Rachel's Choice

by Judith French

Behind her, the Dutchman stood up and lifted his rifle just as the dory plunged into a trough. Coblentz flew out of the small boat like an arrow from a bow. He hit the water with a splash, went under, and surfaced waving his arms and yelling.

  The private laughed and guided the rowboat into a circle before pulling in his oars. He stretched out his hand to the cursing sergeant, but before he could reach him, the Dutchman rose and suddenly sank. When he came up, he screamed once and then vanished.

  “Sharks!” the private shouted. “Sharks!”

  The patrol boat cut between Rachel and the dory, and without looking back, she turned her sloop toward the widest part of the river.

  Devil take him, she thought with a shudder. Coblentz was the worst sort of human scum, and she hoped Lucifer would make him a warm welcome in the bowels of hell.

  Chapter 23

  Rachel spent the night on the sloop, hidden in the thick reeds of the Jersey shoreline. She hardly slept at all. Instead, she spent her hours agonizing over the loss of Chance and swatting mosquitoes.

  At first light she splashed water on her swollen eyes and dressed in her own clothing. She weighted down the Quaker dress with lead fishing sinkers and buried it in the mud. Then she sailed her boat along the river until she came to the first village, anchored there, and asked directions to Finn’s Point.

  She caught a ride with a Nanticoke Indian woman carrying butter and eggs to sell in the next town, and the matron was more than willing to share her breakfast of bread, hard-boiled eggs, and buttermilk. Rachel had no appetite, but she ate anyway. She knew she would need her strength to carry Chance’s body home to Rachel’s Choice.

  The day was cloudy and overcast, threatening rain. Across the river, from the west, came rumbles of distant thunder. For once Rachel paid no heed to the weather; her sorrow was so great that she could hardly summon the energy to walk the last half mile from the main road to Finn’s Point burial ground.

  She asked directions from a boy surrounded by a flock of black-faced sheep. He didn’t speak, merely pointed through the stand of white pines toward the river.

  Dry-eyed, Rachel made her way through the fresh mounds toward the burial party. To her left a gang of black men sang an old spiritual as they dug a deep pit in the marshy earth. A white corporal on horseback was obviously overseeing the operation.

  I’ll not let them put Chance’s body in a mass grave, she thought, not if I have to shoot someone to stop it. As she neared the blue-coated soldiers, she saw that most wore neckerchiefs over their faces to mask the smell of corpses.

  Another couple was there ahead of her; an old woman wept and prayed over a canvas-wrapped bundle. Rachel saw the gray-haired man exchange heated words with an officer. Finally the soldier threw up his hands and walked away. Immediately the woman took one end of the wrapped body, and her companion took the other end. They lifted the heavy burden and carried it back toward the main road.

  “Sir!” Rachel called. “Wait, sir, if you please.”

  A pasty-faced captain wearing a chaplain’s insignia turned toward her. “If you’ve come to claim a body, you must have the proper forms,” he said. “Otherwise, don’t bother me.”

  “Reverend, please,” she replied. “If you’d just listen to what I have to say.”

  The ominous sound of thunder reverberated across the river, and dark clouds boiled overhead.

  The soldier on horseback rode over to them, dismounted, and handed his bay gelding’s reins to a black boy. “Shall I escort the lady off the property, Captain?” the corporal asked.

  The chaplain ran a hand through thinning sandy-colored hair and shook his head. “No need for that, Chambers.” He glanced back at Rachel. “Ma’am, I just told you. You must make an application through proper channels.”

  Rachel stared past him as he rattled on, delivering a speech she guessed he must have made dozens of times before. Spatters of rain struck her face, and the wind picked up.

  A group of soldiers stood idly near the dock. Beyond them a procession of sweating black men carried canvas-wrapped bodies from the boat. One brawny African, midway down the line, caught Rachel’s immediate attention because he looked so much like Pharaoh.

  “… like to help in any way I can,” the chaplain concluded, “but my hands are tied.”

