Sword of Vengeance (4 page)

Tibbs snored, then smacked his lips, and his long fingers fluttered as if he were clawing at the earth. Kit never considered attempting to rouse his friend. Tibbs had drunk himself into this stupor, and time, not man, would have to drag him out of it. Kit left his besotted companion and walked across the room to the table. He started to reach for the treasure pouch, then changed his mind and turned back to his cot, where he retrieved his belt from the foot of his humble bed. He was happy to note his knife was still in its sheath. He slid the six-inch blade from its scabbard.

Back at the table Kit discovered half a dozen hollow reeds of varying thickness that Father Ramon had intended to convert into writing pens. Kit selected one, and with knife in hand, he settled himself in the doorway and watched the overcast sky lighten in hue as somewhere beyond the clouds the sun rose above the horizon. Kit worked the blade point into the reed and dug out a series of four evenly spaced holes. From time to time he paused to stare out at the rain-spattered earth, the gray clouds reflected in the puddles, the dull green sheen of the willows and loblolly pines that screened the village from the coast.

A pair of Creek warriors hurried toward a partly completed coquina brick structure in the center of the village. Kit guessed it was the mission church.

The Creek men were about Kit’s height, and like the seafarer, they were well muscled and moved with quiet, quick steps. Between them, the two braves carried a load of timber into the church structure with only a glance in Kit’s direction. They kept their heads bowed to the rain.

Kit resumed carving on the reed, adding the appropriate air holes and shaving and tapering the mouthpiece. He put the crudely honed instrument to his lips and played a couple of trilling notes. One of the holes needed enlarging, and he went to work on it. He finished, blew away the debris, and tried the flute again. This time the sound came clear and piping and sweet upon the rain-washed air. Kit smiled with satisfaction, then looked up and was surprised to find he was no longer alone.

Maria, the little girl from the beach, and two of her friends, both boys, peered around the corner at the red-haired stranger in the doorway. One of the boys, a chubby, sweet-faced child with rust-colored eyes, held a makeshift cage in which a seaside sparrow hopped from perch to perch and eyed the world through a cage made of twigs and bound together with strips of cloth. The sparrow’s brown plumage was streaked with ashen gray feathers. The feathers on its breast were tinged yellow, and nature had placed a spot like a sunburst between its eyes and gray beak. It sang high-pitched notes to match the flute.

“I am called Kit,” McQueen managed to say in his fractured Spanish.

“I am Maria,” said the little girl. “I found you,” she added proudly, as if the Yankee were her very own prize.

“I’m glad you did,” Kit told her.

“And this is Mateo and Juan.”

Kit noted that Mateo held the bird cage while Juan, who seemed a trifle more reticent, stared longingly at the flute. Mateo held up the bird cage for Kit to examine. He proudly described how he had rigged the snare and captured the bird all by himself. Kit understood only snatches of the lad’s account, but he nodded approvingly and gave the appearance of being most impressed. All the while Juan continued to scrutinize the man from the sea.

“He does not speak,” Maria said, indicating the long-faced boy to her right. “Even after Father Ramon baptized him, he still did not speak,” she added, incredulous that no miracle had occurred to give the mute child his voice. She shrugged and took a step toward him. “I am not afraid of you.”

“
Bueno
.” Kit smiled and placed the flute to his lips. He blew softly and his fingers danced over the holes to produce a merry tune of his own composing. The music danced upon the rain. The children smiled with delight, and Maria began to dance in little circles. Mateo held his bird cage out so its occupant might sing along with the carefree melody. Only Juan seemed unaffected. However, appearances were deceiving. His appreciation was far more subtle in its display. He remained perfectly still, as one transfixed by the redheaded piper and the tune he played while sitting in the doorway.

Kit finished his song, much to Maria’s chagrin.

“Play it again,” Mateo said.

“Not me,” Kit replied. He pointed the flute at Juan. “Him.”

He held the flute out to the silent boy. Time seemed to hang still as the child summoned his courage. Then, slowly, he stretched out his arm and opened his fingers. Kit placed the flute in the boy’s palm.

“Now you have a voice,” Kit said.

