Peter Loon (24 page)

The parson chuckled softly.

Peter frowned in the dark, and said, “While James was hiding, and the Clayden ladies went looking for him . . .” He hardly looked ahead of him as they rode and he talked. “Nora and I were supposed to be looking for him too.”

“Yes,” drawled the parson.

“Nora took me down to the river. . . well, I don't want to put it. . .” Peter fell silent.

“You don't want to put it in such a way that it sounds you're accusing Nora of anything.”

“Yes,” said Peter, amazed how quickly the parson understood the situation. And what
else
did he understand?

“I'm not a priest, Peter,” said the parson, “if this is in the way of a confession.”

“I thought I might tell you something,” said Peter, hardly audible to his companion.

“Between you and God is good enough for me, my friend.”

Peter hadn't thought of dealing with his conscience quite that way. There had been a great deal of confession at the few church services he'd attended, when people were encouraged to bare their iniquities before their neighbors, and most seemed ready-before God, the preacher, and the congregation–to shed themselves of the sins they had committed.

“Did she call on your affections, lad?” said the clergyman.

“Well, it might be . . .”

“It's not a circumspect place, the bank of a river.”

“There was a hollow beneath an oak tree . . .”

Parson Leach said nothing, and Peter wondered if he had compounded the wrong by speaking of it.

“But she started to shake,” said Peter. “I've never seen anyone shake so–like a drunken fit.” They rode in silence for a while, then the parson pulled up. Peter drew Beam to a halt beside the clergyman, uneasy and a little frightened. “She kept pulling me toward her,” said Peter, “but she kept shaking worse and worse.”

“Why do you suppose, Peter, that she took you down to the river bank?”

After a moment, Peter said, “I thought, then, that she fancied me.”

“And now?”

“Perhaps she wanted me to stay with her. Perhaps she thought I would stay if. . . She frightened me, she shook so.”

“She was frightened herself, I venture. Frightened of Nathan Barrow, I think.”

“Of what he'd do, if he caught us?”

“Of what he'd already done, lad.”

Peter said nothing; if he had not understood enough to articulate this very thing, he had at least experienced it on some deep level of suspicion.

The parson turned his horse's head west again and moved on.

Peter took a moment to orient Beam and catch up with him. “You never asked what happened.”

“Am I right in guessing, Peter, that, had anything . . . happened, as you put it, you wouldn't have left the Claydens this evening.”

“No, I don't suppose I would have.”

“Between you and God, Peter.”

“Yes, Parson.”

They had only ridden half a minute more before Peter asked, “Did you truly snatch a pistol from a man's hand?”

“It doesn't sound very likely, does it,” came the reply. “Careful, here.”

They had come to the bank before Great Meadow Brook, and looking down at the sparkle of water, Peter was conscious of their shadows leading the way. The moon had risen behind them and the track appeared as if lit by daylight in contrast. Looking back, he caught sight of that bluish light again, but this time he was able to locate it in the broad darkness of the Great Meadow.

“It's a foxlight,” said the parson, when Peter pointed it out. “I've seen two or three tonight already. Look over there,” and he pointed to the southeast.

Peter saw a second blue flicker some yards away, like pale lightning kindling the ground. “Will-o-the-wisp,” said Peter.

“The same, if I am not mistaken.”

Peter felt an unprocessed sort of fear fill his chest.

“Those will be wet places, I warrant. I've read Count Buffon, who is a French naturalist and who observed foxlight over swamps and marshes, and connects them with unhealthy air.” Peter could well imagine them to be unhealthy, and said so, whereupon the parson chuckled. “I've chased them about myself, and never caught up with one, so I understand why people ascribe mystery to them. But
there's
another light altogether,” he added, pointing due north.

Peter saw a tiny orange flicker in that direction and eventually decided that it was coming from the midst of trees on a knoll about a quarter of a mile away.