  “I have money,” Rachel supplied hastily. Needles of rain borne on the salt breeze dampened her dress and hair. “I’d be glad to pay you—a donation perhaps to your church. But I …” A shaft of lightning illuminated the forbidding clouds, and a loud clap of thunder rang in her ears. “I want to …” Rachel trailed off as a team of corpse bearers—including the man she was now certain was Pharaoh—veered off to the left, away from the path.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” a soldier with a lit pipe in his hand called after them.

  The chaplain looked to see what the problem was. “You there!” he shouted. “Halt! Stop those two men!”

  Pharaoh and his accomplice, a short, muscular, light-skinned black, began to run, bearing their grim burden between them. Sheets of rain hindered Rachel’s visibility as the storm bore down on them.

  “Stop them!” the chaplain cried, fumbling in his holster for a pistol.

  As he drew it, Rachel screamed and threw her arms around his neck. “What’s happening?” she cried.

  “Get away from me, woman!” The captain shoved her roughly aside. She stumbled against the corporal, then regained her balance. “Oh! Oh!” she wailed. “Help me, please. My ankle, I think it’s broken.”

  One of the soldiers by the edge of the dock fired a rifle. The other black men carrying bodies dropped them and scattered. Some ran back to the boat; others fled into the river.

  “Hold that woman! She may be part of this,” the chaplain ordered, but the rainfall was so heavy that his voice didn’t carry to his troops.

  Rachel continued to scream loudly.

  The corporal grabbed for her arm, but his foot slipped on the wet grass. She dodged his grasp and dived under his horse’s neck.

  Shouts came from the black crew digging the mass grave. “Shootin’!”

  “Somebody firin’ at us!”

  “Get down!”

  The workers dropped their shovels and swarmed out of the hole. Still yelling, they ran en masse through the pelting rain, toward the Union soldiers. As three of them dashed past Rachel, the black boy holding the corporal’s gelding pushed the reins into Rachel’s hands.

  “Take the horse, lady!” the youth hissed. “Run before they clap you in irons.”

  Rachel thrust one foot into the stirrup and slapped the animal’s neck with the leathers. The bay leaped forward while she struggled to get her other leg over the wet saddle amid the tangle of her skirts and petticoats.

  “Don’t let her get away!” the chaplain shouted.

  Breathless, Rachel clung to the horse’s mane and lashed the gelding’s rump with the dangling ends of the reins. The bay leaped over a low hedge and then an open grave, but Rachel kept her grip and gradually worked her way upright on the animal’s back. She found the other stirrup with her toe as she yanked her mount’s head to guide him back onto the level path.

  The horse’s hooves threw clods of mud into the air as they tore down the road at full canter. Behind her, Rachel heard the crack of rifles, but she leaned low over the gelding’s neck and urged him faster. As she galloped through the grove of pines, Pharaoh suddenly appeared in the lane dead ahead of her.

  She yanked the bay up so hard that he reared, nearly pitching her off. “Pharaoh! What are you—”

  “No time!” he shouted. “We can’t outrun them carrying him. You’ll have to take him on the horse.”

  She struggled to hold the bucking animal. “What? Take who?” She could hardly understand him above the sound of the downpour.

  Pharaoh crashed back into the trees and returned seconds later with his teammate. Between them, they supported Chance.

  He looked more dead than alive; Chance’s eyes were swo
llen slits, his ashen skin tightly drawn over the bones on his face.

  “Sweet Jesus!” Rachel threw her weight forward, bringing the bay down, and forced him to a shuddering stop. “Chance … I can’t believe you’re alive!” she cried.

  “You’ll have to take him up behind you,” Pharaoh said. “Tom and I can’t get away if we have him to worry about.”

  “No!” Chance staggered forward and grabbed the bay’s cheek strap. “Put me in the saddle,” he rasped. “I’m too weak to hold on behind her, but put my feet in the stirrups and I’ll ride to hell and back.”

  Rachel didn’t argue. She kicked her right foot loose and flung herself off the horse. Pharaoh and his comrade lifted Chance onto the animal’s back; then Pharaoh boosted her up behind him.

  “Soldiers comin’!” Tom warned.

  “Go!” Rachel yelled.

