The King's Mercy

by Lori Benton

  Her lashes lay soft upon her cheeks as she tended him. “This looks painful,” she said, head bent.

  It was, but her touch was sure. Her hands were capable but smooth, those of a gentlewoman, the nails long and oval, neatly trimmed. She wore no cap, but a small lace pinner at the crown of her head. She’d a wee cowlick to one side of her hairline, a tiny peak where it parted to be swept back. He’d the urge to lean forward and kiss it, just there…until she touched a tender spot on his little finger.

  He caught his breath, biting back a wince.

  She glanced up. “I’m sorry.”

  “Wheest,” he said, and saw the color rise faintly beneath her fine skin. While she began to wind the linen around his salved hand he asked, “Have ye spoken to your stepfather?”

  She raised her lashes, revealing eyes more green than blue today. “Not about that. Mister Reeves says Papa’s in no mood for conversation.”

  “Have ye told him?” he asked, but the scuff of booted steps in the yard drew their attention. Speak of the devil, Alex thought as Reeves entered the smithy and halted.

  “Miss Carey, I’d wondered where you’d gone.”

  Joanna secured the linen bandage with a knot at Alex’s wrist, gathered up the salve and extra linen, and stood. “I was tending to—”

  “I see plainly what you’re doing.” Reeves’s glance settled on Alex, a look so scorching it compelled him to his feet. Jemma had turned, but like a startled wee mouse hoping to escape notice, she didn’t move another muscle.

  “How bad is it?” Reeves asked, with a nod at Alex’s bandaged hand.

  “He oughtn’t to be at the forge for a few days,” Joanna said.

  “Is that so?” Reeves’s gaze flicked between them, still searching but less heated. “Then I wonder, MacKinnon, would you be willing to lend a hand in building kilns for the tar-burning? We’ve a few more need constructing.”

  “I could. Though I dinna ken how it’s done.”

  “Simple enough to watch and learn.” Reeves blazed a grin, all its edges sharp. “Get Moon to show you. It’ll make him feel useful.” He fixed his gaze on Joanna. “If you’re done here, Miss Carey, I’ll see you back to the house.”

  She obliged the overseer, though if Reeves was as conscious as Alex of her displeasure in his brusque bidding as she glided out past him, the man hid it well.

  18

  NOVEMBER 1747

  “Azuba? Miss Joanna! Best come quick!”

  Bent over sewing, they both jerked erect at Marigold’s frantic call.

  “Angels help,” Azuba said.

  “What now?” Joanna asked, rising and hurrying out.

  “A tar kiln’s exploded,” Marigold told them, halfway down the stairs. “One dead, others burned.”

  Dead. Joanna froze, gripping the banister. Alex had helped build the kilns at Mister Reeves’s request. So had Elijah. She didn’t think either was helping with the burning—she’d heard the clang of Alex’s hammer that morning.

  “Who?” she asked, searching Marigold’s distraught face.

  “Grandpa Jo!”

  Azuba moaned. Grandpa Jo—Josiah—was Severn’s oldest slave. He’d worked the fields as a younger man but had long since retired to lighter work, including overseeing the tar kilns.

  A pit opened in Joanna’s chest as she forced herself to focus on those who could be helped. “Are the others being brought in?”

  “Already in the kitchen,” Marigold said through tears.

  Azuba hurried back up to fetch the needful supplies, passing Charlotte on the stairs. The child was pink-cheeked with excitement over something to break the monotony of her days without Jemma’s company. “What’s happened?”

  “Some men were burned at a tar kiln, but I don’t want you near them.” Their suffering would frighten Charlotte.

  “Joanna…” her sister whined.

  “Stay in the house, Charlotte, please.” Joanna followed Marigold to the back door, noting the door to her stepfather’s bed chamber was shut fast.

  “I tried,” Marigold said, catching her glance. “He don’t answer.”

  Joanna’s thoughts flew to Alex, but swerved away as swiftly. She’d help Azuba do what they could to ease the injured men’s pain. Afterward she would not go to the smithy with what was becoming a constant urge to seek out the only man on the plantation who seemed willing to listen to her. Papa was here. She would stand at her stepfather’s door and bang it down if she must, but he was going to come forth and deal with this situation. They needed him.

