The Seekers (53 page)

Murderer
—

By his own hand, all the underpinnings of his world had been cut away—

But Amanda was no better off. He looked at her, small and lovely, watching him with fear and uncertainty—

How would she survive?

In the answer to that, he saw both a heavy responsibility that had fallen to him, and one slim opportunity to redeem himself a little. He put gentle hands on her shoulders.

“Amanda, you must listen carefully—”

“I will.”

“There’s been trouble at the printing house. I think I killed a man.” Her eyes grew huge. “That’s the reason I must go away. I’ll be arrested and sent to prison if I don’t. I think you’d better come with me.”

She was slow to grasp the idea. “You mean—away from here—?”

“Yes. Tonight. I’ll take care of you. That is”—bitterness showed in his eyes—“I’ll try. I
am
old enough—”

“But I don’t understand why—”

“Your mama isn’t here to protect you, and I promised Uncle Gilbert I would.”

And if I don’t keep that promise somehow, I’m finished.

Seeing her reluctance, he added, “Mr. Piggott might come back—”

“That’s not what you said a minute ago.”

He struggled to keep his voice quiet and firm. “I was wrong.” He hated to he. But he knew of no better means to persuade her to accept his protection than invoking Piggott’s spectre.

He sensed her wavering.

“I looked outside, Jared. It’s snowing—”

“Goddamn it. I know it’s snowing!”

“Oh, don’t lose your temper! Don’t swear at me—”

“I apologize. Please, Amanda—no more tears. Let’s go to your room. Find some clothing. A warm coat—”

She held up her hand. For the first time, he noticed the cordage bracelet.

“Will you let me take this?”

“Yes, yes—but hurry!”

She fought as he tugged her hand! “What’s happened to you, Jared? Your face is funny. You don’t look like yourself—”

And what do I look like? What I am?

MURDERER—

“Stop talking and come along!”

He said it with such ferocity that she obeyed without another question. As they passed the head of the stairs, he glanced down. He saw no one on the second floor, heard nothing. The house seemed an enormous well of silence. Silence that mourned the passing of the dead, and the destruction of the living.

Twenty minutes later, two figures emerged from the darkness around the Beacon Street stoop.

Jared had decided to risk stealing out the front way in order to satisfy himself about Aunt Harriet. He’d crept to the door of the lamp-lit sitting room, seen the body beneath the blanket.

Leaving Amanda shivering in the dark hall, he stole in, his eye turned warily toward the passage leading to the kitchen where voices still murmured.

He lifted the blanket. Stared. Let the blanket fall. There was no satisfaction in seeing her dead.

“I’m cold, Jared,” Amanda said as they slipped across the street to the Common. He’d insisted she put on her heaviest coat and fur-lined bonnet! But already her teeth were chattering almost as badly as his. He tried to make light of it.

“Oh, you won’t be cold for long. I know a cozy stable in the South End. We’ll stay there tonight, very snugly. In the morning we’ll slip across the Neck to Roxbury. We’ll have a wonderful adventure—”

What a pathetic sham! But Amanda was young enough to believe him—almost. She sniffled, clutching his hand tightly.

From the Common, Jared looked back at the Kent house, its windows shedding warm light into the moving pattern of snowflakes. The sight engulfed him in a pessimism blacker than any he’d experienced before. Hope was futile. He could never be anything more than what he was: the inheritor of weakness and unbridled emotion, a creature possessed by the past, and carrying its curse forever into the future—

He turned away. Lowering his head against the wind, he guided Amanda into the dark.

Hamilton Stovall stood across the street from the printing house, watching it burn.

In the distance, a clanging bell and the clatter of hoofs signaled the approach of a fire wagon. The snow continued to fall, but Stovall, bareheaded, seemed perfectly comfortable as he gazed at the flame-filled windows.

Close by, lawyer Elphinstone looked as if he were freezing. A man ran up to him, spoke briefly. Elphinstone bobbed his head, approached his employer. “Hamilton?”

“What is it?”

“The doctor that boy fetched just looked at Walpole. He’s going to pull through.”

“I suspected he would. I examined the wound myself.”

“Is that why you were so slow to send for the authorities?”

Stovall said nothing.

