The Bonny Bride

by Deborah Hale

  Even as she fled for her life, a small voice in the back of her mind taunted. On the run again, Jenny. Will you never stop?

  “Come along, ma’am. Ye bring the baby and I’ll carry the wee lad.” Harris stooped to pick up the child.

  The boy promptly kicked him in the shin. “I ain’t a wee lad! I’m a big boy an’ I can walk just as well as you can. Let me alone!”

  Even with the urgency that goaded him, Harris had to work at stifling a smile. He glanced doubtfully at the small bare feet poking out from under the child’s nightshirt.

  “Aye, no doubt ye can,” he gave a wry chuckle, even as his ankle twinged. “But it’s a fool who walks when he can ride. Will ye let me be yer horsey?”

  The boy looked to his mother, who was struggling to quiet her squalling infant.

  “Do as the man says, Willy! We’ve got to get on that ship.”

  “I s’pose.”

  Hoping he wouldn’t get a chubby knee in his kidney, Harris hoisted the lad onto his back and strode for the wharf. His ankle protested the added weight with every step. That pain was nothing to the sharp talons of dread tearing at his heart.

  It hadn’t come as any great surprise to find Jenny gone from the inn and no one willing to admit they’d seen her. Harris feared what the shards of a smashed pitcher on the floor might mean.

  Had Roderick Douglas come and kidnapped Jenny before she could flee to the safety of the St. Bride? Or had she given her bridegroom up for dead and decided to take her chances with the brutal but prosperous Roderick rather than try to fend for herself? Harris wasn’t certain which alternative distressed him more. The familiar desolation of being deserted threatened to engulf him again.

  He fought it.

  Time enough to mourn and fret about himself in the days to come. For now he must take some crumb of comfort in knowing Jenny was safe—from the fire at least—and do all he could to secure the safety of other men’s families.

  Tottering up the rickety gangplank, he handed the child off to an older woman who held out her arms to him. Then he steadied the boy’s mother, who was having trouble boarding with the baby in her arms.

  “This’ll have to be the last, Harris!” called Captain Glendenning. “We can’t risk staying any longer.”

  As if to bolster his claim, something exploded on the foredeck of a ship nearby. In seconds, the whole vessel was bathed in flames, her crew diving into the water to escape.

  “Cast off!” roared the captain. As the crew made to haul the gangplank aboard, he held his hand out to Harris.

  Shaking his head, Harris scrambled back onto the wharf. “I’m going to stay and do what I can to help contain the fire,” he called. “Keep an eye peeled for Jenny, will ye?”

  He lingered a moment watching the St. Bride ease into the channel.

  “Chisholm,” someone called. “What’ll we do with these other folks?”

  Harris turned to find the vicar shepherding two women, half-a-dozen children and an old man who looked ready to faint at any second.

  After a moment’s deliberation, he said, “Take them to Roderick Douglas’s house. It’s made of stone with a copper-clad roof. If any building in town survives the fire, it will.”

  “But, but,” the vicar sputtered. “Surely we cannot…commandeer the place in his absence.”

  Harris offered the old man his arm and an encouraging smile. Starting off up the street, he called back to the vicar. “Commandeer—that’s exactly what we must do. As ye say, Mr. Douglas is absent. He’ll have no use for his house. Once he comes back, I’ll answer to him if he objects.”

  The group picked up several more strays on the way to Roderick Douglas’s house. They were within sight of it when a soot-blackened man caught up with them.

  “Chisholm, can ye come? Loban’s place is afire. We’ve had a bucket brigade going from the river, but I doubt we can save it.”

  “Concentrate on keeping the surrounding houses from catching, then. Wet down the roofs. Pull them down if ye have to. I’ll come as soon as I get these folks to safety.”

  He wondered fleetingly why everyone kept coming to him for directions and advice. Perhaps they’d grown so used to living under the dictates of Roderick Douglas that initiative no longer came easily to them. He had challenged Douglas’s authority and bested him—if only temporarily. Did that make him a leader in their eyes?

  Harris didn’t feel like a leader. He felt like a rudderless ship, far from land, blown by capricious winds, uncertain if he would ever make safe harbor again.

