Ghost Fire

by Wilbur Smith

  There were no sounds from the guardhouse. No light, either. A sixth sense that he had learned to trust prompted him. He crawled forward into the dark clearing, until he was close enough to see by the starlight.

  There were no guards. A corpse wedged open the blockhouse door; two others lay nearby. Gilyard didn’t understand what had happened, but he knew better than to reject good fortune when she presented herself.

  He beckoned his men. “Down to the lake,” he ordered. “We’ll make our escape in those battoes.”

  “What about the sloop?” asked Lieutenant Trent. A lantern burned on her deck, revealing dark figures moving. They seemed to be loading a cannon.

  At that moment, the moon came from behind a cloud. There was nowhere to hide. Gilyard and his men were lit up in the clearing, like actors on a stage. But the men on the sloop did not train their gun. Instead, one ran to the mast and started hauling on a halyard.

  Three of the rangers dropped to their knees and sighted their rifles. Even in the dark, against a target bobbing in the water, Gilyard would have backed them to hit the mark.

  They looked to him for the order. Gilyard considered. “Hold your fire.”

  A flag broke from the masthead, pale in the moonlight. It was the white banner of France—but it had been altered. Over the white fabric, someone had taken black tar and painted a round skull and a pair of crossed bones.

  Trent stared. “It looks like the Jolly Roger.”

  Despite the tension, Gilyard couldn’t suppress a grin. “They are men after our own hearts. Get to the boats.”

  Pausing only to smash holes in the thin bark canoes, the rangers loaded themselves in the battoes and rowed out to the sloop. They had taken barely three strokes when suddenly the cove was lit up by the light of many torches. A company of Frenchmen rushed down from the track. It did not take them long to work out what was happening. They formed a line along the shore and raised their muskets.

  There was nothing Gilyard and his men could do. At that range, even the notoriously inaccurate muskets could not miss.

  For a second, the lake seemed to explode in a clap of lightning. A cannonball flew over Gilyard’s head and plowed into the French line. It carved through the men, showering their companions with blood and limbs and spreading panic through the ranks. They had not expected to face cannon fire from their own ship. The line buckled.

  “Pull!” Gilyard shouted. The men on the oars redoubled their strokes, making the battoes leap through the water. On shore, the French officers shouted orders and beat their men with the flats of their swords to get them into line. A few managed to let off a ragged volley. But the shots fell harmlessly into the water.

  Some of the Frenchmen ran to the landing stage. But the batoe were gone, and the canoes were scuttled. They could only watch impotently as the rangers came alongside the sloop and climbed aboard.

  “We will find out what manner of pirates these are,” said Gilyard, as he clambered over the side. By the lantern light, he saw a quartet of sailors bound and gagged in the fo’c’sle. Two more men were standing by the cannon, sluicing down the deck with buckets of water to drown any stray sparks. Theo and Moses had gambled their lives by firing the cannon on the deck of the gunpowder-laden ship.

  Theo came over and saluted. “Welcome aboard, sir.”

  “I ordered you to remain in your place.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Nonetheless, I cannot deny you seem to have done a useful night’s work.” He turned to Trent. “Set fuses, Lieutenant. We will destroy this vessel and make our escape in the battoes before the French can give chase.”

  He saw the expression on Theo’s face. “You disagree?”

  “With respect, sir, it seems a shame to blow up a serviceable ship. I’ll wager your General Abercromby would be glad of the cargo she carries.”

  “And if I had wings to fly, I would be home for breakfast.” Gilyard was getting impatient. “We are rangers, Mr. Courtney, not sailors. And we are losing precious time.”

  “I can sail her.”

  Gilyard stared.

  “I worked my passage from Calcutta to Boston. If your men can haul a rope, I fancy I can navigate this vessel to safe harbor.” He glanced at the shore, where the French had started to organize themselves. Soon they would bring up artillery or find other boats. “But we had best be quick.”

