He reins in the mare, and elbows me. I slide off, and he follows. Sounds of battle blend with the roar of the river through the gorge.
“Tie her up,” he says. “Fetch my sacks.”
It rankles me to take his orders again, but now is not a time for protest. I act quickly. He grabs boxes and bags from the cart, squats, and sets to work, mixing stuffs in a wooden bowl, rubbing them together.
I wait to see if he needs me, but he seems to forget I’m there. His fingers unwrap parcels, pry open vials and capsules. Too slow, too slow, and still the battle sounds roar.
It must bode well. Somehow we still stand. Do you? I edge away slowly, moving toward the sounds. Here the river sits in the gorge below, flanked on either
side by high rock faces. I am only a few yards from the ledge, and from the noise, it seems the fighters aren’t far distant. It was well planned to meet the ships here, before the landing, here where Roswell men have the advantage of height and cover, where it’s hard for homelanders to leave their ships and reach our men.
Trees are thin, bushes sparse. I crouch and creep forward, until at last I’m crawling on my hands and knees. I can hear men’s voices, murmuring low to one another through the brush, but I haven’t reached the lip of the ledge yet. I’m not sure if I dare to.
Through a veil of autumn grass I see a man sitting on his haunches, his feet pulled in tight to his legs. He is folded like a cricket. Long white fingers twitch like antennae over the barrel of his gun. It is the schoolmaster. He pushes his hair out of his eyes and ducks low to avoid the battle. He revolts me—to lurk like this, while you and Darrel stand in harm’s way.
I crawl around behind him. Rupert Gillis never notices. He only has ears for battle sounds.
I proceed more cautiously now.
Footsteps. I flatten myself to the ground and try not to breathe.
They stop directly before me, and a gun barrel waves before my nose.
I look up to see you train your aim on me.
LXXXIII.
You’re alive.
Your face is pale. Your eyes are terrified. You lower your gun.
“Judith?”
You use my name. Not “Miss Finch.” I rise to my feet.
“What are you doing here?” Your eyes race back and forth, over me and back to the gorge. Are you more angry, or afraid?
“Please go home,” you say. “This is no place for you. You’ll be hurt, and I won’t be able to . . .” Your attention snaps elsewhere, like a hunting dog sniffing the wind.
You look like someone trapped in a nightmare. I should pity you, but I’m so happy to see you alive.
“Please go home,” you say again. “Please.”
Do you suppose I’m here just to follow you? I wonder. I could almost laugh.
I shake my head. I won’t go home. Yes, I should laugh— I’m a wife now, independent.
Every gunshot makes you turn toward the battle, toward the men who venture forward, shoot, then scurry back again.
“Lucas,” comes a whispered shout. “We’re nearly out of shot.”
You turn toward the voice, but I prevent you. I seize your hand and tug you toward your father. You resist, but not too much. Surprise, I think, works for me. You come. We both duck low through the grasses. I don’t relinquish your hand. Hard-calloused and hot, damp with sweat, furred with hair on the back. I’m giddy in this moment, which is wicked, with puffs of dark smoke rising into the blue sky, and balls shrieking through the air, but I hold your hand in mine.
You stagger back and yank my prize away. “What am I doing?” you say. “Judith, I can’t come with you!”
It wounds me to grunt my bestial noises at you.
“Come!” I say, clearly enough.
You stop in your tracks and stare at me. Which of us is more amazed? If you think mine is a voice from the past, wait only a moment longer.
I seize your hand once more, and you let yourself be led.
And there. I part the grass and show you your father, squatting, feverishly fashioning death.
LXXXIV.
You don’t recognize him at first. How could you? Then he sees you. Sees me touching you. Sees how tall and full you’ve grown.
“Lucas.” You stare at him, and then at me. Your eyes bore through me, first through my mouth, then my dress, my dark memories, and you begin to understand—or think you do. Horror curls back your lips. I stand naked before you both. I want to sink into these weeds and crawl away.
I hadn’t thought this far.
I’ve killed you. Killed your pity for me. Killed your father again before you. I have no tongue to swallow the gall I taste so well. For here you stand, and there he crouches, and all around us cannon fire rains down, and the cries of the wounded climb like geese into the bright October blue.
LXXXV.
One cry I know. Darrel. He’s hurt. Mother and Father and I were so accustomed to Darrel’s baby cries we almost stopped responding. Papa’s little brat, Mother’s darling, a chatterbox in ringlets. Such a shame the pretty face was given to the son. All this I consider as I tear away from your father and his pretty son, for once glad to be rid of the sight of you.
I follow Darrel’s cry. Too lusty to be dying. Bless his fool mouth, he’ll have a whole ship’s crew on him in a moment if he doesn’t stop that yowling.
I approach from behind and find him in a matted hollow of tamped-down weeds, Pa’s pistol sprawled beside him. Much too close to the edge of the gorge, his clothing singed and spotted. He’s whole, intact, and for a moment I can’t make out what’s wrong, until I see strands of smoke rising from his boot.
I hook my arms beneath his shoulders and pull him far back from the battle, under the shelter of a willow tree. He is solid but I am strong.
