by Aaron Galvin
“She knows nothing of my people,” I say.
“Oh, but she does,” says the waif. “Studied’em a good long while now. Her and Mister Cotton both say—”
The waif flies to the door at the echo of footsteps up the hall. Her smile pains my gut. “Big plans indeed,” she says.
Elisabeth strides into my cell, passing the waif without acknowledgement. “I have a gift for you,” she says to me, her eyes gleaming.
She stands clear of the door as two burly guards haul a hooded prisoner between them. They cast the prisoner to the floor and pin his shoulders with their knees.
Elisabeth steps toward the prisoner. “You scorned my last two gifts, girl. No doubt you shall enjoy my third.” She kneels and takes his hood in hand. “Say hello to your brother.”
His face cut and bloodied, George looks on me as one dazed to his surroundings. He mumbles with spittle drooling from his mouth.
“Come now, George.” Elisabeth grabs hold of his hair, yanking up, forcing him look on me. “Did you not miss your dear sister?”
“That man is no brother to me,” I say, forcing the lie. “Betty played you for a song, Elisabeth. The same as she played me.”
“Did you, Betty?” Elisabeth turns.
My nostrils flare as Betty Barron and her daughter enter my cell. Cloaked in heavy robes to fight the cold, Susannah will not meet my stare as she shuffles in.
Betty shares no such qualms.
“Mary Warren is dead on your account,” I say, drawing near to Betty as my chains allow. “Add her soul to the list of those waiting for you.”
“No,” says Betty. “You forced this recklessness upon us all, Rebecca. And I warned that I were well versed in this sport you play at.”
Susannah draws her robes tight, folding her hands inside. “It is so cold in here, Mother.”
“Patience, child,” says Betty. “We will leave soon.”
I glare at Betty. “You bid me trust you.”
“And yet you did not,” says Betty. “Had you listened well, no doubt you should have seen the wisdom in my words.”
Elisabeth chuckles. “What wisdom do you possess? You hold no secret knowledge.”
“My father taught me humble servitude is of the highest virtues. That kneeling before the master”—Betty reaches into her robes—“means you draw near him.”
Betty sheds her robes, a blade in her hand. The tip of her dagger erupts through the neck of the guard nearest me. He falls clutching his throat, gasping.
Susannah gives her guard little time to respond, burying her hatchet in his back. She backs away as he screams, spinning in attempt to remove it.
The waif screams and flees my cell.
“Mother, the girl!” Susannah cries before giving chase to the waif.
Elisabeth screeches and lunges at Betty. “You traitorous bit—”
She falls to the floor—yanked down by George. He pulls her to him, climbing astride her, straddling her chest, wrapping both hands around her neck.
The guard trips with Susannah’s hatchet in his back. He falls within my reach.
I waste little time in throwing the chain of my wrist shackles around his neck, pulling tight against them.
He grabs hold of my hair, yanking me close to him.
A woman’s scream fills my ear alongside a deep, punching sound.
The guard gasps at each thud landed and gives up his final gasps not long after a few have fallen. His grip relents in death and I pull away.
Betty stands above me with Susannah’s hatchet in her grip, dripping blood.
“Y-you saved me…” I say.
Betty drops the hatchet and flees the room.
“For my family.” George’s growl draws my attention.
Elisabeth flails beneath him, her mouth opening and closing without sound. She claws air to reach his reddening face.
“For my wife,” his voice breaks.
Elisabeth’s eyes roll in her head, her head lolling in his grip.
George keeps his stranglehold of Elisabeth long after she grows still.
“Brother,” I say. “She is gone.”
His attention snaps to me, his face livid. It melts away when our eyes connect, and he paws at Elisabeth’s body, not ceasing until he finds a ring of keys.
“George,” I say. “How did you—”
“We have little time, sister.” George scrambles to me and tries my locks with each of the keys. “Have you seen the others?”
The shackle around my left ankle unlocks.
“Mary is dead,” I say as George frees my right ankle. “Andrew were somewhere here, last I saw. I know not what they have done with Ciquenackqua.”
George curses at another failed attempt to free my wrists.
“Did Betty speak to you of Father?” I ask.
“Aye,” says George. “We will—”
A shackle unlocks.
George frees the other.
I fall into his arms, clutching at his neck. “Forgive me, brother.” I cry. “Forgive me all that has happened.”
“I do,” he says. “But we must go now. Can you walk?”
“I can run to escape this place.”
George grins. “Good. Come then.”
My heads swoons when he aids me stand. I fight the dizziness by glaring at Elisabeth’s corpse. I fall upon her screaming, grabbing her hair, bashing her skull into the floor to ensure her dead.
“Rebecca!” George pulls me off her. “We must go. Now!”
“Wait.” I pluck the axe from the dead guard and reach for the dagger in the other’s throat.
George throws me toward the cell door ere I grab the dagger, then pushes me up the hall.
Betty waits at the far end, waving us hurry.
The rankling of keys in George’s fist bid me hurry.
“We found Andrew!” Betty yells.
I follow her up the next hall toward a dying guard, clutching at the oozing hole in his belly. “K-kill me…” he begs.
