Shiloh

by Lori Benton

  “So ye’ve another son?”

  “He’s called Ian. He’s with his mother. As is our wee daughter.”

  “I thought your daughter lived?”

  “Mandy, aye. Not our second-born, Elizabeth. So believe me when I say I do understand the grief—”

  “Ye don’t!” Ned interrupted. “Ye didn’t ken those bairns ye buried. Not like I knew Robbie . . . Eddie—” Ned’s voice caught on his sons’ names. A second later the study door flew open. Ned passed the foot of the stairs, clapping on his hat, making for the door to the street, features racked with bitterness and pain. He didn’t see Seona, perched on the landing.

  Ned was through the door and gone, shutting it ungently behind him, before anyone in the study spoke again.

  “Ian. There’s no excuse for what your brother said . . .”

  “He’s grieving,” came Ian’s heavy reply. “I know that.”

  Seona didn’t move a muscle on the stair where she sat, hand over her mouth. A fist around her heart. Ned wasn’t the only one grieving. Two babies dead. Ian. Elizabeth.

  “There’s more.” Mister Robert explained about the business doings with Morgan Shelby that had soured, for which Ned blamed himself. “And if that wasn’t enough, Penny’s gone awa’ to Deerfield.”

  “Gone? Is she coming back?”

  “We dinna ken. Ned only comes to the shop because I’ve agreed to stop asking.”

  Seona missed what Ian said to that, then heard his weighty sigh and knew he must be near the door now. “All right, Da. But I think for now I’ll shift my tribe back over to the Chestnut. We all need rest.”

  Ian had barely finished speaking before he emerged from the study, making for the stairs. Seona shot to her feet as he mounted the first step. He looked up, features catching light from the landing window.

  Had his eyes always been so blue? Like a jaybird’s wing, she recalled thinking them. Or a smoky autumn sky.

  “Seona.” It was the first he had said her name since appearing in the back garden. “How long have ye . . . ?”

  “Long enough,” she said, turning to mount the stairs.

  He reached the landing fast. “What did Ned mean—I don’t care what she says now? Those were his words. What did ye tell him about . . . us?”

  Seona shook her head as if she didn’t understand the question. A peal of giggles from above saved her answering.

  Ian stepped back, gazing at her with eyes bruised by grief and weariness. “Sounds like they’re in my old room, the bairns.”

  “It’s our room now. Mine and Mama’s. Gabriel’s.”

  She headed for it. His nearness on the stairs had set her trembling. She was relieved to find Lily and Catriona with the children, for one thing was clear enough. She wasn’t ready to be alone with Gabriel’s daddy or to answer his questions, whatever they might be.

  Which meant her own must wait.

  9

  August 1796

  Ian was gone on his red roan, Ally with him. “Spying out the land, he said,” Catriona told Seona as they headed for the Chestnut Inn. “Looking for a place to set up shop.”

  The knot in Seona’s belly, lodged there since Ian’s appearance in the garden five days ago, unraveled at the news. She wouldn’t be seeing him again in the time it took to cross Boston’s North End. A brief reprieve.

  Looking for a place to set up shop. One like he had at Mountain Laurel? Ian hadn’t shared his plans with her—not that he’d had a chance to do so. She had made sure of that, keeping company with Catriona, her mama, or Naomi and Miss Margaret whenever Ian was at the house.

  There would be no adoption. She had known it that moment in the back garden when Ian scooped up their son, by the joy and relief that seized his features. It was, she realized as they reached the inn, a weight off her mind.

  Others had taken its place.

  They had come to bring Malcolm and Naomi to the house before the day got too hot. Already the city’s smells lay thick on the muggy air—roasting coffee and rotting fish uppermost—while along the wharves the rising sun poked rays through the masts of moored ships like it had done through the woods of Mountain Laurel. Overhead, gulls floated white against a pink-and-peach sky, their cries high and plaintive.

  They found Malcolm at the inn’s stable, sitting near the box occupied by Juturna, with whom Catriona had fallen in love at first sight. Ian’s filly put her brown nose over the slats to greet his sister, who cooed, “There’s my beautiful girl.”

