by Fortune Kent
The marchers on the street ahead stopped and the cadet on the black horse glanced up and down the row of spectators. His eyes met Kathleen’s, and even from a distance she saw his face was fair and open. He guided his horse toward her and loosened the strap around his chin and lifted his hat. His blond hair curled tightly on his head.
He smiled at her and she could not help smiling back. His eyes, she saw, were blue. She blushed.
“Forward…march!” The cadets moved on. The blond horseman held Kathleen’s eyes for a moment more before sweeping his hat out to the side in a salute to her. He bowed and pulled his horse back into the line of march.
Kathleen looked covertly at Josiah and found him frowning. Clarissa smiled. A knowing smile, Kathleen thought, feeling resentful yet proud and pleased at the same time.
The parade ended and, in a confusion of high-wheeled bicycles, running boys, and dung sweepers, Josiah and the two women returned to the coach. Fifteen minutes later they stepped down into the courtyard of the Tontine Inn.
A wooden plaque over the door promised ENTERTAINMENT and the date—“1791—boasted of a long-established hostelry. The smell of cooking drew them through the entryway and past the stale odors of the taproom.
“Two dollars a day each,” Josiah reported as they climbed the stairs to their rooms. “All meals included.” He looked to Kathleen. “Can you be ready for lunch in twenty minutes?”
“In ten,” she replied. While she washed in the basin in her bedroom she discovered, to her surprise and relief, that her headache was gone.
There were only a few customers left in the dining room when they came down. The room was below street level, and Kathleen counted seven steps from the parquet floor to the entrance. A cool room and dim, despite two small windows on either side of the door and candles on the tables.
They helped themselves to rump roast, boiled potatoes, corn, and string beans. Strawberries with cream followed.
“The Worthington Estate?” The landlord repeated Josiah’s question. He stood beside their table, coffeepot in hand, a short balding man whose spectacles glinted in the candlelight. “Strange goings on, to my way of thinking. Comings and goings and not just for next weekend’s doings. Guards, they have. Nothing like this since the Anti-Rent trouble twenty, thirty years ago.”
“Then Captain Worthington is at the Estate?” Josiah asked.
“He’s there, right enough, but not a soul from the village has seen hide nor hair of him. Changed, they say, from what he used to be. Back from the West, he is. I can’t tell you much else. Mind my own business, I do, and if others did the same, the world would be a better place.”
Suddenly the front door slammed open. Kathleen gasped. A man with hands on hips stood silhouetted at the top of the steps. All eyes in the room turned toward him. He was dressed in black, wore a brimmed hat and a cape across his shoulders. The glare from the doorway shadowed his bearded face. He paused for a long moment and Kathleen thought she saw him smile.
“Allen! Allen!” Josiah rose and held up his arm and the stranger descended the steps and came to their table. Did he limp slightly? Kathleen could not be sure.
Josiah introduced Clarissa and Kathleen, and Edward Allen nodded and slouched into a chair. “Brandy,” he ordered and the innkeeper moved away. Kathleen examined him. Rough, unexceptional clothes—the cape turned out to be a cloth coat draped about his shoulders. Between his black, wavy hair and black beard his forehead was high and broad. His hazel eyes glanced uneasily at the candle, the table, and the plates displayed high on the wall above their heads. For a moment they looked into Kathleen’s eyes and held. She stared, fascinated by the intensity of his gaze.
Edward Allen finished his brandy and called for another. Kathleen experienced a sinking feeling much as she had when, as a young girl, she returned home to find her father with his head resting on crossed arms on the kitchen table muttering to himself. Was this the carefully selected man who was to lead her to Captain Worthington? He was as if at ease as an old servant unexpectedly invited to dine with the family. Was deference the quality Josiah had really been looking for? Could he be comfortable only with subservience?
“Come with me,” Josiah said, placing his arm over the other man’s shoulder. “We’ve work to do.” Kathleen saw that Josiah was a full head taller as the two men climbed the stairs to the street.
