The King's Mercy

by Lori Benton

  Blackbird left them to their work, but toward sunset returned and took up the reverend’s corn basket, gave him an empty one, and sent him off to the forest for firewood. He went, stooped with fatigue. Leaving his basket nigh full, Alex started after Pauling, intending to aid what he hoped would be the man’s last task for the day.

  “Wait you,” came Blackbird’s voice behind him. He paused as she approached. “You help good,” she said.

  Uncertain whether she commended the quality of his work or the fact of it, he nodded. “Ye’ve given me a roof, let me eat at your fire. The least I can do is make myself of use.”

  He and Blackbird had fallen into a tacit rhythm with each other. He’d the sense she was satisfied with the arrangement despite his uncertainties as to its nature or her expectations. Had she some notion of adopting him, as Jemma hoped to be adopted?

  The idea of it begged the question. Did he want to stay with these people?

  He couldn’t push his thoughts past that point without Joanna’s face rising up, as if to plead against it.

  Even such imagined pleading was in vain. He could never return to Severn. Having stolen his bound years of service, to say nothing of Jemma and the tools, Carey would demand reprisal, legal or otherwise. But was he free to leave the Cherokees and continue his journey northward? He was no slave, probably not even a prisoner, not in the manner he’d been among the English. He knew what that felt like, and it wasn’t this.

  “Blackbird,” he began, wanting to address the question, but got no further before an outcry from the forest intruded. One of startlement and pain.

  He was running in that direction, dodging cornstalks and pumpkin vines, Blackbird a pace behind him, before the exclamation registered as Pauling’s.

  He reached the man as he was shaking off the snake that had sunk its fangs into the fleshy heel of his right hand—a snake fat and patterned, with the twin rows of knobs at its tail tip that proclaimed it a canebrake. It flew into the brush to coil upon itself and shiver the air with its angry rattling before sliding away through the undergrowth.

  Alex grasped Pauling’s bitten hand and raised it. Puncture marks showed clear and red, the callused skin around them pink, a little swollen.

  “Reverend,” he said, seized with horror; he’d been warned of the canebrake’s deadly venom. “I’ve carried ye to your bed once before. By your leave I’ll do it again.”

  The Cherokees had their healers, some who knew the forest herbs. Perhaps there was hope.

  Alex was ready to hoist the man over his shoulder as he’d done in the smithy yard at Severn, but Pauling shook his head.

  “There’s no need. It will be well.”

  He bent for the stick he must have been reaching for when the snake struck. Alex stopped him. “Reverend, be sensible. The more ye move about, the faster the venom spreads, aye?”

  Around them arose chattering, as those who’d been in the field nearby gathered. Blackbird stepped forward and took her slave by the wrist. Alex expected the wounds to be worsened, the hand more noticeably swollen. If anything the fang marks appeared cleaner than before, as if some harmless snake had bitten him days ago.

  Drawing the same conclusion, Blackbird looked at Alex. “You see snake?” Unable to find the word in English, she made a sound through her teeth so like the snake’s rattle several within hearing gave a yelp.

  “A canebrake, aye. It had him fast by the hand.”

  Blackbird questioned the women gathered, then turned back. “They say he die. Or lose hand.” She looked hard at Pauling, into his untroubled eyes. “Sick?”

  “He will be,” Alex said.

  Pauling put his bitten hand to Alex’s arm, a grip reassuringly strong. “I don’t think so. I’ll finish gathering wood for the night and see you back at the lodge.”

  Blackbird let Pauling go about his chore, but no one returned to the fields. They followed the man as he foraged for downed sticks, pinecones, anything that might fuel his mistress’s cook fire.

  Alex fell in with the task, watching him for signs of the venom’s effect. Whenever he glanced their way in the gathering twilight, he saw the number of Pauling’s followers had grown until a veritable crowd trailed them through the woods.

  When not another stick could be crammed into the basket, Alex took it and nodded for the reverend to make his way unburdened back to the town.

  Blackbird followed, taking up the corn basket, Little Thunder now at her side. What had begun as a death watch was turning into a processional with a cautiously festive air. Those they passed called out inquiries, answered by the witnesses of the encounter with the canebrake.

