by D. J. Butler
Obadiah kept singing:
That ’e their inspirer an’ patron would be
When this answer arrived from the jolly old Grecian!
“Iffen you’re lucky enough to git out alive,” she advised the ruffian, “you might should beat it outta Nashville and ne’er look back. By the time my pa finishes with you, you’ll wish you’d turned into a pillar of salt. You’ll wish you’d been tore into twelve pieces and rode to the wind by Imperial couriers, like that old Levite concubine, rather than have to stand afore the righteous wrath and judgment of my pa.”
Sarah didn’t have a plan. She was antagonizing this man in the hope that if she managed to create a little chaos, she might find a way to escape. And if she couldn’t escape, any delay she created would give the Calhoun boys more time to come after them. The Calhouns and even the odd little Cetean; she wouldn’t turn up her nose at his help.
“Stop it, you little witch!”
Voice, fiddle an’ flute, no longer be mute
I’ll lend you my name an’ inspire you to boot!
Obadiah was hit and miss at best on the tune, but he had enthusiasm.
There they were again, the two shadow figures, and then they were gone.
Cal stirred.
“As of right now, your life ain’t worth a chewed plug.” Sarah lowered her face, expecting a blow and hoping to duck it.
The fist pounded her in her shoulder and neck, and also thumped the man carrying her.
“Hey!” he shouted, and threw her to the ground.
Sarah landed hard; the ground was grassy and carpeted with fallen leaves, but she was stunned, and lay still to collect her breath.
The man following also dropped his burden.
“The hell you hittin’ me for, Angus?” demanded the injured thug.
Cal moaned piteously as the men carrying him tossed him to the ground, too.
“Shut up, Bob, I weren’t hittin’ you, but the little tricksy-mouthed vixen!”
Obadiah had stopped singing. “Shut it, the lot of ye! You, what be your name, Angus? Did I ’ear you say you ’it the girl?”
“She won’t shut up!” Angus snarled. “She keeps goin’ on ’bout how the Elector’s gonna kill me!”
Bob clucked like a chicken. “Po’ little Angus, gittin’ scairt by a girl!”
“To hell with the girl!” Angus barked. “I’d chop her to pieces right here and now and eat her heart raw and not miss a wink of sleep over it. But iffen she really is Iron Andy’s daughter? Damn right, I’m a mite nervous! Ain’t you?”
Bob spat in the leaves. “Don’t be such a goddamned coward.”
“I ain’t afraid. I jest don’t relish gittin’ my tongue cut out, and havin’ my fingernails torn off, and bein’ hung from a tree by my own guts. They say he crucified people in the Ohio Forks War. They say he took scalps. They say he’s the one as killed George Washington, stabbed him in the heart in his sleep with Washington’s own sword.”
“All that shit you heard about the Elector jest ain’t true,” Bob said. “The Calhouns spread those notions around to make folks scairt of ’em. Besides, didn’t nobody kill George Washington; John Penn bought him off with a bunch of land somewhere and he jest up and quit. Pontiac’s the one they killed, and it was hangin’, not no midnight assassination. And iffen any of it is true, it happened a long time ago. He’s jest an old feller now with a lot of rough cracker grandsons who live out in the woods, stealin’ cattle, drinkin’ home-made corn likker, and sportin’ with their own sisters.”
“You ain’t from around here,” Angus muttered. “You don’t know.”
Obadiah laughed and sucked at the wineskin again. “Don’t ye worry, lads, I wot what’ll fix ’er.” Kneeling in the blanket of leaves, he looked Sarah in the eye. “I’d tell you that this’ll ’urt me worse than it’ll ’urt you,” he said to her, “but it’d be a lie.”
He punched her in her good eye.
Her field of vision filled with stars. Her head spun. Very clever maneuvering, Sarah, she told herself. Well done.
Blood ran down around her eye and onto her cheek.
The men laughed. Sarah had to yank her imagination away from thinking about slitting all their throats but Angus, and leaving him hanging from a tree by his own guts.
Her vision cleared, she saw Obadiah still looming over her, and she found she had a plan.
