Falconer's Quest (3 page)

“I stand ready to do as you advise.” Falconer motioned to where the nervous young innkeeper sat with his wife. “Brother Karl is here as well.”

Grobbe motioned for the young man to rise. “Do you wish to continue with this work?”

The young man’s stammer was as obvious as his nerves. “I-If the elders will it, g-good sir.”

Grobbe looked to either side. None objected. “You have seen to your duties well. There have been no complaints from visitors. Your wife provides an excellent table.”

“Th-thank you, Elder Grobbe.”

Falconer said, “I am willing to sign over the running of the inn until Matt comes of age.”

“What say you, Brother Karl?”

Karl glanced at his wife, who used the corner of her apron to dab at her eyes. “Th-that has been our h-hope, Brother J-John,” he managed to say.

The elder Grobbe paused a moment. Long before his gaze shifted, Falconer knew the time had finally come for the question he had pondered ever since speaking with Reginald three days earlier.

Grobbe asked, “What about the boy?”

“I would rather Matt be allowed to speak for himself,” Falconer replied. He looked at the boy beside him and sat down.

“Very well.” Grobbe motioned to Matt. “Young Matt Hart, what say you?”

The boy’s fingers trembled slightly as he held his hat in the same manner as Falconer. But his voice was steady. “I have nothing left for me here, sir.”

One of the elders stiffened in protest. “Salem is your home and your family’s heritage!”

Grobbe silenced his colleague with a single glance. He turned back to the boy and said gently, “I pray in time this will change for you, lad.”

“I pray I can say the same, sir. But right now…”

“Yes? Please continue, lad.”

“The only thing that makes me happy is singing at sunset with Father John.”

The previous elder could be held back no longer by merely a piercing look. “Your family helped establish this community! How could you possibly
think
of walking away from your heritage?”

Matt did not look at the speaker but kept his eyes on the elder Grobbe, a man he had known all his life. “A frau stopped me on the street today, sir. She choked up as she hugged me. I continually see sorrow in all the faces I meet. The boys don’t treat me the same—the same as before. They mostly ignore me, and some call me names.”

“We can soon put a stop to that,” the second elder forcefully chimed in.

“It won’t matter, sir,” Matt responded, turning now to look at him. “I don’t want to be the lonely orphan boy. I want to go someplace where people don’t think about or talk about my missing mama every time they see me.”

Falconer studied the lad standing beside him. Matt had sprouted a full eight inches in the past year. There was a mature leanness to his features, a steady calmness to both his gaze and his words.

“You have been through far too much for a child of your years,” Grobbe murmured.

Matt might have shrugged. “When Father John spoke to me of Master Reginald and his difficulty, I found myself wanting something for the first time since Mama passed.”

Grobbe gave him a moment, then gently urged, “What was it you wanted?”

Matt spoke in the same calm voice. “To leave. To be where I am not known.”

This time Grobbe cut off the elder’s protest before it was fully formed. “What of your place here among us?”

“I may return, sir. I do not see that day now. But I shall pray on this as hard as I am able. For my mother and my father both lie here in peace, and I think they would want this, though right now I cannot say for sure.”

Falconer edged back a trace in his seat. Until that moment, he had not clearly seen how the boy had been changed by the tragedy. Or how he had grown.

As was their habit, they sat together upon the porch, this time with coats about them against the fall chill. The next day would be anything but normal, what with a dawn rise and their final breakfast with the Salem folk, and this last evening of song and contemplation held a bittersweet air. Sarah had protested at the news of their swift departure, although not overmuch. For any who looked carefully could see that, since the elders’ meeting, Matt carried a notable difference about him. There was a wind in his sails now, a new spark to his eyes. Though he said nothing, even Aunt Sarah, who loved him as dearly as she did her own bairns, saw that this change was for the better.

It was Sarah who now turned and spoke, not to Falconer or the lad she loved but rather to her husband. “Have you asked him?”

“Not yet.”

“If not, when?” But her husband was clearly loath to speak. She harrumphed something that might have been
Men
. Then Sarah leaned forward so she could look around her husband and asked, “Are you angry with God, Brother John?”

“No, Sister.”

“I ask you this because I will not have you leave this home with wrath in your heart, especially not for your Maker. There is a difference between sorrow and burning rage.”

“Sarah.”

“No, husband. If you will not speak, then I will have my say.”

Falconer stood and moved to the rail so he could see all six faces. Paul and Sarah Brune, their seamed features glowing with harvest tans. The three children, two boys in their late teens on the swing and a younger girl by her father’s chair petting the cat. All holding the same hearty farmland vigor. And Matt. “You are right to speak as you do, Sister.”

“Am I, then.” She settled back in the rocker and did as many of the Moravian women when talking among themselves, slipping her hands beneath her apron and folding them together. Beneath the curve of her small starched cap, her eyes glowed strong in the dimming daylight. “Tell me why.”

“Because I must care for the boy. And he will judge the world through what he sees in me.”

“Do you speak these words because you know I wish to hear them or because you know them to be true?”

“I promised Ada I would do right by the lad. I said I would love him as our son and raise him into the man she knew he would be. I can only do this with God’s help.” He saw Matt wipe at his eyes and forced himself to focus upon the couple. “I could not make it through each day without Him. Even when He is distant, even when I question His ways, even when I am…”

Sarah rocked softly, giving Falconer time to find his strength. “You are a good man, Brother John. You will become whole again.”

“I scarcely know what that means.”

“You will be healed,” she said. “And you will be the father Matt needs you to be.”

