Master of My Dreams (40 page)

In Concord, Colonel Smith’s exhausted troops,
failing to find the rebel stores and growing increasingly alarmed
at the sight of minutemen pouring in by the thousands from all over
the countryside, had turned and headed back toward Boston. Incited
by the earlier bloodshed, the rebels began to fire on them from
behind stone walls, fences, and trees. Soldiers fell, dying. Order
began to dissipate. The troops returned the minutemen’s fire, but
it was impossible to hit men who fought like Indians, hiding behind
trees and stone walls, only to pop up and pick them off. Panic took
over, and what had begun as an orderly march back toward the safety
of Boston and the warships anchored there, soon became a downright
flight. By the time the soldiers met up with Lord Percy’s relief
force outside Lexington, all semblance of order had been lost.
After a brief rest, the regulars resumed their hasty retreat,
taking fire from all sides.

As Smith’s weary forces fled east, desperate
to reach still-distant Boston, Major Pitcairn, knowing the men
needed an outlet for their fear and frustration, cunningly sent
Percy’s fresh troops ahead and outside of the main column with
permission to burn and pillage everything in their path. By the
time they hit Menotomy, they had carved a path of violence and
destruction before them.

And Menotomy was not to be spared.

Deirdre, huddled at the window with Delight,
Mrs. Foley and several neighbors, felt her companions’ hot breath
stirring her hair, warming her neck; she smelled the sweat of their
fear and heard their sobs of terror, a terror that was reflected in
her own heart as the sharp crack of gunfire and the boom of cannon
heralded the approaching arrival of the fleeing British forces.

With a sound like rising thunder, they came
around a bend in the road, nearly two thousand men running as fast
as their legs could carry them. Officers galloped past, their
coattails flying, shouting desperately for order. Wagons toting the
dead and wounded rumbled by, their wheels lodging in mud and
spinning free once more. Musket fire cracked around them, and
Deirdre saw a soldier fall, only to be trampled by the river of
red-coated regulars. A horse reared up and plunged over backward,
crushing the officer who had been so proudly mounted on its back.
Minutemen, mere shadows in the haze of gun smoke, darted from
behind trees, their muskets spurting flame and smoke.

Mrs. Foley cried out as she saw her husband
and Captain Locke dive headlong over the stone wall that bordered
the house, popping up to train their muskets on the fleeing troops.
Thunder cleaved the air, and more redcoats fell, some wounded, some
dying, some already dead. Flames and roiling black smoke burst from
the windows of a nearby house as the soldiers ransacked the
building and then set it afire. People ran screaming out into the
road. Minutemen raced into the nearby house of Jason Russell, and
Deirdre saw the old man die on his front steps as a wild-eyed
redcoat cut him down, savagely bayoneting his body.

“Lock the windows!” Joanne Foley cried, and
sobbing, they slammed the shutters shut against the carnage
outside. Deirdre and Delight clung to each other. The windows
rattled in their casings with each thunderous reverberation. One
blew apart as a musket ball burst through, flinging the shutters
wide and slamming into the mantel just above their heads. Fists
pounded on the door and angry curses rent the air. Joanne Foley
hefted the musket, swung it toward the door and fired, the
thunderous blast exploding in their heads. Outside, a man screamed
in agony and another hurled himself through the open window, only
to be brought down by the musket of an old man who took careful aim
at the redcoat from his place on the stairway. Blood exploded
against the wall. Flashes of red drove past the window. Horses
screamed in fright, bellowed in agony. Smoke tainted the air, and
the cries of those who had been shot, those who had been bayoneted,
those who were dying, pierced the walls of the little house.

Gunfire roared from the house of Jason
Russell, where the minutemen had made their stand, and with each
hollow boom, each crack of a musket, the women sobbed and cried and
huddled together. The horror seemed to go on forever. Then the
thunder began to fade as the fleeing soldiers raced on toward
Boston, leaving the wounded and dead in their wake.

