“What difference does that make?” Jeb was pleased with his haul. “They’re scallywags and gutter trash, the whole lot of ’em. But they got their own weapons. I checked. And they’ll aim and shoot where you say, on account of I promised you’d pay each man another five dollars when the day was done.”
Added to the two dollars in gold Jeb had already levied out, this was a staggering sum. More than most of this lot of herders and haulers and no-accounts had earned in a year. By Jeb’s reckoning, he’d earned the other fifty in cash he’d pocket for the afternoon’s efforts. “You wanted ’em,” Jeb finished. “They’re here. Now let’s go finish the job.”
Vladimir ducked his hands under his cloak and came up with more weapons. “Tell them to line up across the street.”
“I’ll play your captain, but I expect to get paid for it.” Jeb gave little strength to the retort, though. Because his attention was captured by Vladimir’s secret arsenal. In his left hand the man held a pistol whose entire length appeared chased in solid silver. At second glance, he noted two barrels side by side, like a hunter’s gun. With two percussion caps and two triggers.
But the gun was nothing compared to the weapon in Vladimir’s right hand. The blade was far too long to be called a knife, yet too short for a proper saber. What was more, the blade was crooked. Like an arm with the elbow bent. It grew broader as it approached the tip. And the edge was sharpened on both sides, the inner and the outer. “What you got there?”
Vladimir smiled. It was the first time Jeb had seen the man show any expression at all. Jeb knew he had met his match when it came to a menacing grin. “Line up the men, captain.”
The gang formed enough of a threat that before they rounded the block and entered the square, the area was deserted. Jeb heard somebody behind them shouting for the sheriff, but he paid it no mind. Unless they deputized the rest of the town’s male population, the sheriff would be best off hiding away himself.
Vladimir marched before them. They were nineteen strong. The dusty, silent men laced out behind the man in black.
When they arrived at the entrance to the alley, there was one man blocking their way.
“Out of my way, old man,” Vladimir ordered.
The graybeard was stalwart and stern. And unarmed. “I came with vengeance in my heart. But a better man than myself has ordered me to put my weapons down. A man I disliked and feared, if truth be known. I have been afraid he would steal away my niece and her lad I love like my own children. So I refused to speak with him. Though everything others said of him was good and godly.”
Vladimir took another step forward. “You will not receive another warning.”
The older man only raised his voice. “The one inside that prison cell is better than I. In his darkest hour, John Falconer has thought only of others and of God. He has brought one man to salvation and asked only that we go and save ourselves. How could I not do as he asked?”
“I’ll take care of this loudmouth,” Jeb said. But he did not step forward.
“I cannot face my niece if I fail her now. I will do as Falconer has asked. I have sent my men away so that they will not be sacrificed on your earthly altar to false gods and wrongful deeds. But I stand here to defend this good man with my final breath.” He pointed a shaking finger at Vladimir and shouted, “You shall not pass!”
Cody nudged his brother. “Look behind.”
Jeb hated taking his aim off the old man. But he glanced back and found himself being watched by a dozen men, perhaps more. They ringed the square, except for three men still perched on the roofs. “Where are their weapons?”
“Weirdest thing I ever did see,” Cody muttered.
“Enough,” Vladimir snarled. He spun the blade so that it flickered like a deadly mirror in the sunlight. “You wish to die, old man? So be it.”
But a shout halted the black-clad stranger in his tracks. The nineteen men wheeled about at the sound of a whip cracking like gunfire. They watched as the bearded men in homespun moved to either side of the road.
Into the square rode the strangest apparition in what Jeb had already called the strangest day in his very strange life.
The carriage was drawn by six black steeds, so lathered they looked mottled. Even so, it was clear these were the finest horses he had ever seen. But the horses were nothing compared to the carriage.
Dusty as the vehicle was, it glistened in the sunlight. Every surface was gilded, right down to the wheel spokes. A royal crest and a golden crown adorned both doors. The three drivers were uniformed with double rows of buttons shining brighter than the carriage. Out of the nearside window leaned a young woman whose beauty outshone even the carriage. Her blond hair looked white in the sun. Her headscarf was blown back across her shoulders. Her hair billowed about her. Her mouth was open, and she spoke with an accent that made her shouted words into a song, one of fear and outrage. And courage.
Behind the carriage galloped four men in dark official-looking suits, bearing the stern expressions of professionals. Long before the lathered horses were reined in, the men Jeb had gathered were already drifting away. It was one thing to play hired gun against an untrained, overmatched foe. It was another thing entirely to face an enemy not only trained but armed with authority.
The carriage door opened and the blond woman scrambled out. A man appeared behind her and shouted, “Serafina! No!”
“Where is Falconer? What have you done to him?”
The first man leaped from the carriage, then a second man, this one younger and bearing the same authority of the men still on horseback. “Serafina!”
This time she halted.
“You must come back!”
She returned to the carriage, where a fourth and final person emerged. Another woman, this one in a feminine version of the clothes worn by the men now crossing the square toward them. The remainder of Jeb’s posse faded away into the dust and the heat as the young man sheltered Serafina behind him and declared, “These men are federal marshals! I have a warrant to take custody of one John Falconer.”
The first man to have emerged from the carriage walked toward the man in black and declared, “You must be the one known as Vladimir.”
“And if I am?”
The man was well padded and better groomed. A man used to fancy front parlors and sending others off to do his bidding. But he now trembled with fear and the trip’s exertion, though he stood his ground. “I bring you a document bearing the seal of the legate Prince Fritz-Heinrich von Hapsburg. Ordering you to return to Washington and cause John Falconer no harm. In fact, it orders you to protect him.”
