Silver Tears
Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
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www.DiversionBooks.com
Copyright © 1990 by Becky Lee Weyrich
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
For more information, email
[email protected]
First Diversion Books edition June 2014
ISBN:
978-1-62681-304-5
For Margarett Ann and John Goodfellow … Thanks for all the fun times, from Maine to Florida and all points in between!
March 15, 1685
Bury St. Edmunds, England
“
D
on’t cry, love. There, Alice, there’s a good girl for your mum. Whatever happens, child, whatever they do to you, don’t ever let them see a single tear.
”
Thalia Wiggins stared down at her daughter as she murmured this final warning. Her strength was all she had to leave the child.
In the fine mist and fog of that dismal March dawn, the grayish half-light made Alice look much younger than her fourteen years. Her golden hair lay plastered and lifeless against her pale cheeks. Her blue eyes were clouded with fear, wide and staring in disbelief. She was a thin child, but she was not a weakling, Thalia reminded herself. She would survive, no matter what.
The condemned woman embraced her daughter one last time.
“Move it along there,” growled a burly guard. “We haven’t got all morning. I’m chilled clean through to the gizzard from waiting around for you three witches to do your rope dance.”
Alice struck out at the man as he tried to shove her mother away. With one flick of his wrist, he knocked the girl to the cobbles.
“Mind you don’t make me really angry, brat,” he snarled down at her. “There’s ways we can deal with a witch’s spawn.”
Alice scrambled up, ready to throw herself on him again, but a warning glance from Thalia stayed her attack. She watched helplessly as the man prodded her mother with his pike up Hangman’s Hill.
Never before in her life had Alice wanted so desperately to weep. She longed to shed great silver tears of hopelessness that would flood the world and wash her away from this life, this time, this nightmare. But the memory of her mother’s admonition forbade any outward show of emotion, making Alice’s throat and chest ache while her eyes burned.
If only Lord Balfour were here instead of off in France. He would not allow this to happen. Only he, Alice thought, could save her mother’s life.
The whole terrible scene before her was like something out of a ghastly dream. She saw the black storm clouds boiling in the sky and the three gallows looming like skeletons silhouetted against the eerie predawn light. A shudder ran through her whole body.
Slowly, not even aware that she was moving, Alice trudged up the hill, needing to be closer to her mother during these final moments. She could feel the rough, cold cobbles through the worn soles of her slippers. The acrid smell of smoke from the watch fires filled her nostrils and burned her throat. The oppressive silence closing in on her seemed to take her breath away. Other shadowy figures moved about in the mist that shrouded the hill—those who had come to see their loved ones die and those who had come simply to watch the grisly spectacle. But in spite of the crowd, Alice felt alone. Alone and lost.
And then a familiar and reassuring hand gripped Alice’s. She turned with a start and found herself staring up into a pale and craggy face. A hopeful smile trembled on her lips.
“My lord,” she whispered. “You’ve come to save her.”
Sadly Balfour shook his head. “Your dear mother’s beyond my help now, child. We must both be brave for her sake.”
A dry sob escaped Alice.
“Be strong, Alice,” the man’s brittle voice pleaded. “Don’t cry.”
Alice’s cold fingers clung to the warmth of Lord Geoffrey Balfour’s hand. His nearness was reassuring, but more than that, she knew that he was suffering as much as she. She had to be strong for him. Had it not been for this old and dear friend, she and her mother might both have been dead long ago.
She knew the story by heart, her mother had repeated it so often: “Me, a poor orphan girl, all on my own, selling me herbs and medicinal concoctions in the streets of London to keep body and soul together, minding me own business, harming no one, when what happens? A bunch of besotted soldiers comes upon me one night and decides they’ll have a bit of sport. Hauled me off down a stinking alley, they did, and took their turns with me, the lot of them. I was more dead than alive when Lord Geoffrey come upon me. ‘God, have mercy!’ he cries to his coachman when he sees my pathetic state. ‘Get this woman to my house.’ And before my head even clears, I’m at his townhouse, being bathed and tended to by servants and fed wine and broth like I was somebody.”
