells. And to speak of the future.

  “For now, I’ll get the lot of us to Boston,” Ian had said as they ascended the trail his uncle’s slaves had worn to the clearing by the burying ground, where they had prayed and sung to the God of their hope. “Then see what follows. Not much as plans go, but I cannot know what I’ll find there.”

  Would his and Mandy’s ar
rival make matters better or worse? None could say. But John, whose opinion he valued, had agreed it was best Ian return to his father’s house and learn for himself what Seona and Lily desired.

  They had trudged along in silence after that, Charlie’s hounds loping ahead, noses to the ground, until they reached the plot of headstones. Ian had first stumbled upon the place before making the fateful choice to marry Judith, thinking Seona lost. The graves had been neglected then, the forest threatening to subsume the stones in its mossy embrace. He had cleared away debris, driving back the wild.

  “We’ll keep it tended,” John assured him. “And give you a moment now.” He shot a glance at Charlie, who chirruped to his milling dogs and shouldered his ever-present rifle. They waited in the deeper shade of the surrounding wood while Ian went among the graves, sweating from the climb. He pulled sticky linen from his chest as he surveyed the collection of markers.

  The oldest belonged to Mountain Laurel’s original settler, who, in disdain for the English, precipitators of his exile and that of countless sons of Scotland, had spoken only the Gàidhlig and caused his slaves to learn it too. Not quite as old were the headstones of his uncle’s first wife, Miranda Cameron—for whom Mandy was named—and their son, Aidan, Seona’s father, dead before her birth.

  “I’ll see them safe,” he promised the kin he had never met. “They’ll want for nothing in my power to provide. Rest knowing it, if ye can hear my words.”

  And, Uncle . . . , he continued in silence, gaze moving to one of the newer stones. Hugh Cameron, his father’s elder half brother, a man misshapen by his choices in life, broken by his loves torn away too soon. A wife and bairn dead in childbirth. Their surviving son taken by violence at eighteen; the ripples of that long-ago tragedy had ever widened, crippling hearts and minds in the silence of their secrets. Forgive me my sins, Uncle, as I have forgiven ye yours.