  “Take my sloop,” Rachel said. “It’s anchored in Rose Harbor. Pick us up at Hangman’s Cove in two days.”

  Pharaoh slapped the bay’s rump and took off running. Chance dug his heels into the gelding’s sides and whipped him into a gallop. Rachel shut her eyes, pressed her face into Chance’s bloodied shirt, and locked her arms around his waist. Branches tore at her hair and sleeves, but she didn’t feel the pain.

  Somehow Chance was alive, warm and breathing. That was all that mattered. And not even the bullets whistling past their heads could dim her unrestrained joy.

  “You’re alive,” she whispered. “You’re alive.”

  She wouldn’t attempt to make sense of it now, but if they survived this wild ride and the hail of gunfire, she vowed she’d strangle him with her bare hands.

  When they reached the main road, Rachel told Chance to turn the horse east along the river and then left at the first woods road they reached. To her surprise he didn’t do as she asked. Instead, he rode past the narrow opening in the trees, then reined the horse to a walk and backed him thirty feet before entering the pine forest. He guided the animal on a zigzag course, crossing a stream and finally meeting up with the rough track a quarter of a mile from the place where it intersected with the wide thoroughfare.

  “No sense in making it easy for them to track us,” he said painfully.

  Chance had been telling the truth when he’d told Pharaoh he was too weak to hold on. As it was, he could barely keep himself upright in the saddle. Although he refused to hand over the reins, it was Rachel who bore his weight as they threaded deeper and deeper into the pine barrens, long a refuge for those who avoided authority.

  And rain continued to fall; the path narrowed to a bushy, sodden deer trail. Without the sun Rachel soon lost her sense of direction. She could only hope that the trail led away from the Delaware River and into the forest rather than doubling back to civilization.

  When Chance slumped forward, only barely conscious, Rachel slid off the horse’s rump, took the reins, and led the gelding. Her shoes were soon as soaked as her dress, but she kept going, lifting one mud-encrusted foot after another. Blackberry vines scratched her legs and arms and tore at her clothing. And when the thunderstorms passed, sometime in midafternoon, the woods became a stifling hot maze of downed trees and swampy sinkholes too deep to wade.

  Just before dusk, when she was too tired to walk another hundred yards, Rachel saw a movement in the brush ahead. She stopped short as a hound began to bay.

  “I smell smoke,” Chance said.

  She jumped and snapped her head around to stare at him. He hadn’t spoken in over an hour, and she’d thought him unconscious. “What do I do?” she asked him.

  “Wait,” he managed. “We’re … we’re too done in to run.”

  She leaned against a pine sapling and caught her breath. The dog continued to bark, and after a while an olive-skinned boy appeared through the trees, a musket cradled in his thin arms.

  “Whatcha want?” he called.

  “Please,” Rachel answered. “Do you have water? A place we could rest? My … my husband,” she lied. “My husband’s ill.”

  “You lost?” the boy demanded.

  “No,” Rachel replied. “Not if this is south Jersey.”

  The boy laughed. “Come on. Gran has a batch of fry bread on the stove. I reckon you’re hungry and mosquito bit.”

  “Definitely an understatement,” Chance murmured.

  The youth led the way to a two-room cabin in a small clearing with a well beside the front door. A white-haired woman came out to greet them and instructed the boy to unsaddle the horse.

  “Give him water, Vernon. Tie him in the lean-to.” She stared at Rachel and Chance through faded eyes. “Come in,” she said. “Come in and set and keep your troubles to yourself. I can see you’re running from somebody or somethin’, and the less I know about it, the better.”

  The old woman who introduced herself as Granny Pritchett helped Rachel get Chance off the horse and into a low bed near the fireplace. Their hostess frowned and muttered under her breath when she saw the extent of his injuries, but she asked no questions. Instead, she put a kettle of water on the hearth to heat and offered Rachel a pot of ointment to rub into Chance’s back.

  “I’d wash them cuts with lye soap and salt water,” Granny Pritchett advised. “He’ll not thank ye for it, but it might save his life.”

  That night, when the old woman and her grandson had retired to the other room, Rachel sat beside Chance’s bed and demanded answers.

