The Immortal American
L. B. Joramo
Copyright © 2013 by L.B. Joramo
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Dedication
For my son, Reid
Prologue
19 April 1775
My sights aligned on two men, both on horseback, talking heatedly in the forest. Not even the bright afternoon sun could shine through the dense Massachusetts trees to where they were mounted. Dark shadows distorted their faces, making young and handsome into grotesque and macabre.
They were less than three feet from each other, and my rifle inched sideways from one man to the other. Their horses were drawn tight against each other’s, circling and tearing into the ground in a nervous dance, sensing the tension from their riders, from the moment, from the God-forsaken day. The riders’ irate tones were periodically interrupted by a far-off musket shot and, occasionally, a terrified scream.
Shrouded by an overgrown juniper bush, I was no more than thirty yards away from the arguing men. Tiny thorns imbedded themselves in my arms, legs, and stomach, tearing my skin, reddening my already filthy arms. I was numb to it all.
They were the last two people I loved on this damned earth, those two angry men: Mathew and Jacque. They were all I had to live for, those riders in my rifle’s sights.
Chapter One: The Menacing Shot
Two months earlier in Concord, Massachusetts . . .
The scent of gunpowder filled my nostrils and the back of my mouth. I’d always thought gunpowder and the earth smelled alike, both heady and slightly sour. But gunpowder stung my nose with its odor, while dirt comforted. Soil provided, while powder had a fate of its own.
Pulling back the dogshead to halfcocked on my long rifle, I placed a large pinch of gunpowder into the priming pan, then closed the frizzen. After dropping the butt of my Kentucky musket to the ground, I poured more powder from my horn into the barrel then dropped a round lead ball into the four-foot long gullet of my gun.
“My dear, are you sure you wouldn’t want some help loading that gigantic gun?” Mr. Randolph said, while glancing down my dress’ neckline. Ass.
“Randolph,” Mr. Clark said, “Adams assured us that the good woman can load her own weapon.” But Mr. Clark took the powder horn from my hands. Appearing to pour more down the barrel of my rifle, which would make it far more dangerous to myself than my target, my fiancé, Mathew Adams, snatched the horn away.
“Clark,” Mathew winked at me before turning his attention to Mr. Clark, “she seems set with the powder already.”
Not accustomed to so much gentlemanly help, I stood mute, likely looking like an idiot to all the world. Mayhap not the entire world, but what felt like it to me. Thirty yards away, my fellow Concordians were having a potluck upon the lush green Common. A couple tavern owners had lent the Common a few tables and chairs and ale, and we, the villagers, had brought the food—cranberry and honey cakes, varieties of meats, cheeses, dried fruit, Anadama bread with apple butter, and, my favorite, freshly picked blueberries.
Mathew had invited his two colleagues, Mr. Clark and Mr. Randolph, all Harvard-trained barristers and now young clerks for the Provincial Congress, who were so thoroughly engaged in assisting me with my long rifle.
“Are you sure, Adams?” Mr. Randolph leaned closer to me, peering down in the general vicinity of my rifle. I hoped. “Your delicate fiancée shouldn’t hold that heavy weapon by herself. If you aren’t going to help her aim, then I think I should.”
I lifted a brow at Mathew.
Mathew furrowed his dark blond eyebrows for a second, but then laughed. “Randolph, I have complete confidence in my Violet. In you, however, I have none.” He glanced at me again, an easy smile on his friendly face. In Mathew’s grin was warmth, comfort, and familiarity, like swinging on a rope over the river beside my family’s farm, something we had done ever since we were children.
Mr. Randolph chuckled and strode closer to Mathew and Mr. Clark. “I don’t blame you at all, Adams. She’s quite a beauty. I wouldn’t trust any man to be close to her either.”
Yes, he said that within my earshot. Yes, he was talking about me as if I were an ornament. And, yes, it was infuriating, but what could I do about it? It wasn’t the first time a man had talked about a woman as if she were a trinket, nor would it be the last. Perhaps one day I could think of some retort, but for that day, I just grabbed my ramrod and jammed it into the barrel with a wee bit more force than was necessary.
Mathew wrinkled his eyebrows in silent apology for Mr. Randolph’s being a blockhead. Soon enough, however, the men were talking boastfully about last week’s news of the Salem militia’s resistance against the redcoats who had conducted an illegal search of arms and other military supplies. At least, that’s the way the band of lawyers surrounding me termed it.
