by Hope Tarr
“I said hold!”
The pistol’s report had Jack whipping about, one hand already going to the loaded weapon at his own belt. But Tam had trained the smoking pistol on the ceiling, not him; plaster and pieces of thatching fell about his head and bowed shoulders like snow.
Callum slumped against the wall but, sighting the pistol, he limped forward. “Kill him, Da, kill him,” he urged. “Ye’ve time tae reload, and I’ll go and bolt the door so he canna get away.”
Tam lowered the weapon to his side and shook his head. “Nay, I willna.”
Callum’s bloody face bunched into a scowl. “Then give the pistol tae me, ye codless auld sot, and let me do it.” When his father only shook his head, he turned on Jack. “If it werena for ye, Mam would be alive. She’d be alive. ’Twas her love for ye that killed her, sure as if ye’d held the club in your own hand.”
Rage spent, Jack shook his head. “You’re mad.”
Callum’s face fell. “If I am, ’tis because I mind that day like I ken the lines on the palm o’ my own hand.”
Tam broke in, voice low and feeble. “I was aulder than she, auld enough tae be her da.” He walked over to the table, set the pistol on its edge and pulled out a chair for himself. Stiffly he lowered himself onto the caned seat. It seemed to Jack that he’d aged a good decade since he’d first come into the room. “Aulder than she and yet no so auld that I dinna ken what it was tae feel, tae want. And, God help me, I wanted her. Sweet Maggie, they called her then, the bonniest lassie this side o’ the Tweed.”
“Shut up, auld man,” Callum spat but Tam ignored him.
Fixing his gaze on Jack, he said, “She only marrit me for the bairn’s sake, for your sake, but it was for love alone that I took her to wife, though she’d ne’er sae much as looked my way.”
Pacing about the room, hands held over his ears, Callum chanted, “Ye’re ruining it, ye’re ruining it. Ye’re no supposed tae tell. Only I’m allowed tae tell.”
Tam’s gaze remained fixed on Jack, but Jack kent that it was the past he saw, not the present, and suddenly he was seeing it, too. The horse’s hooves pounding toward them. Mam on the cart seat, the reins in hand, looking back over her shoulder to him and Callum and telling them to climb into the straw piled in back. “Mind you cover your heads, too,” she’d urged. “That’ll be your faither come after us, and he’s sure to be in a rare mood.”
Your faither, your faither, your faither…
Tam’s voice brought Jack back to the present. Turning world-weary eyes on his stepson, he asked, “Have ye ever wanted a woman sae bad ye could taste it? Sae bad ye could taste her on your tongue long after ye’d closed your eyes in sleep?”
Jack swallowed hard, feeling the back of his throat knot. “Aye, I have,” he answered, thinking of Claudia as he’d last left her, her sweet, soot-stained face turned up to his for a farewell kiss. He shifted hard eyes to Tam. “But no so that I’d kill for it.”
Tam’s cracked lips parted in a smile. He looked almost relieved. “We’d had a rare wrangle the night before. I’d struck her hard, knocked out a tooth. When I woke up that morn, she was gone and so was the pistol, the pony cart and the both o’ ye.”
Jack nodded for he remembered it now. He remembered it all. How the hairs at the back of his neck had prickled like pins as, at Mam’s urging, he and Callum had hurried through their breakfast of parritch and honey. How he’d left Callum to crawl to the front of the cart and, hugging Mam’s waist had begged her no to halt but to keep on. But she’d only wrenched his wee arms away and, sterner than she’d ever spoken to him before, bade him go to the back with his brother. Cocking the little pearl-handled pistol she’d brought along, she counseled, “Whatever you hear, whatever you see, dinna say a word, mo chride.”
Dinna say a word, a word, a word…
Jack slipped a hand inside his coat and held it at his waist, the smooth metal of Milread’s pistol caressing his palm. “The man on horseback, shouting for us to halt, that was you, wasna it?”
Tam nodded, tears splashing his wrinkled cheeks. Standing behind his chair, Callum had gone silent. “She was my wife—mine. Even if she ne’er loved me, that didna give ’er the right tae leave. I borrowed my neighbor’s horse and caught up wi’ the cart on the road tae Kelso. I begged her tae come back wi’ me, promised I’d nay raise a hand tae her—or tae ye—ever again, but she wouldna soften. Said the night before was the verra last time and that no faither would be better for ye than one who was a drunkard and a brute.”