Alice’s mother never saw any of her attackers again, nor could she guess which of the drunken soldiers had fathered her little girl. But Lord Geoffrey was always there for both of them. He gave Thalia a home and a position as his own personal charm-woman. Never again did she have to walk the streets of London plying her trade. As for Alice, he saw to her every earthly need.
He was a distant man, a man most often lost in his own deep thoughts or bedridden due to the many illnesses he’d collected over his seventy-odd years. Alice had always looked on him with awe and a touch of timidity. But Thalia Wiggins had told her daughter often enough that Lord Balfour was as near to a saint as they were likely to encounter this side of heaven itself.
Now he stood with his thin hands on Alice’s shoulders, letting his courage flow into her trembling body. Together they watched Thalia approach the gallows.
Alice cringed as the sobs of the first two accused witches pierced the still morning when the hangman lowered their hoods and placed the nooses about their necks. She strained her ears, listening for any sound from her mother, but Thalia held her dignified silence, facing death with her shoulders squared and her head held high. Thalia Wiggins proclaimed her innocence one last time and refused the hangman’s hood.
Alice forced herself to stand a bit straighter, proud of her mother to the last. But her shoulders slumped when the creak of the gallows signaled the dark deed accomplished. The three bodies swayed like limp dolls at the ends of their ropes.
“Come along, Alice,” Lord Balfour whispered. “Let’s get away from this place.”
“No! We must take Mummie home.”
She tore away from the old lord and raced up the hill, her mind set on retrieving her mother’s body for proper Christian burial. She never made it to the gallows. The guard who had thrown her down earlier caught her by the arm.
“What have we here?” he shouted to the milling throng on the hill. “’Tis a bitch witch, I vow. Spawn of the devil and that woman hanging there.”
A murmur whispered over the hill like a wave. Three hangings had only whetted the bloodlust of the crowd. Soon a chant went up: “The witch’s child next. The little bitch witch, too.”
Alice struggled and kicked, but the guard had a firm hold on her. The crowd was closing in. She screamed and fought all the harder.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, another hand gripped hers, pulling her out of the guard’s grasp and hiding her beneath the folds of a black cape.
“Enough!” Lord Balfour cried. “This beautiful child has done no wrong. Leave her be!”
“She was birthed to a witch,” the guard growled. “Born to the evil arts and better off done with now. It’ll save us a trial and hanging later on.”
The crowd, angered by Lord Balfour’s intervention, moved in closer, ready to take Alice. The old lord pulled his sword and stood them off.
“You all know me!” he shouted. “Is there one among you who hasn’t come to me for aid in time of trouble?” Silence answered his question. “Is there one among you I’ve ever turned away?”
“It’s not you we’re about to hang!” someone in the mob yelled out. “It’s
her
. The bitch witch!”
“Would you murder my own bride-to-be?” Lord Balfour accused.
The surprised murmur of the crowd matched Alice’s own shock.
Marry Lord Balfour?
Before she could sort everything out in her mind, she heard the shuffle of retreating footsteps, the crunch of heavy wheels. A moment later she was inside the lord’s carriage, being whisked away from danger, off to the wedding that would save her neck and change her life.
Although theirs was never a marriage of passion and romance, it was a union of mutual respect, of warm affection and understanding. For five years the old lord lived, with Lady Alice Balfour always at his side and under his protection. Only with his death did the threat to her safety return. There were those who remembered the little bitch witch who had escaped the noose, those who still wanted to see her hang. As the daughter of a woman executed for witchcraft, Alice would remain guilty in their eyes for as long as she lived. Only by leaving England would she ever be truly safe.
Even on his way to the grave, Lord Geoffrey made plans to protect his young wife.
Struggling to get each word out as he lay on his deathbed, he said to Alice, “The moment I breathe my last, you must flee and never return to England. A ship and crew await you at Plymouth wharf. Ask for Captain Jonathan Hargrave at the Inn of Crossed Keys. He will see you safely across the ocean to a land called Maine. There you will seek out my young friend, Christopher Gunn, and take him for your new husband. I have written him of these plans. Together you will claim my rich lands in Norumbega, where the streets are paved with gold and the natives all live in crystal mansions. You will be safe. You will be loved. You will want for nothing. Godspeed, dear wife.”
Alice had been sitting by his side for hours, holding his cold, gnarled hands in hers. A moment before his death he pulled away from her touch.