“They held off those damned demons—oh, excuse me, Miss Buccluech—all day, I heard,” Mr. Clark said.
I snapped the ramrod back into the hooks on the belly of my rifle.
“No, no, not all day. Just a few hours really,” Mathew said. “Violet heard it from Salem’s blacksmith himself. It was only a couple hours, the standoff, and in the end, the lobsterbacks did march into Salem, some thirty rods or so, then marched right back to Boston without gaining one grain of powder, let alone any arms from those Salem boys.”
As I brought the gun to my shoulder, I pulled the dogshead all the way back—cocked and ready to be fired.
Standing firmly on the emerald grass of the Common, I took aim over the spirited Concord River at a piece of parchment nailed to a tree. It was a broadside declaring that any three or more colonial men meeting to discuss anything, even if it wasn’t traitorously speaking about King George, would be arrested on sight, fined and jailed for a month. Except, of course, we could all come together on Sabbath, today, to hail our King and God—preferably in that order, one assumed.
Mr. Randolph asked, “Do you think the Regulars will march to some other village for another seizure?”
I inhaled, aligning my sights. Pausing my exhale, I pulled the trigger. Immediately after the blast, white-blue clouds whooshed around me, making a few wild strands of my dark hair wave in front of my eyes. For a second I was peacefully alone in the sulfuric smoke. Shooting wasn’t my favorite activity, but in that ringing silence, away from all prying eyes, there was pleasure enough to make me smile as I let the butt of my rifle sink back to the ground.
The opaque smoke began to clear into a fine gray mist, though tendrils of the vapor clutched onto my white dress and about my head. Slowly the three men reappeared.
“Good Lord in heavens, are you all right, girl?” Mr. Clark exclaimed as Mr. Randolph grabbed the spyglass from Mathew and stared over the swollen rushing river.
Mr. Randolph whistled. “She got it.”
“No!” Mr. Clark shrieked.
“She did. She did, indeed.” Mr. Randolph began to chuckle as he turned to me. “There’s a brilliant hole in that paper now. That’s more than two hundred yards away, you little angel. Look at you, complete with a halo of smoke.” He glanced back to Mathew. “Adams, you have swindled your dear friends, I believe.”
Mathew chuckled, walked the few paces closer to me then took my free hand in his. All the smoke disappeared with his movement.
“No,” Mr. Clark shook his head, then looked in the spyglass himself, followed by another suspicious glance at me. “No, it had to be chance. I didn’t even see her aim.”
“Well, sir, you weren’t paying attention.” Mathew beamed at me and held an arm around my shoulders. “I did tell you my fiancée had a hawk’s eye.”
“I thought you were jesting,” Mr. Clark choked. “I thought it was a horrid metaphor for how she viewed you as handsome or some such nonsense.” He nervously licked his fat lips and studied me like an insectologist would examine a rare West Indies beetle—intriguing, but still a bug.
I didn’t trust myself to say anything smart in reply. Lord, I detested how slow my brain stirred when in public. Sweetly shy, my mother tenderly referred it, but for me it was as if something in me froze when I was in a large group of people, even if most of the Concordians were many feet away.
After my crack shot, the crowd hushed momentarily, but nothing would keep them from their gossiping, chatting, eating, and especially drinking. The gunpowder cloud wasn’t even cleared before their busy chatter resumed.
“That wasn’t a chance shot, Clark. We were tricked.” Mr. Randolph’s smile was wide and he winked at me.
Mathew laughed. “True, but, Randolph, you owe me money nevertheless.”
I looked up at Mathew surprised. “You wagered on my shooting?”
“Ah, the angelic trickster does speak,” Mr. Randolph teased with another wink.
Mathew pretended to be sheepish while his light blue eyes glanced down at the ground. He squeezed my shoulders tighter. “I know. I shouldn’t have on Sabbath, but, darling, I couldn’t pass when there was such easy money to be made.” He looked into my eyes and raised his dark blond brows a couple times, which won a smile and chuckle from me.
Mr. Randolph bellowed, “Gladly, I forfeit my money to you, Adams. By God, but I’m smitten now with your fiancée. Miss Buccleuch, if you were to be my bride, I’d have venison at every meal, wouldn’t I?”