“Thanks, mate,” he says, whimpering. I drop him and show myself. His shocked expression reminds me of yours, a moment ago.
“Worm!”
Ah. Nothing changes Darrel.
I kneel by his feet and worry the boot off. Half of it is clean gone, and the inner curve of his foot is drenched in red. I suck in my breath, trying not to frighten him. With his boot and stocking off, it looks like something has taken a bite out of his inner foot. The heel and toes are there, but the bone between the ankle and large toe is bare and weeping blood.
I’ve seen animals butchered. I’ve seen abscesses lanced and other gruesome sights. But never my baby brother’s own pink flesh.
I raise his leg and wrap my apron tightly around the wound. He gasps in pain.
If Mother were here, she’d be in a state.
I try to imagine how this could have happened. How cannon fire from the riverbed, or even the soldiers who’ve scaled the wall, could have shot him in this way. It makes no sense.
He lies crying on his back, staring up into the sky. Of course! Poor idiot. He shot himself.
I bite my lips. There’s no laughing at his white bones. But oh, the foolish soldier boy.
Tears roll out his eye sockets and drip into his ears.
His foot bound fast and propped high on a rock, I move behind him and lift his head into my lap. He turns and buries his face against my knee. I try my best to murmur comforting sounds from within my throat. A hiss through my lips resembles the shushing sound I made when I rocked him as a baby.
With Darrel, nothing changes.
LXXXVI.
We sit, watching the battle from afar, like poor children watching a party at a rich man’s house across a pond. It has nothing to do with us, so we feast upon the spectacle. The sun sets, and the glorious sky purples off over the ocean that brought these ships on her bosom. The prize land toward the west that the homelanders dream of subduing is saffron gold. Fireflies wink around us, just like the incendiaries that burn red and snuff out. The night grows chill. We huddle together for warmth. Darrel quivers with pain that won’t let him sleep. He squeezes my hand so tightly, my fingertips turn white. He doesn’t speak.
Neither do I.
L
XXXVII.
How can this battle have lasted so long? What has become of you and of the colonel? Should I begin to hope? Against all odds, our puny few have lasted this long, apparently without my help. Could I not have gone to the colonel? Bitter, bitter thought. Do I intend to keep my promise? Am I a wife indeed? Do I owe my old jailer anything?
It was your idea, Lucas, to engage them here by the gorge, I think. You wore the colonel’s mantle well. If you survive this day, your place in the village will be made sure, all former taint from him erased.
You’ll be farther from me than ever, if unreachable wasn’t already far enough.
And I’ll be in a hut in the woods. Unless I want another tragedy on my soul. I remember his threats.
All for nothing, then, and no one to mourn me. The village won’t even count it a price paid. Nothing for nothing is fair barter, at least.
No laces, no feast for this bride.
LXXXVIII.
Only the faintest trace of twilight left in the sky. Darrel sleeps now. I no longer have to hide the pleasure I feel at the warmth of his body near mine. It’s a cold world when no one will touch you. My father used to hold me on his lap in the evenings. I loved the sweaty, woodsy smell of him. He never knew me as I am now. In my memory, he is ever warm, alert, interested in what I have to say. In my memory I can speak to him, sing him my little-girl songs.
LXXXIX.
You run along the bank, waving your arms and shouting, “Fall back! Fall back!”
I jump. Darrel stirs. What can be happening? A retreat? Men scurry out from their hiding places near the edge like quail before a hunter’s step. I hadn’t known there were so many so close by. They run, crouching low, and gather, some under my tree. Without meaning to, I cry out, startled by how many men were so close all along without my knowing.
By the light of a pair of lanterns, I can see that the men on the other side are doing the same.
I begin to understand. And I wonder, are we back far enough?
XC.
Stooping, peering in the dim light, some men take notice of me, and their eyebrows rise. The schoolmaster. Abijah Pratt. Mr. Johnson, Maria’s father. They wonder at me, but not for long. I am not one of the women and children who should be preserved at all cost. I might as well be here. Other men, the strangers from Pinkerton, pause to inspect me. What they don’t know about me shows in their wide, curious eyes. I see you loping along the edge of the gorge, your face lit by something bulky and sparkling.
There is a sound like a pebble dropped down a well.
Another. And another. Little thuds as the things land wherever they do. On a floor?
On the ships.
Then:
The earth breaks open with such a loud clap, we fall back and hit our heads on the ground, me and all the watchers crouching under the tree. Even lying on our backs we see it, a wall of flame that rises into the sky above the rim of the gully. We feel its heat blast our faces.
Another roar. Another cascade of fire.
“What’s happened?” Darrel wakes up whimpering.
“Fire from heaven,” says the voice of Preacher Frye. I turn. I hadn’t expected to find him here.
Pathetic screams rise up from the crevice, and horrid smells. There are more explosions, lesser sounds. Their artillery catching fire. Oily black smoke pollutes the bright inferno.
Two booms. Not three.
Silhouetted against the pulsing flames, far off to one side, I see the colonel pace back and forth. Does he realize we can see him? He’s troubled. Why only two explosions?