  “Morning, Malcolm,” Seona said as the old man rose with the help of his cane. “Ready to head over to the house?”

  “Naomi’s sorting through some quiltin’ pieces she means to take along.”

  “I’ll see if she and Mandy need help,” Catriona said but continued stroking Juturna’s nose as if unable to pull away.

  Malcolm smiled. “Has Mister Ian told ye this filly was born just after he and Thomas came to Mountain Laurel?”

  “He didn’t,” Catriona said.

  Thomas Ross had lived with the Boston Camerons until he was apprenticed to a cooper, though he had still called their house his home and visited often, Seona had been told. But none of them had seen Thomas even once since he hightailed it south to chase down Ian, headed to Mountain Laurel, four years back. Thomas had gone to Mountain Laurel pretending to be a slave for the purpose of leading true slaves to freedom, if he could. Seona hoped he had.

  “I suppose you’ve had no word of Thomas?” she asked.

  “No’ since he ran off wi’ the field hands.”

  The same day Hugh Cameron, Seona’s grandfather, met his end as the big house burned around him.

  “I’ll let Naomi know we’re here,” Catriona finally said.

  Seona watched her cross the stable-yard, then turned to find Malcolm watching her. Bereft of Catriona’s attentions, Juturna thrust her nose between them. Seona obliged the horse with petting.

  “You mind me, sweet girl?” She glanced at Malcolm. “He break her to the saddle on the way?”

  “Aye. He did.” No need to ask who she meant. “Didna tell anyone about our coming, did he?”

  Seona found it easier to look into the long-lashed eye of Ian’s horse than into Malcolm’s. “Not even his daddy.”

  Silence. The smell of horseflesh and stalls in need of mucking. The sounds of stamps and whickers. The voices of stable lads.

  “’Twas much prayed over,” Malcolm said.

  Comfort poured through the cracks around her heart. “What all did you pray over?”

  “Everyone we journeyed toward. Everyone left behind.”

  “Esther,” she said, picking just one of many faces missed. “You ever see her after we left?”

  “She came along to Miss Judith’s burying. She’s gettin’ taller, our Esther.”

  Did Lucinda Cameron have Esther serving as a house girl? Likely, if she had brought her along to serve. That was too close to Gideon Pryce for comfort. Especially Esther’s.

  Seona blinked away tears. “I’m so glad you’re here. And free.”

  It struck her afresh that it was Judith’s death had set him free. She wanted to ask if Ian had loved Judith but was of two minds about the answer. It wasn’t as if she wanted to step right into Judith’s place like she never existed.

  The place she took from me.

  Seona clicked her tongue at such a thought. Judith Bell had never taken anything from anyone in her life. She was offered a gift unlooked for and knew no reason to refuse it. What followed had been her fault least of all.

  If only it hadn’t been offered.

  “I’m still praying,” Malcolm said as voices drew near across the yard.

  Wiping hastily at her eyes, Seona turned to greet Catriona, with Mandy in her arms, and Naomi, who had the quilt she had started on the journey bundled around its pieces. She, Miss Margaret, and Lily meant to stitch on it that morning. Atop that were balanced two jars of apple butter brought from Mountain Laurel’s kitchen.

  “Aiming to
give these to Miss Margaret. Best get on through this rabbit warren though.” Naomi nodded toward the street, noisy with the shouts of children and the honking, lowing, and squealing of stock being driven to market or to graze the Common. “Good you come fetch us. I’d still never find my way.”

  The bells of one of Boston’s churches tolled, announcing the opening of markets. Seona grinned at Naomi, whose hands were too full to clap over her ears as she did the first few times she heard the city’s pealing bells.

  “You’ll learn, by and by,” she said, wondering if Naomi and the others would stay long enough for that.

  Catriona had gravitated to Juturna, letting Mandy pat her soft muzzle. “I could stay right here until Ian gets back. Do you think he’d let me ride her?”

  “He done made you that desk Seona and Lily brought north, Miss Catriona,” Naomi said. “Reckon he’d let you ride that horse, did you ask.”

