The King's Mercy

by Lori Benton

  At Savannah they abandoned the ship. Playing on the sympathies of strangers, or thieving, sometimes working for wages, they migrated up the coast. Reeves acquired a decent suit of clothes and began passing himself off as a young man of quality, orphaned, owner of a slave.

  “Was me told him to say it,” Demas said to their lifted brows. “Made others show respect—and leave me be.”

  In Philadelphia, Reeves, then fifteen, apprenticed himself to a merchant, proving skilled at keeping accounts. Demas served, doing whatever labor was needed.

  “We stay there two years before we have to leave that place. We wander then a long while, in one city or another, living as we could. Always Reeves find something to do—or steal.” Some years later they came across none other than Captain Potts, drinking in a tavern in Maryland. “I was outside waiting when Reeves run out, a man on his heels. Reeves led the man down an alley. By time I come on them, that man was dead.”

  Reeves had taken his vengeance against his former captain and found it to his liking.

  Vengeance proved a thirst that deepened with that first swallow. After Maryland, their drift through the colonies had purpose beyond survival, searching for those against whom Reeves held his grudge, following up every rumor gleaned of the Severn or her former crew. Especially the officers.

  “He kill four I know of, including that Obadiah Smith.” Demas gave a shudder at the speaking of the name; neither Alex nor Moon asked what Reeves had done to his chief tormentor. “Then we find Edmund Carey in Wilmington. It fell into place easy. A little at a time, I watch Reeves do what he come to do—this time more than kill. He meant first to ruin that man, body and soul. Sometimes he ask my help. Mostly I watched.”

  Alex looked away from Demas’s glistening, unrepentant face to find Moon drilling the man with livid rage, maimed arm raised.

  “Was it ye did this to me?”

  Demas’s eyes were mere slits. “No. Not your fault, what happened on that ship. You a boy, too, doing as you bid.”

  “But ye let him do it?”

  Alex caught Moon’s seething gaze and shook his head. There would be no peace found in trying to untangle the thinking behind the deeds Demas, as twisted in his way as Reeves, had allowed to go unchallenged. As to what he had done…

  “The mill. Ye set that fire?”

  “I did.”

  “And Jim?”

  “He catch me setting it.”

  “But ye saved MacKinnon,” Moon said. “Why?”

  Demas shut his eyes. At first Alex thought he wouldn’t answer, then the man’s tongue licked over his lips. “Best you know the rest, then you know why I did it.”

  With a sick surging in his gut, Alex said, “Charlotte.”

  Demas’s eyes flared, showing bloodstained whites. “You know?”

  “What of Charlotte?” Moon demanded.

  Alex nodded, needing Demas to tell it and be done. The impulse to race out of that swamp, run the miles to Severn, and lay hold of Reeves was a screaming in his bones.

  “Before Charlotte,” Demas said, “there was another like her. That merchant in Philadelphia had a daughter.”

  The girl, called Amelia, had been nine years old when Reeves came into the merchant’s employ. From the beginning Reeves had been besotted by her. Demas hadn’t seen it, not at first. “He never hurt that girl, but he wanted to. Once I catch him with a girl he find on the street, someone’s slave. I saw what he meant to do and stopped him. He swear up and down he never try it before, but his eyes have that look he had the day he kill my master. Maybe it was a demon had him. Maybe the boy in him fighting back in the worst way. No matter. I got him away from that girl and the madness left him. Left him crying like a baby.”

  On his knees in a filthy alleyway, Reeves had begged Demas not to kill him. “He could see I wanted to. But I chose another path. I tell him I go on with him like we been, but unless he vow there on his knees never to touch a child like that again, one weaker than himself, then I would kill him.”

  The blood had drained from Alex’s face as Demas spoke. “But the lass, Amelia, ye said he never hurt her?”

  “One day I catch him with that girl, touching her yellow hair. Just touching, but it was enough. We were done there.”

  “And he never tried to get shed of ye?” Moon sounded half-choked.

  “Once or twice he try. Now he think he done it.” Demas reached for the canteen to drain its contents.

