“What do you want?” the earl whispered. “What in God’s name do you want?”
“I want you to take that pen and a sheet of paper and confess that you had my father killed for a horse.”
“Of course,” the earl said. “Gladly.”
Nerves twitched in his face, which was runny with calculation. He picked up a goose quill, pulled a sheet of paper closer, dipped for ink, and began to write. He finished. Signed it with a flourish. Cormac leaned forward to lift it from the desk, and the earl lunged for the pistol. He gripped the barrel, then forced open the lock, prepared to shoot. Cormac slammed the flat of the sword across his brow, and his grip loosened. Cormac pried the gun loose of the earl’s grip and tossed it to Kongo.
“That was stupid,” Cormac said.
“I’m sorry,” the earl said in a beaten voice. A thin line of blood lay open on his brow.
“No, you’re not.”
“Go ahead and shoot me,” the earl said. “But remember: one shot from that gun and I’ll have ten men in this room.”
“Yes, and they’ll find you with a hole in your head.”
The earl’s eyes were now brimming, moving to the ceiling, to the doors, to the portrait, and back to Cormac.
“Please, just leave,” he said, while Cormac read the note. “I won’t pursue this if you just leave now. Here, I’ll give you some money.” He played with a key in a locked desk drawer. “Not enough for the terrible thing that happened to your father. But—”
“Nothing changes with you, ever,” Cormac said. “You tried to pay for my mother’s death too. Do you remember that? She died under the wheels of your coach. In the mud.”
The earl looked doomed. He opened the drawer as if fumbling for money, mumbling broken words, sweating harder, and then there was another pistol in his hand.
Cormac rammed the sword into his heart.
The earl’s surprised eyes opened wider, and so did his mouth. Cormac jerked the sword free, blood spread across the ruffled shirt, and the earl’s face hit hard upon the desk. Jesus God, Cormac thought: I’ve done it. I’ve done what I came to America to do. I’ve completed the terms of the vow. Jesus God: I’m free.
Then Kongo touched his arm. “Quick,” he said. “We go.” Together, they laid the earl’s body in the shroud (his face whitening, his eyes wide). The blood was flowing now, slopping on Cormac’s hands, puddling and staining the shroud. They closed the open end around his head, tied the lumpy bundle with ropes, and lifted it together. “Quick,” Kongo said again. Cormac could feel the leaking blood as it sloshed within the shroud. He and Kongo moved its dead weight to the outside stairs that would take them to the deck and the river. Cormac heard himself panting, and for an instant he saw images of shrouded bodies on greased planks falling into the sea.
From the distance, he heard muffled shouts. As in Kongo’s plan, a fire had begun in the barn. To distract the earl’s men. To cover their flight. “Quick,” Kongo said. “Quick.” Cormac turned for a final look at the earl’s study, at the desk, the posters, the juggler’s polished balls: and saw the room’s second door open.
A woman stood there, horror on her face.
She was big with child.
Bridget Riley.
All the way here from across an ocean, from the damp earth of Ireland, from the smoke of a lost, gutted mansion: Bridget Riley herself. Cormac stepped toward her and she backed up. Kongo had his back to the doors, listening to the muffled sounds of alarm. He raised the pistol and aimed it at her. “No,” Cormac said. “Don’t kill her.” Kongo’s eyes were cold and impatient. Bridget took in the bloody sword, the pistol, the lumpy shroud, and understood what had happened.
“Don’t scream, Bridget,” Cormac said.
“Who are you?” she said, a trill of terror in her throat.
“You know me. We rode together through Ireland. And here you are, Bridget, still the earl’s whore, living in another Big House.”
“Good God,” she whispered.
“And now carrying the earl’s bastard,” Cormac said.
The noise from outside smothered her sudden wracked and hopeless weeping. Horses were whinnying. Men shouted. A distant bell was ringing.
“Don’t kill me.”
He could hear Mary Burton, another soul far from home, pleading in the same way: to him, or to Kongo, or to others who had the power to let her live or make her die. For a fraction of a moment, Mary and Bridget merged, their faces, bodies, masks, wombs. As if they were sisters. His contempt for Bridget, for the earl’s whore, for the woman who had told him her sorrowful story in Ireland, smashed against his pity. Pity for her. For the child she carried. Then he thought: If she’s carrying the earl’s child, I must kill it, and her too. To make certain that I’ve gone to the end of the line. But suppose it was a girl child? Suppose…
Kongo could no longer wait. He untied one of the cords in the shroud, went to Bridget Riley, grabbed her blouse, pulled it up over her head, exposing a laced garment covering her swelling breasts. He tied the blouse like a hood, the rope tight around her eyes. Then he stepped to the side and punched her hard. She fell without a word.
“Quick,” he said.
59.
In the black river, the skiff was pulled by the current. The earl’s body lay on the bottom of the boat, tied into its shroud, which was now heavy with rocks. Kongo stood guard at the stern, armed with the pistol and an ax, his eyes searching the river. They were passing the palisades that thrust up from the New Jersey shore. Cormac rowed desperately, trying to move them out of the grip of the current, closer to the Manhattan side, to a place of escape, but the skiff was being pulled by the black water toward the open harbor. Upriver, coming fast, they could see the bob and flicker of lights. A boat, with at least two lanterns. Coming after them. The earl’s men.
This was not in Kongo’s plan. There was no time to feel what he’d done, taking one life, sparing two. Sparing Bridget. Sparing a child. Almost surely the earl’s child. Did it matter? It might. The tribe ordered pursuit “to the end of the line.” Where was the end of the earl’s line? Not now, Cormac thought. No time to think. Time only to row, adding my own feeble power to the force of the river.
Until Kongo told him to stop rowing. Then he grabbed the upper part of the wrapped shroud and Cormac the bottom. The boat wobbled as they heaved. And the shroud sank into the black waters.
Upriver, the light was now larger. Yellow lantern light. The lamp of vengeance and punishment. Coming so fast that it must have five or six men rowing together.
Kongo glanced around, and then gripped the ax.
“We swim,” he said.
Cormac remembered swimming in rock pools in Ireland, in wide streams over hot summers, but he was afraid of the northern waters of the river. I can’t die. Not now, when I’m free.
But Kongo left no room for argument. He smashed at the keel with the ax. Sharp splitting sounds. Water erupted from one hole like a geyser. Followed by another, and a third. The boat slowed, the black water rose, and they were in the river.
The winter river shocked Cormac. He felt absolutely alone now, sinking and sinking, water filling nose and mouth, as he plunged into a black, shapeless, bone-freezing world. The sword was hooked into the back of his belt and seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. He beat hard with his hands and arms and kicked with his legs, but he seemed not to move. And then he started rising. He saw the smeared roof of the sky. He felt his long coat swollen with water, the sword digging into his flesh. He tried to wriggle an arm free of the coat, but water filled his nose and mouth. He now felt nothing in his hands. Or his feet. Down he plunged, down and down, ripped by the current. Thinking: I am dead. Thinking: I now join the earl. Thinking: I have done what I came to do. But now I die. Far from home. Thinking: Revenge drowns.