“How did he get in the line of fire, Hamilton?”

“He stumbled.”

“Oh. I understand only one of the balls struck him—”

“Yes.”

“Well above the heart, luckily.”

Stovall’s uncovered eye glistened with reflections of the blaze now threatening the adjoining buildings. Noisy men milled in the street. The fire bell clanged louder. Stovall seemed oblivious to everything but the flames gutting Kent and Son.

“Going to be a total loss,” Elphinstone muttered.

“I imagine it’s well insured.”

“Will you keep the money, or rebuild?”

“I haven’t decided.” After a moment, he added, “Has anyone seen the Kent boy?”

“No. I expect he’s fleeing for his life. He heard you shout murder. He undoubtedly thinks Walpole’s dead.”

Hamilton Stovall’s mouth curved up at the corners. His brown eye glared as the fire shimmered on the white silk of the bandana.

“Let him,” he said.

T
HE ROAD LED ON
toward a town whose lights gleamed faintly in the darkening day.

Jared wished they could push on to that settlement. There, they might find a public house like the one in Philadelphia where he’d worked part of a week, scrubbing floors and washing ceilings. The labor had left him stiff and sore every night, but it had given, them a temporary haven in the stable attached to the public house—plus a quantity of biscuits and meal for the next-stage of their journey.

Now the biscuits were eaten, and the meal too. They had to stop again. But going on to the town was impossible. He was too tired and weak. And Amanda was be ginning to make small, fretful sounds that indicated her own exhaustion.

She was nearly as disreputable looking as Jared himself. Her cheeks were pale. Her dark hair hung tangled around her shoulders, picking up snow crystals beginning to blow out of the northwest.

The draw-cord of the canvas bag was slipping from his shoulder. He tugged the cord up close to his collar as he surveyed the first of two farmhouses ahead. The houses and outbuildings were set about a quarter mile apart, and windows in both dwellings were lighted.

“Might as well try the first one,” he said.

Amanda didn’t respond. She acted dazed. Her hand moved aimlessly, brushing snow from her sleeve, then fingering a rent in the front of the coat that had once been clean and fashionable but now, in December, bore the marks of hard use.

“Come on, Amanda.”

She murmured something that might have been an argument or a complaint. Jared took hold of her elbow, guided her around the worst of the ruts in the road to the first farmyard. An almost sensual joy possessed him when he thought of resting behind solid walls.

They’d taken no more than a couple of steps toward the house when a huge brindle animal shot around the corner. Amanda screamed. The shepherd charged them, barking. The sound seemed loud enough to reach to the end of creation—

“Run!” Jared yelled, turning and starting away. An instant later, he heard his cousin’s second outcry, whirled back and saw her on the ground, floundering.

The shepherd came on, teeth bared. The dog made straight for Amanda.

Jared lunged, caught the girl’s arm, literally dragged her to him. The watchdog jumped at his legs. Jared kicked, struggling to pick his cousin up at the same time. Somehow he avoided the snapping jaws and reached the road.

The dog stopped at the edge of the property, but kept barking. Jared cradled his cousin in his arms and staggered down the road, unnerved by the yapping of the animal, by the thought of the harm Amanda could have suffered—and by disappointment.

“There, he didn’t hurt you,” he panted. Amanda kept moaning softly against his neck. “Amanda, stop that! You’re all right.”

“Yes. Yes, but the dog scared me—”

“He scared me too.” The barking stopped abruptly.

Jared glanced back. He could barely see the huge animal as it padded toward the house. He set his cousin on the ground.

“We’ll try the next place. There are lamps in the back—see?” He pointed. “Let’s go around that way—”

She stumbled as they started into the second yard. Jared caught her and held her up. Night was coming fast. The wind was stiffening, driving the snow harder. The ground was already covered with a white crust.

A memory of the warmth of the Boston house tormented Jared for a moment. He put it ruthlessly aside. He could allow himself no weakness, no regrets. They had come a good distance, but they had to go even further, surviving day by day and hour by hour—

He led his cousin down the side of the shingled house. They must keep on, never falter, never stay in one place too long. This was still civilization. He was still a murderer—

He’d considered it an accomplishment just to reach Philadelphia before the worst weather began. But he’d been nervous working at the crowded public house. Even with the war going on, Philadelphia attracted a great many visitors. What if someone from Boston recognized him—?