I laughed again, then turned to Mathew, finally inventing a sound reason for withdrawal. “If it’s all right with you, I’d like to find my sister and see if she needs help fending off the twenty-two men who are wooing her.”
“Of course, darling.” Mathew kissed my forehead, and released me with a broad smile.
Mr. Randolph kissed my hand good-bye. “I could learn how to make venison pie, if you’d hunt for me.” He straightened and whispered, “The offer of marriage is open, and, of course, I’d learn to love Mathew too, if you said yes.”
I quietly giggled, liking Mr. Randolph’s bawd humor, in spite of myself.
Mr. Clark kissed my hand also, but muttered something about women and guns being unholy. I nodded, wondering about Mr. Clark’s religious persuasions, then pirouetted on a heel with my rifle that was almost as tall as I.
I was more than twenty feet from where the men were still discussing loudly beer and patriotism, when Mathew caught my arm. I hadn’t heard him approach and was shocked when he spun me around, then kissed my cheek. He whispered how he loved me, letting his nose delicately grace the skin behind my ear as he did so. Turning me back in the direction I’d been heading, he chuckled and jogged to rejoin his friends.
Smiling, I touched my freshly kissed cheek and began to walk across the greens. I spotted my mother and sister in the potluck crowd. They loved attending the get-togethers—my mother for the latest gossip, my sister because half of the single men in Concord would follow her around like lost puppies. My blonde mother and sister were bathed in marigold light from the sun, laughing in a group of mostly young men, two of whom were wrestling at my sister’s feet. I shook my head at the lads. They were wasting their time. My sister, Hannah, had been receiving court from a Regular officer, a Lieutenant Mark Kimball, and Hannah was besotted. Ten and six years of age, my sister already had an understanding with her suitor.
I walked up the rectangular Commons, past the crowd, toward a two hundred year-old gigantic oak. The Commons were surrounded to the north, east, and south by whitewashed taverns and houses, and the skeletons of maple trees with only tiny, light green buds for coverings. The high rolling, muddy waters of the Concord River framed the west. Just a mile to the north-northwest of the Concord Commons laid my family’s farm, close to the aptly named Old North Bridge.
Upon reaching the large tree, which always made me wonder what it would be like to have seen so many years go by, I leaned against it and closed my eyes, letting my rifle rest against the oak too.
“That was quite a shot,” a man’s deep, French-accented voice casually noted.
Startled, I twirled toward a tall black-haired man, also leaning against the oak, not two feet from me. I hadn’t a clue I’d invaded someone else’s privacy, and when I realized I had, I tried for a smile and hid my instant fists—my irritating and instantaneous reaction when I was caught off guard.
He softly laughed and caught my rifle I’d knocked over when I’d jumped at his words. His scent wafted into my nose—a masculine aroma of leather, clean pine tar soap, and the hint of the ocean after a storm.
“I apologize for the fright.”
Shaking my head, I finally stuttered, “N–no, I’m sorry to have intruded. I didn’t see you here . . . at all.”
He shrugged with a slight movement from his wide shoulders. “I blend.”
He wore all black, which did intermingle into the dark wood of the oak and the shadow that enshrined him, and I wondered if he had come from a funeral. He donned the clothes of a gentleman without lace, yet possessed the build of a man who labored daily.
His eyes were the darkest blue I’d ever beheld—blue onyx. And although I’d met attractive men before, I found him arresting. That alone made me want to run away as fast as I could, yet my feet were oddly rooted to the ground.
“Mademoiselle, your rifle,” he whispered, while nodding to the Kentucky long arm that he proffered back to me. “Truly, that was amazing. I’ve only seen one other shoot like that in my life.”
I blushed, despising myself for the heat that burned in my cheeks as I accepted my musket with a maladroit nod.
“It is your rifle, hmm?”
I jerkily nodded again, feeling the fire from my cheeks spread down my neck. “It—it was my father’s, but he . . . passed away. It actually had been a gift for my father from a Mohawk friend.”
He let a warm gust of air escape his lips. It breezed across my cheeks, enflaming me further. How had he gotten so close?
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Shaking my head, I tried everything not to meet his eyes. “Merci, erm, thank you, but it has been three years now.”
