The Immortal American (The Immortal American Series) (23 page)

“I will be at the boulder to meet your man at 7:30 tomorrow morning.”

I nodded once more and glanced at the red uniform then back up to Colonel Devlin in time to see him shake his head. “Truly, all my heart extents to you.”

I kept nodding and thought of tomorrow’s plans.

After Colonel Devlin left, I stood over the uniform for a long time, feeling the cloth with my fingertips and wondered what my sister would say of it. Was it pure wool, Hannah? Or a wool blend?  

Feeling particularly cold in the center of my body, I carried it up to my bedchamber—the chamber that Hannah smiled in, dreamed in, and figuratively died in. The house creaked and moaned as I never had heard before. Did it miss my sister too? My mother? Even my father?

It was black outside, and while I undressed, I saw my reflection in the glass of the window that over looked the fields and the copse that I knew intimately. The other window pointed in the direction of the Joneses’ house and the barn and the river that slashed across the forest. That same river was swollen and flooded with melted snow and recent spring showers. The river gushed and gurgled its sacred, old-as-time language to me. Was it whispering how it took my sister’s life? How it helped ease my sister’s pain until there was no sadness, malaise, or despondency. With murky brown frigid water, the river swam by and comforted my sister, as Hannah had asked it to.

My eyes adjusted from viewing the woods to myself in the glass. This morning, I had tied the laces at the back of my waist myself. I had forced the strings too tight, and looked at the angry red criss-crossed lines on my back by contorting my head at the window. I unfastened the pins in my hair and stood bare before the woman in the glass.

My hair waved down to my hips, and as such I didn’t see my breasts, but a glance of shoulders there, a bellybutton here. My skin glowed white, my eyes were a vibrant green. I looked so alive. Why didn’t I just die? This pain that made my bones so brittle wasn’t killing me. Why not?

While walking naked in my chamber, I found a scrap of the lavender foamy fabric that was Hannah’s stomacher for her funeral’s dress, and tied it around my arm. Lying down on her side of the bed, I looked up at the dark ceiling.

Tomorrow was to be a day of grieving for me, the next was my wedding. Soon, I would no longer be a virgin and have no one to talk to about the intimacies of corporally knowing my husband.

This was the thought that tipped my decision.

I had looked forward to the day when I could giggle with my sister about my lover husband. I would whisper to her some vague innuendo of what making love was like, but now I couldn’t do any of that. I had slept alone, for the first time ever, last night. Although, it wasn’t really sleep; anytime I would fall into a doze, I’d wake myself and search for my sister, and then the muscles in my body twisted, sinew snapped, my bones would crush all over again with the pain that she was no longer alive.

Yes, that decided it.

Tomorrow, I was going to become a murderer.

I dressed in the uniform. It was a bit roomy, but not by much. It was a uniform for a boy, probably for a drummer.

I tied my hair back with a black ribbon at the nape of my neck, like the men do, then tucked the rest of my hair into the jacket. I didn’t have to search far to find my
sgian dubh
, the small, sharp dagger Scot’s men wear in their boots or hose, then slid my feet into my riding boots, the knife I hooked inside. I tried to see if the tomahawk would fit in the other boot’s sleeve, but it was too thick at its apex. Sliding the ax up my arm’s sleeve, I found a perfect fit, which concealed it flawlessly. I had to hold my hand a certain way, but with a flick of my wrist, the tomahawk would spring from my sleeve, where I caught it by the handle.

After calculating the distance of the walk, and all other endeavors pertaining to murder, I took the uniform off, laid it on the floor, then laid the cutlery at the foot of my bed. With only the wisp of light purple cloth on my arm and a long thin silver chain that held a small acorn-sized blue diamond over my heart, I walked back to my father and mother’s chamber. My father kept a claymore sword as a keepsake of his heritage. I hefted it out of its leather sheathing. I would have liked to tear Kimball’s arms off with the weight of the weapon, but it would have been too heavy to carry through the woods. It would be conspicuous too. I wanted something swift, fast. The tomahawk.

