by C. C. Finlay
“And you always do what you’re told?”
The stoic thought about it for a moment. “Depends on who does the telling. And what they tell me to do. And if I feel like doing it. But yes, almost always.”
He left the cell, closing the door behind him. Proctor ran through the two rooms, looking out over the river on one side and the courtyard garden on the other. Gordon’s carriage was rolling away, with Gordon still inside it.
Proctor ran to the door and found it unlocked. He opened it and ran down the steps. The guards waiting at the bottom caught him by either arm. When he tried to tell them who he really was, the necklace constricted around his throat at once.
He came to as they were laying him on the floor of his cell. He looked up to see one of them swirling a finger at the side of his head.
“His secretary warned the warden,” the guard whispered. “This one’s gone a little mad. He’ll bear close watching.”
They left the room, locking the door behind them.
Proctor went over to the window and kicked the chair. There was no way he was going to stay in prison for any length of time.
Chapter 20
One hundred hooves trotted along the road lined on either side by live oaks. The green uniforms of the British Legion had been faded by seasons of weather and wear, matching the leaves still clinging to the trees in November. The hard black caps on the heads of the men were marred by months of woods and war.
Banastre Tarleton, leading his men from the front, glimpsed a splash of red from the corner of his eye and turned in his saddle to see what it might be. But by the time he cranked his head around, the color was gone.
He heard a boy’s chuckle and decided that he was imagining things. There were no boys in his cavalry, and his men had no reason to chuckle.
The battle at Waxhaws had been an overwhelming victory against a superior force, but ever since then Tarleton and his men had been hard-pressed by southern partisans, men little better than outlaws, who attacked in the twilight and faded back into the swamps. Rumors of one such force had been little more than another wild goose chase, which was no more than Tarleton expected. More than likely, the partisans had hoped to draw the legion away from the plantation they occupied. The autumn harvest was in, and soldiers on either side needed food and fodder to get through the coming winter.
The road opened out on a plantation up ahead, the place locals called Big Home. Size was the only thing that distinguished it. In every other particular, from its rough wood to its brutish proportions, it resembled the rude shacks that seemed to be dropped at random throughout this wild, unsettled, and unsettling country. Tarleton was ready to welcome anything, adapt any tactic, that would bring an end to this rebellion and allow him to return home to the civilized parlors, theaters, and clubs of London.
He felt an urge that made him want to turn away from the road and face toward London. That was strange. He’d left men here—
“Go on,” whispered a voice. “Go on to the Big Home.”
Tarleton noticed that the horses had all slowed to a walk. “Let’s go,” he said angrily, and kicked his own horse forward, expecting the others to follow him.
This plantation was protected by luck or something. Despite the ruthless foraging by armies on both sides, no one had plundered it. Even with no man at home to protect it—the owner had died recently—it had remained untouched.
Well, that wouldn’t last.
The rest of the legion was spread out across the grounds of the plantation, their horses in the pasture, soldiers taking their ease on the broad porch. His men were good, loyal men, who fought hard for him. They, too, deserved peace and a chance to reclaim the homes and lives stolen from them by the rebel rabble.
A fresh grave stood in a little cemetery just outside the entrance of the plantation. The rebel general, Richard Richardson. He’d had the cowardice to die of natural causes a month ago, before Tarleton could hunt him down and kill him. It seemed too convenient to be true, but when the legion had alighted unannounced on Richardson’s home, his wife was in her widow’s dress and his children, especially his ten-year-old son, seemed genuinely grieved. More so than Tarleton had been at the age of nineteen when his own father died.
“Captain Kinlock,” Tarleton said as he dismounted by the house. “Did any rebels appear while we were gone?”
“Not one, Colonel,” Kinlock said.
“We didn’t see any either,” Tarleton admitted, handing his horse off to one of his men. “It was a feint, meant to draw us out from the plantation. What do you think they want here?”
“Same as we do, I reckon—fresh grain, a good meal, supplies.”
“Chasing a fox through the swamp is a losing venture. So maybe it’s better to sit on the hen house and wait for the fox to appear.”
Kinlock grinned. “And here we sit.”
Tarleton studied Richardson’s grave. “This was the house of one of their most respected generals. You don’t think there’s anything else here?”
“Lost pride, perhaps,” Kinlock said.
“Perhaps,” Tarleton answered.
But as he climbed the steps of the house, he had a different thought in mind. There was something about Richardson’s widow that made him uneasy. She was hiding something. It might be as simple as the family silver, but his instinct told him it was something bigger.
He kicked open the front door, making sure his boot left a big black scrape across the wood. Inside, a girl gasped in shock, only to have someone quickly shush her.
“Is my dinner ready?” he yelled. The words echoed through the big, hollow rooms.
He made his voice as imperious and grating as possible. An angry woman or furious child was likely to say things in temper that they would otherwise hold secret. Men would do the same, but there were no men on the farm. All the more reason to suspect a connection to the rebel partisans.
Richardson’s widow, wearing a black dress as simple as an ordinary death, appeared in the doorway. She was preternaturally calm as always. Tarleton dearly wanted to find some way to rattle her cage and uncover her secrets.