The boy closed his hand and dashed off into the rain, with Maria and Mateo at his heels. The silent boy was halfway to his parent’s jacal when he skidded to a halt in the mud and turned back toward the man in the doorway. He raised the reed flute to his lips and piped a chorus of notes with such wild abandon that his whole body shuddered with the joyous sound. Then he turned and scampered off into the rain.

“You’re welcome,” Kit said.

His head started to throb. The dizziness had returned, though less severe now. Kit decided to weather his discomfort lying down. A thundercrack startled him as he stood in the doorway and braced himself against the wall of the house. Overhead, the storm tracked to the north and loosed a torrential downpour that all but obscured most of the village behind its watery gray sheets. Kit glanced over at Tibbs’s still slumbering form. A hurricane could spring up and blow them all away and Tibbs wouldn’t stir. Kit had to admire the potency of the padre’s rum.

The cot creaked and groaned as Kit stretched out, folded his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes. With nothing but the droning downpour to relax him, Kit’s thoughts turned to home, the Hound and Hare Inn on the
Trenton
Road.

His father, Daniel McQueen, a veteran of the War for Independence, had cared little for the bickering between political factions that oftentimes divided the populace. He had retired to the life of a blacksmith—honest labor, he called it. Kate McQueen, Kit’s mother, managed the inn. She had a daughter to help her while Kit labored alongside his father at the forge, working iron and learning to shape steel to his will. Kit heard once more his father’s strong, truthful voice speak in his soul, touching young Kit with words of caution and encouragement.

Captured like some living portrait in his mind, Kit watched the embers of a forge glow with life. He saw himself, a twelve-year-old boy, working the bellows. He cried out with glee as he sent a column of sparks like a whirlwind of miniature suns coruscating up into the black iron chimney.

These were good memories, the kind that anchored a man when he might be feeling hurt or lost and alone. They carried Kit into a place of rest and healing. The sound of the rain faded. Asleep, he did not even hear the storm slacken, the downpour lessen, until it became no more than a fine settling mist. Asleep, he did not hear the patter of footsteps across the puddled ground, nor could he be aware yet of the giggles and whispered asides of the children, all ten of them who had followed Juan and Mateo and Maria back to the hut. There the children crowded around the door to wait in respectful silence for the red-haired flutemaker to awaken—thirteen children with hollow reeds in their hands and hearts full of expectation.

“W
HY DO THE YOUNG
die?” Father Ramon Saucedo muttered softly. “Why does anyone die?” He stared down at the two-week-old grave of a young man who had been bitten by a cottonmouth and succumbed to the poison before reaching the village. “Joseph was my first altar boy. I myself taught him to read and write. He wanted very much to be a priest.” Father Ramon glanced at the Yankee standing at his side.

It was late afternoon and Kit had been looking for the Franciscan for the better part of an hour. He’d misinterpreted little Maria’s directions and been forced to retrace his steps after becoming lost on the edge of the very same swamps that had claimed Joseph’s life. It was only by sheer chance Kit had stumbled onto the Creek Christian burial ground where the priest was wont to visit and read from the worn, leatherbound Bible he carried.

“Answering that question is your job, Padre. Not mine,” Kit replied.

“Perhaps you are right, my young friend,” the priest conceded. “Then again, I have often suspected there is no answer. Only the search for it, as we seek the truth of our lives.” Father Ramon placed his hand over the crucifix he wore. A gentle breeze tousled his thin, silvery hair and ruffled the voluminous sleeves and hem of his coarse brown robe. “The cross is the only truth I know.” He snapped his Bible shut. He folded his arms across his bony chest and studied the Yankee he had rescued from the rising tide. “What truth do you know?”

Kit shrugged. Like most young men he intended to live forever. Thoughts of the hereafter were far from his mind. He believed in his quickness, in his strength and daring. He believed in the power of dreams and what a man might accomplish if he remained watchful and resolute.

“I believe, my friend, that I will leave tomorrow,” Kit said. “We have been hiding for three days. We dare not stay longer.”

Kit noted the padre did not try to hide his relief. He couldn’t blame the priest. Having the Yankees in the village threatened the very survival of the mission settlement. For three days, Kit and Tibbs had remained in hiding, allowing their wounds to heal until both men felt well enough to travel.