  Gilyard tried to maintain his air of command—but he could not help the roar of laughter that erupted. The men stopped their work: they had never seen their captain so cheerful. Gilyard clapped Theo on the shoulder. “Mr. Courtney, I think you are the most remarkable man I have ever met.”

  •••

  The British fort at the far end of the lake looked familiar. The plain walls and star-pointed corners were of a model that had been reproduced all over the globe. If the fir trees were replaced with palms, and the gray waters of the lake with the blue of the Indian Ocean, the building could have been any one of the trading forts that Theo had seen in India. It was the mark of empire, stamped wherever Britain planted her flag.

  Theo moored the sloop under the fort’s guns. The rangers disembarked in good spirits, ready to spend the prize money they had earned from capturing the ship. But a somber mood met them on land. The taverns were empty; the surgeons’ tents were full.

  It did not take them long to find out why.

  “General Abercromby has been routed,” Gilyard reported. “He had eighteen thousand men, and four thousand Frenchmen drove him off with heavy casualties. The summer’s campaigning has been wasted.”

  The elation that had carried Theo from Fort Royal dissipated, leaving him empty and desolate. He had thought that by taking the fight to the French, he might dull the pain of Mgeso’s murder. But the void opened inside him, leaving him gasping and tearful.

  Gilyard saw the distress on his face, though he did not understand it. “Where will you go?”

  Theo had no answer. Every home and family he had known had been taken from him. He had no one. A memory of Abigail Claypole flitted across his mind, but she would be long since married to her farmer. No doubt she would have forgotten Theo, though perhaps she still bore the scars of the beating her father would have given her on his account. She was another woman Theo had loved and failed.

  “You would make a fine ranger,” said Gilyard.

  Theo accepted the compliment. “I fear I might have problems with military discipline. I do not have a knack for obeying orders.”

  “If you gave them, I hazard men would follow you. In the rangers, we prize initiative over slavish obedience. ‘Every man’s reason and judgment must be his guide,’ as the Rules of Ranging have it.”

  Theo considered. “It need be for just a few months,” Gilyard urged. “The enlistments expire with the year’s end. We founded the rangers because we knew we needed a different method of fighting. We wanted to combine British discipline with the craft and tactics of the Indians. You know the Indian ways better than any white man, and you fought in the East India Company’s armies at Calcutta. I do not say this lightly, but I would give my eye teeth for a hundred men such as you.”

  “I thought the army was withdrawing,” said Theo.

  “The regular army may be in retreat. The rangers will be needed more than ever. Through the autumn and over the winter, we will sabotage the French. We will spy on their positions and capture their correspondence. We will disrupt their supplies and strike such terror into them that they will hardly dare venture out of doors.” Gilyard fixed Theo with his vivid blue eyes. “The French have invoked their treaty with the Abenaki. The man who killed your wife and the Indian who helped him will be active in the mountains. Perchance we will run into them.”

  Theo remembered his dream: Mgeso drowning in the black water as the snake coiled around her. He did not know if he would ever lay her spirit to rest, or assuage the emptiness he felt constantly, but at least he could fight to avenge her. “It will be an honor to serve with you.”

  •�
�•

  That autumn, the French came to believe that devils haunted the woods.

  Gilyard’s rangers harried their enemies everywhere they could. They took canoes and battoes up the lake into French territory. They burned outposts, laid ambushes, captured supplies and slaughtered livestock. They killed Frenchmen. Theo was astonished to see the rangers scalping their victims with as much bloody enthusiasm as the Abenaki.

  “The army offered our Indian allies a bounty for every French scalp they brought in,” Gilyard explained. “It did not take our men long to demand the same terms. If there is profit in a custom, men will adopt it no matter how barbarous it may seem.”

  For all the savagery, Theo enjoyed those months more than any other time in his life. The soldiers, with their rough camaraderie, became his family. The danger was constant, but he thrived on it: the battle of wits with the French, the knowledge that one mistake could cost not just his life but the lives of the men he fought beside. He embraced the responsibility. Soon Gilyard commissioned him as a lieutenant.