  Pauling was stooped with fatigue, but otherwise appeared as he had when he left the cornfield at Blackbird’s command. Alex stayed by his side, unwilling to give over concern, unable to explain its apparent needlessness.

  At their lodge Little Thunder pulled aside the buffalo hide. In the firelight spilling out, Blackbird took up Pauling’s hand, assured herself the snakebite remained as innocuous as it had appeared earlier, then motioned him inside. She turned to shoo away the people, telling them her slave was well.

  Someone in the crowd gave a whoop, answered by a few more such. They drifted off, buzzing with excitement. Little Thunder went into the lodge, leaving Alex and Blackbird alone in the dark.

  “Have ye ever seen such a thing? Someone bitten by a canebrake taking no ill at all?”

  She’d understood his English. “No. His God do this?”

  Alex could only shrug. “I dinna ken.”

  Blackbird didn’t share his doubt. “He favored by his God.” She gave a shudder, as though in fear. “No more slave. He must go.”

  33

  AUGUST 1748

  With the tobacco harvest underway, Joanna saw little of Mister Reeves for the next fortnight, though twice he’d entered Papa’s room at meal times to find Joanna ensconced at his bedside, reading aloud while he ate. Both times he’d asked her stepfather some innocuous question and retreated.

  Papa’s health had marginally improved. He was rising from bed for short periods, keeping down his food, in less pain and better color. Azuba and Phoebe had taken stock of their herbs. Neither were missing anything that, if slipped into his food, might cause such symptoms as Papa had suffered. It had to be something Mister Reeves procured in Wilmington.

  She was beyond any hope of calling it a coincidence.

  What about Elijah’s belief that Mister Reeves caused his injuries? What of Micah, found dead on the border of Mister Simcoe’s land? And the mill? The tar kiln that had claimed Grandpa Jo? Had Phineas Reeves orchestrated all of it?

  Joanna couldn’t wrap her mind around such dreadful calculation. Nor the reason for it.

  “You the one got to find it out, Miss Joanna,” Azuba said. “Unless you mean to bring Master Carey into it now?”

  The last time she’d brought an accusation against Mister Reeves, Papa had been deaf to it. The man was his blind spot. She needed proof. But she’d alienated the overseer, refusing his proposal.

  “True, and ye’ve locked horns with him over Severn’s future,” Elijah said. “What if ye made like ye’d changed your mind about that much, that ye’re coming round to his way of thinking? Maybe he’ll let down his guard with ye.”

  Pretend with a pretender. She was out of her depth.

  Marigold must have thought likewise. “How she meant to catch a rattling snake and not get bit?” she asked Elijah before turning back to her. “You best be careful, Miss Joanna.”

  Careful was the least of it. “Pray for me,” she’d said, and shut herself in her room to do the same, longing for that cup to pass. When it didn’t, she rose and went out to drink it.

  * * *

  With a mouth gone dry and appetite fled, Joanna presided at a candlelit supper she’d helped prepare, having sent an invitation o
ut to the fields. She’d half-expected Mister Reeves to ignore it, but he appeared at the appointed time, washed and attired, looking less than pleased. “Miss Carey? What is the meaning of this?”

  “I’ve barely seen you these weeks past.” She took a seat and motioned him to do so. “I’ve wanted to speak to you.”

  He complied, sitting across from her. “I’ve much to do. I haven’t time for formal meals.”

  “Still, you must eat.” She decided to let him do so for several minutes before broaching her intended subject. Phoebe had made his favorites—veal in a wine sauce, roasted butternut squash, boiled garden kale, drop biscuits with melting butter and honey. Even strawberry jam tarts.

  “What is so important as to warrant such effort?” he asked at length, indicating the unusually elaborate supper.

  “I wish to know how the harvest is proceeding—and anything else of matter.”

  He held her gaze across the table. “Why should you?”

  “I’ve thought on what you and Papa have said and…” She swallowed, dry-mouthed, hoping he would take her apprehension for sheepishness. “Perhaps my vision for Severn does have its flaws.”

