Chapter 31
The deer know something’s amiss. A pair of young bucks, maybe thirty yards away among the skeletal trees; one has three points to his antlers, the other two. Hephzibah chooses the three-point buck, even though he’s farther—he stands broadside, a cleaner shot, while the other quarters away.
The air hangs still. Not a sigh stirs the branches; the thawing snow oozes around their shoes. Hephzibah holds her breath in her chest. Her arm aches from the weight of the musket. To her left—so quietly she feels the words rather than hears them—Ramsay says—Just behind the shoulder…wait…wait…
Surely the buck sees them. Surely that watchful dark eye has taken in the man and woman who stand at the edge of the copse in the dying light. A muscle ripples across his side. The head starts to turn.
Now, says Ramsay.
If only Silas hadn’t taken so ill at the end of summer and missed much of the harvest. If only Beulah, incapacitated by sickness at the start of her pregnancy, had been able to help Hephzibah in the garden.
If only the hogs hadn’t eaten the ragwort, leaving only one for butchering in the autumn.
If only Silas could manage the musket. Or the sloop that would carry him to the mainland to barter for supplies.
If only a pair of hungry, full-grown men hadn’t turned up at their door.
“It doesn’t matter,” says Ramsay, as they trudge back to the flock. “The snow’s already begun to thaw. An early spring.”
“It’s usual at this time of year. The second half of January. A fool’s spring.”
“A fool, am I? Why, it’s as mild as April. The snow will be gone by tomorrow, I wager. The rabbits will be out and about. I’ll show you how to fashion snares out of string. A nice rabbit stew—that ought to fill our bellies.”
Who can resist his good humor? Hephzibah asks—grudgingly—“Where did you learn these things? Stalking deer and snaring rabbits.”
“I was bred up in the Scottish borders. The gamekeeper used to take me about the grounds with him.”
“Whose gamekeeper?”
He hesitates. “My father’s.”
“Your father?”
“He and my mother were never married. She died when I was small. My father…”
Hephzibah glances to her side, where Ramsay slogs through the melting snow, head bowed.
He has tucked his empty sleeve into the pocket of his coat and by the expression on his face, she knows that every stride jars his chest that was split open, his scalp that was peeled back like the rind of an orange, his arm that was sawed off above his elbow.
Bone and tendon and sinew still in a state of grave insult.
Like the snow, she thaws. “What of your father?”
Ramsay raises his head and stares at the thick gray horizon.
“Oh, he did what he could for me. Had me conveyed to his hunting lodge to be raised by the local clergyman and his wife. I used to steal out when I was supposed to be studying my Latin and my arithmetic. Macdonald—the gamekeeper—he took me in hand. Taught me to fire a musket and stalk a deer and snare a hare and a thousand other things that have proved useful, in one way or another. Until my father found a berth for me in one of Her Majesty’s men-of-war and I went to sea. ”
“How old were you then?” she asks.
“Eleven.”
“How terrible. Such a life for so young a boy.”
“Oh, it wasn’t so awful. My first captain was a decent man.
The lieutenants tough but fair. We had an excellent master, a right seaman.
I learned all my navigation from him. No, it wasn’t a bad life at all, that first cruise, once I got used to things.
All the routine and discipline and useful employment a lad needs, to keep him out of mischief.
My father was right to put me into a naval career. ”
Their footsteps slop in the snow. Hephzibah has only an old pair of leather boots, already soaked. She stops at the top of the hill and locates the sheep, huddled near the hollow where she and Ramsay spread some hay earlier in the day.
“I’ll take the sloop to New London tomorrow,” says Ramsay, as they survey the flock.
“It’s too dangerous. Someone might recognize you. Anyway, you can’t sail the sloop, not without your right arm.”
“Elliott will go with me.”
“The doctor doesn’t know a stern sheet from a mainsail, even when sober. He told me himself.” She adds absently, “Besides, Silas will never allow you to leave with his silver.”
“And how does he think to stop me, pray?”
Hephzibah turns to reply. Ramsay narrows his eyes to a point of focus just beyond her right ear. She follows his gaze out past the meadow and barren beach.
“My God,” she whispers.
The doctor sits where they left him—at the board, drinking cider. Beulah on the bench by the fire with her mending. Both look up as Hephzibah and Ramsay duck through the doorway.
“Why, what’s the matter?” asks Beulah.