“Lord Geoffrey?” she whispered.
“Begone with you, Alice. Now…”
There was no time for tears before the great black coach sped off through the night toward Plymouth, carrying Alice to meet her destiny.
September 29, 1690
The Coast of Maine
“
L
and ho!”
The cry drifted down from the crow’s nest high above the ship’s deck.
Lady Alice, standing at the starboard railing, drew her sable-lined black cape more closely about her and strained her eyes to see land through the dense, cold fog. The sky and sea seemed to merge in a thick, blue-gray chowder of nature’s brewing. She shivered. Could Norumbega, with its crystal palaces and gold-lined streets, truly be out there somewhere as Lord Geoffrey had promised? She closed her eyes and smiled, giving her head a firm nod.
“Did my lord ever deceive me?” she whispered. “I will find what he promised—the land and this magnificent Scotsman, Christopher Gunn, as well.”
As if her recently departed husband heard her words and was anxious to reassure her, a bright shaft of sunlight cut through the banks of mist. A high bluff, crowned with majestic, green-black pines, caught the light and shone like a beacon far ahead. In that forest at the confluence of the Bagaduce and Penobscot rivers, Alice knew she would find Fort Majabigwaduce, the only English outpost on the wild coast of Maine. Somewhere beyond, in the vast wilderness that stretched as far as the eye could see, she would discover Norumbega, Alice assured herself.
“My new home,” she said with a sigh, “at last.”
Her eyes glittered crystal blue in the sun as she scanned the rugged coastline—sheer bluffs of many-hued granite crowned with stately evergreens. Her late husband had told her that the tallest, straightest pines were marked by the king’s men to be felled as masts for the English fleet. The settlers in Maine cut these on pain of death. But with so much timber and so few settlers, surely, she mused, there must be more than enough for both the king and the inhabitants of the fort.
The wind calmed and lost some of its fierce bite. Alice tried to relax. The voyage had been long and bitter—rough seas, foul water, and worse food, along with a superstitious captain who hated having women passengers on board his ship. That was all behind her now, she told herself. Tonight she would sleep in a real bed, with a real roof over her, welcomed by the man who would soon be her new husband. By tomorrow she and Christopher Gunn would be on their way to claim her inheritance.
“My lady?”
Alice turned toward the sound of the gravelly male voice. She smiled, even though the slate-hard eyes staring into hers held no light of kindness.
“Yes, Captain Hargrave?” She made an honest attempt to be pleasant to the man in spite of his gruff manners.
“You’d best be going below. We’ll soon be past the islands and coming into Penobscot Bay. My men…”
The tall, burly seaman’s words trailed off and his hard face tightened. He looked away, avoiding her steady blue gaze.
Alice laughed softly. “You needn’t tell me about your men, Captain. I know they’ve looked on me as a burden and a hazard since the moment we put out from England’s shores. As have you.”
She watched color creep into his ruddy cheeks and felt a mild touch of satisfaction. The man had plagued her the entire trip. He obviously had no love for the fairer sex even ashore and believed her presence on his vessel was a constant threat to them all.
Hargrave cleared his throat, then continued. “Lord Balfour put you in my charge for your protection, and, by God, milady, protect you I will. I’ll not have you subject to the sailors’ rough language or the chance of injury as we’re anchoring. I’ve got you this far, I’ll see you safely ashore and then be done with this whole bloody business.”
Alice offered the surly officer a mocking curtsy, then flashed her icy-blue eyes at him. “Believe me, Captain, you’ll be no happier to see the end of me than I of you.”
He growled in annoyance.
She continued, “Sir, I have no idea why you dislike me so intensely…”
Hargrave heard no more of what she said.
Dislike
her? He stared at the young woman before him, feeling his blood rage as it had since the first moment he’d set eyes on her. “The old lord’s widow,” he’d been told when he agreed to this passage. “A poor, mourning wretch, off to the wilds of Maine to make a new life for herself.”
He’d pictured a woman well past her prime. After all, Lord Balfour had been in his seventies and sickly for years. But Alice was a woman who set a man’s pulses pounding, a woman who fired a man’s imagination as well as his blood. She was in the first lush bloom of womanhood, full of spirit, with eyes as liquid blue as the sea on a midsummer day and hair the color of freshly struck gold coins. A
rich
widow besides, he reminded himself.
