The King's Mercy

by Lori Benton

  Moon’s breathing was the only sound besides the chirring of night insects, the distant croak of frogs. Then, “There’s nothing between Joanna and me. There can never be.”

  Alex waited, thinking Moon meant to leave it there. Perhaps it was the dark, no starlight beyond the small window to show a man’s face, or perhaps it was Alex’s turning the tables, presenting himself the one in need, that made Moon expand upon his reply.

  “I wanted to marry her. So does Reeves. Captain Carey accepted his suit.”

  “They’re betrothed?” Coming upriver Reeves had mentioned Carey’s stepdaughter, but not as one spoke of his beloved.

  “She hasn’t given him answer.” The hoarse words hung in the darkness. “It wasn’t until Reeves asked that I summoned courage to do it myself.”

  “D’ye love her?”

  Silence. The buzz of insects. Then, “I care for her.”

  Not exactly a declaration of passion. A breeze had arisen beyond the window, wafting in to dry the sweat on Alex’s skin. He lay back and drew the linen to his waist, scratching idly at a bite on his shoulder. Even in the dark he could sense the room still heaving as it had since he stepped off the flatboat. “Ye and Reeves ken each other from long since?”

  “Aye. And he’s of no better birth than me, though he’s picked up a polish of manner—along with his giant.”

  Alex fingered the healing welt on his temple. “So ye thought if Reeves had the gall to ask for the captain’s stepdaughter, ye’d naught to lose in the asking?”

  “Happen it was something like that. But then the forge…”

  “An explosion, ye said. What caused it?”

  “I’ve no answer to that. By the time I was able to examine the forge, it had been repaired.” Moon’s voice was a dead-calm sea. “Even had Captain Carey given his blessing, I’d never have held Joanna to it. Marrying a useless cripple?”

  Alex couldn’t let that pass. “Ye mind what Reeves said when he first marched me into this shop? He was right. I need ye. So does Carey.” When Moon said nothing, he let the subject go. “Ye’ve said how ye came to be serving Carey on land. How does Reeves come to be doing the same?”

  “He didn’t tell ye?”

  “Not in any detail.”

  Moon sighed. “As Reeves tells it, he was still in His Majesty’s service when he got himself abducted off a quay by pirates, was forced to serve with them, then at some point escaped. Afterward came a deal of traveling through the colonies, positions obtained and lost, a few years as a merchant’s apprentice. Nothing lasted. Early last summer he wound up in Wilmington to cross paths with Captain Carey. Not long after, our overseer left, and before ye could shout hard-a-lee, Reeves had the position. And here we are.”

  It was the longest speech Alex had yet coaxed from Moon. The words themselves were indifferent, but under them something deeper seethed. “D’ye hold it against Carey, choosing Reeves’s suit over yours?”

  “No,” Moon was quick to say, slower to add, “Happen at first I did, but ye don’t know Captain Carey. Aboard ship he was a father to us lads. Later he saw me apprenticed to a blacksmith in Wilmington, then hired me on when I was ready for the work. He’s a good man. Ye’ve nothing to fear from him. Not if ye work honest—and hard.”

  The Englishman’s suspect virtues aside, Alex was aware Moon had looked past himself to offer that encouragement. It surprised him, how much that felt like a victory.

  6

  The nail rod was three feet long, the charcoal fire built as Moon, manning the bellows, had instructed.

  “Keep the rod down deep,” Severn’s former smith said. “Off the fire’s top. Right…now check it.”

  Getting a feel for the iron after five days at the forge, Alex was already pulling the rod from the fire with the tongs. Several inches glowed orange-red, the tip almost white.

  “Over the anvil,” Moon said.

  Alex turned from the forge’s heat, took up a hammer, and positioned the bar with the glowing tip near the anvil’s far edge. He delivered blows at an angle, drawing out the iron, fashioning a four-sided point, squaring off several inches above it.

  “Hardie,” Moon said.

  Across the blade of the hardie, a device fitted at the anvil’s heel, Alex positioned the rod at the length of a finished nail and struck so the hardie’s blade half-severed it. A flip, another blow, then he stuck the heated tip into the anvil’s pritchel hole and broke it at the nearly severed joint. A final blow flattened the head. He thrust the remaining rod back into the fire and, with water dipped from the slack tub, quenched the iron he’d worked. The contracted nail dropped through the pritchel hole, striking the earthen floor.