  “Oh, Jenny,” he whispered to himself. “Where have ye gone, lass? And will ye ever come back to me?”

  Would she ever see Harris again? Jenny asked herself as she huddled in the shoals of the Miramichi. She did not know how long she had been there. Day and night had lost all meaning. The river had begun to boil and churn ominously, mirroring the fiery apocalypse on land. A scene from the Book of Revelations.

  “Ahh!” Jenny screamed as a glowing ember landed on her shoulder.

  She ducked under water, relishing the cool stillness below the surface. If only it had been possible to breathe down there…

  Sputtering for air, she lifted her head again, pushing the sodden mass of hair back from her face.

  The flames had marched almost to the water’s edge, consuming the parched trees with swift rapacity. Harris and his captors had been some distance ahead when the fire overtook her. With disaster at hand, had Sweeney and McBean done away with Harris and let the fire hide their crime? Or had the flames taken them all by surprise?

  Either way, the situation did not bode well for his survival.

  A tall spruce at the very edge of the river burst into flame and pitched into the water. Swallowing a gulp of air, Jenny dove. She heard a strange, muted noise as the tree crashed. A hiss of steam, as water consumed the flames. When she lifted her head again, she shuddered to see how close the tree had come to landing on top of her.

  A powerful undertow of despair threatened to swallow her. Her body reeled with fatigue and hunger and the strain of her fears for Harris. All her life she had dreaded experiencing the death of love in the face of adversity. Now she faced an unforeseen hardship—being robbed of newborn love just when it had begun to flourish.

  What would become of her, supposing she did survive the fire? Could she bear to face so bleak a future? Of all the deprivations it was sure to hold, none grieved her as sorely as the loss of Harris.

  How much easier it would be simply to abandon the struggle. Surrender to the seductive lure of sleep. Let the waves close over her. Pray for the mercy of a reunion with her husband on the other side of death’s wide chasm.

  Harris bent double, hacking the smoke from his lungs. Through this harrowing night he had somehow managed to transcend most of the dictates of his body. He was beyond hunger now, and beyond exhaustion. He still needed to breathe, though.

  There wouldn’t be much of Chatham uncharred after tonight. From what Harris could see, however, they had managed to stop the fire from spreading past town into another stretch of dense forest. That knowledge lifted his spirits.

  In the distance, he heard a frantic cry that the church had caught fire. With one last rasping cough, he hefted his bucket and ran toward St. Mary’s. His heart sank as he caught sight of it. They’d never save it now. The fire had too deep a foothold. Once the flames climbed that spire, there was nothing to do but let it burn. Except cut down the surrounding trees so they would not catch and spread the fire.

  “Have ye got an ax?” he called to the two men coming out the vestry door.

  As they turned toward him, he recognized the brawny build of one and the broken nose of the other.

  “Well, if it ain’t Scotty. Ye got more lives than a cat, boyo. I was countin’ on ye gettin’ well roasted on t’other side of the river.”

  “I could say the same. What are ye doing here?” Catching sight of the sack McBean had hoisted over one shoulder, Harris deduced the answer to his own ques
tion.

  “I ain’t got time to chat, Scotty-boy. And I ain’t got time to deal with ye now, so use yer head for once and stand aside.”

  Rage exploded in Harris, like a cache of resin in a burning pine. He and the other men of the settlement had battled for hours to stem the tide of destruction, while these two rogues looted the town of its few valuables. Sense told him not to risk another confrontation with this pair, but he paid it no heed.

  “Have ye no shame at all, looting a church?” He took a deep breath and planted his feet wide. “If ye mean to make away with those things, ye’re going to have to get through me first.”

  Sweeney took a menacing step forward. “Have it yer own way, boyo. Guess I’ll have to finish ye off, like I should’ve done the first time we had a go-round in this here graveyard.”

  He sent one meaty fist hurling toward Harris’s face, but at the last second Harris ducked under it. The force of the blow towed Sweeney along. Harris thrust out a foot, tripping him into the dust.

