The King's Mercy

by Lori Benton

  Joanna didn’t recall her feet carrying her back inside the house, only that she stood in the downstairs passage gulping air, vision tunneled to a blur, while someone nearby was repeating that hateful word, miscarry…miscarry.

  A hand gripped her arm. “Miss Carey? You’re positively a ghost. Do sit down.”

  Joanna resisted Mister Reeves’s tug on her arm. She needed to keep moving, fast enough to escape this pain. This cage.

  “Did MacKinnon upset you? I saw you speaking to him.”

  Her tunneled vision widened. She’d been on the verge of a faint, but it was passing. Feeling rushed into her limbs. Her heart. She looked into Mister Reeves’s solicitous face and forced words to come. “About…Elijah.”

  “Was that all?”

  “Of course.” While their eyes had carried on another conversation entirely.

  As if the trail of her thoughts were written across her face, Mister Reeves’s mouth twisted. “Come now, Miss Carey. I know you find MacKinnon appealing, but if he’s dallied with your heart in any way, I would blame myself. I brought him here, thinking he would make a fitting blacksmith—Hephaestus, god of the forge, I prophesied. Give him his due, he’s done well in the smithy, but whatever he’s contributed in that regard cannot outweigh his distracting you from the course you’re meant to follow.”

  Belated alarm pierced her veil of heartache. “I don’t know what you’re saying. There’s nothing—”

  From the end of the hall came Charlotte’s voice. “Joanna? Did Marigold do something bad?”

  Her escape. Joanna hurried toward her sister, holding out her hand. “Come, Charlotte. I’ll explain as best I can.”

  “I wish you would do exactly that.”

  Mister Reeves’s voice had been soft behind her, yet his words sent unsettling ripples through her as she ascended the stairs with Charlotte.

  22

  MARCH 1748

  The forge had yet to dispel the morning’s cool, but the banked tension coming off Elijah Moon fairly blistered the air. Alex raised the hammer to the nail rod he’d been working while Moon went on with what occupied him—randomly picking up tools from the bench and putting them down, with more than necessary force. He hadn’t uttered a word since rising. Not to Alex. Not to Jemma on her bellows perch, casting looks from one to the other. Earlier, when Moon visited the necessary, she’d asked what ailed him.

  “Ye havena tweezed it out of Mari yet?” he’d replied, surprised what transpired in Carey’s study yesterday wasn’t already common knowledge in the slave quarters.

  “Mari got a baby coming, but she clammed up about it.”

  “Best mind your business, then.”

  He shot a glare at Moon’s back. In that moment of inattention the hammer caught the bar a glancing blow. He fumbled and dropped it, narrowly missing his toes as it struck the earth.

  Moon turned, eyeing him balefully. “Give attention to your work.”

  Alex didn’t bend for the hammer. “As ye’ve given attention to yours?”

  “What’s that supposed…?” Moon began, then dismissed the question. “I care not.”

  “Liar,” Alex said. “Is that what this is about, then, walking out on her as ye did? Because ye do care, and it scares ye?”

  Moon narrowed bloodshot eyes, hand fisted around the handle of a pair of tongs.

  Jemma stared, having let the bellows go still. Alex jerked his head toward the door. She pretended not to understand the dismissal. He gave her a final warning with lifted brow, then set the nail rod on the counter and stepped from behind the anvil, halting several paces from Moon, who’d turned away.

  “That’s right, turn your back. On me, this smithy, and Mari. May as well go ahead and end yourself, as I ken ye mean to do.”

  Behind him Jemma gasped.

  Moon faced him, his grip on the tongs tightened. Fury boiled in his eyes. “What do ye want from me, MacKinnon?”

  “To stop playing the self-pitying fool who’d throw away every good thing he has like it was garbage. Is that what ye think of her? Of the bairn she’s carrying for ye?”

  Moon hurled the tongs. Alex ducked. They slammed into the wall. With a squeak like a mouse, Jemma leapt from the block and bolted from the smithy.

  Moon seemed not to notice. “What does everyone expect me to do?”

  “Take up the offer made ye. Buy her freedom. Or was she nothing but a body to comfort ye, help ye forget for an hour what ye’ve lost?”