  Alex grinned at it.

  “Well done,” Moon said dryly, amused at his pleasure in this most basic of apprenticeship tasks. “Do it again.”

  Leaving the finished nail lying, Alex took up the tongs, grabbed the heating rod, and swung back to the anvil. As he did so, the ground beneath him pitched as it hadn’t done for the past three days. He braced himself, took up the hammer, began drawing the rod into another point.

  He finished the rod, started a second, a third. Heat shimmered the air. Sweat soaked his shirt and the kerchief tied round his head. The ache of his arm spread to his shoulder, neck, back. The hammer’s clank pierced his skull.

  Moon stopped him as he reached for the fourth rod.

  “Rest while I tend the fire.” Moon scrutinized him, brows pulled tight. “We’ll raise that anvil. It’s low for ye. Your back and shoulders will be telling ye as much.”

  “They are.” And his legs. Hang it all, his teeth hurt. He slung the hammer into its rack, dipped water from the drinking barrel, drank and drank again.

  He’d meant to go out under the oak in hopes there’d be a breeze, but he paused to clutch the doorframe until another wave of dizziness passed. When his vision cleared he saw the lurker, owner of the toes he’d seen poking from behind the smithy that first day. This time he glimpsed a small, nut-brown face peering round the corner at him before it vanished.

  He went back for more water. “Who is it skulking out there?”

  “Trying to get a look at ye without returning the favor? That’ll be Jemma.” Moon’s words hovered like a cloud of midges. “They’re trying to make a kitchen girl of her.”

  Speaking of kitchens…he felt like an oven, as if the insufferable heat came from within, not without. All his joints ached. Moon’s voice reached him through a shimmering veil.

  “On your feet, MacKinnon. While the fire’s hot.”

  Alex pushed up from the block chair. The smithy floor heaved like a deck in rough seas. He lurched sideways with the motion, falling toward the forge. Something caught his arm, yanking him back. Next he knew his face was in the dirt, cracked shoe-leather blurring in his vision. Then darkness swallowed all.

  * * *

  “I’ve sent word to the families, informing them of Reverend Pauling’s expected arrival,” Joanna told their cook, Phoebe, and the girls flanking her broad frame. Three sets of eyes in glistening faces widened as she instructed them in the planning of several days’ meals sufficient in volume to feed a crowd that might swell to fifty. Joanna brushed at the sweat beading her temple. Open doors emitted more flies than breeze into the kitchen’s stifling confines. There was no help for it in summer, not with a brick hearth broad enough to accommodate three iron cranes, two turnspits, and a scattering of spider-legged griddles. An oven was set into the sooty wall beside the hearth, near a row of long-handled ladles, forks, and tongs. “Other kitchens will contribute to the victualing, but as there’s no telling what they’ll bring, we must be prepared.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Phoebe was quick to say, while behind her back the younger women shared a glance of dismay, as if she’d announced Pharaoh’s army was descending on Severn like locusts, expecting dinner. Phoebe’s plump h
ands smoothed her voluminous, grease-spotted apron as she sniffed the air. “Dorcas, get that meat turning!” she snapped at the younger of the kitchen maids.

  Dorcas pressed her lips together, but took a stool beside the spit’s handle and commenced turning a ham spitted over a dripping pan, a task for an unskilled child.

  “Where are Mari and—” Stopping as voices reached her, Joanna faced the door as Marigold entered, dragging a scowling Jemma across the threshold by a pinioned arm.

  “I don’t give a rat’s whisker! You meant to help in the—” Seeing Joanna, Marigold halted and thrust Jemma forward. “Look who I found skulking round the smithy.”

  Jemma pouted her lip. “Don’t be telling tales on me.”

  Joanna strove to appear unperturbed as she took in Jemma’s appearance. Gone was the child of a few months past, Charlotte’s beloved companion. Still on the puny side for twelve, she’d gained a little in height—the most insignificant change and the only one not self-inflicted.