I carried the claymore with me to my chamber, the utterly alone chamber, and lay down with the sword. There was something comforting about the long rapier. Or perhaps I was completely mad by that time with my grief. At first I laid down with it beside me, staring at the metal, the craftsmanship of the twisted knots of the Scot Celts. Then, thinking of warriors from past times, of kings who fought with their troops, I pulled it on top of me, like the tombs of the great knights, placing the cold weapon to run down the length of my body.

This long sword had been handed down by generations of Scot men. The claymore had known battle, and I found it to be my only friend in the dark of that night.

I watched the black hours progress slowly, my father’s pocket watch keeping time for me while I held it in the palm of one of my hands. The hands moved at a bitterly slow pace through the long night. The moon, that white half globe, tried to glimmer through my windows, but my evil demise wouldn’t allow any illumination to shine in. The greasy, gritty water of my heart consumed all the light.

I wondered where Jacque was. Oh, Descartes, how I understand at long last your prophetic philosophy: What is real? What is a dream? This cannot be my life. I didn’t deserve my entire family to die. I know, I know, no one does, but . . . but perhaps, left over in my blood from my mother’s line of Puritans who arrived in Massachusetts as the very first settlers, I somehow had believed that if I just tried hard, labored long enough, good things would always happen to me. I had had sufficient misfortune with my father’s untimely death, but I had survived and made it so that my family endured (dare I mention that we flourished with our love and laughter?) 

Now this? None of my family members were alive. I was an orphan in this world. Certainly, I had Mathew, and I loved him, and promised myself right then I would do better by him, but I had never envisioned a life without my family, my sister. What was I to work for now? What could I fight for? Why was I still alive when all I was living for was gone? This house, this farm was my only reminder of a life once lived.

I let my eyes drift closed, but they jerked open only a minute later.

Then it was time.

I left the claymore on my bed, dressed and armed myself. I departed before I saw any signs that the Joneses might be rising. In the night, I had retrieved the box full of my savings, and left it on my bed, indicating—I hoped–that if I died, they were to have all of it: Bess, the wagon, and the horses too. I’d heard of a small town in Pennsylvania, where the Dutch and some Quakers had settled, where free blacks were being treated fairly. I left a map of New England with the town circled.

In the woods the early morning sun bled its orange and rouge rays in between the gray tree trunks and even bleaker clouds. I walked, feeling the tomahawk sit on my palm, the
sgain dubh
catch at my calf.

It didn’t take long, not long at all, before I heard the signals that men were close by—a fire popping, a clang against metal, deep male murmurs. I wore my father’s large brimmed brown leather hat low on my head. It hid my face well. I slunk through the woods, remembering how Deganawida had taught me to walk without any sound. With each step I absorbed all the impact into my feet and legs.

I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me sooner, last night, but I suddenly realized that Colonel Devlin, by taking Kimball to the outskirts of Concord, was almost certainly breaking the rules for quartering a prisoner. For that I was grateful.

Colonel Devlin cut a fine image in the very early morning light. His tall broad back faced me, a back not many men could brag about, except for a warrior like him. I knew it was him, also, because I could smell him. All my senses were heightened that morning. I walked within three feet of him, then stood still. He cleared his throat, then as if sensing a ghost, he turned quickly to me.

He gasped. At first he looked shocked that anyone had gotten that close to him, then further surprised as he realized it was me in the red uniform. He stumbled a couple steps away, clenching his teeth. “Violet, couldn’t you find a man?”

My teeth were chattering in anticipation, so I could only grunt out, “
I
want to do this.”

Colonel Devlin’s eyes rounded, and he held his breath. “Are you sure?”

I nodded.