  Seona offered Malcolm her arm. He was frailer than she minded, more stooped, but he looked about them keen-eyed at the sights, wrinkling his nose at the smells. For folk accustomed to fields and fresh air, Boston took some acclimating. It still felt odd, being walled off by homes and shops and harbors lined with ships, caught in a tide of bodies—white, black, red, and every shade between.

  Seona had heard a saying since coming to Boston. Fish out of water. That was what they were, she and her mama. Naomi, Malcolm, and Ally, too.

  Did Ian feel it?

  With the November presidential election months away, the town of Braintree, home of Vice President John Adams, hummed with talk of government more insistently than the heavy air buzzed with cicada call. Since President Washington had declined to serve a third term, party politics was figuring strong in the campaign, with the Federalist Adams standing against Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic-Republican from Virginia.

  “Folk sure worked up about it all, but I can’t tell if they happy or riled,” Ally said as they left a baker’s shop with the bread they meant to put with a cheese and some apples for their dinner, to eat while they made the twelve-mile journey back to Boston. Hopefully before the cloud bank building to the west dropped its promised rain along the coastline.

  “Some are one, some the other,” Ian said as he secured the provisions in a saddlebag, tossing Ally an apple. He felt removed from the proceedings practically, if not in interest; he wasn’t a landowner, thus could have no vote in Massachusetts.

  Perhaps that was soon to change.

  Ally unhitched Cupid, his favorite of the sturdy half-draft bays that had pulled the wagon north, which they had saddled for him to ride along with Ian in what was proving a tedious search for a shop suitable for cabinetmaking, situated within twenty miles of Boston. Having found a prospect in Braintree, currently a tailor’s shop, Ian had spent hours with the elderly proprietor, touring the structure and talking, inescapably, of politics.

  “Safe to say most here support their local son, Adams,” Ian added. “But not all do.” Not the tailor, a staunch Republican in favor of that party’s stand on less federal interference with state’s rights.

  With a glance at Ally’s blank expression, Ian wondered should he use the ride back to Boston to explain the concept of political parties. Thoughts of Gabriel and Seona and what he ought to do for them—and the rest—proved too consuming as he unhitched Ruaidh and mounted.

  Was there a single decision that might do right by everyone? How could he come to it if he didn’t know Seona’s mind? How could she know what she wanted when he hadn’t been back in Boston a week, most of that time spent roaming nearby townships to see what prospects they offered?

  The Braintree property would take little effort to convert into a cabinetmaking shop. The payments the owner was willing to accept would allow Ian to invest in lathes, benches, tools, and supplies he no longer possessed. Braintree was near enough to Boston he could visit Gabriel often. There were rooms above the shop for him and Mandy, a cottage in back where Malcolm, Ally, and Naomi could be comfortable. Ally could find work. Naomi could look after Mandy and, if she wished, take in washing, sewing, extra baking. Malcolm could tend a garden in the yard.

  Ally was silent as they reached Braintree’s outskirts. A cart rattled by on the road. Once it passed, he said, “I thought Gen’ral Washington be president ’til he died. Like kings do.”

  “We fought a war to be free of kings. Now we’re doing things different. A man doesn’t have to go on being president if he doesn’t wish it, once his term’s expired.”

  “Doing things different,” Ally mused.

  Another silence lengthened as they rode. Ally finished his apple. Riders and wagons and one fine carriage passed them by. Thunderclouds built high. The air hung heavy, salted with the pervading smell of the sea.

  Ian was starting to doubt they would make Boston before the storm broke when Ally asked, “Like we doing things different now?”

  “Aye. Ye’re no more a slave, for one.”

  “Well then. What I supposed to be? What I meant to be doing?”

  Ian glanced sidelong at the big man, floppy hat pushed high on his gleaming forehead. “What d’ye want to do?”

  Ally’s brows soared. “Reckon I’ll go on taking care of the horses. Maybe sweep that shop, iffen you take it?”

  “Or ye could learn a bit of cabinetmaking.”

  Ally scratched his nose. “I ain’t too handy with hammer and nails, Mister Ian. And them bitty wooden joints you make?” He raised one broad, thick-fingered hand. “I don’t know.”