  Jemma had never been a pretty child. With skin, eyes, and hair the exact same hue, amber as pecans, she’d drawn second glances from visitors to Severn, some who’d made uncomplimentary quips about her looks. At least in those days, she’d never been mistaken for a boy. Now, instead of the tidy homespun frock she’d worn, Jemma was dressed in a pair of cast-off breeches, all holes and patches. A shapeless shirt in little better state hung halfway to her knees. But her hair was the biggest alteration. Until recently it had been the child’s best feature, thick and curling to her waist. Jemma had hacked it off—with a blunt kitchen knife, apparently—rendering it a ragged mop that didn’t reach her shoulders.

  “Jemma,” Joanna said. “Quite a few people have been missing you of late. Charlotte most especially.”

  The girl kept her smudged face lowered, gazing at her filthy toes.

  Marigold gave her a shake. “Miss Joanna talking to you!”

  “Yes ma’am.” The words were lifeless. Where was the spirited voice she’d once heard throughout the house as Jemma and Charlotte played together?

  “You found her at the smithy?”

  Marigold nodded. “Caught her lurking—again.”

  “This isn’t the first time?”

  “No ma’am,” Phoebe assured her.

  At the spit, Dorcas added, “Jemma ain’t never where she needed. This her job, not mine.”

  The other girl, Sybil, planted floured hands on her hips. “And I’m left to do up the dishes most meals.”

  “All right,” Joanna said, stemming the flood of complaint. She’d seen defiance on Jemma’s face when she was towed through the door. It had vanished behind an unreadable mask, as if she’d retreated inside herself where none could reach her. Very like Elijah.

  “Jemma, why are you hanging about the smithy? Are you worried about Elijah?”

  “No ma’am. No more’n everybody do.”

  “Is it the new man, Mister MacKinnon? Are you curious about him?” When Jemma hesitated, then shook her head, Joanna drew a steadying breath. “What’s wrong, then, Jemma? Just because you’re working in the kitchen—or meant to be—doesn’t mean you and Charlotte cannot spend some time together.”

  Jemma flashed her a look so brief, Joanna wondered if she’d imagined its desperation. “Miss Joanna? Can I ask something?”

  “Of course,” Joanna said.

  “Could I help in the smithy instead? I seen Mister ’Lijah trying to teach Mister Alex while yanking at the bellows with his one arm. I could handle that job—the yanking.”

  Joanna looked up in time to see every woman under the soot-blackened ceiling beams roll her eyes.

  “ ’Lijah don’t need you hanging about his forge,” Marigold said. “How you mean to reach the bellows, scrawny as you are?”

  Jemma glowered. “I could stand on something!”

  “Jemma,” Joanna cut in. “Do you truly want to work in the smithy? Or are you trying to avoid working at all?”

  She wished she could bite back that last question even before she caught the sharp looks Phoebe and her girls couldn’t suppress.

  Stupid, Joanna. She knew what it felt like to be thrust into a world of responsibility and endless work and feel one hadn’t a choice in the matter. Trapped. Overwhelmed. Terrified of failure. For an instant she felt the weight of that burden full force; not just her own, but that of everyone whose name was penned in Papa’s ledgers, who labored under yokes as heavy and more so. It was too crushing to face.

  But she could give Jemma this small choice, couldn’t she?

  “No ma’am,” the girl was saying. “I want to help Mister ’Lijah. And that Mister Alex don’t scare me much.”

  Phoebe and her girls erupted in protest.

  “You want?”

  “You spoiled little—”

  “Never heard such foolery—”

  “You ain’t a boy!”

  Joanna held up a hand for silence, considering Jemma. “All right. Provided Elijah is agreeable, we’ll give it a try.”

  Marigold’s shapely mouth fell open. Phoebe looked too shocked for words. Jemma’s expression flooded with relief, as if she’d been delivered from a fate worse than death. Was that what she thought of spending time with Charlotte?

  Joanna opened her mouth to add that she’d be down to the smithy to take Jemma’s measure again, to provide her with a proper petticoat and gown, when a voice called out beyond the kitchen door—one so out of place it took a moment to recognize.

  “Mari!” Heavy footsteps crunched on the path, then Elijah appeared in the doorway, breathing hard as if he’d run from the smithy. “Someone needs to go—” Seeing her, he cut short his urgent words. “Joanna.”