Neither appeared again for the rest of the day. Later in the afternoon Kathleen joined Clarissa for a walk along Newburgh’s tree-shaded streets to Washington’s Headquarters where they found a Fourth of July community picnic spread across the lawn which stretched from the stone house to the river. They strolled toward the center of town, hurrying as they passed alleyways where hogs rooted amid the garbage. On Broadway the two women looked into the windows of the shops.
Clarissa remained gracious and polite, yet avoided talking of Josiah and Gleneden as though she now wanted to cloak the feelings she had exposed on the day of Kathleen’s arrival. Only once did she mention their journey to the Worthington Estate.
“I’m now your aunt,” she said.
“My aunt?”
“Yes, Josiah decided I’m to be the widow of your father’s brother.”
“My father did have a brother. He was killed in the War.”
“Josiah seemed to know. Or he guessed. His intuition always surprises me, though I should be used to it by now.”
“Did he tell you how he intends to approach Captain Worthington?”
“He said we’re supposed to be traveling from near Utica in upstate New York to visit friends in the city. Edward Allen is our coachman. We’re quite well-to-do, it seems.”
“I don’t like to have to lie,” Kathleen said.
Clarissa raised her eyebrows. “A minor vice like lying bothers you? Have you forgotten why you’re going to visit Charles Worthington in the first place?”
Clarissa’s sharpness brought the sting of tears to Kathleen’s eyes. “You-you-you’re right,” she stammered at last. What must Clarissa think of me? she wondered. Will I ever be able to make her understand? She set her mouth firmly and changed the subject. “How do we get onto the Estate?”
“I don’t know. Josiah isn’t sure. All he told me was that our entrée depends on Captain Worthington’s character, whatever he means by that. But he’ll find a way, he always does.” Clarissa half shut her eyes and smiled as though fondly leafing through a memory album. She abruptly shook her head, turned and nodded at a shop window. “Look, what a stunning gown,” she said. They talked no more of the Worthingtons.
Josiah and Edward Allen had eaten and left the inn by the time Kathleen came down to breakfast the next morning. Later a smiling, exuberant Josiah joined the two women at lunch.
“All arranged!” He rubbed his hands together. “Our romantic and dashing Captain Worthington will soon have three guests.”
“Romantic? Dashing?” Kathleen asked.
“He was a few years ago and I assume he still is in spite of his present indisposition. This fête on Sunday may be a sign of a change for the better. It’s the first entertaining he’s done since coming here last winter.”
“You talked to him?”
“No, no. I considered the direct approach but had to give up the idea.”
“Then you know someone on the Estate.”
Josiah moved his hand back and forth, palm toward her. “No, I don’t. Allen and I couldn’t get near the place. The Estate is like an armed camp and no one seems to know why. We’ll have to outsmart them. I’ll have to outsmart them.”
“Are you going to tell me how?”
“You’ll find out in due course. Best for you not to know too soon.”
Kathleen sighed. First the disappointment of Edward Allen, and now these vague plans.
“You three leave tonight,” Josiah announced. “Immediately after supper.”
Good, Kathleen thought At least the waiting was over. The second of her eight days ticked inexorably away.
A church bell was tolling six when Josiah led them to the coach. Clarissa leaned to him and his arms went around her and she held his face with both of her hands and pressed her cheek to his.
As the coach jounced from the courtyard into the street, Clarissa gazed back at Josiah. Her face was pale. Kathleen had never before seen a look of such devotion. Kathleen herself felt an emptiness, a loss. Even though she feared Josiah and had known him only three days, his absence left a void.
They drove toward the Estate five miles to the south. Clarissa sat quietly with hands clasped in her lap. She looked content, Kathleen saw, as though she possessed a knowledge that was hers alone.
If only I knew more of people and of the world, Kathleen thought. She had been able to go to school only eight years and when she met more educated men and women she felt ill at ease. She knew she learned quickly, for in school she finished her lessons before anyone else and she liked nothing better than to curl up in a chair and read the books borrowed from the homes where she worked. There was so much to know. So much she needed to find out.