Falconer saw a bit of Ada in the woman, which was hardly a surprise. Ada had been raised in this very household after losing her own parents to an influenza that had devastated the Moravian ranks. “How can you be so certain?”

“Because I hear God speak in time to your own words, Brother John. Even when you cannot hear Him, even while your heart remains wounded by your loss. Still and now, He is with you.” The rocker creaked softly in cadence. “You may not go in peace, Brother John. But you will go with God. And you mark my words. He will use this road to draw you near once more.”

Chapter 3

Before the sun had risen, Falconer and Matt took the northwest trail out of Salem, riding a pair of fine horses and leading a pack mule. At midday they halted by a swiftflowing creek and ate provisions from their bulging saddlebags. Sarah Brune was determined they would arrive at their destination with food to spare. The day was fair, and they made good time.

At sunset they found an empty meadow by a deserted cabin and camped under the eaves. In spite of brisk temperatures, Falconer slept deeply and did not dream. He awoke to swallows chasing the first rays of daylight, the horses cropping grass, and the soft breath of his son, whose bedroll was beside his. He lay there for a time, feeling the faint stirring of something deep in his bones. He found himself wondering if there was more to this quest than simply coming to the aid of some dear friends.

Late in the second afternoon, they arrived at what once had been the Moss plantation and now belonged to Falconer. The new overseer had hung a sign by the post road announcing
Little Salem
. The overseer was Moravian, the youngest of nine brothers and thus destined to receive almost none of the family land. Though he and his wife missed their kin and the Salem community, they reveled in farming a spread of this size. The house had been divided into four segments. Two families had matching apartments, a pair of rooms had been set aside for Falconer, and a portion of the cellar was rebuilt as a Freedom Train hideaway.

After dinner Falconer took Matt down the side lane to where the orchard formed a live border between the main house and the rebuilt cabins, now housing six other landless Salem families. Each had been deeded a portion of fertile bottomland. Falconer could hear children playing in the last throes of daylight. He liked the fragrance of the few apples left to rot into the earth. He liked the sound of bees humming. He liked most of all how his heart responded to these things.

Falconer now said to Matt, “I’ve had the impression something’s bothering you.”

The boy jumped and touched a low-hanging limb.

“It’s all right if you don’t want to talk about it. I’m not one for pressing you to speak. But if you wish to talk, I am ready to listen.”

Matt took so long in responding, Falconer almost suggested they return to the house and bed.

But Matt then said, “I feel like I’m doing something wrong.”

“Why is that?”

Matt shrugged.

“It is hard for me to communicate with a motion of your shoulders, son.”

Matt said in a small voice, “Is it wrong to be happy?”

“Ah.” Falconer resisted the urge to take hold of the boy. “Let me see if I can add some meat to that bit of a question. You feel that you are being disloyal to your mother by enjoying our time on the road?”

The voice grew smaller still. “Yes.”

“I confess to feeling the very same thing.”

Matt halted in his tracks and looked up at Falconer.

“I cannot deny the sensation. It seems improper somehow, looking forward to a tomorrow that does not hold her.”

“I do miss her so much.”

“As do I.” Falconer crouched down beside him. “Were she here, do you know what I think she might say?”

“What?”

“I believe she would tell us to make this our quest. We have one quest already, of course. We shall try and rescue our friend’s son. But Ada would say we should have another quest, one that may well prove equally important to us in the seasons to come. Do you know what that second one might be?”

Matt swiped one cuff across his cheek. “To be happy again.”

“To be certain that is part of it. Another part would be to find our way into a new future. It may not be the one we would have asked for. But it is ours. And we should come to a point where we can claim it.”

Matt used both hands this time, smearing the wet across his cheeks. “Will I forget her?”

“Not ever. Not in a hundred thousand days.” This time Falconer did not resist the urge to embrace him. “I am very blessed. All I need do is look at you and I see her looking back at me. Since you cannot share this same blessing, I must try very hard to be strong. I must make a safe harbor in my heart for the love she taught me to hold. And I must have it there for you to find whenever you look at me.”

They did not take the main road to Richmond and then on to Georgetown. Instead they held to smaller routes. The horses were as amiable as they were strong. He and Matt covered close on twenty-five miles a day, as near as Falconer could reckon.

They traveled with a distinct ease between them. Matt did not return to his previous high cheer and joyful chatter. Nor did Falconer expect it. But the boy did talk, inquiring about what he saw, for he had never been farther afield than the valley beyond Salem’s southern border. Twice he smiled—once in a moment of awestruck abandon when they emerged from three days of dank forest ways and found themselves upon an eastern ridge. All the world seemed stretched out before them, and at its very border lay the great inland sea known as Chesapeake Bay. The second time was the next morning, when Falconer described the town of Portsmouth and the sailors’ inn where they would berth that night. Matt had never seen a city before, never viewed a ship, never heard the call of gulls or the music of crashing waves. Falconer spoke of them all, and a bit about his former life.

They crested a final rise, and there before them were the rooftops of Portsmouth town. And beyond them, clustered like a wintry forest, were the bare watery beacons of the only place Falconer had ever known as home.

“Father John?”

“Yes, son.”

Matt pointed to the east, beyond the smoke rising in the still clear air. “What are those?”

“They’re called masts. They’re the main poles for holding a ship’s sails aloft.”

“Masts.”

“Most oceangoing vessels have three of them. Except for the square-riggers used by fishermen and coastal shippers. Those have two. One of which is called a lateen. The crossbeams you see there are called booms.” Falconer grinned. “I suspect that is far more information than you wanted.”