The feel of the rhythmic, thundering hooves as she galloped and the cold wind stinging her bare face mixed with her conviction that she would…she must…find John safe. The ride would end with her arms around her child, holding him safely and snugly to her heart. Time enough later—much, much later—to talk to him about his Dad. For now, she had to get back to him. The intensity and the craving to see him again was as vital and elementary as the need to take her next breath.
She was only a mile from home when she slowed Dan to a walk—just to catch her breath, and to give him a moment to gather himself for the mad gallop down the main drive of the cottage. It wouldn’t do to kill the poor horse and have to run the rest of the way on foot. She didn’t expect to be able to see any sign of the cottage from this distance. In all the times she’d ridden back from the village and strained for that first, welcoming sign—usually a thin needle of smoke to indicate a fire in the hearth—she had never caught a sign of it for another half mile or more.
Which is why, when she saw the long funnel of black smoke jutting up into the sky above where she knew the cottage should be she sat up suddenly straight in the saddle, stopping her horse dead in the road.
The house was burning.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sarah dug her heels hard into Dan’s side and the horse bolted from a walk into a gallop. Sarah never saw the ground rushing by beneath her in a blur of green and brown or the two small stonewalls that she and the horse vaulted over as easily as if they’d been puddles on a street. Her eyes strained to see the house appear on the horizon over the next hill. She willed the house to materialize intact and the smoke, which grew blacker and more pronounced the closer she came, to dissipate to reveal that the cottage still stood.
When she crested the final hill on the homeward drive to the cottage, she sucked in a hard breath. The sound more than anything startled her horse, who shied violently, nearly unseating her. And she never took her eyes off the sight at the end of the hilclass="underline" Cairn Cottage, fully engulfed in flames, and the forecourt pocked with lifeless bodies scattered like sacks of grain carelessly dropped from a wagon.
Her energy slowly seeped from her. Her nearly maniacal urgency to be at the cottage gave way to an involuntary hesitancy to confirm her worst suspicions. Was it hope or certainty that she would find him safe that fueled her on the crazy gut-wrenching miles from Balinagh? Her weight rested solidly in the saddle as she surveyed the terrible scene below. And Dan came to a halt.
She tried to control her breathing as she watched the forecourt with the motionless bodies and the raging fire. A part of her almost believed she could feel the heat. She stared, stunned and paralyzed. A sound came from just over her left shoulder but she didn’t turn.
Gavin was laboring up the hill with his horse and wagon.
“Cor, Missus,” he said, gasping for breath as if he’d run alongside the horses himself. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
His words shook her out of the moment and she gathered her reins tightly in her hands and pushed Dan down the hill with her legs. Once she was moving, she allowed herself to think the impossible: maybe he was still alive. The thought galvanized her into a full gallop down the hill toward the cottage, the appalled shouts of Gavin ringing in her ears behind her.
She dismounted before Dan even downshifted out of the canter. The closer she got to the farm, she could see that many of the lifeless forms were animals—mostly their sheep. From the looks of it, all of them.
Sarah stepped over several carcasses, each one mottled bright red against the dirty white of their wool, and went to the dead man lying face down in the center of the courtyard. Her gun in her hand, she made a quick scan of the forecourt before touching him. She knelt and turned him over. It was Seamus, his blue eyes open and unseeing, his throat cut in a bloodless white arc. Tears welled up in her eyes. She got a flashback of Seamus walking with John across the forecourt to the barn, his gait stooped and halting, his large hand resting lightly on her boy’s shoulder. She closed his eyes and saw her hand was shaking badly.
Sarah felt the heat from the terrible inferno at her back as she jumped up to run to the stable. She jerked open the door but the barn was empty except for the bodies of the two little goats that had helped sustain them for the weeks and months since they had arrived. The sight of the little dead goats, for some reason, triggered a feeling of blinding rage in Sarah. She left the barn and ran to the paddock. It was empty except for more dead sheep.
“John!” she screamed, her eyes scanning the entrance to the pasture and the little back courtyard outside the kitchen door. “John Matthew!”
Gavin brought the wagon into the forecourt but his horses panicked at the proximity of the fire and he fought to keep them calm. He leapt out, grabbed their bridles and led them to the far side of the barn, all the while looking over his shoulder at the carnage and the dead body in the middle of the courtyard.
Sarah approached the cottage. One of John’s dogs lay dead in her path.
Quickly, Gavin unhooked the horses from the wagon, pushed them into the barn—not bothering to find a stall—and shut the door. He ran to Sarah who was kneeling by the little dog and looking at the burning cottage, her face a mask of unreadable agony.
“Missus,” he said, breathlessly, “they’ll’ve taken the boy.”
She didn’t take her eyes off the burning cottage.
“This is what they do,” she said tonelessly.
“No, they won’t have burned him in there,” Gavin said. He touched her arm gingerly. “You weren’t here when they came, so they’ll’ve taken him with them.”
A look of hope flashed across her face and she turned to him.
He nodded. “I’m sure of it,” he said. He looked at the burning house as a large piece of timber came crashing down in front of them, making them both take a step back. “He’s not in there.”
Sarah looked back at the cottage and then at the dead puppy on the ground. She shook her head.
“There’s also a woman,” she said. “Dierdre.”
“Mrs. McClenny?” Gavin looked back at Seamus lying on the ground. “Aye, well.” He shook his head and looked at the cottage. “That’s not good,” he admitted.
There was nothing they could do for the cottage but let it burn. They had nothing with which to put out the flames and it was too dangerous to attempt to retrieve any belongings from inside. Gavin went back to the horses, Dan included, and untacked and fed them. He put each of them in stalls, dragged the dead goats and the sheep to a small trench behind the barn, and began digging a larger trench for Seamus.
Sarah sat in the unharnessed wagon as if in a trance and watched the cottage burn. What sun there had ever been that day had long disappeared behind a cloud, not to return. She held the gun in her hands, tracing the lines, the numbers, the indentations on it like one would a treasured talisman. Her eyes never left the cottage.
She watched the outline of the porch crumble and she remembered sitting out on those steps just three months ago with David. She remembered watching the stars from those steps, and the feel of his warm lips on hers. Her eyes travelled to the chimney that jutted from the middle of the little cottage and she remembered the nights spent sitting around its hearth, the three of them laughing, playing cards, telling stories.
The frame around the smaller living room window in front gave way and broke into pieces on the ground. She expected to see angry tongues of flame emerge but instead, a plume of grey smoke belched out into the early evening air. As she watched, she realized she was praying. Praying for guidance, for relief from pain, for hope that her boy was alive.