When this is over, she vowed, I’ll read and I’ll study and I’ll go back to school. And then the realization came to her that if she did kill Charles Worthington—and she knew she must—she would never be able to do all the things she dreamed of. She stared from the window at the murky water of the Hudson.
Edward Allen consulted a map on the seat beside him and guided the horses inland away from the river road toward the setting sun. Trees along the way cast long shadows in the direction of the mountains. Kathleen felt a tremor of excitement, for she knew they were rapidly approaching the Worthington Estate.
On both sides of the road scarecrows watched over the fields which lay parched from want of rain. The occasional streams ran low. They passed between a long double row of Lombardy poplars looking, Kathleen thought, like sentries at attention guarding the way to the Estate.
The coach skidded to a halt. Kathleen opened the door and looked up and found Edward Allen, mouth slack, reins limp in his hands, staring at the roadway. A tree blocked their path and two masked men stood alongside the coach. One held two pistols pointed at Edward Allen. The other, rifle at the ready, his finger on the trigger, walked slowly toward Kathleen.
Chapter Five
Kathleen froze, immobile, hand still on the door. The tree athwart the road. The two masked men. Highwaymen? She pulled the door shut and shrank back inside the coach.
“What…what?” Clarissa asked.
“Two men, with guns,” Kathleen whispered hoarsely. She heard a shout from the roadway, felt the pounding of her heart. Get away, get away! Clarissa, Edward Allen—no help there. Without thinking she unlatched the opposite door, and as she stepped to the metal foothold she felt the coach sway and knew the gunman was mounting from the other side.
Run. Hold the maroon dress high. Run!
She glanced about in desperation. Where to hide? The row of poplars offered no cover. Past the trees she saw a creek bed where water trickled among the rocks and collected in stagnant pools. On the other side of the stream a woods sloped upward for some thirty feet to the crest of a hill. Beyond, a denser growth of trees promised shelter.
She ran, the dress heavy and awkward, her shoes twisting on her feet. The bushes in the undergrowth caught at her clothes and the bank of the stream crumbled beneath her and she slid to the bottom.
What was that? The slam of the coach door. Shouts—“Stop, stop!”—the thudding sound of a man running.
She leaped from rock to rock with her breath coming in short gasps, rasping in her throat. She scrambled up the far bank and stumbled at the top, falling, and pain stabbed her knee. On her feet again, the footfalls close behind, over the top of the bank. Heavy breathing behind. A hand grasped her arm and she pulled away, but the hand tightened and spun her about and she recoiled from the unshaven face and the yellow teeth. A mask drooped around the man’s neck. A short man, hardly taller than herself.
She screamed. A cry of desperation and helplessness. He reached to her and slapped her across the cheek and her head snapped to one side. “Oh,” she gasped, surprised, face stinging, and tears filled her eyes. She slumped away from him.
His thumb and forefinger caught her chin and turned her head first to the right, then the left. “We don’t want no damaged goods,” he said. She sobbed, defeated, and he smirked. His face, she saw, was streaked with rivulets of sweat. He shoved her ahead of him back across the creek where he retrieved his rifle from under one of the poplars.
Kathleen joined Clarissa and Edward Allen on the road and, while the heavy-set man with the pistols watched, his companion tied their hands behind them. He led the way to a wagon hidden in the trees and helped Clarissa and Edward Allen clamber aboard. They sat on straw heaped at the front of the wagon bed. After throwing the luggage into the wagon he motioned Kathleen to climb in the rear.
She stumbled and tried to hold the side of the wagon but her hands were tied too tightly and she fell backward. The short man with the yellow teeth caught her from behind and his hands circled her waist and moved up to cup her breasts. Nausea gagged her and she squirmed away.
“Nice, very nice,” he said and laughed. His hands slid down her back and he pushed her into the wagon.
