Heirs of Acadia - 03 - The Noble Fugitive (36 page)

Falconer understood both the meaning and the pain it caused. “I am very sorry, sir.”

Gareth nodded. The two men sat and watched the sunset. As darkness took hold, Falconer used a flint to light candles. When he returned to his chair by the window, Gareth said, “I am a soldier at heart. Neither faith nor my work with the pen have changed my perspective upon our struggle.”

“Sir, I am grateful for your words. But nothing you can say will change my opinion that your wife is correct.”

“Perhaps so.” Gareth smiled. “That is the problem we men face. Being confronted with our secret intentions by the women in our lives.”

“Aye,” Falconer sighed.

“Be that as it may, it is about something else that I wish to speak. There is another battle awaiting you.”

“Sir?”

“One fought with words. Yet one that will carry the fate of a multitude of voiceless and despairing souls in the bargain.” Gareth straightened in his chair. “There are two responsibilities that only you can fulfill. Parliament we have already discussed. I believe Serafina has already mentioned the other matter. My wife hopes you will describe to them both your experiences within the slavery business so that these may be captured in drawings for our pamphlet.”

Falconer felt the hand of bitter memories grip his chest and squeeze very hard. “I have spent years begging God to help me to forget.”

“Falconer, I speak to you now as an old soldier. One who carries his own burdens of dread recollections. We do not seek to know about your own personal sins. We wish to have you describe your eyewitness accounts of the current slave trade. But it is
precisely
because of your own previous actions that your account will carry force. You know the evil first hand, agreed?”

“Aye,” he said, the word drawn from a well of memories. “I know it.”

“And so you shall speak as one who has seen the core of this wicked trade. Your words will carry the weight of one who has been confronted with the magnitude of this horror.” Gareth’s features showed that he understood Falconer’s distress. “You must remember the Lord’s promise to turn the dross of our past into gold. He does not promise that it will be easy. But He promises to use us for His glory. Is that not enough?”

“I would like to think so,” Falconer said to his hands.

Gareth let the silence linger a moment longer, then asked, “Are you ready to go and serve our Lord?”

Falconer’s nightly enemy attacked with a ferocity that surprised even him. He awoke to the utter dark, far earlier than normal. He sat up in bed, chest heaving, and stared out the narrow window to his right. Moonlight cast the front drive into a river of silver. But despite the dream’s vivid intensity, he did not feel the normal sense of woe. Instead, he felt strangely calm. He slipped into his clothes, wondering at the welcome sensation. Normally a man of action, he was not given to introspection. Yet here was a quandary worth considering. How could he have just arisen from his worst nightmare in years and yet feel at peace?

Fully dressed, he pulled a stool out from beneath the narrow window table. He seated himself and placed his elbows upon the table’s smooth wood. He did not pray so much as wait.

It came to him then. The words Gareth had spoken the day before, of battle and of responsibility and of a charge being placed upon him alone.

With shocking awareness, Falconer now saw his nightmares from an entirely different perspective. He clenched
his hands the tighter, willing himself to hold to the course, to understand.

He saw how the nightmares revealed all the forces he struggled against. It was not merely the past that hounded him. It was the present. It was the future. A
new
future. One where he stood in defiance of the evil that had once dominated his every day.

The recurring dreams took on a different meaning then. For now Falconer saw it from the perspective of a willing servant. That was how he viewed himself. A flawed and failing man, a being for whom a myriad of daily thoughts and actions were tainted by all he wished he was not. Yet a servant just the same.

A servant who sought to do his duty. A servant who was attacked every night by all that was evil and demonic, all that wished him to fail.

A servant armed by his Master. A servant who would follow the Master’s call.

Falconer lowered his head to the cool wood. He stumbled over his words, as was often the case with him. Yet he knew God heard not only the words but the humble and thankful heart behind them as well.

Then he heard the scream.

Chapter 27

Serafina finally managed to break free. She flung herself upward and away from the terrifying darkness. When she opened her eyes, it was to see alarmed faces in the open door of her little chamber. She sighed and slid down farther into the bed, her heart racing such that it caused her every breath to tremble. But she did not mind. She was awake and safe.

An older woman held a candle in one hand and asked with deep concern, “Are you all right, child?”

“Yes. Truly. I’m fine.” And she was. Remarkably, all she felt was the compassion filling this creaky old house. “It was a dream.”

A thundering of steps up the stairway resounded through the wall opposite her bed. Before she heard the voice, she knew. Oh yes. He would be there, of course. To shelter and protect.

“Is the lass safe?” Falconer called.

“A dream,” the older woman replied as she met him at the door. “Only a dream. And you, sir, are in the women’s hall.” Others in nightgowns and sleep bonnets melted away to their rooms.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am.” He raised his voice. “Serafina, would you care to join me in the kitchen for a cup of sailor’s tea?”

She slid her feet to the floor. Outside her door the woman protested, “As you can see, sir, it is still dark outside, far too early for anything save rest.”

“I shall be in the kitchen in case she feels otherwise,” Falconer said and thumped his way back down the stairs.

The stairway was narrow at that level, for the high floor now used by the women had originally been intended for servants. Serafina’s legs trembled as she pulled on a robe and
prepared to go to the kitchen. She steadied herself with one hand upon each wall as she descended.

The middle floor held what had been family rooms, just as in her own house in Venice. The thought brought an aching lump to her throat, causing her to grip the handrail tightly to keep from stumbling. When she arrived at the ground level, Serafina paused to wipe her eyes, then followed the hall back to the kitchen.