“Get that devil drink away from me!” she snapped. She hoped he was stupid enough—or drunk enough—not to wonder why she would have wine in her pack, if she hated it so much. Maybe he’d think it was Cal’s, that would be ironic. Maybe he’d think it was medicinal.
“New Light, eh?” Obadiah had another swig. “One of Barton’s Children, eh? Followers of the former Bishop Stone?”
Sarah put her face down, doing her best to look sulky and defiant. With her chin tucked against her collarbone her face was in shadow, and she took the opportunity to tear her own lower lip with her teeth. She was rewarded with the warm metallic tang of blood on her tongue.
“’Im, too?” The Englishman gestured at Calvin. Cal was stirring into wakefulness, and two of the thugs kept pistols trained on him. “’E goes in for the tent-preachink an’ the speakink in tongues?”
Sarah nodded sulkily. She wondered about the other two men, the shadowed ones she had such a hard time pinning down in her field of vision. Well, seven to one against wasn’t much worse than five to one. She’d have to try to get Obadiah moving in the right direction, and hope all the others would all follow.
“Right, drink up!” Yanking her to a sitting position, Obadiah shoved the wineskin to her lips.
Sarah spluttered and coughed to look convincing, and carefully, with her tongue and teeth, forced blood into the wineskin. Three pulses with her tongue should make three drops. As she bled her own lip into the wineskin, she focused her mind, hexing the wine with blood and will. She trembled, feeling energy flow from her into the wineskin. If her mouth had been free, she would have chanted a rhyme, but she’d have to do without. It was taking a long time to get three drops squeezed out, and she hoped Obadiah wouldn’t notice her eagerness to keep her mouth on the wineskin’s opening.
Obadiah did notice, but misunderstood. “Look at that, the wee squaw likes it mickle well after all!” he laughed raucously. “Let’s try it on ’er brave!”
He threw Sarah back into the leaves.
Cal looked groggy but his eyes were open. He must have seen Sarah resist the drink, because he played along, shying away and whimpering before allowing wine to be poured down his throat. She was proud of him for focusing and trying to help her, even not knowing what she was up to. Of course, now he’d be hexed, too, and that might complicate things.
She would just have to deal with that later.
The men all laughed and one of them kicked Calvin in the chest.
“I don’t see as any of this is gonna make the Elector any happier,” Angus muttered, “iffen he catches us.”
Obadiah resumed his song, louder and merrier than before.
And besides, I’ll instruct you, like me, to entwine
The myrtle of Venus wiff Bacchus’s vine!
He took a long swig.
Her captors all roared with laughter and Sarah held her breath. Angus reached for the wine but Obadiah rebuffed him with an elbow, and then drank deeply, finishing off the skin, tossing it aside, and finally relieving pressure from his chest with a long, loud belch.
Immediately, he reached for the second wineskin.
“Obadiah, my dear,” Sarah called in her sweetest, clearest Penn’s English. “These ropes are uncomfortable.”
The Nashville thugs laughed again, but Obadiah Dogsbody looked merely puzzled. He scratched his head. “Aye, poppet.” He pulled a clasp knife from his pocket, snapping the blade open.
“Hell, no!” Angus snapped. “Don’t kill her, and if you’re gonna do it, don’t do it right here under the old man’s nose!”
The other ruffians laughed again. “Gi
ve it to her!” one of them shouted as Obadiah trudged back to Sarah’s side and knelt. Then carefully, even gently, Obadiah slipped his blade between her wrists and cut away the ropes. He also cut the rope from her ankles.
The men from Nashville stopped laughing.
Sarah stood. She had him, the fat bully. “Would you help my nephew Calvin?”
Obadiah cut Calvin loose, and he staggered to his feet too, staring at Sarah just a little too intently. Uh oh. A brawl between the two of them would do her no good.
Obadiah put away his knife and took Sarah’s hand, stroking her arm. “My master the Right Reverend Father mickle wishes to see you, my pet,” he whispered. He stank of wine and sweat and horses, but she forced herself to smile lovingly at her captor.