  * * *

  Joanna understood the construction of tar kilns and their potential for exploding if not properly built or monitored throughout their burning, but not even the injured slaves, seared by flying debris during the explosion, could tell her the cause of the morning’s tragic unfolding, save that old Josiah, standing close to the kiln at the critical moment, had been struck in the head by a chunk of burning lightwood, then covered in a rain of embers and pitch, his clothing set aflame. Those uninjured had put out the flames, but the old man had likely been dead before they ignited.

  Joanna had no need of banging on her stepfather’s door to acquaint him with the tragedy. Mister Reeves beat her to it; the two were in the study when she returned to the house.

  “I’m attempting to explain, sir,” Mister Reeves was stating, “that I’m not convinced it was an accident.”

  Joanna halted at the half-open door.

  “Do you imply Josiah brought about his own death—on purpose? Or another slave? Half of them were injured and none, to my reckoning, had a grudge against that old man. He was well loved.”

  Joanna had heard the wailing from the slave cabins as she left the kitchen.

  “He was what, eighty?” Mister Reeves replied. “Mightn’t he have overlooked something, failed to check on the work of others less skilled than himself?”

  “All my slaves put to the tar-burning are skilled.”

  Neither man was looking Joanna’s way. They stood at opposite ends of the desk, facing each other across its clutter.

  “The slaves weren’t the only ones involved in building the kilns,” Mister Reeves admitted. “MacKinnon was put to the task, by me.”

  “MacKinnon? What on earth for?”

  As abruptly as a tallow candle set before a hearth, Mister Reeves’s expression melted with contrition. “MacKinnon burned his hand at the forge a few days ago. Badly enough he couldn’t wield a hammer. I asked him to help with the building of the kilns—the laying of lightwood, nothing strenuous. I gave instruction for Moon to show him the way of it.”

  Papa stared at Mister Reeves. “Are you blaming MacKinnon for this mishap? Or Elijah?”

  “Moon?” Mister Reeves appeared taken aback. “No sir. But do you think it mere coincidence a kiln explodes the one time MacKinnon has anything to do with them?”

  “No, Papa. Alex mustn’t be blamed for this.” Both men fell silent at Joanna’s entrance.

  Mister Reeves recovered quickly but didn’t conceal his annoyance at the interruption. “Miss Carey. Eavesdropping, were you?”

  “I’ve a question for you,” Joanna said, ignoring his. “Did you inspect the newest kilns prior to their firing?”

  “I was busy elsewhere.”

  “So you’ll blame a man who never until now has seen a tar kiln built, when you admit you failed to perform what is your reasonable duty? You are Papa’s overseer. Whatever the cause, I consider it your oversight for not checking the kilns. Josiah’s death is on your head, Mister Reeves.”

  “My head?” he challenged, features drawn into lines of wounded affront. “How do you figure—”

  “Enough!” Papa halted the argument, fingertips pressed against his temples. He swung his gaze to Mister Reeves, then back to her. “This was meant to be a private conversation, Joanna.”
/>
  Flinching at what amounted to a dismissal, she glanced at Mister Reeves, who wasn’t quick enough to hide a flash of satisfaction. “Forgive my intrusion,” she said, her tone still sharp. She made an effort to blunt it. “Papa, I’m relieved to see you out of your room. I only wish…”

  “It hadn’t taken another tragedy to bring it about?” he finished for her.

  “Yes. But now that you are, might I broach a matter I’ve been wanting to discuss with you?” She hesitated to speak freely before Mister Reeves, but he would have to hear about it eventually.

  “What is it?” her stepfather asked. “To do with Charlotte?”

  “Yes, and everyone at Severn. Everyone still alive.” Knowing it was too late for Micah, Josiah, countless others who had lived and died there, bound to them in service, compelled her to ignore her better judgment, which was telling her to hold her peace and wait. “Papa, you’ve worked very hard over the years to make Severn and all your business endeavors prosperous, but I wonder if you’ve considered that what we have now is enough. More than enough.”

