Suspicion pierced the pain on Hawthorne's face. "Who would do such a thing?"
Sophie resisted the urge to look northward along the road. "We're not certain. The assassin's body was found near the bodies of two other men."
Mathias glowered. "My brother was one of them. His throat had been slit from ear to ear."
Hawthorne bounced his glance around the party. "It sounds as though an assassin got him, but I wouldn't know for certain."
Would they ever have their suspicions confirmed about who had murdered Will, the other Spanish assassin, or Jonah? Hawthorne talked in circles, and they didn't have time to dawdle and question him more. Since Mathias had finished with the bandages, Sophie stood and brushed off her hands. "Let's see if you can ride. I apologize we've no leisure to brew you something to ease your pain."
His features distorting with pain, the young man accepted Mathias and David's assistance in standing. Then he insisted on transferring his saddle and saddlebags from the dead mare to Donald Fairbourne's horse. Mathias checked his bandage, but no fresh blood soaked outward from the wounds. Helped into the saddle, the spy took the reins despite bloodless lips. Not while he was conscious was he letting the redcoats have him or what he transported.
Runs With Horses caught up with them as they resumed their trek south on the road to report the absence of soldiers for several miles back. In Creek, Standing Wolf updated his brother on Hawthorne. The rigors of horseback sealed the Bostonian's remaining strength into silence. They walked the horses a few minutes to make sure the young man wasn't going to collapse. Then they increased their pace to a trot. Mathias resumed scouting southward, and Standing Wolf dropped behind.
David sidled his gelding up to Samson. Sophie assessed her brother's preoccupied expression. "How's your arm?"
"My arm? Oh, that arm. Hurts like the deuce." He nodded toward Hawthorne, twenty feet ahead of them, and murmured, "I don't know how he stays in his saddle without whimpering."
She lowered her voice, too. "Weren't you ever fervent and idealistic when you were a puppy?"
"Possibly about women, but I doubt I'd ride with two holes in my side for any woman. And definitely not for a cause."
"There's more to him than meets the eye."
"Or ear."
"You heard it, too. His accent."
"He wasn't born in Boston."
She nodded. "He speaks Spanish words with such clear vowel sounds. I wager he was born in Spain and raised and educated in Boston."
"And Hawthorne's an alias. Something else doesn't make sense. He was shot from the front, but his horse was shot from behind. Who shot him, El Serpiente? Was the assassin responsible for both shots?"
"Maybe he had help. He mentioned a fifth assassin."
"We should have checked the site for more evidence." David gnawed his lower lip. "The morning you were under house arrest, I told you the old man was in over his head. We're in over our heads now, too. A Spanish spy with saddlebags full of the gods know what, a redcoat patrol behind us — bah! I say we exit this perilous stage."
She sighed. "Alas, we cannot back out yet. We've a moral obligation to get Hawthorne to safety. Darien, perhaps."
"If he remains alive as far as Darien. You realize the very fact that we're chasing the old man's killer makes us look like we're in bed with the French and prime prey for those assassins." He shook his head. "Damn the war."
A quarter hour later, Mathias trotted his horse back to report that the tracks showed El Serpiente's horse had slipped a shoe. The Spaniard needed to find at least a hammer and nails, if not a farrier or a smith, before he continued much farther. No trading post was marked on the map in their vicinity, and the settlement of Darien was more than an hour away. The assassin was on foot not far ahead. They could encounter him before noon. And Mathias saw no sign that he had an accomplice.
Mathias and Runs With Horses checked their weapons and rode southward to discover the assassin's whereabouts. Dry-mouthed, Sophie made sure her musket was loaded. Jacques and David readied their own weapons and Hawthorne's pistols. Then they proceeded after Runs With Horses and Mathias.
In another quarter hour, Mathias rode back to them. "Looks like an abandoned trading post about a mile ahead, set back from the road. We tracked El Serpiente headed that way." His gaze roved over them and came to rest on Sophie. "Watch yourselves."
The five rendezvoused with Runs With Horses and arrived at a building shaded by pines and live oaks. At one time, underbrush had been cleared all the way to the road, but foliage had encroached on the structure after its abandonment. Aside from cicadas strumming the noontime and an occasional crow caw, Sophie heard nothing other than movements of her party. Tracks in the sand leading to the building revealed that a man on foot and a three-shoed horse had preceded them. However, there was no sign of man or horse.