“Of course,” she said. “I am very honored to go see him. Please take me there directly.”
Obadiah grinned and turned to go, still holding her hand. She threw a quick glance at Cal; he was balling up his fists and flaring his nostrils.
“Dear Obadiah, wait a moment,” she said. It wasn’t a strong enough hex to control the man, it just infatuated him, and maybe confused him a little bit where she was concerned, so she needed to be careful. And subtle, like the serpent.
The big man stopped and listened.
“Did the Right Reverend Father ask to see my nephew Calvin, as well?”
“Nay.” Obadiah frowned.
“His mamma will be so worried.” She knitted her brows. “If you would be so kind, I would like to take my nephew home. I’ll go with him, because I’m not sure he knows the way. If you tell me where I can find you, I’ll come join you later this evening, and we’ll speak to the Right Reverend Father together.”
Obadiah shot Calvin a suspicious look. “Your nephew?”
Sarah nodded. “He’s my brother’s son.” It was a lie she herself would have believed a day earlier. “He’s a good boy.”
Obadiah smiled. “Very well, my pet. I’ll tell Father Angleton to expect you, shall I?”
The Nashville ruffians stood with their jaws open, blinking in disbelief.
“The hell’s goin’ on here?” Bob demanded.
Obadiah spun and struck Bob in the mouth, then drew his pistol. Bob dropped to the ground and held his jaw.
“Anyone else got a question, lads?” Obadiah menaced his men.
“We just don’t wanna git ourselves shot,” Angus said, raising trembling hands in surrender. “Or worse.”
“She be comink back straight away,” Obadiah grunted. “Ben’t you, poppet?”
“Of course, my love,” she told him.
“Very good.” He smiled placidly.
* * *
Calvin Calhoun loved Sarah.
He had always loved Sarah, he knew that. Even when they had both been children, and she was his dear little auntie, his father’s sister though she was younger than Calvin himself, he had adored her.
He loved her because she was funny. He loved her because she was smart, smarter than anyone, even as smart as Old Man Calhoun, maybe. He loved her because she was tough, and proud, and a leader. He even thought she was pretty, though it was hard to say that about a girl with such an unfortunate eye, but then his own face had more than once been compared to the head of his tomahawk. He was in no position to go casting stones at the homely.
He could never say anything about his feelings because she had been his aunt, which was too close. You could marry a cousin, but not your father’s sister, that was bad and if you tried it, they wouldn’t let you marry in church or even in public and nobody would acknowledge that you even were married, much less recognize your kids. And everybody knew your children would be sickly and deformed. The Elector himself had reinforced this point when Cal was a boy, dragging all his grandchildren down to Nashville with pennies in their fists to see a traveling circus that featured a two-headed bull calf, stuffed and mounted, and warning them in dark whispers that the calf’s sire and dam had been brother and sister. Cal had often wondered if that was the real story behind Sarah’s eye, that her mother hadn’t been some Shawnee concubine warming his bed in his old age, like the Elector’d put about, but some close kin of the Old Man’s.
It turned out neither was true. Sarah was somebody else entirely, a Penn or an Ohioan, if Cal had understood correctly.
Sarah was not a Calhoun, and he could marry her.
He had proposed already, she had accepted, and he had abducted her almost in the traditional fashion (without notice to kin, though that was due to the circumstances and could be remedied later). Lord hates a man as can’t recognize the sound of opportunity knocking at his door. She hadn’t seemed too thrilled about it, but she had accepted him, and she’d come around, especially if he could prove himself as a protector and provider.
Then something had happened, he wasn’t sure what, but he had been knocked out. His head still throbbed.
When he’d woken up, it had been to watch Sarah pretend she was New Light and resist a drink of Calvin’s wine. Cal had played along, and then somehow—he wasn’t quite sure how, he had still been groggy from whatever blow he’d suffered—she had talked the fat Englishman into letting them both go.
The love for her in his heart had exploded then, into a million flowers and singing birds. He felt tingly all over, and lightheaded, and he knew in some corner of his mind that he was overreacting, that she had saved his life from the ruffians and his natural gratitude was being blown all out of proportion by his love.