  Days in the forest had a simple clarity: kill or be killed. But at night, Theo was haunted by the demons of his past. Sometimes he dreamed that Mgeso was on a mountain top, with crows circling; more often she was submerged in the swamp, hair swimming around her face. She was trying to tell him something, but all that ever came out of her mouth was the snake.

  One night, Theo woke covered with sweat and felt hands on his shoulders. It was Moses, crouching over him. The loyal Abenaki had enlisted with the rangers at the same time as Theo, and had saved his life more than once in the subsequent months.

  “You cried out in your sleep,” said Moses. “Was it Mgeso again?”

  Theo nodded.

  “Her ghost fire burns fierce,” said the Abenaki. “You will never find peace until she does.”

  “And how will that happen?” Theo asked, though he already knew the answer.

  “You must kill the man who killed her.”

  After every skirmish, Theo examined the dead to see if Bichot or Malsum was among them. He fought with a savagery that shocked even the rangers. He volunteered for the most dangerous assignments, and pressed Gilyard to go further into enemy territory.

  “You cannot shoot every Frenchman in North America yourself,” Gilyard warned him, one day in the forest. “And if you count your own life cheap, at least have a thought for your friend’s.” He gestured to Moses. “He follows you like a shadow. Beware you do not get him killed.”

  Winter drew on. One morning, Theo woke to find the lake unnaturally still. When he went to wash, a thin film of ice covered the water. A bitter north wind blew in flurries of snow, bringing memories of Mgeso and the storm they had spent trapped in the hollow tree. The ice on the lake grew stronger.

  Theo’s mood worsened. There would be no more campaigning that year, no chance of finding Malsum and Bichot. The British army had retreated to its winter quarters in Albany and would not emerge until spring.

  But one day in early December, Gilyard came to Theo with a grim smile. Theo noted the fresh gold stripe on his cuff that showed he had been promoted to major.

  “Your wish has been granted,” Gilyard said. “The general has given you an early Christmas present.”

  “I thought General Abercromby had called a halt to the fighting.”

  “Abercromby has been recalled to London. His successor, General Williams, is a great improvement. He intends to prosecute the war with vigor. But the French have not been idle. They have replaced their commander, too. By all reports, General Corbeil is a talented soldier and an unyielding foe.”

  Gilyard spread a map on the table in the mess tent. “It is vital we keep abreast of their movements over the winter. Some say the French may abandon Fort Royal, others that they are reinforcing. The general has ordered us to take a scouting party north to find out.”

  He lowered his voice. “We captured a French trapper two nights ago. He revealed that Bichot is leading a company of irregulars based in Fort Royal. Among their number, he says, is a terrifying Abenaki with battle scars and a wolfskin cloak.”

  “Malsum,” said Theo. His pulse quickened.

  “This will be a hard scout,” Gilyard warned, “marching through snow and ice, up against the enemy’s fortress in the grip of winter. Even if the French do not kill us, I fear the weather will. I am taking only volunteers.”

  Theo’s eye ran over the map, noting the length of the lake and the small star at the top that marked Fort Royal. He tried to imagine crossing that great distance in winter. “When do we set out?”

  “It will take ten days to prepare our equipment. Take a week’s leave—enjoy the delights of Albany—then rendezvous with me at the lake.”

  •••

  Albany was smaller than Theo had expected—though still the largest settlement he had seen since landing in Boston. Some of the streets were paved, and the grander houses were built of brick, with long eaves and square gables in the Dutch style. The town stretched some two miles along the Hudson River, where small craft dodged the huge blocks of ice that bobbed in the water like floating boulders. Taverns were plentiful, though lodgings hard to find. The town was busy with English soldiers, German mercenaries, Indian scouts and volunteers from all over the colonies—as well as profiteers, speculators and whores who had attached themselves to the army. Theo was just one more piece of human jetsam washed up by the tides of war.