  “What I’ve lost? I’ve a roof over me and food to eat for now, but I’ve no means of earning enough to buy her, or the child. Even should I manage it, where are we to go? How will I provide for myself, much less Mari and the babe?”

  “There’s always a way, if man but tries,” Alex said, then in desperation added, “Have ye no faith in the God Pauling preaches, who’s working all things for your good? I mind the man sitting in that back room, praying his heart out for ye, asking for patience while ye waited for guidance. D’ye not think Carey’s offer is what he meant?”

  Moon stubbornly glowered. “Heard all that, did ye? But ye don’t even believe it.”

  “What I believe isna the issue.” Alex loomed over him, sorely tempted to strike the wee fool.

  It was Moon who struck. “Joanna might say otherwise.”

  “Leave her out of it.”

  Moon snorted. “Ye must think me blind, MacKinnon. I’ve seen how it’s been between the two of ye. Or was. I don’t know what happened, but I only have to look at her now to see her heart’s been broken.”

  Moon was distracting him, throwing back his own words in his face like a smoke screen. But he couldn’t stop himself. “Ye’ve made your choice. Joanna’s no more concern to ye.”

  A throat’s clearing had them both swinging toward the doorway where Reeves leaned, watching them with interest.

  “You cannot keep the peace with anyone, can you, MacKinnon? Demas, Miss Carey, now Moon. Seems I’ve come in time to prevent one of you killing the other.”

  “What d’ye want?” Alex snapped, finding no patience for the man.

  The overseer pushed off the doorframe to stand erect, dressed for traveling, satchel at his side. Smiling. “I’ve a message from the gang boss out at the mill. They’ve need of a smith.”

  “What need?” Moon asked.

  “I didn’t ask. I’m bound downriver with a mare Captain Carey means to sell and in a bit of a hurry.”

  Alex had heard from Moses, Severn’s head groom, that Carey meant to sell some of his horses in an effort to recoup a portion of the losses the past year had dealt him. Severn’s stock was well regarded along the Cape Fear.

  “Aye,” he said. “I’ll go directly.”

  “Excellent. I’m obliged, MacKinnon.” The overseer raised a brow. “No doubt I’ll see you again in a day or two, if Moon doesn’t bash your head in first.”

  * * *

  The mill was silent when Alex reached it—alone; Moon had been in no frame of mind to accompany him. There was no sign of the wiry mill boss, Jim, or anyone, but the murmur of voices, audible above the rush of water, led Alex to surmise they were down at the creek, where lumber was rafted downstream to the dock. Deciding to check inside the mill before heading down the path, Alex hitched his mount and approached the office. It opened to the yard below the elevated mill floor. When his knock got no answer, he opened the door. The place was empty save for its simple furnishings.

  Around the rear of the mill was the room that ran the structure’s length, where lumber set aside for Severn’s needs was stored, the broad doors open, the dusty air within thick with the tang of milled wood.

  “Jim? Ye sent word ye’d need of a smith. Ye’ve got one.”

  At first he thought that, aside from the stacked lumber creating a warren of aisles to either side, the storage room was also empty. Then a fain
t scuffing reached his ears, off to his left, back among the stacks.

  “Are ye there, man?” When still no answer came, he suspected it had been a rat, or one of those larger creatures, possums, that made the noise. They tended to crawl into places like this and could be the devil of a nuisance to extricate.

  Voices in the yard reached him. He went out to find the mill slaves coming up from the creek. They saw him and halted at the head of the path. Jim wasn’t with them, but Alex recalled another’s name, a tall man with a sprinkling of white in his hair.

  “Tom, I’d word you’d need of me. Where’s himself to be found? Down at the creek still?”

  Tom’s scanty brows rose as he squinted through a slant of sunlight. “Jim be up here somewhere. You check the mill?”

  “Office and storeroom.” The mill floor was partially open. Jim would have heard him calling.

  “He talk of fetching board from the storeroom. Sure he ain’t there?”

  “I’m sure.” Unless the mill boss had hidden himself and ignored his call. Unlikely.