I pause only to steal his dagger from its sheathe. Then I leap around his weak swipe and continue on, following Betty.
The guard cries out as George halts to end his suffering.
Susannah waits near the hall middle, knelt outside a cell door, her face blustery. “The girl, Mother. E-Elisabeth’s slave,” says Susannah. “S-she escaped.”
Betty continues past her. She scurries to the hall end and lies in wait, peeking around the corner.
I reach the cell door. Different from the one that kept me, this door bears a grated opening near the top.
George pushes me aside before I can look inside. He tries the keys through the lock with maddening swiftness.
My gaze wavers between his efforts and our sentry, Betty.
“Hurry, George,” says Susannah. “Hurry.”
Anger swells in me at the approaching echo of footsteps and shouted voices from around the corner. I stalk to join Betty, my hands relishing the handles of both dagger and axe in my palms.
I throw myself at the wall beside her. Keeping careful watch of the approaching shadows, I count three on the opposite wall.
“Hurry, lads!” a guard calls. “They must—”
I lurch around the corner, frighting all three men. My dagger finds its home in the throat of their captain. I shove him back into the arms of his companions, then sweep Susannah’s axe around, burying it in the cheek of a guard.
Betty saves me from the third man, fearing him back with wide, arching swipes.
The guard drops his flintlock and flees back down the hall.
I fetch up the flintlock and train its aim. The shot thunders in my ears, filling the hall with smoke. When it clears, the fleeing guard lies sprawled at the hall’s end. My blood surges in the aftermath.
“That were a fool thing to do,” she says. “The sound of your shot—”
“The waif escaped,” I say, dropping the flintlock. “No doubt she rallies more to come even now.”
I dash back to George and Su
sannah, finding the door gaped open. Inside, George feverishly works his dagger through the ropes binding Andrew’s wrists and ankles over his back.
“Andrew.” Susannah cradles his head in her lap, stroking his hair. “My love, what have they done to you?”
“George,” I say.
“I know, Rebecca…”
“The guards—”
“I know!” George cuts the last rope strands.
Andrew moans as his arms fall across his back and his legs slap stone. “M-my legs…I cannot feel them.” He looks on George. “L-leave me.”
“I will not,” says George, squatting to slip his hands under Andrew’s neck and knees. Grunting, he lifts Andrew off the ground and shoulders him.
Andrew cries out.
George turns to me, his face blustery red from the weight of Andrew. “Guard us well, sister.”
I grab Susannah’s arm and pull her out of the cell. “The guards walked you in here,” I say. “Now lead us out.”
Susannah lingers on Andrew’s face.
I thrust the axe back into her hand, drawing her attention. “Lead.”
Susannah takes the axe then flies up the hall.
“Where is Betty?” George asks.
“Gone ahead.” I pause beside the dead guards, slinging a loaded flintlock about my shoulder and drawing the captain’s pistol from its holster. Then I race to catch them.
We hurry down the steps, wheeling around corners, sprinting down a new hall.
Andrew cries out at each step taken, his face wincing, body bouncing on George’s shoulder.
“What is your plan?” I shout to George.
“Trust…the others”—he labors to balance Andrew—“to do their work.”
“Others?”
A salty breeze fills my nose as we descend a second stairwell.
Betty waits for us at the bottom of the steps, crouched behind a wagon, waving us stop.
George and Susannah hesitate in the stairwell at the echo of ominous bells and shouting men across the yard.
I move on, skulking low, sidling next to Betty. The night sky and shadow embrace me as I sprawl on my belly and peer underneath the wagon.
Our freedom lay not fifty yards of barren ground between us and an open gate.
War rages beyond the pike-tipped barricades. Several guards lie dead outside their wall. Others fall in clouds of smoke, all attempting to reach safety inside the fort as a train of blazing wagons rolls toward the gate.
Voices shout orders. The square fills with more soldiers. A few rush to swing close the wooden gates. Several more bear a wooden beam between them and slot it through holds to further guard the gate.
More men line the wall. Their rifles bark fire and smoke on those below, all to the tune of women’s screams and those in death’s throes outside.
“We must move,” I say, pulling Betty back to the steps.
“What now?” Susannah looks to George. “We cannot escape this way.”
My brother frowns.
Fear swells in me at the number of guards filling the fort square.
“George,” I whisper, “we cannot hope to skirt their attention for long.”
A gull flutters to land on the wagon. It cocks its head at me, then flies again at the echo of another volley from the guards. The bird’s flight draws the attention of a guard captain across the square. Our eyes meet and he shouts to halt his fellows. All turn and bring the aim of their rifles to bear.
“Run!” I hiss to the others.
Shots whizz past me, shattering stone and splintering wood around us.
I kneel and unsling the flintlock. My sight locks on the captain as his fellows doctor their rifles for a second volley.
My shoulder jerks back, my aim firing off kilter.
“Rebecca.” George flings me up the steps. “Go!”
I drop the rifle and trail Betty and Susannah up the stairs.
“S-save yourself, George,” says Andrew.
“No,” George pants.
The second volley rips through the steps behind us.