He knew that, but still his lips wanted to sing and his feet wanted to dance, to stomp out a bright rhythm of courtship for Sarah Calhoun. Sarah Penn.
The sudden riot of love in his head was so powerful, it almost made him forget the evening’s other strange event. This was a night on which Cal had perpetrated one abduction and had himself been kidnapped twice. His first kidnapping had been at the hands of his grandfather, whom he now knew as Grand Master of the Calhoun Mountain Lodge, and under the direction of the Grand Master, Cal had been inducted into the Craft as an Entered Apprentice, and then promptly raised to the degree of Fellow Craft, and then raised to Master Mason.
This was not normal procedure, his grandfather had explained, and it might be seen as rushed, but it was something he had done in order to give Cal all the help he could in preparation for his upcoming journey.
Calvin Calhoun’s head spun with signs, tokens, and passwords almost as much as it spun with love.
He wasn’t entirely sure why his grandfather had inducted him into the Craft. The old man had only said, as he’d walked Cal back to his cabin through the woods, that a Mason was obligated to help another Mason in need, and that the signs and tokens and passwords could be used to call for that help.
Cal wondered how that would work. If Sarah hadn’t rescued them from the Nashville men, could he have used the passwords to find out if any of them were Masons, and ask them to let him go?
Maybe. In the meantime, his head spun.
He stumbled along, haggard and weary and Cupid-smitten, humping one pack on his shoulder and dragging the other under his arm. He wished the Englishman hadn’t shattered his pa’s old gun, but at least it made one less thing for him to carry.
“Sarah,” he gasped, “you’re pretty as a picture from any angle, but iffen you’d slow down, I might could look at your face once in a while!”
She didn’t answer and she didn’t slow down.
He noticed something that surprised him, then, cutting through the fog. “Sarah, are we goin’ the right way? It seems to me we ain’t got off Calhoun Mountain yet, so we should be goin’ downhill.”
“I can’t say for sure how long that hex’ll hold him,” she shot back over her shoulder, “or how long he can keep his hired men in check. And the gun’s gone, and you been hit on the head and need lookin’ at. We can leave tomorrow, iffen you’re still fixin’ to come with me.”
“Hold who?” Where did she get all her energy? Cal wanted to stop, catch his breath, maybe lie down. Touch her
hair softly and say kind things.
“Obadiah Dogsbody. The Englishman.”
Cal laughed. “You hexed that muttonhead? No wonder I couldn’t make out why he’s lettin’ us go!” He slapped his knee and stopped walking. “How about we celebrate your cleverness with a kiss, girl?”
She kept walking.
“Come on, Sarah!” he called after her.
Still walking.
“My head’s jest fine!” he yelled.
Calvin heard a rustle on the slope behind him. He was in love, but he was neither deaf nor stupid, and the senses he’d trained in a lifetime of hunting deer and sneaking other men’s cattle out of their pastures had not deserted him. He spun on the balls of his feet, whipping out his tomahawk with his free hand.
Something manlike—and not a man—stood in a clearing among the trees on the slope below him. Cal saw it clear as could be, with the moon shining full down on the not-a-man. The near-human thing had no features and no clothing. It was like a statue of the humanoid form, unfinished. It didn’t shine or glow or reflect light; in the moonlight, it looked like it might be brown or gray, top to bottom.
As Cal turned, the not-a-man froze. Cal got a good hard look at it, and then it bolted into the trees. Cal thought he saw a second…thing…behind the first, disappearing into the night. He waited a moment, staring holes into the forest, but nothing stirred.
Cal whipped back around and trotted up the slope again after Sarah. He strained his ears to listen, conscious of eyes, or at least vision, on his back as whatever it was he had seen watched him from behind. The hair on his neck stood, and he shivered. He kept a tight grip on his war axe, brandishing it to the side occasionally so the unseen watchers would know he was armed.
Sarah paused to look down at him, panting. “Come on, you danged slowpoke!”
Then her eye widened. “Run, Cal, run!” she yelled. “Run like the Devil hisself is after you!”