His large, calloused hand engulfed my fingers that were holding my rifle. “The death of a beloved parent is . . . it is painful, no matter how many years go by, non?”
“Jacque! There you are! I thought you weren’t going to make it.” Mathew hollered, seemingly from a world away. As he rushed toward us, he offered a hug to the dark Frenchman, who in turn kissed Mathew three times on his cheeks. Mathew tried to reciprocate the affectionate welcome, but being an Englishman, he stiffly kissed the air with his face in serious concentration, as if putting on French airs was like studying Newton.
“Oui, I made
it out on this very warm day. I thought you told me that Massachusetts was always cold.”
“Usually it is, but it’s also unpredictable.” Mathew laughed and looped an arm around my waist. “I see you’ve met my Violet Buccleuch. Violet, darling, this is André Marie Jean Jacque Beaumont, the man who has been training some of the militias around our colony, and whom I hope I have convinced to train our Concord Militia too.”
“Monsieur Beaumont.” I curtsied, finding my hot cheeks almost unbearable.
“Miss Buccleuch.” Monsieur Beaumont bowed, and caught my hand in his.
Tradition: a man kissing a woman’s hand upon introductions. There was nothing extraordinary about it, no error of impropriety. Yet I knew in that moment I had crossed the Rubicon, as it were. He, for his part, behaved no differently than any other man who had ever bent low to kiss my hand in welcome. He never slipped or held my fingers longer than was proper. His kiss was fleeting with the wisp of his lips against my skin, and his afternoon black whiskers tickled me. His long nose barely caressed my hand, but, again, there was nothing new to any of that. Other than the way I felt when he kissed me, kissed my hand.
My heart hammered painfully against my ribs, as if I was on a runaway horse with no reins, dashing at breakneck speeds. Vis insita, Newton explained it, the first of his laws—A body at rest stays at rest. A body in motion, like me, would move at constant velocity. Lord, I hoped not.
Monsieur Beaumont stood, a friendly squeeze around my hand while he smiled, then released his grip. “Mathew has spoken of you since the moment I met him. It is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”
Glancing at Mathew, I tried desperately not to show my nervousness. I might have possessed some semblance of a modest smile. “‘Tis a pleasure to meet you as well, Monsieur Beaumont.”
Mathew had told me about his new French friend—a mercenary, training the Massachusetts militias whilst there was so much unrest in Boston. When Mathew had told me of his new comrade, I grew suspicious on the spot. Surely, he was some expatriate here to add more riot to the already protesting mobs in Boston. However, I could scarcely consider such thoughts when standing in Monsieur Beaumont’s presence.
Common sense vanished when I looked up into his eyes, so dark, so blue. How I desired to gently touch his glossy black eyelashes that framed those orbs of his, but how I needed to never do exactly that. I was engaged—engaged to the man holding my waist at that moment. I was considered pious and obedient. I was a mess.
“Come now, Mathew.” Mr. Randolph suddenly appeared and pulled on Mathew’s sleeve. “Let’s make a bet on the winner of the horseshoes.”
Mathew chuckled and was easily led away. “Forgive me, darling, but I’m tempted to make more easy money off Mr. Randolph.” He looked at Monsieur Beaumont and said, “Take care of my darling for me!”
I wanted to call out to Mathew to return to me. Of all the times to gamble, it was not now. I needed him, needed his presence to keep my head on my shoulders, needed him near to make the earth under me stop from crumbling under my feet.
Glancing back at Monsieur Beaumont, he had a warm smile on his face while he bowed his head in Mathew’s direction. “It would be my honor, mon ami.”
Monsieur Beaumont turned toward me. “Miss Buccleuch, shall we take a turn?” He extended his bent arm to me while the other flourished forward toward the Concord Common greens.
Horrified, I stood still. Not even daring a breath for fear that if I did I would unleash some evil I’d never known before. Until that very moment I’d been proud of the kind of woman I had become, the provider for my mother and sister when my Da died; the moralist who strived for responsibility and ethics the way a pilgrim staggers on his bloody knees to Jerusalem; the woman who’s most proud possession was loyalty. Yet that sun-filled warm day in late February, as I remained motionless upon God’s green earth betwixt a foreign French man and an unbending oak tree, everything would change for me.
I took in a shaky breath and reached for Monsieur Beaumont’s arm.
Chapter Two: The Philosophy of Justification