The kitchen in Wilberforce’s manor extended like a brick appendage. There were windows on three sides, and two sets of double doors separated it from the main house, keeping smoke and odors and noise away from the formal rooms. Serafina entered and found Falconer seated at the central worktable with a hot mug and a candle and a Bible set before him.

“Sit yourself down, lass.”

She did as she was told. Falconer rose and prepared a mug with sparse motions and set it before her. He did not ask about her welfare, as she expected. Instead, he recharged his own tea, seated himself once more, and sat quietly with the mug between both hands.

In the candlelight she could see characteristics she had not noticed before, such as an aquiline nose and silver traces woven into his hair. Yet he did not appear old. His features were weather beaten and sun darkened in the manner of one who would never again be pale. There were scars about one wrist, as though a rope had burned into his skin, and crisscrossed white scars about his other palm. She sipped her tea and determined that she would like to draw those hands.

“For three years and nine months I have suffered from a dream,” Falconer said, speaking to the candle and not to her. “It is always the same. I am chained in a long line of slaves, locked inside the hold of the ship I used to command. There is a great storm. I can hear the sailors arguing. I cannot hear their words, but I know what they are saying. In order to survive, they must lighten the ship. They must throw their
cargo overboard. That is all I am to them. I and all the other slaves chained within the central hold. We are cargo. Ballast.”

Serafina was surprised by her own reaction. She was not frightened by the image, nor repulsed. Instead, she found herself studying not just the physical man seated across from her. She felt she was inspecting the interior man as well. A man who sought both to share his secret weakness and reveal the depths of his being.

“The hold opens,” he continued in a low, soft tone. “The sailors use a pike to grip the chain. I am pulled up and into the storm. In the light I see the other slaves.”

Falconer stopped and lifted his mug, using both hands. His breath shook slightly. As though in sympathy, the candle’s light shivered.

He set down his mug and went on, “Every slave wears my face. I look at the sailors. They all have my face as well. I cannot halt it as I am pulled over and dropped into the sea.” He lowered his head until he was facing the scarred wood between his hands. “I am undone, for I am unclean. . . .”

Serafina’s glimpse into the heart of the man seated before her drew forth a realization that caused a soft gasp.
He loves me
.

Falconer misunderstood her intake of breath. “Those words are spoken by an ancient prophet, one who had come before the throne of the Almighty.”

He loves me
. The realization whirled through her mind. She also understood he was doing his best to hide it. This was why he had avoided speaking her name. How she knew these things did not matter, but she was sure Falconer was reluctant to speak her name because it drew his feelings too close to the surface.

A tear dislodged itself and coursed in heat and sorrow down one cheek.

Falconer noticed that, though he did not appear to be looking her way at all. “I did not tell you this to upset you, lass.”

She shook her head but found herself unable to speak. Her
tears were coming more freely now. She wiped her face but could not stop the flow.

“I told you because I want you to know that I understand what your nights are like.”

She heard Falconer’s words and she also heard the unspoken message behind them. It was as though her own heart could ask questions and hear Falconer’s heart give a silent response. And she heard her own heart speak silently in reply.
I have nothing to give you. My heart is shattered and empty. I cannot love. Perhaps I never shall again
.

She lowered her face to her hands and wept with the abandon of one without future or hope.

Falconer reached over and touched her, his hand merely resting upon her shoulder. Serafina felt the gentleness, and more. She could see a man who asked for nothing. She knew that he understood her wounded state. She recalled his talk upon the train and realized he had spoken as he did because he thought himself beneath her station. He loved her and knew it was futile, so he did his best to hide it away. He sought not to pressure, not to demand. Instead, he sought only to give. To protect, to shield, to comfort, to strengthen, to honor. He fought his own desires and wished only to give. Which only caused her to weep the harder.

“I should not have spoken as I did. I am very sorry.”

Serafina buried her face in her hands. She wanted to tell him that this was not why she wept, but her sobs would not allow her to draw sufficient breath. She did not even weep because of Luca. She wept because of how wrong she had been. She had known nothing of love. She had lied to herself . . . why? She had believed the lie because she had wanted to make her fantasy real. But love was not built upon fantasy. She saw that now, for the very first time. Love was built upon giving. And Luca had given nothing. He had sought only to take. But she had been enchanted by his lies and she had wanted to believe that her time for loving had come. And as a result she had given her love to a man who deserved nothing.

Finally her weeping calmed. When she sat up again, Falconer rose and walked to the stove. He took a clean dishtowel and poured a bit of hot water from the kettle. He walked back to the table and handed it to her.

Serafina wiped her face, then dried it with the towel’s edge. “May I ask how old you are?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“When will you be thirty?”

His dark eyes did not reflect the candle so much as hold a golden light all their own. “I can’t say for certain. I don’t know in which month I was born. Only that it was winter.”

She managed to stifle new tears before they formed. Her breath was ragged and her throat felt raw. But still she spoke. “I have had a dream since childhood of running through the streets of my city. Only they are streets I have never seen before. I am trying to go home. But I cannot find my way. I cry out but no one hears me. And now . . .”

When she began to tremble, Falconer said softly, “You don’t need to tell me this.”

But she did. “Now there is an animal that is after me. I am a little child in the dream. Always a child, and I cannot run fast enough to escape this beast. I know the beast will devour me. Every street I turn into, it seems that the animal is just ahead of me. Ahead, behind, and to every side. Then I turn a corner, and I hear a growl. Just as it attacks, I wake up.”