Jacques and Mathias helped Hawthorne dismount just outside the cleared brush. Mathias motioned the young man to wait there and caught Sophie's eye. "Stay with him."
Still partially concealed, Mathias, David, Jacques, and Runs With Horses spread out to encircle the building, firearms ready. Hawthorne leaned against his saddle, exhaustion escaping his lips. She reached for her canteen. "Water?" she whispered. He shook his head no, his face devoid of color.
He couldn't travel much farther. "You're better off lying down for now." She kicked together a pile of pine straw, eased him onto it, and stood in time to glimpse Jacques and Runs With Horses disappearing behind the building.
Hawthorne grew quiet. Musket in hand, Sophie walked past him, her horse, and those of the others to the four extra horses and gave each of them a pat.
A twig snapped in the palmetto brush behind her, and she spun about. With no time to raise her musket, she found herself staring down the barrel of a pistol not four feet from her; and above the pistol gleamed the fatigue-rimmed black eyes of El Serpiente. Fear beat her pulse into staccato.
Grime and sweat streaked through stubble on his face, matted his hair, and sullied his clothing. He stank of sweat and horse. "La hija del Lobo." His upper lip twitched with sarcasm. "French-loving fools."
"You've misunderstood —"
"Drop the musket." When she hesitated, hatred snarled his lip. "Now!" He cocked the pistol She swallowed and let the musket drop. "Bueno. Untie the last two horses."
Horror and outrage flooded her. Why did he need two horses unless he planned to take her hostage? "I won't go with you."
"Then you die now —"
The report of Hawthorne's pistol rang through the brush, the ball passing between Sophie and the assassin. While the horses skittered in shock, Sophie snatched her musket and dove for cover in the palmetto underbrush on the other side of the horses. El Serpiente fired his pistol, Hawthorne screamed, and she cringed.
She took aim on the Spaniard. Dread stayed her trigger finger and dribbled sweat down her back. The flint had fallen from her musket.
El Serpiente whipped out a knife, his attention focused on her. With the musket useless for firing, she prepared again to use it as a club. Squared off with the assassin, she heard Mathias from the direction of the abandoned trading post: "To the horses! Quickly!"
Rather than leap into the brush for her, the assassin lunged for the nearest horse — that of Charley Osborn — sliced through the rope guiding the horse, and vaulted onto the animal barebacked. Reins seized, he jabbed his heels into the horse's sides, spun him about, and galloped back toward the road. Mathias's rifle shot sheared his hat from his head and skimmed his scalp, shattering branches and showering man and horse with splintered pine.
Sophie's knees wobbled when she recalled the sight of the assassin's knife. "N-no flint!" she croaked when her brother and the blacksmith sprinted over to her. That instant, she remembered the rest of it. "Hawthorne! Ye gods!"
Blood seeped through the right upper portion of his waistcoat, the smell of it mingling with that of pine straw to form a dusty and acrid stench. While the four other men gathered around, Soph
ie knelt at his side, helpless. "Stephen Hawthorne, thank you for saving my life!"
He moved gray lips. "In my saddlebags — it was split between the three of us. You must help le Comte Dusseau take it to Don Alejandro, por favor, te suplico." He lifted his right hand and clutched her sleeve, his Spanish heritage tumbling from his lips. "Mesón de Dragon y Phoenix en San Agustín...busca a Luciano de Herrera." His voice began failing, and he forced out final words. "O la casa de mi tío, Don Antonio Hernandez, en La Habana..." His body relaxed, and his eyes searched the sky without sight, a glaze settling over them.
When his hand fell away from her sleeve, dejection and loss smothered Sophie. Another man dead. Good gods, was there no end to the violence? The sound of an approaching horse dragged her to her feet. Standing Wolf reined back. "Redcoats. Four miles away."