What was such a woman doing here? She should be back in London, taking her place at court, sipping spiced wine and nibbling on almond pastries, exchanging the latest gossip with other beautiful, pampered ladies. She should not be mourning an old, dead husband, but stripping off those dull widow’s weeds to warm herself in the arms of some willing and ardent lover. Someone like himself, Hargrave mused. A man could do far worse, he told himself.
“Captain, are you listening to me?” Alice’s demand broke through his wandering thoughts.
“Aye, milady,” he lied. “You believe I dislike you. What I truly dislike is having a female on my ship—
any
female. Lord Balfour did us both an injustice, I fear.”
Alice’s delicately arched eyebrows twitched upward. “You’ve brought me here safely, Captain, as my husband knew you would. My lord chose you because he trusted you. You’ve proved as good as your word. Furthermore, you knew that your passenger was a woman before you agreed, and you’ve had a handsome payment left to your accounts for your efforts. So what injustice has my late husband done to either of us?”
“I don’t like being a party to this,” Hargrave said.
“Soon you’ll be out of it,” she replied coolly. “The moment Christopher Gunn greets me, your responsibilities will end.”
The sailors moved about the ship’s small deck, preparing to ease the vessel past the rocky offshore islands and into the sheltered bay. Neither Alice nor Jonathan Hargrave noticed, however.
Hargrave, who had held his tongue for many leagues as they crossed the rough seas, could take it no longer. Now the words burst from his lips. “What do you know about this Christopher Gunn, milady? How can you even consider marrying him?”
Alice took a step back as if he’d struck her a blow. “I beg your pardon! I don’t believe that’s any of your concern.”
He put out a hand to steady her as the ship’s bow plowed through a swell. “
You
are my concern until I discharge you on that wild shore yonder. And, by God, I’ll not see an innocent… lovely woman left to her own devices among heathens.”
“I won’t be alone, Captain, and Christopher Gunn, from what I know of him, could hardly be considered a heathen.”
“Did your husband tell you everything about Gunn? Did he
warn
you?”
Alice couldn’t imagine what the man was talking about. Yes, she knew about Christopher Gunn—he was a tall, incredibly handsome Scotsman, from what she remembered, having seen him that one time years ago. She knew he was the only son of one of her late husband’s friends. According to Lord Geoffrey, he had been a restless young man, “a ship without a sail—but he’ll do great things one day,” her husband had said. Alice told the captain all this, then added, “My late husband assured me that he had written to Mr. Gunn and that all was arranged for our marriage. If you are truly concerned, I have a letter of introduction to Mr. Gunn, along with a deed to my colonial holdings in my cabin.”
“Aye,” the captain answered, skepticism dripping from the single syllable. “I’ll take your word for all that. However, Lord Balfour neglected to tell you the rest of Gunn’s story, I’ll wager.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Obviously. Lord Balfour knew—he must have. What could he have been thinking, handing you over to such a man?”
Alice was beginning to feel a trembling in the pit of her stomach. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear any more of what Captain Hargrave had to say. “You
know
Christopher Gunn?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Aye, know and detest him, I do. Scoundrel, blackguard, and a few other names I won’t mention in a lady’s presence. We were shipmates once, even friends for a time. But no more. We both set our caps for a pretty maid in a foreign port. She chose Gunn over me. I challenged him. He laughed in my face, shaming me in front of her. But ’twas I who had the last laugh when we sailed away and he left her there on the dock. Have you any inkling why he’s off in this godforsaken place, a man of his intelligence and education?”
Alice shrugged. She had wondered, but she refused to admit that to the outspoken captain, who was obviously trying to get even with Gunn for their past differences.
“I’ll tell you why he’s here.”
“Somehow I knew you would.”
“Gunn has a special talent,” the irate man continued, “a talent with ladies. He might have married and settled down to a gentleman’s life back in England. There’s talk that more than one well-dowered young woman of noble family had her eye on him a few years back. But, no, Chris Gunn wanted none of this settling down to home and hearth. Proper young ladies bored him, he told me once as we sat drinking together late one night in a dockside tavern. He was fond of the chippies of White-chapel, but his main passion ran to other men’s wives. Noblemen’s wives, at that.”