“The gentlemen may be served in the dining room,” she said.
Kinlock and Tarleton’s other officers smirked at being called gentlemen. They were anything but gentlemen and they knew it. But they followed her into the dining room.
“James,” Tarleton called, looking into rooms and around the corners of doors. “Where’s James?”
The widow stopped and turned around. James was her ten-year-old son, the one so upset by his father’s death.
“I sent him to his room. He was misbehaving.”
Tarleton threw his arms open in an extravagant gesture of disbelief. “How, madame, may a boy his age misbehave? Everything they do at that age is the outgrowth of their natural curiosity and desire. I want him. Fetch him to me.”
He expected her to balk, like a horse approaching a bad jump.
But, calm as ever, she ducked her head. “As you wish, sir. James, come here please.”
His head appeared over the railing on the landing of the stairs. He was a handsome boy, with intelligent features set in a face framed by curly hair and a cleft chin. “Yes, Mother.”
“Colonel Tarleton requests the plea sure of your company for dinner,” she said.
“But I already ate my—”
His mother’s stern look conveyed an unmistakable message.
“Yes, Mother, I’ll be right down.”
The Richardsons’ dining room was a plain rectangle of whitewashed plaster of uneven application. The table filled the room so near to its edges that there was little room for servants to pass behind the officers, much less for each of them to be waited on individually. Kinlock and the others didn’t expect it, so it was not a problem, but it only served to reinforce Tarleton’s impression that he was in a wilderness that wore its civilization like a borrowed overcoat that might be reclaimed at any moment.
Tarleton took his place at the head of t
he table, while his officers took the other seats. The last chair, at the end opposite Tarleton, sat empty. For a moment, Tarleton thought he glimpsed a blond boy sitting there in a red coat. Then he looked again and the boy was gone.
James appeared in the doorway in a clean shirt and jacket. Inwardly, Tarleton approved. The boy had the makings of a gentleman at least.
“Come here and stand at my side, James,” Tarleton said.
James looked at his mother.
Tarleton hammered his fist on the table, causing boy and mother to jump. “You do not look to her for permission,” he yelled. “I command here. When I tell you what to do, you must learn to do it.”
The boy swallowed hard but mastered his fear. “Yes, sir.”
“Very well,” Tarleton said, softening his voice. “Now come stand at my side. You will eat some of every dish put in front of me.”
James opened his mouth to protest, then looked at Tarleton’s eyes and snapped it closed.
Excellent. Tarleton would not put it past these partisan sympathizers to poison the men they served at their table. From their constant raids and ambushes, he thought them capable of anything.
But Mrs. Richardson made no unexpected change in the service of her meal. Plate after plate came out to the table. James obligingly swallowed his bites, and then she served the other men. Tarleton, who had grown weary of corn pone and hominy, enjoyed the uncommon plea-sure of a real meal. Each bottle of wine, obligingly sipped first by James as it was uncorked, was better than vinegar. A bargain at the price he paid for it, which was nothing, though Tarleton would not give it much more credit than that. In all, he was almost enjoying himself.
As he wiped his mouth with his napkin between each course, he noticed that Mrs. Richardson watched the empty chair at the far end of the table with the avidity of a hawk. With each serving dish that made its way around the table, she obediently placed a scoop on the plate.
Tarleton did not know what she was up to, and, not knowing what she was about, he was furious. He watched her closely, looking for a clue, but could discover none. While the other men conversed in general terms about the campaign and British victories, Tarleton grew ever more sullen. He would only blink or glance away for a second, but every time he did, she found some way to clear the plate of the food she had just placed on it. Some way to empty the glass of its wine.
And none of the other men seemed to notice or, if they noticed, care.
Finally, as Mrs. Richardson stood to the side of the empty seat, ladling a spoon full of cobbler into the bowl there, Tarleton lost his temper.
He wadded up his napkin and flung it on the table so hard it knocked over his wineglass, which cracked, spreading a red stain over the linen tablecloth. He kicked back his chair and stood up.
“Madame,” he said. “If you are so eager to serve an extra seat, let me give you someone to serve.”
A boy’s chuckle echoed in the room, though James’s face, green with too much food and wine, registered only fear.
“I want no one to move or leave this table,” Tarleton snapped.
He scarcely knew his own thoughts as he stomped out the front door until his eyes lit on the grave. Then it all came together. Yes, he would rattle the widow’s cage and make her sing. He scanned the faces of the legionnaires until he saw the worst men of the lot, a pair of thieves, throat cutters who delighted in hurting men when they had the chance. Every unit in every army had a man or two of their type, Tarleton told himself, and it was for jobs like this.
“Grab some shovels, boys,” he said, pointing to the two men. “General Richardson will be joining us for dinner.”
They appeared puzzled for a second, then one whispered to the other, and they snickered like men in on a joke. In moments, they were flinging dirt aside. When they got down to the plain pine casket, they scraped the top clean and then pried the lid off. They looked up at Tarleton, disappointed.
“The silver’s not in here, sir,” the first one said.
“There’s nothing in here but the old man’s corpse,” the second one said.
“You fools,” Tarleton replied. “It’s the corpse I want. Bring it in and prop it up at the end of the table.”