  “You say he sent for you?” Tom scratched his bearded jaw. “To my knowing everything’s—”

  “What?” another slave cut in, gaze lifted past them to the mill across the yard. “Jim burning something?”

  “Smoke coming up,” someone said as Alex pivoted. A column, pale gray but darkening, was ascending from the structure. The acrid scent of it hit his nose.

  “Fetch the pails!” At Tom’s shout the slaves sprang into motion, hurtling toward the wooden pails stacked outside the mill office, ready to hand for such emergency. Fire.

  As the slaves grabbed up the pails, Alex sprinted around the mill, thinking of that scuff he’d heard. He staggered as he made the turn and from the corner of his eye caught a figure darting behind a pile of uncut timber outside the doors. He’d no time to call out; smoke billowed from the storeroom. Inside, it was thick in the air. The crackle of flames came from his left where he’d heard the sound he’d put down to a varmint.

  “Jim! Are ye here, man?”

  Ducking low, he made his way through the stacked lumber. Fire lit that end of the long room. Its heat drove him back. He hurried toward the doors, grabbing up an armful of cut shingles on his way. Out in the yard he tossed them down, bellowing for the men to bring their pails. Even as he shouted they rounded the corner of the mill, water from the pails splashing.

  “Left side!” He moved aside so they could pass, then hurried in, gathering up more shingles, out into sunlight to drop them, in again as the slaves came running out to refill their pails at the mill pond. He detected no lessening of heat or flames, spreading through the seasoned wood with alarming rapidity.

  How long it went on—Alex rescuing wood, the slaves running in and out to douse the flames—he couldn’t have said. Eventually Tom grabbed his arm. “Let this go. Fire done spread to the mill workings. We got to save those.”

  Eyes streaming, throat burning, Alex abandoned his attempt to save the lumber but made one more dash into the storeroom. Surely a fire at his mill should have brought Jim running. Could he have been inside after all?

  “Jim!” Heat and smoke were thick. Flames lit the path through the stacks like the corridors of hell. Tom was right. Not just the lumber but the structure’s walls were burning. The ceiling above, part of the mill floor, was in flames. Finding no sign of Jim, no answer to his shouts, Alex started back through the warren but was still a turn from the doors when a portion of the ceiling fell in ahead, cutting off his exit.

  A spasm of coughing gripped him. Doubled with it, he found the air slightly more breathable at knee height. Crouched, he sought to clear the path, grasping a half-blackened timber from the fallen rubble to wrench it aside. His left hand closed over a smoldering portion, and he bellowed at the searing. He struggled out of his shirt and wrapped it around his right hand, a shield that would soon char to shreds. The fire’s heat smote his back, blistering in its intensity. The flames made a roaring now. He gagged on smoke as he pulled aside another timber, head swimming, eyes streaming.

  Edmund Carey’s face rose in memory, gaze commending him after the kiln’s explosion when Reeves would have seen him blamed. Those faded eyes would look on him otherwise if he learned how he’d wounded Joanna, whose face rose next, banishing her stepfather’s. With it came the knowledge that he loved her, and that he was about to die, his last memory of her what he’d read in her gaze there on the doorstep, speaking to him of things neither had the courage to utter. Of need. Longing. Regret.

  Would she weep at his perishing? Would she care?

  Joanna, Carey, Moon, Marigold, Jemma, Charlotte. Their faces flashed through his mind, and he wondered what would become of them, a thing he’d never know unless…Could he climb over the stacked wood that hadn’t burned?

  Smoke was a wall of gray near the rafters. He’d never make it so far without a clean breath.

  Pain seared his back. He slapped at it, thinking the fire had overtaken him. It had been an ember, blown forward by the fire’s wind. Flames licked across the ceiling timbers, soon to fall and bury him.

  Move. Do something. He was on his knees, head hanging, coughing uncontrollably. Above him timbers cracked.

  A voice shouted. Or was it the fire’s chuckling roar?

  He couldn’t reply in any case. Something struck his shoulder a blow, knocking him flat. He tasted dirt.

  Mercifully the world went black.

  23

  Joanna bent over the table where Charlotte painstakingly traced her letters across a sheet of foolscap, evidencing enough engagement that she was about to suggest her sister attempt stitching her letters, when a frantic shout rang up the stairs: “Miss Joanna!”