  “Enough for what?” Mister Reeves asked.

  Ignoring him, Joanna fixed her gaze on her stepfather, who looked nearly as puzzled as Mister Reeves had sounded.

  “What are you saying, Joanna?”

  “I’m saying that I wish to manumit our slaves. All of them. Those who wish to remain and work here at Severn may do so, but we’ll provide for them a reasonable living.”

  Utter silence filled the room. Mister Reeves’s look of astonishment vanished in a bark of laughter. It unleashed a flood of mirth, nearly bringing the man to tears. “Oh, Miss Carey. You do amuse!”

  She ground her teeth as her face grew hot—with anger as much as embarrassment. She held her tongue and gazed at her stepfather. “Papa? Have you nothing to say?”

  He lowered himself into his chair, looking thinner than she’d noticed in a very long time.

  “Sir, surely you aren’t considering such nonsense?” Mister Reeves asked, mirth faltering at Papa’s silence.

  “Phineas,” he said, quelling in his tone. He held Joanna’s gaze. “Joanna, you have always had a tender heart and, as David recently reminded me, your role here hasn’t been easy. But surely you realize the scenario you’ve just described is as impossible as a man flying to the moon?”

  “Why should it be, if we were willing to live modestly?”

  With a brow raised at Mister Reeves’s snort, her stepfather said, “To clarify, it would be impossible with these slaves to live in such a manner here. There are laws governing the manumission of slaves in this colony.”

  Alex’s question on the subject rang in her mind. “What is the law?”

  A sigh escaped Papa’s lips. “Shall I tell her, Phineas, or would you care to do so?”

  “I’ll do it, sir. Then I suggest we summon Moon and MacKinnon to account for themselves—for we’ve still that matter to resolve.”

  “So we do,” said her stepfather, then waved him to continue.

  Mister Reeves turned to her. “Miss Carey, would it surprise you to know the laws of North Carolina state quite clearly that any manumitted slave must leave the colony within a six-month, or risk being taken up and sold back into slavery? So you see, whatever notions you’ve been harboring about us living with the likes of Mari and Azuba—and whoever else has taken your fancy—are…” He’d grace enough to suppress what Joanna saw welling, the urge to laugh again. “Such notions are, as Captain Carey said, as likely as humanity ever visiting the stars.”

  * * *

  No commotion had marked the kiln’s exploding, so Alex and Moon remained none the wiser of it until Jemma raced in with the news.

  “The turfs muffled it,” Moon explained as he and Alex set to work with rake and shovel, along with the slaves who could be spared, clearing the remains of the ruined kiln near the edge of Severn’s forest. “Had ye been nigh ye’d have heard it. Felt it too.”

  Under Moon’s supervision and that of the old man they’d called Grandpa Jo, Alex had spent three days unloading lightwood from carts driven in from the forest, laying it to build the kilns. Over wood rich in pitch that would burn down to tar, cut turfs had been laid, with chimney holes left tunneled into the heart of the kilns to regulate airflow. Too little air and the fire wouldn’t burn hot enough to produce the tar, which collected and ran from each kiln through a trough, down to a barrel set to catch it. Worse was too much air, too hot a fire.

  Josiah’s body had been wrapped and removed to the burying ground. In the pit that had been the kiln and around it for yards, splintered, blackened wood and broken turf lay as though a cyclone had touched down. The air reeked of tar and burning, even through the kerchiefs tied across their noses. Alex went about setting order to the area with a heart heavy for those who grieved. Across the smoldering pit, Jemma drug a rake through a wafting of smoke, the cloth over her mouth and nose soaked with tears.

  Other mounds rose yards away from the exploded kiln, their chimney holes smoking. Alex cast them a narrowed eye.

  Hauling cooled debris single-handed, Moon caught such a look. “It’s unlikely to happen again.”

  Alex met blue eyes above a faded kerchief. “Will there be looking into it? By Carey, I mean.”

  Moon was about to reply when Jemma fetched up and nodded toward the wagon track. “Here come Mari.”

  The kitchen lass made straight for them. “Master Carey,” she said, out of breath after the brisk walk. “He asking for you, ’Lijah. You, too, Mister Alex. In his study.” Marigold shot a look at Jemma. “You come to the kitchen, and I don’t mean for eating.”