Oh, the two adventurers were still sore and hardly up to their full strength, but Tibbs had declared he was confident of their ability to make the journey home. And Kit agreed. Anyway, they were bound to find a settlement along the Georgia coast in which to heal the last of their hurts. What mattered now was getting under way. Every day they remained in the village heightened the risk of discovery.

“I will have my people prepare food for your journey,” Father Ramon told him.

“My thanks. And while you are at it, why don’t you have them return our guns?” Kit carefully watched the padre’s expression, searching his features for any sign of duplicity.

Father Ramon did glance up rather sharply, and he started to protest. But lies had no place on his lips. “Guns … yes. I suppose I must.” He sighed and hooked a thumb in the rope belt circling his waist. “I thought it best to keep them until you were ready to leave. My Creeks have learned the ways of peace, unlike most white men. I took your guns in hopes of protecting them.”

Father Ramon glanced up at the black willows and oak trees that even in this place of death were alive with the antics of the gray squirrels, chattering and scolding one another while dark-winged birds darted among the branches and multicolored butterflies fluttered lazy spirals in the warm summer air.

“Do you know,” the priest continued, “Saint Francis of Assisi could call the birds from the treetops and the animals from the depths of the forest. He would sing to them, talk to them, and tell them of the love of their creator. I have walked this clearing day after day in prayer and have yet to summon so much as a bee from a flower.” The old man in the brown robe made a soft, sibilant sound as he exhaled. Father Ramon spoke like a man questioning his belief, Kit thought to himself, yet Kit doubted the padre had even begun to tap the depths of his faith.

“You’ve made your mark, Padre. I wouldn’t worry about whether or not you can charm the birds from the treetops.”

“My mark …” Father Ramon muttered ruefully. “Is that what a man should live for? Is that what you think?”

“That or for gold. And the power it can bring.”

“I do not think you know yourself as well as you think you do. I have seen you, carving flutes for the children as they gathered at your door. The heart speaks that which lips often deny. I trust a man’s heart.” With a gesture of his hand he led the way back to the path that wound through the woods to the village.

Kit started to follow, then paused, noticing the grave marker of Augustus LaFarge. Memories of the coarse, good-humored sailor returned. Poor LaFarge, he deserved better than to drown so close to home. But there were worse places to await the unfolding of eternity than here amid the willows and oaks and pines, here where the play of the distant tide lingered on the wind, where flowers bloomed and an old priest came to pray and consider the meaning of life. At least LaFarge had a marker, which was more than could be said for the rest of the
Trenton
’s crew.

“Augustus, sleep well. You know the truth of it now, I warrant.” Kit turned and started after the padre. Father Ramon waited for him near a fallen log that had rotted away from the inside. A swarm of bees had chosen to build a hive within that brittle cover of bark.

“He lies in sanctified ground,” the priest said, nodding toward LaFarge’s grave.

Kit had to laugh. “Padre … old Augustus had a lot of attributes. But sanctified wasn’t one of them.”

“It is now.” The priest stroked his silver goatee and smiled. “I am glad I did not hand you over to Sergeant Morales.” He had begun to like this young man. Where Bill Tibbs was guarded and suspicious of every overture, Kit McQueen had ventured among the people of the village and treated the Creek with respect.

“But you won’t be sorry to see me leave, either,” Kit mentioned.

“No, but one day, perhaps you will return and—”

“Father Ramon!”

The priest straightened, a look of concern on his face. The voice that called him with such urgency belonged to little Maria.

The girl appeared, breathless, out of the green gloom at the east end of the path where the tall grass grew in patches and sunlight struggled through the moss-draped trees to illuminate the shadowy interior of the woods.

Father Ramon hurried as best he could toward the girl. Maria spied the familiar figure in the brown robe and ran to him as fast as her little brown legs could carry her.

“What is it now, my child?” the priest said as the girl ran to his open arms. Kit felt the goose bumps rise on the back of his neck. An image of the village beset by a detachment of Spanish troops from St. Augustine flashed through his mind. But the danger this afternoon came from a different source, one Kit knew only too well. The girl blurted out her message in a mixture of Spanish and Creek. Kit was unable to follow her. He waited patiently for Father Ramon to translate for him.