  It was a gloomy, overcast day. A bitter wind blew down the Hudson and brought stinging hail showers that emptied the streets. The low roofs of the houses sent water streaming down Theo’s collar as he sought a boarding house. In an unfamiliar town, his mind churning and head bowed to keep the hail out of his eyes, Theo lost his way. He tried to find a church spire to orient himself, but the high houses hemmed him in.

  Across the road, he saw a woman in a blue shawl. She was carrying a basket of laundry, attempting to keep it away from the mud that splashed up around her. Hail and sleet had soaked the cloth and made it heavy: she struggled under the weight. Her plight was pitiful, and instinctively Theo crossed the road.

  “Let me help you,” he said, taking the basket from her hands.

  She looked up in fright. “Go away,” she said. “I have nothing for you to steal.”

  Their eyes met.

  Theo’s grip slackened. The basket tipped from his hands, spilling clean linen over the filthy street. It was a face he had almost forgotten, that he had not expected to see again: but the moment he saw her it was as if they had never parted. He felt the same shock in his heart as he had the first time, when he had found her picking mushrooms in the woods.

  “Abigail Claypole?” he breathed.

  “Theo Courtney?”

  The last time he had seen her she had been in the crowd of villagers, waiting for her father to take his vengeance. Did she blame him for what had happened that night? For leaving her to a cruel future?

  Abigail let out a gasp. She threw herself into his arms and hugged him hard enough to crack his ribs. “I never thought to see you again.”

  The wind had blown off her bonnet. Sleet soaked her raven hair and ran down her cheeks like tears. Theo wiped it away and cupped her head in his hands. She had grown up in the time they had been apart: she was even more beautiful than he remembered.

  “What miracle—?”

  He took her to a tavern and ordered hot wine. They held hands across the table and stared into each other’s eyes in wonder.

  “I heard your company was ambushed by Indians,” she said. “They said you were dead.”

  Theo told her about his capture and adoption by the Abenaki. There was one uncomfortable fact he could not ignore and would not lie about. “They made me take a wife.”

  Her eyes widened in something close to terror. “You are married?”

  “She died.”

  Abigail’s face softened. “Did you love her?”

  “Yes,” Theo answered honestly.

  She pondered awhile. “
Then I am sorry.”

  “I thought I would never see you again, that you would be long since married to the man your father chose.” Theo felt his cheeks coloring: he was protesting too much. In truth, his mind was in turmoil. First in marriage, then in death, Mgeso had been the guiding flame of his life. Anything that took him away from her felt like a betrayal of his deepest self. Yet, looking at Abigail across the table, he felt a passion rising in him that was impossible to deny.

  “How did you come to be in Albany?” he asked.

  “Father would not let me stay in Bethel. He beat me until I thought I would die, then drummed me out of the house with nothing except the dress I was wearing. No one in Bethel would take me in. They feared Father too much. And they hated me for what I had done.”

  Her voice was calm, her hand steady as she took another sip of her drink. Theo could only marvel at the strength in her.

  “I’d heard the militia captain say he was taking you to Albany,” she continued, “so that was where I went. Then I heard about the ambush, and that you were dead. But I had nowhere to go. And then there was Caleb.”

  Theo’s chest tightened. He should have known. She was young, beautiful and alone. It was foolish to think she would have waited a year for the memory of a man she thought was dead.

  “Caleb?” He could hardly utter the name. He told himself it was for the best if she was married. He could force back the feelings that had erupted so unexpectedly and devote himself to avenging Mgeso as he had sworn.

  Abigail smiled. “It is not what you think. Come and see.”

  Leaving the tavern, she led him to a neat, shingled house near the top of the hill at the edge of town. Theo followed, carrying the basket of muddy laundry. Hens pecked the ground by the front door, while steam billowed from a small shed at the side of the house.

  Without knocking, Abigail entered straight into a small parlor. A cat was curled in front of the fire burning in the grate. An old woman sat in a rocking chair, holding a bundle of knitting against her chest.

  “This is Mrs. Jacobs,” said Abigail. “She looks after Caleb while I am working.”