  “What happened in Philadelphia, that was years ago,” Moon said. “Has he never…other girls?”

  “Ye ken he has,” Alex said, his voice ragged. “Jemma.”

  Demas’s breath came deep. “I never catch him. I tried to make her tell.”

  And succeeded in frightening her all the more.

  “But Charlotte,” Moon said. “Ye might have led off with that, aye?”

  Alex was feeling every second ticking by like a world of possible torment for the wee lass. And for Joanna.

  “You think I left that child to his mercy, all this time since he run me off?” Demas asked. “No, man. I stay out by the old mill, coming in at night. That girl from the kitchen, Sybil, she tell me what I want to know. Then I get sick and these ones here find me. How many days now?”

  “Two, they tell me,” Alex said.

  “What Reeves done in that time, I cannot say.” Fury suffused Moon’s face, but Demas met his gaze unflinching. “You knew enough of what he was and you left them. Both of you.”

  Remorse lanced through Alex’s vitals. “Aye. We did.”

  “We have to go back.” Moon was on his feet, determined gaze on Alex. “How far are ye willing to go with this?”

  Alex stood and faced him. “I’ll do what has to be done to protect them, but no more. I dinna want blood spilled in that house if it can be helped.”

  Moon’s eyes narrowed. “Ye haven’t mentioned Joanna since they brought ye into camp. Ye broke her heart, leaving like ye did. She loved you.”

  “I ken that.” He feared to ask if hope of mending that broken heart existed. He touched his coat above Pauling’s letter. He risked more in returning to Severn than the consequences of a broken indenture.

  Moon went to the guard nearby, who handed over the pistol. Moon thrust it into the waist of his breeches, then stood before Demas. “We’re leaving for Severn. It’ll be nightfall ere we get there. Are ye strong enough to come?”

  With a noise through his teeth like a growl, Demas grasped a pole of the shelter. Ignoring their proffered hands, he pulled himself to his feet. He swayed, nostrils flaring. Alex felt the heat of him a pace away.

  “I do what I must.”

  Moon gave a nod. “Come to the fires. Get some food. We’ll let them know.” He started in that direction.

  Alex waited for Demas to take his first steps, uncertain the man could cross the camp, much less make it to Severn. He reached the cook fires but halted near Moon’s hut, well back from where the ex-slaves were gathering. Alarm rippled through the camp until Moon stepped forward to explain where they were going, offering any wishing to accompany them the chance to do so. Above their responses—fearful, angered, remonstrating—Alex heard the labored breathing of the man beside him, felt the fever’s heat radiating off his flesh.

  Demas leaned close. “You know why he chose you?”

  “Reeves? Off the Charlotte-Ann, ye mean?”

  Demas grunted. “Took me time to work it out. He mean all along to do the one thing I never let him do, so he chose you to take me down before that time come. His mistake, choosing the one man wanted to stay on that ship, who wanted nothing of what he offered. In the end, he lose us both.”

  Alex frowned, gazing at the men and women arguing over going back to aid the master who’d enslaved them.

  “But it isna the end,” Alex said. “Not yet.”

  He
got no response. That radiating heat beside him had vanished.

  Demas had melted away between the huts without a single eye seeing him go.

  It was some moments before a woman nearby made the discovery. A cry was raised. Across the space of dark heads, Moon looked straight at Alex, while around them half the ex-slaves were saying to let Demas go and good riddance, the other clamoring to search him out and drag him back.

  Moon knew as well as he there was no time for the latter. “Ye men not going with us can hunt for Demas as ye wish. Those meaning to go with MacKinnon and me, take ye food and—”

  A new disturbance arose at the edge of camp. The crowd parted, opening a way between Moon and three women in mud-stained homespun, one with a bairn in her arms, emerging from the swamp.

  “ ’Lijah! We found you at last.”

  “Mari?” Moon strode to meet her, wrapping her in his arms, while Azuba gaped at Alex striding toward them.

  “Mister Alex? How you here?”

  “It’s a tale that can wait. How is it with them?”