  “Can ye think of anything else ye’d like to do?”

  “Guess we won’t be planting nothing, ’cept my granddaddy growing a garden. He don’t need my help with that past driving stakes or putting up a fence.” Ally shook his head. “Aside from working a field, all I know is tending critters.”

  “Maybe ye could find a paying job in town to suit ye,” Ian suggested. “Inns have stables . . .”

  The next pause lasted nigh a mile before Ally asked, “Mister Ian, what do you want to do?”

  “About that shop?” He didn’t know. He felt no strong leading for or against a shop. Of one thing alone he was certain: he wanted to raise his children together but shied from the full picture that notion sought to birth—one that tightened his chest with a sense of longing and guilt too tangled to sort.

  He guided Ruaidh to the verge, letting a massive, blue-painted Conestoga pass with a clanking and creaking and the shouted encouragement of its mounted driver. Ian looked back as it rattled on. From the rear of its canvas awning a girl and boy looked back at him through the dust in its wake.

  The sight made Ian think of his bairns together, but he didn’t picture them playing in the streets of Boston. Or Braintree. He saw them in the woods and fields of an untamed land.

  He slowed the roan, letting Ally draw abreast. “What do ye think I should do?”

  Ally chewed his lip, pondering the question. “I’d say . . . marry up with Seona so them babies got a mama and a daddy. That seem good.”

  Ian changed the subject. “Who was your daddy, Ally? If ye don’t mind my asking.”

  “Him? He was off some other farm. Mama say he was big in the bones, like me. Best I mind, he got sold away when I was a baby. Mama would know.”

  Ian felt ashamed he had never thought to ask, sorry for the man who never knew his son, whom Ian had come to value in ways having nothing to do with the buying and selling of human beings.

  “Reckon you’ll do right in the end, Mister Ian,” Ally added with a confidence Ian wished he shared.

  “I’m praying on it. And about that shop we saw. About everything.”

  “About that man with the dead horse?”

  “Man with a . . . ? Judge Cooper, ye mean?”

  The mention was startling, coming on the heels of his thoughts of untamed land. Frontier New York land, he supposed it had been, tucked into the back of his mind all the while. William Cooper and his offer hadn’t figured into Ian’s prayers since. Yet carving out a pl
ace for Gabriel and Mandy, a home with no memories of slavery or grief attached—a fresh start in every way—held an appeal suddenly greater than when the offer was made.

  Seona wasn’t ready to have her life uprooted again. But waiting in limbo while his funds drained away wasn’t an option either. What if he went west now, got himself established? Would Seona, given time, agree to follow? Could he endure another separation from Gabriel, even with that goal in mind?

  From the west thunder rumbled. He turned to eye Ally, riding beside him.

  “What made ye think of Cooper? All this talk of politics? Or the rain about to catch us again on the road?”

  Ally glanced toward the darkly piling clouds. “Neither, Mister Ian.”

  “What then?”

  “I minded how you looked when you first told us about the land that man offered you.”

  Ian breathed a laugh. “How did I look?”

  Ally’s gaze flicked over his face. “Like a light was shining inside you, bright behind your eyes. Ain’t no light shining, Mister Ian, when you talk about a shop.”

  10

  They almost beat the rain. After a mile of racing sprinkles, a downpour overtook them at the Neck, the narrow spit of land linking Boston to the mainland. While Ally stabled the horses at the Chestnut, Ian dodged rain showers through the North End. Even in such weather, Boston felt bursting at the seams with humanity. As a boy he hadn’t minded the press and bustle, but now he missed the sight of open fields, of wooded hillsides threaded with the trails of deer and bear.

  Pausing to shake off his oiled cape on the threshold, he called first at his da’s shop and learned a parcel had arrived for him, marked from North Carolina. “Catriona stopped in before the rain and mentioned it,” Robert Cameron said, wiping his hands on a piece of sacking as he met Ian at the counter.

  Surprised John had already sent payment, he asked, “How much do I owe ye?”

  His da waved away the postage. “How fared ye in Braintree?”