  The quill in Charlotte’s ink-stained fingers jerked. “Jemma—in the house?” She thrust back her chair so abruptly the inkwell toppled.

  “Charlotte!”

  Her sister bolted into the passage. “Here, Jemma!”

  Joanna righted the inkwell, snatching up a kerchief to mop the spill before it could soak through the foolscap. Down the passage came the thump of feet on the stairs, her sister’s excited voice. “Did you come to play with me and the Annas?”

  “No—where Miss Joanna?”

  Azuba’s voice joined the mix. “Jemma! What you doing inside this house causing a stir?”

  In seconds Jemma was in the doorway, gasping for breath. “Miss Joanna—the mill done burned, Jim and Mister Alex inside. They saying he the one done it, but it ain’t true!”

  Joanna let the ink-soaked kerchief tumble to the rug, searching for sense in that jumble of words. The names spoken slammed through her brain. She reached for the bedpost. “Alex.”

  “He all right.” Jemma came into the room. “I raced back once I knew they was blaming him. But they don’t know about Demas!”

  Joanna lowered herself to the tick, taking in nothing past he all right. Azuba and Charlotte were in the room, questioning, exclaiming, while Jemma gasped out half-coherent answers. Their voices filled Joanna’s head like frantic bees. She raised a hand, silencing them. “Start from the beginning, Jemma.”

  In a rush, Jemma spilled the story. “This morning early Mister Alex and Mister ’Lijah was having a row over Mari. It scared me so I run out the smithy, but I didn’t go far. Mister Reeves come and say he going downriver to sell that mare and would Mister Alex go to the mill on account they needed his help. Mister Alex went, and since there weren’t no work for me, I followed.”

  Azuba snorted. “Work aplenty in the kitchen,” she muttered, but waved at Jemma to go on.

  “Mister Alex was riding and me afoot. By time I got there, the mill was burning, the hands and Mister Alex trying to put out the fire. But I seen something whilst they was busy with them pails.”

  Joanna wanted to put her face in her hands and weep. The mill…lost?

  Jemm
a’s voice cut through again. “Miss Joanna, you hearing me? I seen Demas lurking in the woods. I thought if anyone started the fire, he done it on account he weren’t helping stop it. Then he seen Mister Alex go in and not come out, and he run into that burning mill and dragged him out. So I don’t know.”

  Joanna’s head felt thick. “Dragged him out? Is Alex injured?” She rose and headed for the stairs.

  Jemma trailed her. “He banged up, burned some. He weren’t wearing no shirt, but he was sitting up talking, last I saw. The mill hands afraid they get the blame so they passing it on to Mister Alex.”

  The tap of her shoes on the stairs; the slap of Jemma’s bare feet; Azuba and Charlotte’s voices buzzing; Jemma’s words still coming.

  “Two of ’em made it back afore me. I had to sneak into the house so Mari didn’t see and snatch me off to the kitchen, but as I come in I hear what they telling Master Carey. Jim’s dead and must’ve been Mister Alex set the fire. I heard Master Carey say lock him up.”

  At the stair’s foot Joanna turned. “Lock him up?” The world constricted around her, cutting off her breath. “Come with me, Jemma. Tell Papa all you’ve said.”

  “No ma’am. I can’t do that.” Jemma shrank back. Azuba grabbed for her. The girl twisted away, panic in her gaze. “I can’t!”

  Did she think she was in for another whipping? Joanna hadn’t time to cajole. “All right. Find Alex, see if his wounds are tended. Then come tell me where he is.”

  The girl nodded. Joanna started for the study. Behind her, still on the stairs, Charlotte called, “Jemma!”

  “This is no time for play, Miss Charlotte,” Joanna heard Azuba reply.

  “But she’s different,” Charlotte protested. “She looks like Mari.”

  Halfway down the passage Joanna turned back. Frozen a pace behind her, Jemma glared at Charlotte, poised on the bottom stair. Tiny of stature, amber-hued, dressed in those ragged garments, Jemma bore no resemblance to Marigold.

  “Miss Charlotte—hush!” Jemma said in a tone so fierce Joanna jumped.