Their shocked expressions transformed in a moment to the nervous laughter of men who set cats on fire to amuse themselves. The two men shrugged, and one of them reached under the general’s arms while the other wrapped up his legs. The general had been buried in his uniform, which held the pieces of him together, more or less, as they carried him up the steps and into the dining room, leaving a trail of fallen dirt and scurrying insects along the way. Kinlock and his other officers looked on in a mixture of disbelief and horror, but Tarleton heard the young boy’s chuckle again and he snapped at James.
“This is no laughing matter!”
The boy, whose eyes were wide with terror, had his hand clasped over his mouth, but not to keep from laughing. Instead, he turned to the corner and vomited up his dinner, the acid stew of meat and cheap wine splashing all over the wall, from the chair rail to the floor.
“Sir?”
Tarleton spun back. His two throat cutters were having a hard time propping up the corpse. Every time they set it up in the chair, it tilted to one side, leaving them to catch it before it spilled to the floor. They held it at uneasy arm’s length between them.
“God damn it,” Tarleton cursed like a man possessed. “God damn every man of you, if you do not do as I command.”
The corpse’s arms dangled to either side. He grabbed it by the wrists and pulled it forward, elbows across the table, and pushed the chair in so that it couldn’t fall over. The head leaned forward, falling on one arm, like a drunk asleep at the table. Putrid flesh fell out of an eye-socket. White maggots squirmed like tears down a desiccated cheek.
“That’s all—now get out,” Tarleton said. The two men fled, pausing in the doorway to look back. “I said, get out!”
They shut the door behind them.
Tarleton walked calmly back to his seat at the head of the table. He picked up his napkin and wiped the dirt from his hands. Then he pulled down the front of his coat and tugged the cuffs of his sleeves back into place. He took his seat and cleared his throat.
“James,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” the boy said weakly, still huddled in the corner.
“I still expect you at my side.”
“Yes, sir.” The boy trembled as he shuffled over to Tarleton’s side, staring at a spot on the ceiling so he wouldn’t have to look at the table.
Richardson’s widow stood next to her husband’s body, squeezing her hands to stop them from shaking. If Tarleton had entertained a notion that it might not be the general in the grave, one glance at the corpse disabused him. Even in death, the imprint of the general’s features matched his son.
“You wished to serve someone in that seat,” Tarleton told the widow. “I pray you continue.”
Anger flashed across her features and hardened into resolve. She picked up a serving bowl and unceremoniously dumped a large wooden spoonful of potatoes on the plate. The bowl rattled when she dropped it on the table. She stood there rigidly staring straight ahead over the top of Tarleton’s head.
Yes, said a boy’s voice. Yes, that’s it, push her now, push her.
Tarleton decided to push her.
“Feed him,” he said, with a wave of his hand. “Go on and give him a spoonful.”
Her chin trembled and her lips narrowed, but her hand was steady as she lifted a spoonful of potatoes to the dead man’s mouth. She placed the spoon to the lips, held it there a second, and then put it down again. When she was done, she resumed the same rigid stance as before.
Tarleton slammed his fist on the table and the plates jumped. Kinlock and the other officers twitched in their seats, but said nothing.
“I said, feed him. Feed him the whole thing.”
Yes, said the voice. Yes, yes.
Dutifully, she did as she was told. She stabbed the spoo
n into the potatoes, scraped it off on the dead man’s mouth, then did it again.
His officers began to shift in their seats and clear their throats.
Tarleton was furious. He reached for the plate of mutton and tossed it down to her end of the table, spilling half its contents. “He looks like he needs some meat on his bones. You better feed him some meat.”
She set the spoon down and without a word, picked up a fork and knife. After cutting a small piece of meat, she placed it on the fork and shoved it into the dead man’s mouth. The metal scraped against the teeth as she pulled it out again empty. Kinlock winced at the sound. She took up the knife and began to cut another piece.
Rage shot through Tarleton. Could nothing shake her? He kicked his chair back and stood to yell at her again when a new voice, a man’s voice, spoke.
Enough.
The room was frozen. Kinlock and the other officers had their faces turned toward Tarleton, or the corpse, or their eyes averted entirely, but their eyes, what ever direction they faced, were still and unblinking. Beside him, James stood with his chin elevated, caught in mid-sob.
Richardson’s widow stood at the far end of the table as still as ever, but, as Tarleton watched, she tilted her head toward her dead husband’s body.
A blond boy in the regulars’ red coat stood on the opposite side of the general, mirroring the position of James at Tarleton’s side. He had food stains on his shirt. His hair was a wild, unruly tangle of knots. His eyes glittered with an unearthly fire.
He placed his hand on the dead man’s shoulder, and the corpse moved, animated by the spirit of the general, visible behind the bone and rotting flesh. Tarleton jumped. What was this?
“God forgive me, all my sins,” Kinlock whispered.
James screamed and turned away, hiding his face. The widow covered her mouth, choking off a sob.
Don’t tell them anything, my beloved, the corpse said.
“Tell us everything,” said the boy in the red coat. “We know that you know the Salem witches. We are calling all of them—calling you—to our service.”