The parson led them down to the brook, which was not rushing this time of year, despite the recent rain, and after Mars and Beam had drunk a bit, they splashed across to the other side and climbed the bank. They continued along the track they had been following, which would eventually lead them past and away from the unexplained light to the north.

A mound of earth and granite, higher than its neighbors, rose up to their left, and the parson turned Mars aside to climb this. When Peter caught up with him, the parson had his spyglass out from beneath his cloak, and was training it on the grove to the north. “I
am
curious about that light,” he said. He lowered the telescope and passed it to Peter.

Peter peered at the light, but could tell little, watching it flicker past the trunks of trees. He was curious also, but didn't know if that meant he wanted to inquire into its disposition. There was something peculiar about it, and though a light to wayfarers is generally a welcoming sight, this looked out of place among the lonely grove of trees in the midst of Great Meadow. It was October, after all, and no other season so compelled a person to believe in trolls and goblins.

But the parson had made a decision, and Peter was not ready to part company with him. The clergyman urged Mars back down the slope, and crossed their previous track when he came to it. Great Meadow Brook meandered to their immediate right, and they had to drift west to avoid its banks, further than they would have otherwise on such a line of sight. Once they splashed through some marshy ground and Peter half expected a ball of foxlight to rise up and meet them.

The fire in the trees looked more and more like a campfire as they approached it, though the parson remarked, half to himself, that whoever was camping was not far from habitation in any direction.

They finally came to a fence and searched some time for a stile or a gate. When a stile was found, the next few yards took them to the edge of the copse.

“I can't imagine someone hasn't heard us,” said the parson, and Peter agreed. The parson called out from the edge of the grove. Peter looked up, where the moonlight limned the crowns of several noble oaks, as well as the plumes of birch trees waving in the night wind. No answer was returned. The parson pursed his lips in a deliberate frown, and replied to the silence, “That is stranger still.”

Peter was making something of the firelight and its surroundings, by now, craning his head from one side to the other, peering through the trees. He thought he saw something move and that rudimentary apprehension fluttered through him again.

Having dismounted to cross the stile, Parson Leach handed his reins to Peter. He paused, for a moment, over his musket, but decided not to take it from its sheath.

Peter said, “I'll go with you,” and he returned to the fence and looped Mars's and Beam's reins over the upper rail.

Parson Leach called out again. “Ho, there, by the fire! We're coming up!”

Peter followed the parson to the edge of the trees, and to avoid being swatted by low branches and bushes, he allowed the man to advance a few steps before entering behind. Their progress sounded thunderous to the young man, or rather the parson's progress did, for the clergyman was making no attempt to move quietly. Though it made little sense to creep along after announcing their presence, Peter found himself walking as silently as any woodsman tracking game. The wind came around for a moment and he smelled smoke and the hint of something cooking.

Parson Leach paused beyond the inner circle of trees and a voice came from somewhere inside the copse. “Come ahead, the both of you.” It was a cordial enough address–as much as anyone could ask, coming out of the dark–but the absolute confidence in knowing how many they were gave Peter pause.

“Peter,” said the parson easily.

Peter followed the clergyman through the last of the trees, past a low line of thickets and into the midst of a rock-rimmed clearing. The fire they had seen had been built against a stray boulder near the center of the open space–a cheery enough blaze, with some long sticks propping a little kettle against the rock and over the flames.

The light from the fire glimmered against the trunks and limbs and clutches of remaining leaf, so that Peter had the impression of having walked into a room with walls and a lofty ceiling. Against the trunk of an oak, where roots had presented a convenient hollow–like that of the tree on the bank of the river that afternoon–there sat an elderly man with a pleasant enough countenance, a long white beard, and wispy white hair. He might have been a woodsman, or an old farmer, or a wanderer. His kit lay beside him–an ancient musket, a sack or two, a blanket, and some rabbit pelts. A short jug stood next to him.

“Are you hungry, then?” said the old man. “Did you smell the old man's stew?”