At that proximity, the soldiers would have heard the firearm reports. Runs With Horses rushed over to rope the horse they'd loaned to Hernandez. Sophie retrieved her musket, mounted Samson, and headed the gelding out, realizing when she reached the road that she hadn't glanced at Hawthorne's body again. Perhaps she was indeed capable of leaving violent death behind, but she was certain she'd never grow inured to it. Damn the war, the bloody, wretched, useless war.
Chapter Nineteen
THEIR FIRST GLIMPSE into Hawthorne's saddlebags didn't occur until mid-afternoon. Whatever the rebel had been protecting with his pistol wasn't obvious among his personal articles, spare clothing, food, and extra ammunition. After they'd set up camp for the night south of Darien, they inspected his property again, and Sophie wondered whether he'd been crazy. To her eye, there was nothing about his belongings to defend.
Jacques sat near firelight with the saddlebags. Knife in hand, he prodded seams, scraped surfaces, and whistled through his teeth. Soon he motioned the others over and handed each a pistol ball.
Sophie rolled hers between finger and thumb before holding it closer to the firelight to examine a section Jacques had scraped off. Beryl green winked at her from the heart of the ball, invoking an initial thrill of wonder: an emerald disguised as ammunition.
Jacques insisted that they divide the collection of twenty-four emeralds between them before he and Standing Wolf left the circle of firelight for their allotted watch. Mathias hunkered down on his bedroll to patch a moccasin, and Runs With Horses sharpened his knife. Sophie continued cleaning her musket. Then she cocked the unloaded musket, aimed it at the ground, and pulled the trigger. To her satisfaction, the new flint sparked. But by then, her wonder over the emeralds had waned.
David, who had paced awhile, sat near her and flipped a twig into the fire. "I doubted the lure of military intelligence alone could provide adequate persuasion for the likes of the Gálvez family. Curse Hawthorne for taking advantage of us."
Mathias said, "Too late for curses. He's dead."
David glared at the campfire. "If the total bribe was split among three couriers, they'd some seventy emeralds to wave beneath Don Alejandro's nose. Where did they come by it all? The Congress hardly has two pennies to rub together and cannot even send supplies and soldiers to the rebels in Georgia."
Mathias shrugged. "Maybe it's another loan from France."
"France is destitute, too." David caught Sophie's gaze and lowered his voice. "Four emeralds apiece will keep us content for awhile. Haven't we discharged our responsibilities to Hawthorne by now?"
"Those emeralds are a burden, not a blessing. And we haven't caught the murderer yet. We go on to St. Augustine."
David watched Jacques slip into the ring of firelight to light his pipe before he said, "So we mark ourselves as rebel couriers by handing the emeralds over to a Gálvez?"
"We won't give them to a Gálvez," said Sophie. "We'll track down this Comte Dusseau person that Hawthorne mentioned and transfer the onus onto him. Let him decide what to do with the stones. At that point we discharge our responsibilities. And I wager he'll supply us with information about Father's murder in return."
More tension infiltrated David's expression. "Dusseau. Who the hell is he?"
Jacques stood. "Comte André Yves François Dusseau, a young man well-connected with the Marquis de Lafayette."
"Charming." David tongued the information with a twist of sarcasm. "And who was Hawthorne's other traveling companion?"
His question hung almost as palpably in the air as Jacques's tobacco smoke. "Another spy. There is certainly no shortage of spies in this land." The old Frenchman strolled back out into the foliage.
David's sigh sounded brittle. "Well, at least Hawthorne told us where we might find Dusseau. The Dragon and Phoenix Inn in St. Augustine. I wonder why he mentioned an uncle, Don Antonio Hernandez, in Havana, but didn't say anything about the woman in the black veil at the Church of Saint Teresa."
Mathias shrugged. "Rendezvous plans change."
"Horse shit. The whole affair reeks worse than a Savannah bawdyhouse in August. And who's that Luciano de Herrera fellow we're supposed to seek in St. Augustine?"
Sophie said, "I don't know, but I've no desire to meet Herrera or travel to Havana. The way the Fates have operated thus far, I shouldn't be a bit surprised if a Spaniard turns out to be an agent for the Dutch and absconds with all the stones to Holland."
"Ah, Holland, jumping on Britain's back along with France and Spain." David's chuckle was raspy. "You know, Sophie, you should pen your memoirs of this adventure."