Vladimir made his weapons disappear, then held out his hand. He unfolded the document, read it, then carefully inspected the seal. “It appears genuine.”
“More than appears. It is.”
“In that case, my business is done.” Vladimir refolded the document and started across the square.
Joyner shouted after him, “What about my gold?”
Vladimir gave a careless wave at the carriage and the entourage. “Ask them.”
The gray-clad woman spoke for the first time. She looked ill with fatigue, yet her voice was the clearest sound Jeb had heard all day. “Where is John Falconer?”
“In the jail.”
“Take us to him!”
Jeb let the homespun army shoulder him aside. They bore no arms, but he wasn’t about to make trouble while federal marshals glared at him. “Come on, Cody. Let’s hit the trail.”
“But what about our gold?” he whined.
“There ain’t none.” Jeb found himself too worn out to pay Joyner’s answering snarl any mind. “Don’t ask me how, but that feller in there bested us. He’s been locked up and a hair’s breadth away from the noose, and still he took us down.”
Joyner growled, “We shoulda shot him when we had the chance.”
“Woulda, coulda, shoulda.” Jeb was suddenly so tired he could hardly place one foot in front of the other. “We done lost. We go
t to fold our cards and get out while we still can. That’s all there is to the telling.”
Chapter 32
Falconer stumbled as he crossed the jail’s threshold, but there were hands at the ready to steady him. His jailer Carl. Ada Hart. Serafina Gavi. Ada’s uncle. Alessandro Gavi. Nathan Baring. “Please, you’re not going to want to touch me” was all he could think to say. “I need a bath.”
“You’re alive,” Ada said. “God be thanked. Are you all right?”
“Fine.” He blinked in the overharsh light. “I’m going to be fine.”
“God be thanked,” she repeated, reaching a hand toward him but stopping herself.
Falconer saw the look Ada gave. First to Serafina. Then to him. And understood it was not his filthy state that forced her to hold back.
He smiled slightly, then said to Ada, “You look awfully weary.”
“As she should,” Alessandro Gavi said. “She came all the way to Washington and then refused to remain there until we knew that you were safe.”
“Your man Joseph would have come as well had we not all ordered him to stay,” Nathan told him. “And he only agreed when I insisted that he would endanger us and our mission if we were accompanied back into Virginia by a freed slave.”
Serafina said, “Nathan Baring woke up a federal judge in the middle of the night to obtain the warrant for your release.”
Her father added, “And Serafina obtained an order from the legate’s wife, stamped with the prince’s own seal, ordering Vladimir to leave you alone.”
Falconer’s head spun with the confusion of so many details at once. He had no idea what they were talking about. And it did not matter.
“Well, my deep gratitude to you all. What now?”
“You must go to Washington,” Alessandro replied. “Where the judge will decide if the case against you has merit.”
“It does not and he will immediately dismiss all charges,” Nathan said with confidence.
“And after that?”
“You’re free to do as you please.”
He looked at Ada. “Where is Matt?”
“With his grandmother on the farm.”
“You must go back to him. He will be sick with worry.”
She searched his face with eyes that held words her mouth would not shape. “And what of you?”
Falconer looked at Serafina. He saw a beauty that could not be denied. But that one look was enough for him to know she was not his to claim. Nor, in truth, did he any longer wish to do so.
He turned back to Ada. “Soon as I am able, I will come home.”
Sequel to The Night Angel
THE LOYAL RENEGADE
John Falconer settled back into the elegant carriage for the journey back to Washington, still bruised from his ordeal in the Virginia jail following his efforts against slavery. Serafina occasionally leaned forward from the seat across from his to check his bandaged wounds, offer him a morsel of food, and murmur comfortingly. A new sense of competence and compassion seemed to emanate from her, and with a bittersweet pang, Falconer realized she was growing into womanhood. More than that, she was growing into the role she would soon be assuming as wife and mother.
Falconer glanced at her young man, Nathan Baring, who was concentrating on a sheaf of legal documents as he sat beside her. But Falconer felt a curious lack of resentment against this man who ultimately had captured Serafina’s heart. Indeed, he felt a quiet pride over having introduced the two of them, gratified that their love was taking root.
Love. The idea still filled him with astonishment. Ada. More astonishment. This dignified widow from the Moravian community was nearly a stranger. And yet in many ways he felt as though he had known her, had been waiting for her, since before he was born. Waiting. Yes, there would be a season of that now. Part of him wanted to break his promise to the Langston family, to bow out on his agreement to help them with their family business when he was finished with his present assignment for the Gavis. Yet he recognized that above all he must remain a man of his word.
Back in the U.S. capital, he discovered that the commission proposed by the Langstons would bear a greater weight of responsibility than he could have imagined. No, he could not refuse this task, even though it would mean months away from Ada and the hope of a new life with her. Soon enough he will have completed it and be free to return to Salem and Ada. . . .
But when he finally arrived in Salem, Falconer was met by news that kicked his world out from under him. A strange twist of events, a message gone astray, a loneliness that eroded hope, a decision taken. Was Ada now lost to him?
Falconer stumbled to the corral outside the guesthouse where Ada had once bade him welcome, leaning on the fence to get his bearings. His breath sounded rough to his ears, and his gut clenched with waves of regret, of anger, of denial. Suddenly he felt two hands gripping his upper arm. It was Matt, Ada’s young son, with his tousled blond hair. “Please, sir,” he cried, his face filled with an intensity that belied his years, “take me with you!”
Watch for this sequel to THE NIGHT ANGEL
early in 2007!
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The Night Angel Page 30