The Night Angel (36 page)

“Thank you, sir.” Falconer offered his hand. “Can you tell me when that might be?”

“Hard to say. The regular circuit judge has been taken ill. Word is, his replacement’s tied up with a big trial off in Norfolk. I’ll see what I can do about your Bible.”

An hour or so after the doctor left, the jailer returned with dinner. The salt bacon smelled rancid even when cooked. Nevertheless, he accepted the tin plate and dug in, trying to eat and swallow before the taste hit his mouth. It was a trick he had learned as a child, and it served him well enough now.

The jailer hung about the door, watching Falconer eat. “Don’t reckon you’d be chewing any harder if it was a steak.”

Falconer finished the pork and washed the taste away with a cup full of water. “I’ve eaten worse.”

“That so?”

Even from the distance of a few feet, Falconer could identify the source of the jailer’s pungent breath—it was the sickly sweet odor of applejack, a brandy made from distilling rotten fruit.

The jailer asked, “Seen the inside of lotsa jails, have you?”

“No.” The grits and collards he could eat more slowly. “This is the first time.”

“Sorta interesting, you asking Doc for a Bible.” The jailer used the weeping stone wall to scratch his back. “On account of how you got the look of danger about you.”

Falconer set his plate aside and rose to his feet. He approached the jailer, who backed up swiftly. The jailer snapped, “You keep your distance, else you’ll find ten kinds of trouble coming down on your head.”

Falconer kept his voice calm. “Danger was the code I lived by, and fury my compass setting. But the Lord broke through and called me by name. He would do the same for you.”

The jailer’s laugh rang through the dripping cellblock. “We got us a preacher man locked up down here!”

“The Lord is calling you,” Falconer repeated quietly. “And God is saying, ‘Turn, turn from your wicked ways. Repent and come to me.’ ”

“Then I reckon God’s wasting His breath.” The jailer’s grin revealed more gaps than yellowed teeth. His breath wheezed a sickly odor of old wickedness. “My pappy always said I was infected with evil at birth.”

“As were we all,” Falconer replied. “Adam saw to that. Just as Jesus saw to our finally being made clean. Healed of the eternal stain.”

“You got an answer to near ’bout everything, don’t you?” The jailer was no longer smiling. “Here’s one I bet you ain’t figured out. How you gonna keep from dancing to the hangman’s tune?”

Falconer watched the jailer’s jangling departure. When the outer door clanged shut, he returned to his bunk. For the first time since his imprisonment, the rain did not bother him.

Chapter 29

Once again, Nathan Baring’s mother recovered from her most recent spell of sickness. Nathan began arriving sooner at the Gavi home and staying longer. When Serafina put her brushes aside for the day, they took a turn around the square together. Not even the incessant rain halted their outings. For Serafina, these were the only times she was freed from her atelier. The princess’s portrait was taking shape. Serafina had completed the sketches and now moved on to the larger sheet, penciling in the lines that her colors would soon begin to fill. Yet here the mystery was as oblique as it had been transparent with Falconer. The princess was not merely aloof. She presented to the outside world a cold, hard barrier, one built resolutely over years of bitter solitude.

Serafina did not wish to dwell upon the woman’s enclosed nature. In her sketches, she had begun examining what
might
have been. Who this woman possibly could have become, given a different role in life. After all, the princess had merely by her coming revealed both a courageous heart and an independent spirit. She sought to remain her own woman despite all the restrictions and unhappiness that surrounded her. In return for the document bearing the royal seal, Serafina offered the princess the only gift she could.

She painted the woman with love. She sought to reveal the heart that might have emerged under different circumstances.

Serafina worked through the midday hour and stopped only when the princess said, “I must depart. I am required to attend a formal dinner for the French ambassador.” As the woman spoke the clock sounded five times.

Serafina bounded to her feet. “Your Highness, I am most dreadfully sorry.”

The woman actually smiled. “Did you not hear your mother warn you of the time?”

“My mother came into the room?”

“Three times. I signaled her away.”

“Highness, I . . .”

“I have been observing you as you worked,” the princess said thoughtfully. “It is uncommon extraordinary to see a young lady with such astonishing beauty be so totally given over to a profession that requires selflessness.”

Serafina nodded her understanding but could think of no appropriate answer.

“Might I be permitted to see your work?”

“It is not yet finished, Highness.”

“Nonetheless, I wish to see what you are doing with such focused intent.”

Serafina backed away with a small curtsy. “If you wish, madam.”

“Thank you.”

As the princess rose and stepped around the easel, Serafina watched the woman study the painting. For long minutes she stood in silence, her expression giving nothing away.

Then the princess whispered, “Oh, to be faced with all the roads not taken.”

“You do not care for it? Highness, I could—”

The princess silenced Serafina with an upraised hand.

“You, my dear young woman, have a gift. It is not just a gift of the eye and the hand. Artists the world around have that.” She faced Serafina, and her visage was unclouded for the very first time. “You have been gifted with a caring heart. And for your sharing of that unique gift, my dear, I am deeply grateful.”

The princess swept up her dress and moved toward the front door, where her attendant stood. She nodded her farewell to Serafina’s parents, then stopped in the doorway and asked, “When do you expect to complete this work?”