  “Elijah, what is it?”

  “MacKinnon—he’s collapsed. I cannot move him.” Humiliation rippled across his scarred face. “I need help.”

  7

  AUGUST 1747

  When Joanna entered the smithy, Jemma seemed to shrink into the ragged breeches and shirt she still wore. The girl dropped her gaze to the linen draping Joanna’s arm, the basin cradled to her hip, the pocket at her waist bulging with a flask and the last of Severn’s Jesuit bark. “Miss Joanna. All that for Mister Alex?”

  At his workbench, Elijah turned. He’d tailed his hair for the first time since his accident, baring his right ear, half-burned away. “Mari isn’t here, if ye meant that for her use.”

  “I know.” Preparation for Revered Pauling’s visit had dominated Joanna’s waking hours the past days, yet Alex MacKinnon had been in her thoughts. It was too soon to know if he suffered one of the seasoning fevers newcomers to the Cape Fear often experienced, or worse, the intermittent ague for which there was no lasting cure, only the bark for treatment. “Mari cannot be spared from the kitchen, nor Azuba from her duties. Papa’s set the first meeting for two days hence. You’ll attend?”

  At Elijah’s shrug—no more than she’d expected—Joanna nodded toward the back room. “How is he?”

  “Pitiful weak,” Jemma answered. “Come see.”

  The room behind the shop was overwarm, pungent with the bodily distresses of the form overflowing its cot, draped by threadbare linen. Alex MacKinnon had come to them lean as whipcord. Now his pallid face was gaunt, the bones of cheek and jaw sharp. “Has he taken any food today?”

  “Broth,” Jemma said. “And that nasty bark powder Mari mix up. Never seen a man screw up such a face.”

  With Jemma hovering, Joanna set the basin at her feet and tucked her petticoat to sit on a stool beside the cot. Mister MacKinnon’s hair fell in sweaty tangles. She bent to soak a cloth in the water while it still held its coolness.

  “Pull back the linen, Jemma, to his waist.” Jemma did so, wrinkling her nose. Mister MacKinnon’s ripeness crowded Joanna’s senses. “Would you find a candle and light it?”

  As Jem
ma went out, Joanna pressed the cloth to the man’s brow, astonished afresh by the length of him. Arms that went on and on, ending in hands square and powerful, long-fingered, callused. The hands of a warrior. Hands that had shed blood.

  Pushing the unnerving thought aside, she bathed his face and chest, wondering what, besides his freedom, had he lost for the sake of that doomed Jacobite cause that had ended in his imprisonment? A wife? Children? Even if he mourned none, surely he mourned a life—home, livelihood, the familiar and known.

  Was that why Elijah seemed more at ease with a stranger than with her? Did he recognize his own staggering loss in Mister MacKinnon?

  What would it be like to have one’s life ripped away, to be forced to start fresh in a new place? Panic at thought of losing those she loved—Papa, Charlotte, Azuba, Elijah—didn’t quite overwhelm the flame of eagerness that flared beneath it. She quickly snuffed it, unwilling to look at what its light revealed: the things she wouldn’t grieve to lose. Or gain.

  She dipped a fresh cloth and touched it to Mister MacKinnon’s mouth. When his lips parted she squeezed, dribbling water. He swallowed and groaned.

  Jemma returned with the candle and set it on the stand. “Ain’t he big, Miss Joanna? Big as bear.”

  There was more of the panther about the man than lumbering bear, in Joanna’s estimation. The chest she’d bathed was broad and muscled, but now she could count every rib. “Has he spoken?”

  “Yes’m. Nonsense, mostly.”

  “He was probably speaking his native tongue.”

  “That mumbo jumbo them men in skirts upriver speak?”

  “It’s called Gaelic. And they’re kilts, not skirts.”

  More than a few Scotch families had settled on the Cape Fear since the failed uprising in Scotland, welcomed in the colony by Governor Johnston, Papa’s longtime acquaintance. A clannish folk, the Scots. Most had clustered upriver near the trading hamlet at Cross Creek.

  “Sometime,” Jemma said, “seem like he fighting in his dreams. Other times he call out names of men, like he looking for ’em.”