So they’d taken to the road again, putting more miles between themselves and the threat that Boston represented. As yet, Jared had no clear destination in mind. He knew he’d have to choose one eventually. Eventually, but not tonight—

The snow was growing steadily thicker. It reminded him that it wouldn’t be as easy to steal food in deepest wintertime as it had been on the long trip down to the Quaker City. He hoped they wouldn’t have to resort to thievery tonight. He hoped begging would serve instead—

The rear porch creaked under his feet. Amanda refused to climb up with him. She stood in the yard and stared at him with a slack expression. Her thin fingers kept plucking at the tear in the coat. God, how despicable he was to subject her to this—!

His stiff hand rapped on the door. Inside, he heard a man’s guttural voice. Then a woman’s, a little lighter, not so foreign-sounding. A small boy asked a question and the woman shushed him. Boots clumped.

The door opened to reveal a man in his late twenties, plainly dressed, with curly blond hair and blue eyes. An old flintlock glinted in his hands. The young man peered at Jared, then glanced beyond him, wary.

“Ja?”

“Good—good evening,” Jared stammered. “My—sister and I—” He stood aside so the farmer could get a clear look at Amanda down in the whitened yard. With fair glibness, he slid into the tale that had served them before. “We’re on our way to Pittsburgh—”

“Alone? No von else?”

“Just the two of us. We’re from Rhode Island—” He didn’t intend to tell anyone they came from Boston. Who could say how far Massachusetts law might reach? “Our parents died in a fire, so we’re going to Pittsburgh to live with our uncle.”

The young man’s eyes remained suspicious. His wife appeared behind him. Despite her youth, she was rough-skinned and stooped. Jared was almost dizzy inhaling the aroma of fresh bread that suffused her kitchen.

“Children, Karl?” the woman asked.

“
Ja.
Dey say dey’re going to Pittsburgh—”

“Look, I’m not armed in any way—” Jared raised his hands. He’d concealed the Spanish knife and the London-made pistol in the canvas bag on his shoulder. “There’s nothing to fear. We’d only like permission to sleep in your barn.”

The woman’s face softened. “The barn will be frigid in a storm like this. We could let them come in, Karl—”

Jared was quick to capitalize on her sympathy. “If there’s any way I could work for you for a day or so, I’d be glad to, in exchange for a little food to take with us—”

“De roads are very bad dis time of year,” the farmer advised him.

“I know, but we need to get to Pittsburgh as soon as we can.”

The young man set the butt of his flintlock on the floor. Jared felt relieved.

“Might find one of de wagon men in town who’d take you,” the farmer said.

“Town?” Jared repeated.

The young man gestured in the direction of the lights glimpsed on the road. “Langaster. But I cannot gif you charity, dis is a poor household—”

“I told you I’d work! Please, can’t we come in? My cous—my sister’s nearly frozen.”

For a moment he thought the farmer would say no.

Had something hinted to the young man that the visitors weren’t brother and sister? Jared’s light eyes and Amanda’s dark ones, perhaps? Just as the farmer was about to speak, his wife touched his arm.

The man glanced at her, shrugged and stepped aside.

“
Ja,
all right. But you sleep in de barn.”

“Karl—”

“No, dey go to de barn.”

“That’s fine,” Jared assured him.

“If you can help me split wood, I maybe gif you some corn—”

“Amanda, come on!” Jared cried, darting down the steps into the blowing snow. His excitement at having found them a sanctuary disappeared as he gazed at the dim oval of her face. Her eyes were tear-filled.

“I want to sleep, Jared,” she said, teeth still chattering.

“We will! These people are going to let us stay in the barn. But first we can go inside.”

“You better carry her,” the woman said. “She don’t look so well.”

Wearily, Jared picked his cousin up and bore her to the porch and into the lamp-lit kitchen where the smell of fresh bread drifted, indescribably rich and sweet.
One more step taken,
he said to himself as the farmer closed the door against the wind’s whine.
Don’t worry about tomorrow or about the day after
—
be glad you’ve found a place away from the storm
—