Jack’s fingers curved about the pistol. Slowly, carefully, he freed it from his belt. “And so you killed her?”
Tam nodded. “Mind I didna set out tae, but when she wouldna see reason, when she held out that wee pistol and told me tae back off or else, I went daft. I grabbed her by the hair and pulled her down from the cart. But even after I’d got the pistol away from her, she fought me. Before I kent what I was about, I threw her down upon the grass. Somehow my walkin’ stick found its way into my hand. When she started up, I struck her hard, again and again and again until she stopped screamin’, stopped thrashin’ and lay still as a stone.” He paused, his knobby throat working. “Her skirts had got bunched about her waist. She had long slender legs and lovely full white thighs, and when I told her I loved her and put my cock inside her, she was still warm.”
Jack had the pistol in hand now. He didn’t bother to hide it. The tears swimming in his eyes were almost blinding, but even so at such close range he could hardly miss. He trained the flintlock on his stepfather and cocked the hammer.
Tam didn’t flinch. “It wasna until I’d finished and was doin’ up my breeks that I saw the pair o’ ye standin’ by the side o’ the cart, straw stickin’ out from your hair and clothes. Callum started screaming, but I figured he was too little to understand much o’ what had passed. Ye, on the other hand, were a problem. I couldna be sure how much ye’d seen, for ye just stood and stared, your wee mouth clamped tight as a trap.” Dinna say a word, a word, a word…
Jack saw it all, as though a curtain had been drawn back from a Christmas tableau, the scene he’d blocked out for two decades, in panoramic view and grisly detail. The crimson blood smearing the bright green grass. Tam bending down to lay a handkerchief over Mam’s staring gaze. The flies flitting about her still form while, perched in the bows of a berry tree, a mistle thrush launched into song.
Hatred burned like acid in Jack’s belly. He had never felt such loathing in all his life. “Coward that you are, you let another man, an innocent man, take the punishment that should have been yours.”
He had the pistol trained on Tam. He would kill him, of course. The only decision left was whether to fire into his head or his heart. His heart, Jack thought, the verra organ of his own body that throbbed as if with a mortal wound.
Tam wet his lips but otherwise didn’t make a move, neither to rise from the chair nor to reload the pistol that lay within reach. “Aye, a drifter who’d stolen some apples and then nodded off tae sleep in our byre. I found him when I got back and ’twas like the answer to a prayer. I smeared some o’ the blood on his clothes and changed my walking stick for his staff. But there was still one problem left—ye.”
“Me?”
“Aye, ye’d seen everything, and I couldna trust ye tae keep yer peace. At first I thought tae come into your room one night and smother ye wi’ a pillow, but then I was minded that a good half o’ the village a’ready thought ye were daft. Even if ye were tae start talkin’ again, who would believe ye?”
Dinna say a word, a word, a word…
“Afterward I told myself I’d make amends by being a proper faither tae ye. Only every time I saw ye starin’ up at me wi’ those big golden-brown eyes, her eyes, I thought my head would split and my heart would burst.”
Jack’s index finger settled over the trigger. He’d killed countless times before, launched murderers into eternity with a single pull of the gallows’ lever, but this time it was personal.
&nb
sp; “Say your prayers, old man.” He prepared to pull back.
“Jack, non!” Claudia stood inside the cottage doorway. Beneath the gray smudges, her face had gone very pale.
With her was Milread, wringing her hands. “Dinna do it, lad. He’s no worth it.”
Jack shook his head. “Leave me be, the both of you. You heard him—he killed my maither. He killed Mam.”
Claudia started across the room toward him. “But if you kill him, it is you who will hang.”
The pistol in his hand began to waver. “It willna matter, for justice will be done.”
“It will matter to me. You matter to me.” Pushing past Callum, Claudia came to stand at Jack’s side. “If you kill him in cold blood, you will be no better than him.” She laid a light hand on the arm holding the flintlock. “Jack, chéri, if it is truly justice that you seek, then let us send for Duncan. Let him stand trial for his crime in a court of law.”