  Which was true enough.

  “Really?” Mister Reeves seemed mildly taken aback but proved compliant. He spoke for a time about the harvest, then launched into a lengthy explanation of why he felt it unwise to rebuild the mill, despite its being a staggering loss of income for Severn. Rather they should sell the slaves that had worked it.

  Distracted by the perilous subject she still meant to launch, Joanna sipped the wine in her glass and waited with banging heart for the pause that must eventually come…and plunged in when it did.

  “Papa asked to join us this evening. I didn’t think him quite up to it.”

  Mister Reeves cast her a look over the glass he’d raised to his lips. “I did tell you he would improve.”

  “Yes. You did.” Joanna clenched the linen napkin on her lap. “You’re certain you don’t know the cause of his illness?”

  She’d caught him mid-swallow. He coughed, face reddening, then demanded, “Did you go to all this trouble merely to accuse me of having to do with Captain Carey’s illness?”

  Joanna felt the blood drain to her toes. “Of course not. Papa is improving, but he’s had relapses before. I only wished to ascertain whatever you might know of such matters. Surely more than I. You’ve been places, seen things, I haven’t.” Inspiration, or desperation, cleared a path in her mind. “It’s plain I know little about you, much less than I’d like to know.”

  Mister Reeves’s mouth tightened in a misdoubting smile. “Do you? That is interesting. I don’t see how it can be of aid, but what do you wish to know?”

  Her mind raced. “Did you encounter an ailment such as Papa’s before you came to Severn? Perhaps while under his command?”

  Mister Reeves sat back in his chair, regarding her. His stare, as probing as it was veiled, prickled the hairs on her arms, but to her relief he began to speak of places seen and people known.

  Gradually she unclenched her hands and focused on his words, only to realize he was rattling off a litany of his past much like the story he told when they first met. Practically word for word. As he’d done then, he glossed over the years he’d remained aboard the Severn after her stepfather left the Royal Navy. He was about to launch into his capture by the Kingston pirates when she raised a hand to forestall him.

  “Tell me more of those years, Mister Reeves. Before Kingston. You mentioned to Thom Kelly something I hadn’t known, that the man who replaced Papa as captain wasn’t his equal. You never speak of that time. Did he allow his crew to fall into ill health?”

  That last meal with Captain Kelly, before he went back downriver to his death, flooded Joanna’s memory, as did the puzzling enmity she’d sensed simmering between him and Mister Reeves, who smiled at her now across the table, an expression bearing no relation to the coldness in his eyes.

  “That was the least of it. Those years left aboard the Severn were the darkest of my life, their recounting not at all appropriate for your ears.”

  “Worse than the pirates?”

  “Worse in every way.”

  Her courage to continue nearly faltered when his smile did. “But the Severn was your home.”

  “Not after…” He paused, visibly swallowed.

  “After Papa left?”

  “With Moon. Yes.”

  Elijah. Papa. She sensed she’d found the thread in all this tangle that needed pulling. “Mister Reeves, should it help you to talk about that time, I’m willing to listen.”

  “You are.” It was said flatly, with no indication of suspicion or pleasure. “Very well, but bear in mind you pressed me to it.” There was barely time for her heart to thump at his warning before his voice hardened and he went on. “When Captain Carey left the Severn, he’d have done better to hand her over to pirates than leave her in the hands of Captain Potts.”

  As he’d once before implied. “But why?”

  “Potts allowed…abuses to occur. He cared not how his officers kept discipline. What measures they took. Openly or in secret.”

  The smell of the food on the table, the wine in the glasses, thickened in Joanna’s nose until she feared she might vomit. She wanted to hear no more. “Things done in secret?”

  “Unspeakable things. And those who ought to have put a stop to it turned a blind eye. Not just Potts.”

  Did he mean Thom Kelly, who’d continued, unhappily, as first lieutenant aboard the Severn under Potts’s command? She held Mister Reeves’s gaze in the candlelight, saw in his eyes a swallowing darkness. Instinct screamed at her to flee from it.