Like a land savaged by storm and just opening
its eyes, Menotomy began to stir. The fields were strewn with
bodies, some clad in the king’s colors, some in the ragged wool and
homespun of local farmers. Outside, in the muddy road where puddles
of water were now stained crimson with blood, the dead and dying
lay. A few last shots rang out as minutemen fired upon straggling
British troops who, carrying their wounded and dead, were too
exhausted to fight back.

Long, keening wails came from the townspeople
as, here and there, someone recognized the corpse of a loved one.
Women comforted screaming babies and sobbing children, began to
stagger out of the houses in which they had barricaded themselves.
The wounded and dying lay in the road, in the fields, draped over
fences and walls. A red-coated figure stirred in the yard outside
and reached for his musket, only to fall back, his legs jerking, as
a single shot cracked out.

And then, from the east, Deirdre heard the
hoofbeats of a single, approaching horse.

She knew. She knew, even before she ran to
the door and flung it open, who it was. She knew, even before she
saw him, that he had come looking for Roddy. And she knew, even
before her mouth opened in a desperate scream of warning, that it
was already too late to save him.

The glistening, foam-flecked hide of the big
chestnut stallion swept around the bend and burst into view. And
though a cloak covered his fine uniform, it was all too obvious
that the figure who sat so tall and straight in the saddle was a
military man, no less British than those who had slashed a
murderous swath through the helpless village a mere ten minutes
before.

‘‘
Christian!”

The horse kept coming, the rider’s cloak
billowing in the wind.

“Christian,
no-o-o-o-o!
”

She was racing across the lawn, her skirts
flying, before anyone could stop her. She stumbled once, fell,
picked herself up, and kept on running, even as his alarmed gaze
found hers, even as she saw a minuteman rise up from behind the
shelter of a stone wall and carefully, deliberately, bring his
musket up to bear on the lone rider.

“
No-o-o-o-o-o-oooo!
”

The explosion seemed a thousand times louder
than the mightiest of
Bold Marauder
’s broadsides. In horror,
she saw smoke and fire burst from the gun in a brilliant cloud of
color. She saw the minuteman raise his fist in triumph. She saw the
rider jerk in the saddle, a streak of blood ripping along his
thigh, his hand going for his sword a moment before another shot
sent his cocked hat spinning away into the mud.

He tumbled from the horse, his bright hair
glinting in the sunlight.

Screaming, she raced to him and plunged to
her knees in the mud where he had fallen. The big stallion bolted,
thundering back down the road, the irons of the empty saddle
slapping his sides. Somewhere behind her, Jared Foley was yelling,
and the boom of cannon and gunfire was far off in the distance
now.

Christian lay still and unmoving. Blood
seeped from the hair at his temple.

“
No!
” Deirdre screamed, grabbing his
hand and falling over his body. “No, no, no, you can’t die!”
Sobbing bitterly, she pressed his hand to her heart, to the cross,
her tears dropping upon the insignia on his sleeve that marked him
as a king’s captain. “Please, Christian, don’t die on me. Oh, dear
God, don’t take him from me,
please,
God, don’t take him . .
.”

Shadows stamped out the sunlight. Concerned
hands grasped her shoulders, tried to gently pull her away. She
heard Delight’s voice, saw someone poke a musket at Christian’s
chin, and, satisfied that he was no threat, move away.

“Don’t die, Christian . . . oh, please, don’t
die.” She crushed his hand to the cross, never seeing the little
drops of blood that the sharp points raised, never feeling them
trickle down her wrist to stain her own sleeve as she bent over
him. “Dear God, please, don’t take him, he was just doing his duty,
oh, God, oh, God,
please
—”

Jared Foley was there beside her. He knelt
down and grasped the captain’s other wrist, his thumb pushing up
the sleeve to find a pulse. “He’s alive,” he said, straightening
up. “Merely a flesh wound. Lucky he is, too, for
he
will
live to see many tomorrows.”

“Don’t know what the tarnal hell a sea
officer’s doin’ way out here,” muttered another, peering down at
the gold lace of Christian’s coat where the cloak had fallen
open.

“Aye, ’tis rather strange, eh?”