We sprint down the hall and up the next flight.
“There!” voices echo behind us. “Halt!”
More shots fly past me.
Betty turns at the top of the steps. “This level is the last.”
“Find a window,” yells George. “We cannot go back.”
I swing around the corner and flatten my back against the wall.
“What are you doing?” George asks.
“Waiting.” I raise my dagger.
George grabs me by the arm and hauls me away. “I did not come to see you killed now, sister.”
“There is a room at the end,” Betty shouts.
George thrusts me ahead.
I rush down the hall and join Susannah and Betty inside a corner room. A pair of windows on either wall floods the room with clean air. I fill my chest deep with it, savoring the salty taste.
George sets Andrew to rest with his back against a cannon, then moves to bar one of the doors.
I take the other, latching it closed and bracing it with a wooden beam. Then I survey the room—a guard post storeroom of sorts. A stack of cannonballs stands near one window, food provisions and water near the corner, and rifles line the walls.
“Andrew.” Susannah pets his face. “My God, what did she do to you?”
“K-killed me, I think,” he says.
“And still you breathe.” George steals a rifle off the wall and checks it for powder and shot. “Do not give up so easily, Andrew.”
I move to the windows, leaning out of each, taking in the surroundings. No guards line the wall atop us to either side. Distracted, I think, by those drawing their fight outside the gates. Craggy rocks and a furious sea lay beneath the southern windows, whilst sand and marsh sit below the eastern.
My heart pounds at the drop distance. I punch my fist upon the brick wall.
“What is it?” Betty asks.
I move about the room and yank the tops off all the barrels, finding mostly salt pork and fish. Those Andrew rests against hold darker contents, grainy to the touch. I dip my hand inside and sift it through my fingers.
Susannah’s eyes widen. “Devil’s powder.”
“No.” I pull the barrels down, spilling the gunpowder across the floor.
“What are you doing?” Betty asks.
“I will not be taken again,” I say.
“Nor will any of us.” George nods to the cannon.
We strike toward it as one. But where I move to position it, George works to untie the rope end securing it to the wall.
The door nearest me pounds. “Open up!”
“Rebecca,” Andrew says. “F-forgive me.”
I ignore him, unwinding rope from around the cannon as George frees the first bit of rope and moves on to a second knot.
“Th-they overheard me in the tavern,” says Andrew. “F-followed me to the inn.”
“It matters not,” says Susannah.
The door pounds again. “Open this now!”
“It does,” says Andrew. “I am the drunken fool your mother knew me for.”
“Done,” says George to me.
I kneel and take up the uncoiled rope in my arms, tossing the end of it out the eastern window.
“Unworthy of love,” says Andrew.
“You are deserving,” says Susannah.
George grabs the rope and puts his feet on the cannon, leaning all his weight back to test the line. It holds.
I lunge to the window, estimating the dangling rope end near ten feet above the ground.
The second door sounds, harder than the first.
“They have a ram,” says George. “Betty, go.”
“Not before my daughter,” she says.
Susannah looks up. “I will not leave Andrew.”
“He will be right behind you,” says Betty, taking her daughter’s arm. “Come.”
“Aye,” says Andrew to Susannah. “I-I will.”
“You will not,” Susannah weeps.
George grabs her by the waist and yanks her away screaming.
“Andrew!”
“Go now, damn you!” George pushes her to the window and thrusts the rope in her hands.
“Daughter, please,” Betty urges. “I beg you.”
Both doors thunder in succession then again and again, the brace beams thudding against their holds.
Susannah swings her legs out the window. Panting, she descends the rope, disappearing from sight.
Betty wastes no time in following her out, nor do I in stepping to the window after her.
“George,” says Andrew, his voice withered. “George, I am done for.”
“You are not,” says my brother. “I will carry—”
“No,” says Andrew. “Y-you will not.”
The doors shudder in the twin onslaught against them.
I hesitate, not knowing whether to leave or remain to aid them in the fight to come.
“Andrew,” says George. “You—”
“I have been a weight round your neck since first your family took me in.” Andrew’s shoulders heave. “M-my father taught a debt not repaid is a sin. Allow me pay mine now.”
The slam against the doors resounds, the brace beams near fully cracking.
“George,” I say. “We—”
My brother silences me with his glare then looks back on his friend. “You owe no debt, Andrew.”
“I do. For Sarah and Bishop”—Andrew’s gaze wavers between George and me—“and Han…Hannah.” His face wilts. “You named me brother before…but now—”
George grabs Andrew under the arms and hauls him to his feet. “You were my brother then,” his voice wavers. “You are my brother always.”
My vision blurs as Andrew rests his forehead against George’s, his body quivering.
“Care for her,” says Andrew.
“I will,” says George. “Susannah—”
“Not Susannah,” says Andrew, pulling away, looking on me. “Her.”
The doors thunder again, the beams cracking.
I step to Andrew and lean my face to his, our lips brushing in soft caress. I pull away, my head swooning, and stare into his eyes.
“G-Goodbye, my love,” he says, his voice scarcely above a whisper.
“Goodbye, Andrew.”