Callum left his father’s chair and ran to Jack’s other side. “Dinna listen tae her, Jacko. Be a man and do it. Do it now!”
Tam heaved a heavy sigh. “A rope or a bullet makes nay difference tae me, for I’ve naything left tae live for.”
And suddenly Jack realized that was the very best argument of all. Tam did indeed have nothing to live for. But Jack did. He had Claudia. and who knew but they might yet find a way to forge a future together. And she was right. Life was too precious to squander on a moment’s madness. He uncocked the hammer and lowered the pistol to his side.
“Coward!” Callum shrieked. Face bathed in fury, he backed away toward the table, but Milread was already there, picking up the discarded pistol before he could reach for it.
Jack pocketed his weapon and wrapped his arm about Claudia. “You’re no much for obeying orders, are you?” he said, then pressed a grateful kiss atop her head.
Turning her tear-streaked face up to his, she admitted, “Disobedience, it is a fault of mine, I fear, and one of many you will have to accustom yourself to once we wed.”
Despite the horrors heaped upon him in the course of—was it only twenty-four hours—Jack found his smile. “Did you just propose marriage to me, Mistress Valemont?”
The corners of Claudia’s lips lifted. “Yes, Monsieur Campbell, I believe I did.”
Thinking of what he’d almost done, all he’d come so close to losing, Jack felt his whole body begin to tremble. Turning his back on his stepfather and Callum, he whispered in her ear, “I need to be with you,” though in truth he was past caring who might overhear. “As soon as we’ve seen Tam to Duncan—”
Across the room a shot rang out. They broke apart and spun about to see Tam, blood gushing from the bullet hole at his temple, slide from the chair to the floor.
“Saints preserve us!” White-faced, Milread made the sign of the cross.
Jack dashed across the room and went down on one knee beside the prone form. Out of habit he felt for a pulse though in truth there was no need. The gaping hole in his stepfather’s temple confirmed it. Tam was dead.
Callum, gaze like glass, shook his head. “It wasna supposed tae happen this way.”
Jack picked up the little pearl-handled pistol. “This was Mam’s,” he said, more to himself than to Callum. “A gift to her from my faither before his leaving.”
Staring ahead, Callum nodded. “Aye, he always kept it upon him. I suppose ye’ll be wantin’ it?”
Jack hesitated, then let the pistol slip from his grasp. The past was dead, finished. Mam would live in his heart forever, he would honor her memory forever and so he was in no need of a memento. Though his heart was still heavy with hurt, and would be for some time to come, he suspected, he felt lighter, freer than he could ever remember.
Claudia crossed the room toward him. “Come away, chéri.”
She held out her hand. Jack took it and rose. Hands joined, they walked past Callum and made their way to the door, Milread in tow.
“What a day,” Milread exclaimed as they paused on the stepping stones outside to gather themselves before fetching Duncan. “But if any good can come of so much bad, it seems some has.” She cast a significant look their way and grinned. “It seems the pair o’ ye have finally opened your eyes to see sense—and one another.”
“Aye, it seems we have,” Jack agreed, reaching out to tuck an ebony strand of Claudia’s hair behind her ear.
Claudia looked up at him, and the love shining forth from her gentle gaze was a potent enough tonic to heal even the deepest of hurts. “It was indeed Callum who torched your cottage, was it not?”
“Aye, it was.”
Milread blew out a heavy breath. “Then we’ve at least one rook tae roost in the Selkirk Tollbooth?”
Jack hesitated, then shook his head. “Nay, let Callum be. Forbye ’twould be my word against his, and even if he were judged to be guilty, it would not bring back my cottage or Lady. Let his punishment be that he must live with who he is.”
“But, Jack,” Milread protested, brow furrowing, “Ye canna mean tae let him get off with such a thing. Why, ye ken how it is with him. What’s tae keep him from striking out at ye again?”
Jack glanced at Claudia, hesitated and then cleared his throat. “It may be that I’ll no be staying around long enough to find out.”
“Leave the village!” Milread’s mouth fell open.
“Aye,” he answered, fixing his gaze on Claudia. “There’s a great wide world out there, and suddenly I’m minded to see it…that is, if a certain wee woman willna mind pointing me the way.”
Eyes moist, Claudia laid her small hand in his and squeezed. “I think she may be persuaded…once her sentence here is served, that is.”