But Deirdre, clutching his lifeless hand,
knew why he had come. In that brief, awful moment when their gazes
had met just before the minuteman’s musket had felled him, she had
seen the truth.

He had come for her brother.

Her throat constricting, she took off her
kerchief and pressed it to the blood that trickled through the pale
hair where the bullet had grazed his temple. Bitter shame coursed
through her. She had tried to make him choose between his promise
to her and the principles by which he lived his life. How could she
have thought he would abandon his values? How could she have
thought he would turn his back on the Navy, on his duty to king and
country? In his eyes Roddy was a traitor, an enemy of the
Crown.

It was unfair of her to expect him to abandon
his principles, just for the sake of love. It was unfair to think
that the two of them would ever have a chance to be happy
together.

But the fact that she loved him would never
change.

Slowly, Deirdre O’Devir reached up and
removed the chain that had kept Grace O’Malley’s cross against her
heart for so many years.

The cross that she had sworn never to take
off for as long as she drew breath.

She shut her eyes, her lips moving in silent
prayer. Then she enfolded it in her palm, and pressed it to her
lips for a long, tremulous moment. It was warm with the heat of her
body, and before it could cool, she lifted Christian’s lolling
head, drew the chain over his hair, and carefully eased his head
back down, her lips lowering to touch his skin, his parted lips, in
a final kiss of farewell.

“I love ye, Christian,” she said brokenly.
“Dear God, I love ye . . .”

There the cross lay, against his heart, the
proud buttons and lapels of his coat. Deirdre got to her feet, her
hand coming up to touch the strangely empty, naked area at her
throat. But she had done the right thing. She had given him a
symbol of her love, a precious part of herself so that he would
never forget her. Her eyes streaming, she turned to Jared Foley,
knowing that he and his family would take care of her captain until
he recovered.

There was nothing left in America for her,
and the colonists’ fight was not her own. If she and Roddy stayed
here any longer, her brother would surely be caught and hanged—if
not by Christian, then by someone else.

She had come here to find her brother, and
she had found him. She had come here to fulfill a vow to her dying
mama—and now it was time to honor that promise.

Find my son, Deirdre, and bring him home to
Ireland.

It was time to go home.

“Mr. Foley?”

He was kneeling down beside the English
captain, helping his daughter try to stanch his bleeding. He looked
up at Deirdre.

“Please take me to me brother,” she said
quietly, her proud, Gaelic face shining with courage and misery
beneath her tears.

“What?”

At her feet, Christian was beginning to stir.
She looked down at him through the blur of tears, her heart
breaking. “Christian will only hunt him down again, ye see? He’s
smart and determined, Mr. Foley. He’s the finest officer in the
king’s Navy. He’ll find Roddy and take him from me, only this time,
’twill be forever.”

“What are you saying, girl?”

She looked up, turning her face toward
Boston, and Ireland beyond. A gust of wind came up, carrying the
smoke of battle and tugging at her hair.

Brokenly, she murmured, “That it’s time for
me to go home.”

###

She stood on the shore at Boston Harbor, her
eyes seeking the British men-of-war anchored there. Her gaze moved
over each of them until it finally settled upon the one that was
different from the rest . . . leaner, lither, somehow more
beautiful than the all the others. The one with the pointer
crouched beneath its proud bowsprit, the one that had brought her
here to America, the one that she would never, ever forget.

HMS
Bold Marauder
.

The wind blew from the east, making the
frigate’s pennants snap. It continued on toward shore, dancing over
the waves and making them crest with merriment, playing across the
glistening blue waters of the harbor, pulling at her hair and
tugging at her clothing.

She threw back her head and opened her arms,
embracing the wind for a final time.

And then she uncapped the glass flagon,
letting the Irish air escape to be forever mated with its American
cousin. She allowed the flagon to fill with wind, then tightly
capped it once more.

Her brother stood nearby,
uncharacteristically quiet, and solemnly waiting to take her out to
the little brig he had hired to bring them home. His face was a mix
of conflicting emotion, his heart in turmoil, for only he knew of
the unspoken promise he had made to the man who had once been his
enemy.

A promise he now considered breaking.