Matthew was silent, but he felt an arrow pierce his heart as two tears ran from Quinn’s eyes in her terribly-composed and solemn face. It was a mask, he thought, that hid tremendous suffering, more than a young girl could stand without creating a desperate fiction.
“You’re Daniel, returned to me,” she said. “I know it. I feel his spirit in you. And maybe you don’t remember everything of us…how things were…but as he gets stronger, he’ll tell you. And someday, maybe soon, you’ll remember all about Daniel Tate, and you’ll let Matthew Corbett go…because he’s just a suit of skin over the heart of my husband.” Her hand squeezed his, and she managed the saddest of smiles that drove Matthew’s arrow deeper. “I can’t ever let you go again…and we can have another child, Daniel. I’m so sorry…so sorry…I was so tore up I lost our baby. I just cried our baby’s life away, and for that I am so sorry.” She leaned toward him, her eyes glistening. “It was a boy. They told me, before they wrapped him in white linen and buried him. You remember that white linen, Daniel? For our weddin’? And how much you paid for it at the store in Jubilee?”
“White linen is expensive,” was Stamper’s comment. “Pity to bury somethin’ as expensive as that.”
Someone across the fire laughed, and Matthew saw Quinn wince as if struck by a slap across the face, and he took hold of his short-bladed sword that had likely belonged to a man now beheaded and lost to the world, and with every ounce of strength he possessed he struggled to his feet and stood in the leaping firelight with the young madwoman at his feet.
“One more word of disrespect to her,” said Matthew to Baltazar Stamper, “and I’ll run you through or die trying.”
“Let’s test that out, boy,” answered Caleb Bovie, who reached beside himself to grasp a wicked-looking sword that had probably twice the blade of Matthew’s weapon. He stood up, grinning and wild-eyed. His chest swelled out as he inhaled the swamp air, bugs and all. “Muldoon,” he said, “I’ll be on you ’fore you cock that pistol, so if I were you I’d just stand real still.”
“Don’t need to cock it.” Magnus held it up to use as a club. He took a single step toward Bovie. “Come on, let’s see if you’ve got any brains in that damn ugly head.”
Before anyone else could move, something moved in the thicket beyond.
A torchlight could be seen approaching. “Hold your tempers and everyone keep their brains in their heads,” said Stamper, as he got to his feet. Most of the other men stood up as well, and brandished firearms or swords toward the advancing unknown.
“Who comes forth?” Stamper called. A faint tremor in the man’s heavy-lunged voice told Matthew that the tales of this haunted swamp must not be fully lost on even the hardest of these men.
There was a few seconds’ pause, in which the crackling of the fire and the humming of insects were the only sounds.
Then a voice came: “Stamper?”
“I know myself, but who are you?”
More movement sounded in the thicket. The torchlight spread wider. A few of the men cocked their muskets. “Stay your triggers!” Stamper hissed. “I think I recognize that voice.” He spoke to the distance again: “We have some nervous men with guns in here, gentlemen! Kindly tell us who you are!”
“Oh, for the sake of Christ!” replied the man, much nearer now and still coming. “It’s Griff Royce and Joel Gunn! Hold your fire!”
Matthew and Magnus exchanged glances. Bovie’s attention, a short-lived beast, had turned from the approach of violence to the approach of the two Green Sea ‘captains.’ Quinn stood up, but grasped onto Matthew’s arm as if fearful the spirit of Daniel would again fly away from the body it supposedly inhabited.
In another moment the two men appeared through the tangle of vines and brush, both of them looking hollow-eyed and weary under the torchlight. Gunn was carrying the torch. Both men were armed with muskets and had knives in sheaths tucked into their trousers at the waists. They came into the circle of the fire, as the other men visibly relaxed and lowered their weapons.
“No ears yet?” Stamper asked.
“Not yet, but we’ll get ’em,” Royce answered. He and Gunn scanned the assembly, and both of them stopped at Matthew, Quinn and Magnus. “Well,” said Royce, in a voice that held a knife’s edge of tension. “What do we have here?” The pock-marked face with its square chin and high cheekbones showed the hint of a cruel—perhaps cunning—smile. The green eyes seemed full of flames. “The young man from Charles Town…Matthew Corbett, isn’t it? Magnus Muldoon the love-struck hermit and…who is this?” If his eyes indeed were full of flames, the fires reached toward Quinn. “A beauty in rags?” he asked. “Or a ragged beauty? From Rotbottom, I’m thinkin’?”
Gunn had no interest in Royce’s focus of attention; he was fixed on the sight of Matthew Corbett. “You!” he said, with a curl of contempt on his fleshy lips. “Not enough that you came in where you weren’t wanted, you had to come here?” He saw the bloody shirt. “Looks like you paid a price for it, too! I could’ve told you not to come on this hunt!”
“And Joel would’ve been right, Corbett,” said Royce, as he walked forward to stand only a few feet away from Matthew. “Dangerous place out here. Things can happen mighty fast.” He eyed the gory shirt. “I see you found that out already. What hit you?”
“Boy got himself taken by the Dead in Life,” Stamper supplied. “Accordin’ to him they came up under some boats and took quite a few Jubilee men. Boy caught an arrow but kept his head.”
“Bad wound, looks to be,” Royce went on. “Best head back to the Green Sea, you and Muldoon both.”
“I’ll live,” said Matthew, grimly. He looked at the cloth bandages on Royce’s right forearm, where the medical compress had been yesterday. To his dismay, he saw that both of Royce’s forearms were scratched and bloody, and so too were Gunn’s. If there was any evidence of scratches from Sarah Kincannon’s fingernails, they were lost amid the others. “You went through some thorns?”
“A heavy patch. There was no easy way around.” Royce held Matthew’s stare for a few seconds, and then he visibly dismissed the younger man and turned toward Stamper. “We’re not too far ahead. Saw your fire back here. Knew it couldn’t have been the skins, they wouldn’t be that stupid, but we had to come take a look. No offense meant.”
“None taken,” said Stamper. “But why’d you two leave the river?”
“We found their boat,” said Gunn, who kept spearing Matthew with his hard blue eyes. “Tried to drag it out and hide it, but the mud told the tale.”
“They’re on foot now,” Royce said. “They had a choice to make. Either swim back across and head through heavy swamp, or go northeast through the woods to the grasslands. I think they’ll likely take the easier way.”
“May I ask this question?” Seth Lott ventured, his voice mannered and quiet. “Where do they think they’re going? To freedom from the crime? Where would they ever hope to find refuge out there?” He motioned broadly toward the wilderness.
“Wild animals run ’cause it’s in their nature,” Royce answered. He had spied the snake upon the stone, and kneeling down he drew his knife and began to carve himself some meat. “They don’t know where they’re goin’. All they’re tryin’ to do is run from justice. And that damn buck Abram…drawin’ his blood into it, and makin’ them pay too.” He took a stick from one of the others, pushed the chunk of snakemeat upon its sharpened end and began to roast his meal. “I’ll tell you, if I had my way that damn Granny Pegg would be swingin’ from a rope right now, too. Seems to me she should’ve stopped Abram from runnin’, should’ve told him to face up to what he’d done. Saved us all a lot of trouble.”