She lay with straw pricking her face while she fought the bitter taste of bile in her mouth. I hate them! she sobbed. All of them, with their hands and their foul mouths and their leering faces. I don’t want them touching me. I never want to be touched. Never, never, never! Sobs shook her body.
She heard horses neigh, and after a time they bounced forward across uneven ground, moving slowly, the wagon pitching this way and that. The ride smoothed and she knew they had reached the road.
Kathleen opened her eyes and found the straw in a latticework before her face. Scratching, tickling, infuriating straw. She wanted to wipe her perspiring face and she strained her hands until the cord cut into her wrists. She struggled onto her back and freed her face from the straw. Above her head she could see the tops of trees and the sky aglow with wisps of pink-tinged clouds.
“Clarissa,” she whispered.
“No talking,” a harsh voice commanded and she lay quiet. What was happening? Where were they being taken?
Now no trees reached from the sides of the road and she felt the wagon turn and begin climbing. They went uphill for what seemed to Kathleen an endless time before the road leveled and they turned again. The pink had faded from the clouds which pointed like gray and black fingers in the darkening sky. Trees again. Thicker than before, the branches joining above. At last the wagon stopped and the heavy-set man led Clarissa and Edward Allen away. She heard the horses being unhitched and the luggage unloaded. A hand pulled her upright and she flinched.
“Come on, let’s go.” Kathleen hunched her way to the tailgate and dropped to the ground. They were in a clearing in front of a cabin. Yellow light shone through a window and an open door. The heavy blackness of a mountain loomed behind the cabin and a scattering of stars glimmered in the sky above. Clarissa and Edward Allen and the man with the pistols were nowhere to be seen. The short man motioned her ahead along a stone walk and through the door.
A large room with a table in the center. Two oil lamps. A black iron stove near the far wall with a stovepipe angling back and up through the roof. Cots were placed along two sides and doors to other rooms opened at the rear and on the near side. She saw her carpetbag piled with other luggage near the stove.
The man walked past her and opened the second door and motioned her to go in. She stumbled as she went by him, tired, her body sore and aching. Inside she found a bureau and a small bed high off the floor. She leaned against the wall and the man came to her and she cringed away, afraid, hating him. He laughed and reached behind her, without touchin
g her, and cut the cord on her wrists and left the room, pulling the door shut behind him.
Kathleen sat on the bed. Her hands tingled and she rubbed her wrists. The room seemed to spin and she lay back, trying to grip the sides of the bed with her numb fingers. She shut her eyes and finally the movement stopped. She lay exhausted on the bed.
Had she slept? She could not be sure, but thought she had. The room was dark. She was calm now, her head clear. Why am I here? she wondered. What do these two men intend to do? Had she and Clarissa been kidnapped for ransom? Perhaps Josiah had spread stories of their supposed wealth and unwittingly led some local adventurers to waylay them. Or were the Worthingtons in some way involved? After all, they had been almost on the Worthington doorstep when the coach was stopped. Could there be a connection between these men and the guards at the Estate? She had no answers.
I must escape, she told herself. She hated inaction and became impatient with those who waited and hoped for the best. Good fortune, she believed, came to those who sought it out. And she must act alone, for Edward Allen had shown himself to be of no help at all.
Her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness and she noticed a thin slit of light under the door to the main room. She heard voices, but although she strained her ears she could not make out the words. A door opened and closed, and someone walked across the next room. There was no more talking and then the footsteps also stopped and the cabin was still.
Raising her torn skirt, Kathleen touched the cut on her leg and winced. Just a scrape, though, she decided. She swung both legs from the bed and stood and the dizziness returned, and she had to lean on the rough wood of the wall until the whirling subsided. Very slowly, very quietly, she lifted the latch on the door and pushed. The door, either bolted or locked, did not move.
She paced from the door to the far wall. Eight steps. Paced the width of the room. Only five steps. She discovered a window and placed the heels of both hands wider the frame and shoved upward, but the window refused to budge. No light showed through. Nailed shut and boarded on the other side, she concluded.