  “Why?” she asked. “Why were you stupid enough to trade places with Travis? You knew what that prison was like.”

  Chance closed his eyes and didn’t answer. He lay face-down, on his belly. His back was too inflamed to bear the weight of his body, even against a soft feather-tick mattress.

  “I thought you were dead,” she said. “That sergeant, the Dutchman, took my money to let you go. And then he said you were already dead.”

  “I was.”

  “What are you talking about? You couldn’t have been dead or you wouldn’t be alive now. How did Pharaoh get you aboard that ship with the bodies?”

  “You sent him, didn’t you.” Chance’s voice was dry and cracked, hardly more than a croak. “I wondered about that.”

  “His mother sent him. Cora. She told him to help me get you free. But I—”

  “I wanted to kill Coblentz. I’d given my word …” He cleared his throat. “It’s a long story, Rachel. Someday I’ll tell you why I wanted him dead, but—”

  “He is.”

  “He is what?”

  “Dead.” She shuddered, remembering Coblentz’s screams as the sharks attacked. “He took my money, the money you loaned me to pay off the farm.”

  “You gave him your farm money?”

  “I took it back once I found out he meant to cheat me.” She squeezed Chance’s forearm and stroked his stubbled cheek with trembling fingers as if to convince herself that he was flesh and blood and not the stuff of dreams.

  Finding him alive when she thought she’d lost him forever made her all bubbly inside. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. And she still wanted to pound him for giving her such a fright.

  “Are you certain?” Chance asked. “Coblentz is dead?”

  She nodded. “As dead as you can get. I hit him over the head with a bedpan and ran. When he came to, he chased me. I reached the sloop and cast off, but he followed in a dory. He was shooting at me, and he stood up to take better aim.”

  “He shot at you?”

  She scoffed. “I’ve got a hole in my sail to prove it. Anyway, he fell into the water and …” She swallowed. “The sharks ate him.”

  “Near the prison?”

  “Yes.” She ran her fingers through his clean damp hair and leaned forward to caress his temple, but he pulled her down to kiss her full on the mouth. “Oh, Chance,” she murmured thickly. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  She bathed him with her own hands and rubbed medicine into his wounds. His clothes, they burned. Granny promised to find him something to wear in the morning. For now,
his nakedness was covered by a worn linen sheet.

  “How’s Davy?” he whispered. “Is he all right?”

  “Yes, he’s with Cora. She’ll take good care of him.”

  “I miss seeing that little smiling face first thing in the morning. He’s some boy, our Davy.”

  His words made Rachel go all warm inside. “Our Davy,” he’d said. She wished that it could be true, that he would stay with her and be Davy’s father … and her husband.

  “Climb into bed with me,” he whispered.

  “You’re feverish,” she answered. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Chance grimaced. “You’ve been thumping against my back all afternoon. A little more of you won’t make me feel any worse, and you might make me feel a lot better.”

  She clasped his right hand and bent to kiss his fingertips, one by one. “You’re much too ill for thumping,” she murmured.

  “I’m cold. I need warming.”

  “You’re a devil, Chance Chancellor.” But she undid the buttons on her bodice and slipped off her skirt, petticoat, stockings, and camisole. She eased into the narrow bed beside him, wearing only her corset and drawers.

  “Ouch.” He groaned. “Your bones are jabbing me.”

  “That’s not my bones,” she whispered. “It’s my stays.”

  “I don’t care what it is. Take it off.”

  Despite the delicious thrill that skittered down her spine, Rachel felt herself blush. “What if Granny Pritchett comes out? Or the boy? What will they think of me?”

  He chuckled. “You told them that you were my wife, remember? Where else would a wife be, but by her sick husband’s side?”

  “I shouldn’t be doing this,” she grumbled. “You’re much too ill for hanky-panky.”

  “Who said anything about hanky-panky? I just want you beside me, Rachel, sweet. You kept me alive, you know. They threw me into the pit. It’s a grave for the living. When the sun heats the metal lid, a man knows what hell feels like.”

  Her throat constricted, and she made no protest as he fumbled with the ties at the back of her corset. “How did you get away?” she whispered.