  A jangle of silver plate hitting the ground warned Harris that McBean had joined the fray. In the orange flicker of the burning church, he caught the flash of a knife. He raised his only shield—the bucket, heavy with all the water it had soaked up.

  It seemed to take him forever to hoist the pail, which grew ten times heavier for each inch he lifted it. By some miracle, though, when McBean’s knife came to rest, it had embedded itself in the tight, wet wood. Harris brought the bucket up over his head and sent it hurtling down on McBean.

  His momentary flash of triumph died when Sweeney grabbed his arms from behind, pinning them back with a force that nearly wrenched them from their sockets. As he tried in vain to break free, he saw McBean struggle up from the ground with a murderous light in his eyes.

  “Let him go!”

  Harris fought to turn toward the source of that command, but Sweeney held him tight. He prepared to use his feet, should McBean lunge at him, but McBean held his ground.

  “Are ye deaf, Alf Sweeney?” demanded a second, different voice. “Let Chisholm go.”

  “This ain’t yer fight, Tom Loban,” Sweeny spat, his voice heavy with belligerence. “Now git, the lot of ye, else I’ll deal with ye one at a time, later.”

  Harris heard a musket cock.

  “We’ve had about all we can stomach of you two terrorizing folks around here. Now take your hands off Chisholm or I’ll blow you clean to hell.”

  Sweeney thrust him away like a hot coal.

  Harris spun around to see a crowd of Chatham men standing shoulder to shoulder. He recognized some from his weeks tending bar. Others he had met for the first time tonight, fighting fires by their side, helping to evacuate their families on the St. Bride.

  Some carried firearms. Most wielded pitchforks. Faces blackened with soot and wet hair tufted wildly, with the Miramichi burning behind them, they looked like the very legions of hell.

  Harris had never beheld a sweeter sight.

  After years of submitting to the tyranny of Roderick Douglas and his hired bullies, what had it cost these men to stand up for him? More than he could ever hope to repay.

  McBean made the grave mistake of trying to run for his life. A hail of shot blew apart the turf at his heels. He threw himself to the ground, quivering like a jelly.

  “Don’t shoot! For God’s sake, don’t shoot again!”

  One of the other armed men looked to Harris. “Can I save us all a lot of bother and finish him off?”

  Though he was sorely tempted to nod, Harris shook his head. “Let’s not sink to their level. If ye can find a bit of rope, tie the pair of them up good and tight. Once the fire’s over, we’ll see they get justice for what they’ve done.”

  A few of the crowd grumbled over his judgment, but most seemed willing to follow his lead.

  “Somebody stow that sack of valuables at Douglas’s place. Bring the axes. We’ll be in trouble if those elms take fire.”

  As the men dispersed to do his biding, a young lad shouldered his way toward Harris.

  “Can you come, Mr. Chisholm? There’s a poor creature we pulled from the river. More dead than alive he is and burned bad. Keeps calling for the master of the St. Bride—real agitated like. We’ve tried to tell him that the St. Bride sailed hours ago, but he don’t pay no mind.”

  It was on the tip for his tongue to ask why he should be the one to deal with it. But something in the boy’s eyes silenced Harris.

  Glancing around to make certain the elms were being felled, he called out, “I’ll be back directly. Mind ye be careful when those trees drop.”

  As he followed the lad back through town, toward the river, Harris began to shiver. Was it just a symptom of exhaustion, he wondered, or had the air turned colder?

  They entered a warehouse near the dock, which had so far escaped the blaze. It had been converted into a makeshift infirmary for the injured, though most of the people who’d been brought in looked far past any human aid. The smell made Harris’s gorge rise and the scars on his lower face itch beneath his new growth of beard.

  The boy stopped at the foot of a crude pallet, where one of the fire’s victims lay. From the boots protruding beneath a blanket of sailcloth, Harris guessed it must be a man. Nothing in the ravaged face suggested it was even human. The poor creature twitched and muttered in obvious agitation.

  Harris winced. “Can they give him nothing for the pain?”