Ramsay slaps Elliott on the shoulder. “Doctor! Come quickly, man. Where’s your cloak?”
“What the devil?”
“It’s Harte. Anchored in the bay. Boat’s putting off now. We haven’t much time.”
Elliott rises from the bench. “Time? Time? But where? Where shall we go?”
Hephzibah seizes Silas’s cloak from the peg near the door and offers it to Elliott. “Beulah, I’m taking the men to the springhouse. You must put away the pallets, the bedclothes. Any sign of them in the lean-to. The officers will search the house, do you hear me?”
Beulah rises from the bench, face ashen. “What about Silas?”
“We must hope for the best. Doctor? Never mind the cider.”
Hephzibah leads the two men along the well-trod path toward the barn and through the cow pasture, where their footprints will lose themselves in the muck.
Sally and the heifer raise their heads in dull astonishment.
The heifer bawls after them. Ramsay strides along at her side; the doctor staggers just behind, losing ground as they hurry up the slope to duck under the fence of split rails.
His breath comes hard and fast. “Can they see us from here?” he gasps.
“Not so long as the boat hasn’t yet rounded the point. Hurry!”
Ramsay turns back to the doctor and swears. “He’s drunk,” he mutters to Hephzibah. “How much farther?”
“The other side of the pond.”
Ramsay swears again and steps forward to catch the panting doctor by the shoulders with his left arm. “Almost there, mate. Just over the top of that rise, then it’s downhill. What about our tracks?” he asks Hephzibah.
“The sheep watered there this morning. No one will find your footprints in this light. Hurry!”
The sun’s almost reached the horizon, behind the woolen sky, and the gray light flattens as they crest the hill, sheltered by a stand of short, scrubby birch, the apple orchard behind them, and start down the other side toward the pond that nestles in the hollow.
The doctor slips on the melting snow and slides a few feet until Ramsay digs his heels and steadies them both.
Hephzibah feels as if she’s choking on her heart.
How does he keep his feet, when he’s missing his arm?
When every step must be an agony to him?
“That’s it, old friend,” he murmurs to Elliott. “Mind your step.”
By the time they reach the pond, the gloaming settles around them—almost too dark to see.
Good, she thinks. The rim of the pond is slippery with slush and mud.
She can’t look back now or she’ll lose her footing.
She makes her way to the right, where the slope is steepest. The stone entrance that looks like a natural stand of rock, half-hidden by a holly bush—the small cave inside, dug deep into the hillside to keep the butter and the cheese cool during the summer—the thick door to keep out the sheep and the vermin—there!
Her fingers find a wooden plank, rough with splinters.
She runs her palm along the surface until she finds the metal latch and forces it open. A cold damp smell of earth rushes free.
She turns to the two men, a pair of charcoal shadows against the black landscape. The white curve of Ramsay’s cheekbone catches a remnant of light.
“In here,” she says.
Ramsay urges the doctor into the hole and turns to grasp Hephzibah by the elbow. Through the dusk she feels the fury in his face.
“If he touches you,” he says, “by God, he is a dead man.”
Hephzibah smells the men even before she enters the house—sweat, rum, sea. A charge of masculine spirits. The light is nearly gone. A faint yellow glow seeps from the seams of the shutters. She can hear the voices through the walls.
She stands at the door and gathers her thoughts. Gathers her heartbeat under her ribs.
A sharp voice barks a question. Another answers in a whimper—Silas.
Hephzibah puts her hand on the latch and opens the door.
“Why, there she is,” says Beulah. “As I told you.”
The four men overwhelm the room—one wearing a long scarlet coat, embroidered in gold at the sleeves and lapels, and a cockade hat; another at his shoulder in plain blue.
The other two hang back in dull woolen coats and sullen expressions.
In the corner stands Silas in his nightshirt over a hasty pair of breeches, a blanket around his shoulders—diminished, bewildered.
“Ah,” says the one in scarlet. “Miss Sykes, I believe. We have been awaiting your return. My name is Harte, captain of His Majesty’s frigate Reckless.”
Hephzibah makes a brief curtsy.
“Your apron, Miss Sykes. Are you hiding something?”
She unties the knot in the corner. “Eggs, sir. I have been feeding the hens in the barn.”
“Your sister said you were milking the cow.”
“I left the milk in the barn so the cream might rise. Can I help you, sir? Have you need of provisions for your ship? I’m afraid we have little enough to offer.”