  Marigold and Moon parted, joining the conversation, though Moon kept his arm around her, a thing that gladdened Alex’s heart even as Azuba shook her head, tears coming up in her eyes.

  “We left Severn yesterday. Took us all the day and night and then today to find you…to tell you…” Her lips trembled so hard she couldn’t finish.

  “Master Carey had him some sort of seizing fit,” Marigold said. In her arms the bairn set to fussing. She joggled him tiredly. “Left him bedridden. Can’t talk. Miss Joanna bid us go. Said find Elijah. No one knew you was here, Mister Alex, but reckon now the two of you might come?”

  It was worse than Alex had thought. Not even Edmund Carey stood between Joanna and whatever final designs Reeves had on her and Charlotte’s well-being.

  “Not just them two.” Moses had approached, behind him three young men armed with stout sticks, faces set. Warriors ready for battle. “Who leads us?”

  At first no one spoke, and in that moment Alex sensed the shifting as an unseen mantle of authority was laid across the shoulders of each man in turn. As if it could be followed with the eyes, the ex-slaves looked to Moses, then to Moon. Then before an eye could blink, Moon let it pass and looked to Alex, where it settled last.

  “I canna even find my way out of this swamp,” Alex said.

  “We get you out,” Moses said. “After that…”

  Alex glanced once more at Moon, who nodded. “Aye, all right then.”

  Moses and his men headed off through the camp. Moon and Marigold embraced around their whimpering son.

  Azuba reached for Alex’s hand and gripped it hard. “Help Master Carey and my girls,” she pleaded, eyes turned up to him, afraid but hopeful. “Save them from that evil.”

  42

  It was the second day since she’d sent Azuba, Marigold, and Phoebe away and Mister Reeves had ridden to fetch the physician he claimed to have encountered. Sybil had stayed, taking over what cooking was needed and helping with Charlotte, freeing Joanna to tend her stepfather.

  Yesterday, for the first time since the apoplexy struck, he’d made himself understood; the panic in his eyes had receded, revealing a spark of resolve. More than once she’d caught him struggling to sit up in bed, or straining to move his stricken limbs.

  Her remonstrations only made him more determined.

  He could sit up now for short spells, long enough to feed himself, clumsily, with his left hand. His right leg, more so than his arm, had responded to his efforts to move it. She was all but certain he would walk again. As for his speech, if he concentrated he could force the simplest words past his lips.

  Drink. More. Yes. No.

  Questions about Mister Reeves, or anything about Severn’s state, were beyond him, though they stirred in his eyes. He wasn’t diminished in mind, but the inability to care for his most intimate needs was a mortification to them both. Thankfully he spent more hours sleeping than awake. The bedding was spotted with the food and drink he’d spilled, as was her blue muslin gown, the plainest she owned.

  At his bedside, she watched him sleep. Between the poisoning and this new affliction, Joanna guessed he’d lost three stone in weight. His cheekbones were sharp, the orbits of his eyes hollowed, his cheeks pasty and unshaved. She could see his scalp through his thinning hair.

  Lord, have mercy. Joanna clamped her lips to keep from keening as she prayed for him. For Charlotte, Azuba, Marigold, and Elijah. Reverend Pauling. Jemma.

  She rose, picked up the big conch shell on Papa’s desk, put it to her ear, and wept to the distant sough of breakers as she prayed for Alex.

  “Miss Joanna?”

  She returned the weighty shell to its place, balanced on its spikey protrusions, and crossed the room.

  Sybil pretended not to notice her tears. “I best get supper started. Miss Charlotte up there playing with her Jemma doll.”

  Joanna touched Sybil’s arm. “I’ll go up soon.”

  “You think Master Carey would eat something?”

  “A pudding perhaps?”

  Sybil nodded. “I can do a pudding.”

  How far they’d come from the days of elaborate meals and finely set table and the hours it had taken to plan, prepare, and serve each one.

  “He’s going to be all right,” Joanna said.

  “Yes ma’am,” Sybil said, dark eyes doubting.