  “Oh, he ain’t in pain, sir,” replied the boy. “Leastways not in his body. A light burn’ll hurt like hell, but the deep ones deaden the flesh—a mercy it is, too. He’s troubled in his mind. Keeps raving about the St. Bride.”

  “Let’s see if we can give the poor fellow a little peace, then.” Harris knelt beside the body, trying to contain his exasperation that no one here had considered the obvious.

  “I’m Angus Glendenning, master of the St. Bride,” he murmured into the contorted remains of an ear. “Ye have a message for me?”

  The man instantly quieted. Then his voice wheezed out—the words blunted by his mangled vocal organs. “Went to the wrong boat. Could’n’ find St. Bride. Got a message for ya from the lady…” A cough racked him.

  “Take it easy, man. I’m not going anywhere. Ye can tell me in yer own good time.”

  “Can’t wait. Must send men. She crossed the river after Chisholm. Never should have took her. She’ll be caught in the fire.”

  “She?” Harris could scarcely get his own breath. “She who?” Not Jenny. Not Jenny. Not Jenny.

  “Chisholm’s bride. Send men to help her get him back.”

  A gaping pit seemed to open in the floor and swallow Harris. His heart cried out for Jenny in a high keening wail that echoed through the emptiness of his being. How could he endure such pain and still live?

  Then he remembered the man on the pallet, who had struggled to deliver Jenny’s message when it surely would have been easier to slip away quietly.

  “Thank ye for telling me.” He pushed the words out of a constricted throat. “I’ll send the men she needs and it’ll be fine. Ye try and rest now, mind.”

  The burned man drew an easy breath. Before Harris could rise, the death rattle sounded and he was gone—mercifully. With gentle hands, Harris drew the sailcloth up over the dead man’s face. This poor creature’s suffering was over.

  His own had just begun.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Against all odds, the sun rose that morning over the Miramichi. Few had expected to see it. The charred remains of the forest steamed in the frigid air. Snowflakes fluttered to the ground, ominous out of all proportion to their size.

  Pulling his well-singed coat tightly around him, Harris cupped his hands over his mouth and breathed out to warm his fingers. He wandered down to the wharf, shaking his head at the sight of several vessels gutted by the fire. Their scorched hulls bobbed in the choppy water like blackened corpses. How many human remains they would pull from the river in the days ahead, Harris could not bear to think.
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br />   A joyous shout went up behind him. It sounded completely out of place amid such desolation. Only when the men of Chatham surged past him onto the dock did Harris notice the St. Bride sailing in on the morning tide, hull riding low with her precious cargo of life.

  Melting back to the fringe of the crowd, he watched passively as families reunited—laughing, embracing, weeping. He wanted to rejoice for them, to mourn with them, to share and allay their fears for the future. But some unseen force had excised his heart and left in its place a chunk of stone. As with burns, the earlier hurts he’d suffered on Jenny’s account had smarted and stung. This final, deepest one had cauterized his emotions.

  Captain Glendenning disembarked and shouldered his way through the press of townspeople. “I’ve bad news for ye, Harris.” He stared at the ground and swallowed hard, as if working up the nerve to say his piece.

  Harris waited for the master to speak, without dread or even much curiosity.

  “’Twas rough seas last night,” said the captain at last. “More times than I care to recall, I thought my wee barque would end up at the bottom of the strait. But the Almighty held us in his hand and we rode it out. That’s more than I can say for some.”

  He drew a deep breath. “Douglas’s sloop floundered at the mouth of the river. Went down with all hands. I’m sorry.”

  In answer to Harris’s questioning look, he added, “About Miss Len…that is, about yer wife.”

  Harris shook his head. “She wasn’t with Douglas, after all.”

  “Oh, Thank God! The crew’ll be beside themselves to hear it. Where is she?”

  Nodding toward the opposite bank of the river, Harris could scarcely find his voice. “Over there somewhere. She didn’t run away. She came after me. I’ll need a boat to go look for her.”

  He did not say, whatever the fire has left of her body. That was what he meant, though. His face remained impassive and his words emerged calm though rather wooden. But deep inside, the rock that had once been his heart wept tears of blood.

  Jenny swallowed her tears.