“A week at most, Highness. Perhaps less.”

“I shall count this among my most treasured possessions.” She started to turn away, then added, “I only wish it were possible for you and I to become friends.”

Night or day meant little inside the jail. The horse thief moaned over his injuries, until the jailer reminded him he was due to hang in three days’ time. “You won’t be bothering nobody’s sleep much longer,” he said with a cackle. Gradually the man’s cell went silent, until the only sounds in the gloom were the sputtering torches and the constant drip of rain.

There were two jailers. The one who watched over them at night scarcely ever moved from his chair in the front room. The day jailer fed them and made his rounds with a surly sense of responsibility and dark humor.

Late that afternoon, the jailer returned to Falconer’s cell. The man’s greasy hair fell over his forehead, partly masking the intense gleam in his eyes. Falconer saw how the man had to fight himself to come forward, but said nothing. Falconer rose to stand before the bars.

The jailer’s face contorted, and Falconer knew he wanted to joke, to curse, to scorn the prisoner and his faith. But the same force that dragged him forward kept the jailer silent. Instead, he merely handed the Bible through the bars.

Falconer accepted the book with a nod. He pitched his voice low, saying what he had been thinking about since the jailer’s last departure. “One of the writers of this holy Book was a man named Paul. Some of what he wrote was sent from a prison just like this one.” Falconer turned the pages as he spoke. “You’d think he would complain about being jailed for his beliefs. But Paul felt very different about things. Would you like to hear what he wrote to the church in Philippi?”

The jailer did not respond. Nor did Falconer expect him to. Falconer shifted the Book about until the torchlight falling through the bars illuminated the page, then read, “‘He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ: Even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart; inasmuch as both in my bonds, and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace. For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ. And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more. . . .”’

Falconer lowered the Bible. “He is imprisoned, yet he writes of
love
and
hope
and
joy
. What makes it possible for him to speak this way? Isn’t that a wonder worth examining?”

Falconer came even closer to the bars. He could see the sweat glistening on the stubble covering the man’s hollowed cheeks. Close enough to hear the ragged breathing and see the pain in his eyes. And the hunger.

“Every breath has fresh meaning for followers of Christ. Be it a breath drawn in prison or in the open air, it is still a breath of freedom.” He lifted the Book into the space between them. “In Paul’s earlier days, the Bible tells us that he went about breathing out murderous threats. That defined me as well. You know that is true. One look at my face and you know I’ve been where you are now, and still further into the pit. Now look at me. Jailed, stripped of everything, yet I still am able to breathe out my love of God.”

The jailer’s trembling tore his whisper to shreds. “I done so much wrong.”

“Tell God, brother. He wants to hear you and heal you.” Falconer paused a moment, then added, “Will you let me pray with you?”

The jailer did not kneel. Instead, he came crashing to his knees. “I done so much wrong!”

Falconer reached through the bars and rested a hand on the man’s filthy tunic. “Lord, O Lord, hear the call of this penitent sinner. He confesses his sins before you, and he is sorry.”

“Yes, Lord! I’m foul! I’m sorry!”

“Tell me your name, brother.”

“Carl.”

“Brother Carl, do you confess your sins before God and man?”

The jailer gripped the bars so fiercely the cell door rattled. “Heart, don’t fail me!”

“Do you ask the heavenly Father for forgiveness?”

The jailer raised his head a fraction, revealing his terror. “Will He give it to me?”

Only such a man as Falconer could meet that man’s gaze. “Ask Him and see.”

“Lord, O Lord, take away my awful sin!”

“Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?”

“If He’ll take the likes of me, I do, I do!”

Falconer reached for his cup and extended his hand through the bars. “Then I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Rise, brother Carl. Rise up. That’s it. I embrace you in the faith, my brother. Yes. Now go and sin no more.”

Jeb Saunders sat beside his brother Cody on the bench that fronted the tippling inn. Rain fell in a steady colorless sheet off the roof ’s overhang. Cody leaned back against the wall and snored gently. The man had an animal’s ability to store up sleep. He acted when he needed to, and there wasn’t anybody Jeb would rather have guarding his back in a scrap. But when there was nothing doing, Cody could ease his mind off the day as easy as a dog curling up in front of a good fire. Jeb had always envied his brother’s ability to let the day go. Jeb was too much a thinker to take things so easy. And there weren’t many days that had gone down as hard as these last few. Tied to a hardscrabble town like Danville, snared and held fast, they might as well be trapped in the same cage as Falconer.

A man stepped out of the rain. He thumped his boots to clear off the red muck, slipped off his slouch hat, and started down the wooden sidewalk toward Jeb.

Jeb whistled once. It was little more than a quick intake of breath, but enough to draw Cody from sleep. Without moving, his brother tracked Jeb’s gaze to the approaching man. Cody remained leaning back, his eyes covered by the brim of his hat. His hand eased around to grip the handle of his pistol. Jeb heard the soft click of the trigger being pulled back.

The stranger approached them, his face giving away nothing. He carried with him a certain aura, of one who enjoyed bringing death.

He was neither tall nor particularly big. Yet his frame held a massive quality, a tension just waiting to uncoil and strike. “You must be the Saunders brothers.”