“Of course. I understand. I do.” He sighed, then his shoulders stooped as he whispered kindly. “I did the same. I didn’t want you to know that I committed murder with my own hands, but I did the same. I’m an officer and considered a gentleman, but what of gentlemanlike battle? I’ve killed hordes of men with cannons and rows of men with rifles. And that is a gentleman? No . . . No, I forget myself and you, and why you are here.” He sighed again and straightened his shoulders. “He’s through that clearing, by the river. You have twenty minutes.”

I nodded again.

He extended a pistol and a bag of bullet cartridges to me. I took them both, pushing the gun into the belt of my breeches and the cartridges—paper pouches full of gunpowder and bullets—in a leather pouch I wrapped around my waistband too.

“You may consider them a gift.”

I looked up at him when I heard the strained inflection in his voice.

“Violet.” He sighed, before he carried on. “If you find that after . . . it’s changed you, as killing a man changed me, come to me. I will protect you.”

I nodded again, hardly heeding his words, then stepped away from the colonel and turned to the clearing. I heard him walk away, then I searched for my sister’s rapist. Only twenty feet from where I had stood with Colonel Devlin was all it took for me to see him–my sister’s murderer and my mother’s. I saw the man who ripped my love, my life, my heart and soul away from me.

He wasn’t a monster or a devilishly appearing fiend. He was just a man, tied to a tree with his head drooping to his chest, sleeping. His dirty blond hair hung loose around his shoulders, and I couldn’t make out his face, but I knew he was just a man after all.

I walked quietly, so quietly. But I wasn’t walking, I was swimming. The forest floor became the river’s bed, granting me silent passage. Murky, shadowy water flooded and filled the forest. The trees had turned into water plants that swayed in premonition of what I was about to do. They grieved for me, cried for me, yelled for me.

He still wore his dark red coat with its regal gold frog buttons and gold fringe at his shoulders, yet the coat was battered and dirty. His light colored hair was covered in filth and I could just see that both his eyes were swollen and black.

The river gushed, became a maelstrom around me and my prey. He hadn’t moved as I made my approach, and there I stood beside one of his legs, waiting for him to look up at me. Waiting for him to leer at me, then to plead for mercy. I would tell him that I had none. No, better, I would ask where his mercy had been for my sister. I would tell him he was going to hell, and I was going to take him there. Then I would slash his throat or head or his heart. Yes, find if he even had a heart.

Time slowly inched by, more slowly than last night’s turtle’s pace. But I could not hold back the swirling cold river any more. I gripped at his matted, dirt infested hair and yanked his head up. He had a deep cut on his bottom lip that looked black and thick. It was almost exactly where he’d smashed Hannah’s lip, forever scarring her. I was going to scream at him, but extended my arm behind me, stretched my hand forward, letting the tomahawk spring out, catching it and clutching the tool with my rage. Then I saw his bloody neck. Like Colonel Devlin, Kimball wore a smile under his jaw, a morbid grin. The skin along his upper neck had been deeply ripped apart. Black red blood stained his neck, darkened his uniform’s collar.

The Britons were always proud of their Roman past, even choosing to have their uniforms be red, to help hide the blood of their dead enemies’ or their own. Had I not lifted Kimball’s head, I would have never known that someone beat me to killing Kimball. I let my tomahawk fall to the ground on a soft thud. Out of grotesque, unkempt rage, I strangled his neck, but upon feeling what might have been his backbone of his throat I retracted. What I felt was cool. His body was losing its heat. He had been dead for at least an hour, maybe more. I stood, staring down at my murdered prey confused, feeling the tidal waters stir to a stop. A snap behind me made me quicken to my senses. I grabbed my tomahawk and ran.

I ran for a few minutes, wondering if I truly did hear my own feet sloshing in river water, but in reality I was running through the forest. I hid in a blueberry bush, and waited for my assailants, but none came. The forest birds sang of their early morning chores, and the trees no longer swayed under the heavy water of my rage. My own body felt lightened, as if the river had seeped out of me. Perhaps that was relief from not having to commit murder. Or was this buoyed sense the sick elation of knowing Kimball was dead? I didn’t want to know which.