"No one would believe it, even if I were a man."
He rose. "All right. I'm for sleep if my arm will let me."
She studied him. "Is it worse? I can brew you more tea."
"It was quite bearable until you poked at it before supper and changed the bandage."
"Very well. You may change your own bandage from here on."
"Thank you." He massaged his lower back. "Peter's gelding is odious. I shall be glad to have my horse back on the morrow." He walked off to clean his teeth. They were lucky to have extra horses, even those with cranky personalities, to give their own a break from the saddle every few days.
She set her musket aside and ambled to Mathias. "May I join you?" He nodded, still sewing his moccasin, so she crouched beside him. "If the flint hadn't fallen out, I'd have shot him."
"You're alive and well, and that's what counts." He slid the moccasin on his foot and set the kit aside, eyes like obsidian. "Clearly it wasn't his time. Besides, he's mine."
"But it may have been his dead partner who killed Jonah."
"That makes no difference."
No, it didn't make a difference. She licked her lips. "I think I figured out what happened that night." He studied her with expectation. "Jonah — with Fairbourne, Travis, Osborn, and Whitney — got the fire going around Father's corpse. Jonah stayed behind to make sure the fire didn't get out of control. Whitney and Travis headed straight to the dance. The other two left to clean up first.
"The Spaniards came upon the scene, and one of them killed Jonah. While they were poking around —" She pressed her hands together to calm their shaking. "Lieutenant Fairfax found them and shot El Serpiente's partner in the knee."
"Fairfax." Mathias's eyebrow shot up.
"Unable to escape, the second assassin was left behind to Fairfax and his — his interrogation."
Plausibility sifted into Mathias's expression. "Explain why you think it was Fairfax."
"MacVie was terrified of him. I suspect he saw him torturing the Spaniard. The next morning, Fairfax and Major Hunt came to arrest me. I could tell Fairfax hadn't slept. At one point, he offered to interrogate me, and he appeared enraptured, even affectionate, at the thought of it. That afternoon, when I went to identify the dead Spaniard, he interrupted Stoddard's investigation and tried to run him off. I suspect he was looking for evidence he might have left behind in the dark, perhaps a button torn off his coat while subduing the Spaniard. And he looked at the corpse with such affection, as if he were delighted by that agonized face —"
"And Hunt did nothing about it."
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"I doubt he knew."
"Of course he knew. How could he not know? Have you forgotten how frightened the peddlers were of the redcoats? Have you forgotten how much Fairfax enjoyed killing those bandits last night? Fairfax the machine, and Hunt the spineless: what an excellent team they make."
The hiss of venom in Mathias's voice astounded Sophie, almost obliterated her own quiet instinct that Edward would never willingly choose Fairfax on his "team." "So logically you've assessed it." Her nostrils expanded. "I wonder why you've not dedicated the same deductive skills to another incident last night with the bandits."
"How do you mean?"
"Had I wanted to become Edward Hunt's mistress, I'd have stayed behind with him instead of fleeing with you, and I'd never have crawled out my bedroom window a week ago — also with you."
He regarded her coolly. "Will you continue to flee from him when he asks you to marry him?"
She tittered. "He won't do that. He plans to add to his estates and wealth by marrying a fifteen-year-old cousin."
"He's in love with you, not his cousin. If he marries you instead, he's still far from penniless. You'd turn your back on that? The very sound of it is majestic. Lady Sophie Hunt."
Humor drained from her heart, replaced with chill and loss. Mathias seemed to be encouraging her to return to Edward. "I don't love him."
"You didn't love Jim or Richard, either."
She searched his emotionless face, not comprehending the wall between them. "I admit to making imprudent decisions when I was young, but I'm a bit older and wiser now."
"And how is accepting the protection of Edward Hunt an imprudent decision? Through him, you'd spend the rest of your life in comfort and luxury, something few in Georgia can expect of their lot."
Confusion wrung her soul. If only she'd deferred accepting Richard Barton's proposal another month. But she'd no way of foreseeing that the following month, Stands Tall would be dead, along with her unborn child. No, Sophie'd had Betsy to think about, Betsy to protect. Betsy. Sweet Betsy.
Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution Page 15