  “Mister Reeves…Phineas,” she said, his given name foreign on her tongue. “I’m so sorry.”

  The candle flickered with his breath. Wax dripped onto the cloth beneath it. His gaze sharpened with intrigue, and calculation, as though she were an opponent in a game of chess, one proving slightly more worthy than he’d anticipated. “Why?”

  It wasn’t a question she’d expected. “Why…what?”

  “Why are you sorry? Why do you wish to know these things? Why have you suddenly changed your thinking about Severn’s management? Or have you? Are you rather attempting to undermine me in some manner, in hopes your step-father will dismiss me?”

  The darkness pooled toward her, a suffocating thing. She sat back in her chair, certain he’d seen what she was fishing for—reason compelling enough to insinuate himself into their lives, manipulate their sympathies, lull them into trust. And destroy them.

  Did he realize he’d revealed it?

  “I…” A pinched squeak had emerged in place of her voice. She swallowed and forced out, “Of course not. Who wouldn’t be affected by what you’ve just shared? I only hoped my listening might help.”

  Mister Reeves pushed back his chair and stood. He looked down at her, a hawk eyeing a rabbit from its perch. “Help me…or you?” he asked, and left the table.

  * * *

  Joanna found Elijah with Jory, who’d suffered a summer ague since the night but seemed to be improving late in the afternoon. “His cough isn’t so hard as it was,” she said, entering the cabin to the sound.

  Marigold scooped him off the bed and brought him, freshly clouted, into the doorway’s light. “Fever done broke. You right, Miss Joanna, cough’s sounding better too.” Exhaustion threaded her voice.

  Joanna took the baby in her arms, filled with yearning at the warm, solid weight of him. Even with a fretful pucker to his brows, he was a beautiful child, skin like dark honey, wisps of black hair curling over a shapely skull.

  “Well met, wee bairn,” she said, brushing a kiss across his wrinkled brow before realizing she’d mimicked Alex’s speech.

  She caught Elijah watching from the cabin’s chair. He rose and came into the light.
“He kept us wakeful the night long, and I look forward to my bed. For the present I must get me back to the forge.”

  “I’ll go with you.” Joanna handed Jory back to Marigold.

  Stepping from the cabin, she cut her gaze at Elijah and was heartened by what she saw. Despite the present fatigue, he looked in better health and spirits than she’d seen since his accident.

  Which mightn’t have been an accident at all.

  She grit her teeth in fury at the mere possibility Mister Reeves had caused Elijah’s crippling. As they came up the lane toward the nearest shops, she related their conversation at table.

  “So that’s it, then,” Elijah said. “He blames Captain Carey for what happened to him aboard the Severn under Potts’s command. And me, I suppose, for escaping it.” He halted and faced her while still out of earshot of the slaves working in the shops. “I’m sorry, Joanna.”

  “Why are you sorry?” she asked, minding those same words flung at her across the candlelit remains of last night’s supper.

  “For taking so long to climb out of the pit I was in—still climbing, if I’m honest. He was right, MacKinnon, what he said when last we spoke. As was Reverend Pauling, so much he said to me.”

  “I’m glad,” she said, “that you and Alex were friends enough he could say such a thing to you. You were, weren’t you?”

  “For my part. MacKinnon has a heart wider and deeper than he can admit. I think he needed us.” Elijah frowned, weighing the words. “Or needed us to need him.”

  Joanna was gratified to hear it—and all the more furious with Mister Reeves for seeking to turn Papa against Alex. If he were there now, would he be her ally? A warrior to help her fight this battle? But he’d chosen another path. Perhaps the only one that seemed open to him at the time.

  Acknowledging that made her feel no less abandoned.

  “When Alex first came, I overheard the two of you talking.” She recounted the conversation she’d nearly walked in on, that day she came to the smithy to present Alex his first set of clothes. “You were discussing whether the Almighty controls the events of our lives. I hadn’t heard as many words out of you in months. I stood there in the smithy yard, praying with all my heart that if I couldn’t reach you, Alex might.” Her face warmed as she met his gaze. “I never intended to confess that.”