A soft gasp escaped Alice’s rosy lips. “I don’t believe you.”
“Well, be that as it may, it’s high time someone spoke the plain truth of the matter to you. Gunn ran off here to the wilds of Maine to escape not one, but several angry husbands.”
Alice turned quickly away. “I believe I’ll go below now and see that Pegeen has finished the packing.”
“Fine by me, milady. But think hard on what you’re doing before it’s too late.”
She hesitated, furious that Captain Hargrave dared to utter such foul lies about the man she meant to marry. She longed to strike back.
“Is that all?” she asked. “Well, it seems I’ll be getting the better end of the bargain. Apparently, although you know all about my intended, you’ve heard nothing of my own sordid past.”
He only stared at her, silenced by this unexpected outburst.
“Lord Balfour was not only my husband, but my savior as well. I’d be long since hanged had it not been for his kindness. You see, I’m a witch! The ‘bitch witch,’ they called me. A little child whose mother passed the evil black arts on to her, so the story goes. But for Lord Balfour’s intervention, I’d have died on the gallows alongside my mother years ago.” She smiled when she saw the strong man’s face pale at her words. Although she knew she should keep her past to herself, she believed she’d be safe in Maine. Besides, the smug captain needed a good shock to shut him up. “Take care, Captain. Christopher Gunn knows the risks involved. However, should you speak ill of him again, my powerful magic might strike you dead on the spot.”
Hargrave remained silent for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t believe in witches. Even if there were such, there’s no way in heaven or hell you could be one of the coven. You are far too gentle, too beautiful, milady.”
Alice was taken aback by his words and by the softness of his voice. He spoke in a kinder tone than she’d ever heard from him. When he reached out to touch her arm, their eyes met for an instant. She felt an unexpected warmth flowing from him.
“I’ve made you angry and for that I’m sorry, but I felt it my duty to say what I did. You need a good man, a settled man,” he added in a gruff whisper. “Should you change your mind, I offer myself. It’s time I gave up the sea. We could have a fine life together. I’ve put by enough to support you in high style. You’d want for nothing. What say you, Lady Alice?” he pleaded gently.
Alice was dumbstruck. She could find no response for the unexpected proposal. Of course, she couldn’t marry the man; her plans were made, plans that would keep an ocean between her and the witch hunters who still longed to see her dance at the end of a rope. Still, she was warmed by the rough captain’s words. She’d thought him a man without a heart. Now she realized he was instead a steady fellow of deep emotions that he kept to himself. He was a good man, a kind man, but not the man for her.
“I’m touched, Captain,” she answered modestly, sincerely. Then she looked up at him, smiling into his dark, sad eyes. “You really don’t want a witch for a wife, do you?”
“Lady Alice, were you the sister of Lucifer himself, I would still beg for your hand. Witch or no, I want you for my wife.”
The two of them stood, frozen in the unexpected emotion of that instant. The fog had moved in once more so that even the far corners of the deck were obscured. The sailors moving about were only dull shapes in the dense blanket of mist. From somewhere in the distance came a popping, hissing noise that Alice could not identify. The eerie sound sent a chill through her.
“Captain Hargrave, I’m honored, but—”
Suddenly the man’s whole body jolted. His face before hers contorted in an expression of shock. Alice stared up, confused, as she saw his sharp eyes dull. His mouth sagged open and he slumped forward into her arms. As her trembling hands clutched his back, the warm stickiness of his blood soaked through her thin gloves. Her scream was lost in the roar of cannon fire.
“Heave to!” came a frantic cry from above. “We’re under attack! Pirates, damn their eyes!”
Confusion reigned on the deck of the tiny ship. Alice crouched low on the boards, cradling the captain’s head in her lap. She was too horrified by what had happened to take note of the battle raging around her, the Flemish seadogs heaving themselves over the ship’s rail to wage hand-to-hand combat with Hargrave’s men. Only moments before she had threatened that Jonathan Hargrave might be struck dead by some magic she didn’t even believe in. Now here he lay, gravely wounded. Her blood ran cold, and it seemed that through the fog and gun-smoke and shouts filling the air she could hear the creak of gallows far off in the distance.