  * * *

  They dipped their kerchiefs at the well to wash, but with garments stained and reeking, neither looked or smelled fit for an interview with Severn’s master. They passed beneath a moss-draped yard oak, its leaves drifting down to lie brown upon the lawn. Despite the misgiving on Moon’s set face, he went boldly into the house, pausing at the study to knock. Alex glanced along the passage but saw no indication of its female occupants before Carey bid them enter. He followed Moon within.

  Reeves leaned a shoulder against the hearth mantel, where a fire burned. Carey, seated behind his desk, didn’t rise. “Tell me what you can of the explosion, Elijah. I understand neither of you were present at the time?”

  “No sir, we were not. I don’t know what we can tell of it.”

  Alex stood near enough Moon to sense his thrumming tension, but he kept his gaze on Edmund Carey. The man looked tired, aged, unwell.

  “You understand the building of kilns. You may well have heard the slaves talking. Think, Elijah. Was anything at fault in its construction rather than its managing? Phineas bid you show MacKinnon the way of their building.”

  Moon glanced from Alex to Reeves. “Never did he say such to me.”

  Before Carey could swing his frown to the overseer, Reeves said lightly, “I asked MacKinnon to have Moon instruct him.”

  “Is that so?” Carey inquired, addressing Alex.

  “Aye sir. It is.”

  “Did either of you build the kiln in question?” Carey asked.

  “I helped with it,” Alex said.

  Reeves straightened from the mantel, his scrutiny intense. “And other kilns?”

  “Two others.”

  “I oversaw MacKinnon’s work, no matter no one asked it of me,” Moon interjected, his tone heating. “Nothing was done amiss.”

  “We’re only speaking to MacKinnon’s inexperience,” Reeves said, “not casting blame.”

  Moon’s snort of disbelief begged to differ.

  “I will own,” Alex said, “it may have been my fault, though I ken no way to prove it, aye or nay. D’ye see fit to assign blame to me, so be it.”

  Moon stepped forward, shaking his head. “I’ll not hear of that. MacKinnon did as I bid him. And s
ir, ye know I’m well able to judge the building of a kiln, as was Josiah.”

  “No need to take on in MacKinnon’s defense. Miss Carey has already…” Reeves’s words trailed off at Carey’s pointedly cleared throat, but his gaze flashed to Alex, as if to gauge his reaction to his mention of Joanna.

  Alex gave him nothing, leveling his gaze.

  “Phineas, may I recall your attention?” Reeves jerked his gaze from Alex as Carey stood, his posture erect despite the weariness about his eyes. “One who leads must know when to accept responsibility and not shift it, fair or otherwise, be he master, overseer, or blacksmith. The blame for this regrettable occurrence lies not with MacKinnon or Elijah or Josiah. It lies with me.”

  Reeves stared. “You, sir? You weren’t present at the kiln.”

  “I wasn’t present in any sense of the word! Neither, for that matter, were you—as Joanna pointed out.”

  For such a mild dressing down, Reeves appeared inordinately off-balanced, as if the patterned hearth rug he stood upon had been yanked from beneath him. “Regrettably, sir.”

  “You may go, Elijah,” Carey told Moon, who stirred with alacrity to obey. “And you, Phineas.”

  Alex turned on his heel to follow Moon.

  “MacKinnon,” Carey said, “I’d have you bide a moment.”

  Reeves hesitated, jaw clenching with displeasure, but when Carey merely awaited his departure, he made for the door, shooting Alex a look in passing that might have exploded a kiln unaided.

  As the door shut behind the overseer, Carey said, “I hope you’ll pardon Phineas. Not an hour past, Joanna championed you most fervently, practically on the spot you now stand. It seems to have rankled.”

  “Had I need of a champion?” Alex asked.

  “Joanna thought so. But let the matter rest. And the Almighty rest the soul of a faithful old slave.”

  Alex’s teeth ground over what he wished to say to that, for Carey was studying him closely.

  “What rank did you hold in the Pretender’s army, MacKinnon?”