  What was taking Mister Reeves so long to bring the physician? Unless he never meant to return. Was he finished with them? The thought pumped a desperate hope through her veins.

  As Sybil made for the door, Joanna wondered should she send her for help. The McGinnises? They were ten miles upriver, another five along a tributary creek. Could Sybil paddle a canoe so far?

  Why had no one come to them in all these weeks?

  Maybe she would send Sybil. Or maybe she would kill Mister Reeves when he walked through the door.

  As she returned to the bedside chair, through her petticoat she fingered the kitchen knife she carried in her pocket, where needle, thread, and measure once resided. The weight of it was a comfort. And a cold horror. Lord, forgive me. What can I do?

  Papa moaned, the crooked sag of his mouth evident even in sleep. His eyes rolled beneath purpled lids, head jerking as though he flinched from something in a dream.

  At the back door’s opening, she echoed his flinch. She rose and crossed the room swiftly. “Sybil? Did you need—”

  His hand clamped her wrist before she realized it was Mister Reeves, returned at last. The candles in their wall sconces bent in the breeze from the open door behind him; the nearest snuffed out. He was alone.

  “Sybil is in the kitchen,” he said, the words carefully pronounced. She smelled liquor on his breath.

  “Did you bring the physician?”

  “Be glad I didn’t,” he said. “I waited all night while the man tended that child I told you about. It died.”

  “Who? Someone we know?” She hadn’t even thought to ask, hadn’t realized the child was deathly ill—had hardly believed in the scenario at all.

  Had he told the truth for once?

  “More than likely.” He released her, leaving a faint sting where he’d gripped. With effort she refrained from rubbing it away.

  “I returned from your errand exhausted and hungry but found Sybil in the kitchen alone. I had it from her—finally—that Phoebe, Mari, and Elijah’s brat are gone. Run off into the swamps.”

  “Is Sybil all right?” she asked, alarm mounting.

  “She will be, as long as she hurries supper. Are you going to pretend you know nothing of their absence?”

  “Should I? I’ve hardly left Papa’s side.”

  He didn’t blink as he stared at her, taking in the soiled state of her gown. She caught her breath as he leaned toward her and sni
ffed. “So I see. Why, though? You’ve Azuba to help.”

  Joanna hesitated, too exhausted to recall readily what excuse she’d prepared.

  Suspicion chilled his eyes. “Where is Azuba, Miss Carey?”

  Without awaiting answer, he lifted his voice and thundered down the passage, “Azuba! You’re wanted!”

  Dismay seized her. “Mister Reeves, you’ll wake Papa.” When she turned to go back into the study, he grabbed her arm again.

  This time she couldn’t stifle a cry.

  “No one’s coming, Miss Carey. Tell me you don’t know where Azuba is. Make me believe it.”

  “Please, I don’t know. I—”

  Light footsteps sounded on the stairs. “I heard you calling, Phineas. Has Azuba come back?”

  Charlotte was coming down the passage, candlelight making a shimmering halo of her golden hair.

  Mister Reeves released Joanna. “Charlotte,” he said, his voice bearing no resemblance to the harsh tone he’d used with her.

  Shocked by the alteration, Joanna looked at him. He was smiling at Charlotte as though enchanted—a snake charmed by its favorite melody.

  Get her away. Now. As far as you can. But Papa. She would have to leave him alone with Mister Reeves. Do it.

  “No, Charlotte,” she said, and somehow sounded as though any of this was normal. “She isn’t. Let’s you and I go upstairs, all right?”

  She walked away from Mister Reeves, who made no move to stop her. She took her sister by the hand.

  “Can I see Papa?” Charlotte asked as they turned back toward the stairs.

  No footsteps followed. Her heart thumped crazily.

  “He’s a little better, but not yet.” Thus far she’d shielded Charlotte from Papa, hoping his improvement would continue. Azuba’s absence had proved impossible to explain without revealing the extent of their danger. What was she to tell her sister, that she’d sent Azuba away to a safe place? Even Charlotte would understand that meant their home was no longer safe.