They continued down the path in silence. Just as they were about to step out onto the roadway, a bugle sounded from close by.
Jack cocked his ear, listening. “That Duncan is a wily old fox,” he said in response to the women’s questing looks. “It must be that he’s sniffed out the trouble and sent his men ahead to aid us.”
His words seemed to be borne out when, a few minutes later, a man whom he recognized as the bailiff met them at the fork in the road. Looking directly at Claudia, he said, “I arrest you in the name of His Majesty, King George the Third.”
Fear frissoned through Jack’s body. Setting Claudia behind him, he stepped forward. “On what charge?”
“Attempt to escape and thereby violate the terms and conditions of her sentence as set forth—”
“Och, man,” Jack broke in, torn between fury and relief. “There must be some mistake or is it ye havna working eyes? This is Claudia Valemont standing just beyond me. Does she look to be escaping to you?”
The bailiff’s eyes narrowed. “The alleged escape attempt took place this week past and in Edinburgh no Selkirk.”
Jack opened his mouth to deny it when Callum strolled up to join them. “Aye, ’tis so.” Turning to Jack, his broad smile revealed the bloody gap where his front tooth had used to be. “Thanks tae your apprentice, Jacko, we’ve a signed statement swearing it was so.”
Chapter Nineteen
The Selkirk Tollbooth One Week Later
Jack stood on the tollbooth’s portico, the gray drizzle that promised soon to turn into snow misting about him. How many times had he stood thus, on execution eve, waiting for the warder to admit him? How many times had he visited the cell of the condemned with his measuring tapes and his scales and his ready assurances? How many times had he passed a wife or mother, a sibling or sweetheart, trembling and teary-eyed in the corridor on their way to or from their farewell visit with the condemned, invariably bearing a food basket, blanket or some cherished object meant to bring comfort at life’s last? No matter how weary or rushed he might be, Jack always made it a point to stop and reassure them that, nay worries, death would come quick and painless. But now it was Jack who trembled, who feared, who carried the basket of food and the blanket that he prayed would bring if not solace then at least some respite from the misery. Now it was his
beloved, his Claudia, who stood condemned to die.
When he’d seen the sworn affidavit bearing Luicas’s mark at the bottom, he’d scarcely been able to credit the proof of his eyes. Could the boy be so bitter over the wardrobe incident that he would do Claudia such a mischief? But between bouts of crying and snatches of sentences, Luicas had explained that Callum had invited him to the taproom and, once there, had set about introducing him to his first whiskey. First and last he swore up and down, for when he’d made his mark on that wee paper, official looking though it was, he’d thought it to be the tavern bill of fare.
Damning as that document was, Duncan was too fair a man to condemn Claudia on it alone. But when the rider dispatched to Edinburgh returned with Mistress Tweedie’s sworn statement in his pocket, the magistrate had had no choice but to uphold his original pronouncement. “Hangit by the neck ’til dead,” he’d said with a bang of his gavel, though those with seats at the front of the room later remarked that his eyes had seemed suspiciously dewy.
But tears, be they Luicas’s or Duncan’s or even Jack’s, couldna help Claudia now. Action was what was called for, and he could only pray he might find the cunning and the courage to do all that was required of him.
Eschewing the heavy iron doorknocker, he used his fist to hammer away, reveling in the bruising pain to his split knuckles. A moment later he heard the bolt sliding back from the opposite side of the door. He straightened his shoulders and his features just as the door swung back.
Red-rimmed eyes and a gust of spirits-soured breath greeted him from across the threshold. It seemed Wallis, the warder and one of Callum’s mates, had already started in on the whiskey.
He glanced to the wicker basket Jack clenched in one tight fist, to the plaid blanket slung over his other arm, and cracked a snaggletooth smile. “Come tae see the Frog lassie, I’ll warrant. Gi’ ’er a good-bye kiss for me, aye?”
Jack and Wallis were of an age but years of a steady diet of whiskey had whittled away at the warder’s flesh until he was little more than a skeleton covered with great tufts of thick dark hair. Jack could have knocked him down with near to no effort and made his own way to the condemned cell at the back of the building, but once there he would need the rusted ring of keys hitched on Wallis’s belt to unlock the cell door. Wallis kent it, too.