“That’s Ezra Whiting,” says an older voice behind me, sounding like he’s seeing a ghost. Which, I suppose, he is. A ghost or an angel of fire.
“Ezra Whiting?”
“Can’t be.”
“Who’s Ezra?”
“That’s him, plain as day. Colonel Whiting. He’s s’posed to be dead.”
Your surname has started a fire of its own, here where we sit cowering before our deliverance.
“Ezra!” A man calls out.
“What brung him here?”
You freeze. You hear their voices. In the dark, you can’t see your watchers, so you forgot we could see both of you. “Where in Jesus’s name has he been all this time?”
XCI.
Your army may be in a stupor, but you are not. With urgent cries, you summon your men to your side. You train your aim on something in the gorge below. The third ship. Those men will be desperate now. Perhaps they are swarming off their decks and risking the perilous climb for a last, desperate battle. Even one ship full of homelanders is more than enough men. And they will fight like wounded bears.
I watch Roswell Station men load and shoot. Boys Darrel’s age frantically help load guns. Whining bullets land in the dust, not far from where we sit. I tug Darrel backward as much as I can.
I see, in silhouette, a Roswell Station man collapse to the ground.
Was it not enough, the aid I brought?
XCII.
No one else is looking at your father. No one else but me sees Abijah Pratt walk straight toward him and slam him in the shoulders with both fists. The colonel topples like mown hay. Now others see, and you do, too. You’re on Abijah Pratt in seconds, yanking him off your father’s body.
Abijah Pratt’s arms windmill in the air, his screams rise over the shrieking fire. Someone helps your father up. He dusts himself off and stalks away, trying not to seem to favor one knee.
Abijah attacking the colonel! Now, while we fight for our lives? Does Abijah blame the colonel for his daughter’s death? Will others do the same when they thread together his incriminating history? This man, thought dead, emerges from the woods loaded with gunpowder, and stands a likely culprit for all that’s gone wrong since he left.
When they scuffled, it formed in me a vivid impression, but of what, I do not know. Like a familiar tune that takes you back to the last time that you heard it sung, with all the sensations of that moment, which make no sense in the present time.
XCIII.
A handful of men restrain Abijah Pratt. Your father’s eyes are wild as he circles, taking them all in. Like a caged animal, coiling to strike. Abijah Pratt makes another feint in the colonel’s direction. Still gunshots ring through the gorge. Your father looks past Abijah to the commotion there, like a man in a trance. He bends down and picks up the bundle he was tending. He works at it feverishly. The other men watch in silence, as if they have entered his trance.
A spark, and then another. The colonel holds the prize aloft and waves at the others to fall back. He sets his sights on something below and starts a limping canter toward it.
We both realize at the same moment. I know. Your “No!” could reach across the ocean to the homelanders’ wives and children.
You break ranks to catch him.
No. He leaps from the edge, for a second his legs spinning like Abijah’s arms.
He drops from view.
Your back, your shoulders, your legs heave forward.
No.
Mr. Johnson tackles you. You fall upon him.
A roar shakes the earth. A flash of light like noonday.
Dark figures pull you both from the precipice and the quivering heat.
When all is sorted out, the last ship, too, is ashes, and your father with it.
XCIV.
The final explosion dwarfs the others. The shouts and cries I heard from the riverbed will echo in my mind forever and make me wonder if my choice was good.
Is it comfort enough to know that they’d have done it to us if they could? And were it not for the miracle you’ve wrought today, they would. Good war-makers we are, you and I.
XCV.
They hold you pinioned like a prisoner, with your struggling arms behind you. They don’t let go until they’re sure you won’t leap after him to save him. I bless the men protecting you. In the column of fire, I see you turn and search among the dark watchers. You find me, and we gaze at each other.
&
nbsp; You and I both know it. You and I both will feel it.
XCVI.
He is dead.
Swiftly dead. No suffering, no waiting, no remembering. His tale will be told for generations. He’s the hero in the flames.
A coward, more like, that he should snatch glory and immortality and die burning like a sun, rather than sink slowly into the grave confessing his sins.
I will never see his face again, except in nightmares. I am rid of my promise to him. He can never threaten nor frighten me again.
Then why do I cry at his dying?
XCVII.
Smoke eats a hole in the dark sky.
Darrel lies maimed before me.
Your father is dead. The homelanders are extinct, their bodies flying up to the stars. I won’t have to see this thing that I have done.
Survivors search with lighted branches for the injured and the dead.
The river churns and swirls over ink-black stones, singing its endless song.
And we are both alive this night,
you,
and I.
Book Two
I.
The horse. The dappled mare. Where could she be after all this commotion? I haven’t even the means to whistle for her. I shake my brother. I stick two fingers in my mouth and make a charade of whistling.
“Huh?”
Oh, the torture of it.
I prod his shoulder. Bounce my head up and down. Blow through my lips, spread wide by my fingers. I buffoon myself when I try to be understood.
“Whistle?”
I nod.
“You want me to whistle?”
I nod so hard it gives me headache.
“Why?”
I could pull out my hair. Better, his. I jab him again. Do it, idiot. I can’t carry you home.