“We've eaten well tonight already, thank you,” said the parson. “It was more curiosity that took us off the track. We saw your fire.”

“Yes, I am curious too,” said the fellow by the tree. “And old Pownal, here.” He nodded to indicate who or what he was naming, and the two men took note of a dog at the other end of the copse; the creature was as white in the chops and as venerable in the eye as the man, but it stood rigidly, with its back up and its head down. Peter heard a low note rumbling from the animal. “He smelt you half an hour ago,” added the old man, which Peter thought was an exaggeration.

“I couldn't help wonder,” said the parson amiably, “what a person might be doing, camping here with so many houses nearby.”

“Are there?” said the fellow. “I don't put much notice to houses. One of them yours?” There was an inflection to the man's speech that Peter had never heard before, and it occasionally made the fellow difficult to understand.

The parson had no problem, however. “No,” he said. “My
horse
is my house these days.”

The old fellow laughed at this. The humor shook him a bit and Peter saw something move on his lap. The muzzle of a second musket, trained on them both, lay propped on one thigh, and when Peter scanned the ground within reach of the old man, he saw what looked to be the butt of a pistol peeking from one of the bags.

“I am Zachariah Leach'” said the parson. “This is Peter Loon.”

“Peter,” said the old man, as if the name surprised him. “I am Peter Klaggerfell,” he informed them, and the difference in his speech was increased when he spoke his own name. “It's not usual to be traveling of a night, is it?” he asked, registering his own curiosity regarding the motives of his new acquaintances.

“We're going to New Milford,” said the parson.

“I hear things are happening there,” said old Peter Klaggerfell. Without looking up, he added, “There is an owl in one of these trees,” which seemed to Peter a mysterious thing to say.

“Did you hear the call to arms, then?” asked Parson Leach.

“I heard there's another war to be had,” said the fellow. “I fought for the King against the Indians and the French, and I fought for Washington against the King. Now we'll see how Washington fares against me.”

“Washington is dead, Mr. Klaggerfell.”

“Is he? More's the pity. Then some other rapscallion, I'll warrant.” The old man's eyes glinted happily in the firelight.

Young Peter thought that John Adams was president, but he wasn't sure enough of this to express his opinion.

“Do you
need
another war, sir?” wondered the parson. “I would have ventured that the two you endured had proved enough.”

“Do you think? I'm told they've been fighting in France.”

“They were, but the fighting there is done with, I believe.”

“Well, that surprised me, you see. For we fought the French, and we fought the British; and the French, they fought themselves, so I figure how, when you run out of other folk, you tangle with your own kin. I never suspected how easy it was to contract a good disputation.”

The old man might have been having fun with them, but the possibility did not warm Peter to him. Parson Leach stepped over to the fire, picked a stick from the ground and stirred Mr. Klaggerfell's stew. The smoke from the fire roiled against the rock hearth before it was taken over the trees by the wind.

“Thank you,” said the old man. They heard another low rumble from the dog, and Mr. Klaggerfell said, in the most conversational of tones, “That's enough, now, Pownal. Pull it up.”

The dog's great age was more apparent as it crossed the little clearing to hunker down at Mr. Klaggerfell's side. The animal walked stiffly, and the fur at its hind quarters was as thin and ragged as the old man's hair. Peter had a queasy feeling when the dog passed between him and the parson, but Pownal settled next to the old man peaceably enough.

“Have you been in the backcountry long?” asked Parson Leach.

“I couldn't tell you, really,” replied the old fellow. “The word is strange to me. What they call backcountry in
these
parts, I pass through in a day or so. I've been
back
of the backcountry, here to Canada and gone, more times than I can recall, with a good deal of tramping about in between.”

Peter would have expected to feel more comfortable with the old man as the parson conversed with him, but the effect of the man's company proved quite opposite; Peter grew more anxious as he listened to them.

“You're welcome to come with us,” the parson was saying. “There might be a bed waiting for you.”