“I’ll be back before the evening comes,” he said, turning toward his horse. “Pack what ye can. That horse is his, I expect?” There was a fine-looking bay gelding twitching his ears under the sparse shelter of a leafless tulip tree; clearly it didn’t belong to the Hardman household.
“Yes.”
“I’ll need to use that one to move the body. But I’ll bring another to help carry you and your bairns.”
Silvia blinked and pushed a lank strand of hair behind her ear.
“Where are we going?”
He grinned at her—reassuringly, he hoped.
“I’m takin’ ye to meet my mother.”
IAN TOOK A bit of time riding toward Philadelphia. There was no shortage of suitable places for what he had in mind, but it was more than likely that he’d have to do it in the dark. Once he’d found it—a thicket of mixed oak and pine, with a towering single pine behind it that would be visible against even the night sky—he dismounted and scrabbled about until he found what he wanted. This he stuffed into his saddlebag and spurred up along the Philadelphia road.
He managed to hire a sturdy horse with a kind eye from a farm two miles out and returned with it to find the Hardmans wearing everything they possessed, with the remainder of their meager belongings wrapped up in a ratty quilt tied with string. Mrs. Hardman, he noticed, had a crudely made knife with a string-wrapped handle thrust through her belt. This seemed slightly odd for a professed Friend, but then he realized that it was likely her only knife, used for chopping vegetables, butchering, and digging in the garden. Likely she’d never considered stabbing anyone with it.
If she had, he thought, grunting with effort as he and Silvia manhandled the Justice over the saddle of his own horse, this fellow would have died long before now.
“All right,” he said, jerking the rope that bound the corpse tight. “Mrs. Hardman—”
“Call me Silvia, Friend,” she said. “And thee is Ian?”
“I am,” he said, and patted her shoulder gently. “Ian Murray. Can ye ride at all, Silvia?”
“I haven’t, for some years,” she said, biting her lip as she examined the horse he intended for her. “But I will.”
“Aye. This fellow doesna seem a bad sort, and ye won’t be galloping at all, so dinna fash too much about it. So. You’ll ride him, wi’ Prudence behind ye and Chastity before.” He thought the three of them together didn’t equal his weight, and he was not a burly man.
“Wait a moment. Thee should take this, I think.” Silvia reached down and picked up a leather valise from the ground. It wasn’t new but had clearly been a piece of some quality in its prime. It smelled of apples.
“Och,” he said, realizing. He glanced at the Justice’s horse, which wasn’t at all happy with its burden, but not disposed to create a ruckus—not yet, anyway. “It’s his?”
“Yes. He—brought us food. Every time he came.”
Her eye lingered on the awkward shape, but her face was unreadable.
“That’s no a bad epitaph,” he told her, taking the valise. “When my time comes, I hope mine is as good. Mount up. I’ll take care of this.”
He helped her up, then lifted Prudence, who squealed with excitement, and Chastity, who just stared, round-eyed, and sucked her thumb hard.
“Patience, ye’ll come wi’ me, aye?” He tied the bundle of possessions at the back of his saddle, boosted Patience up in front, then swung up behind her, a rope to the bridle of the Justice’s horse in one hand. He clicked his tongue to the horses and the grim little cavalcade lurched off into the lightly falling snow. None of the Hardmans looked back.
Ian did, feeling obscurely that a place where people had dwelt for a long time deserved at least a word of farewell.
The house was small and gray and beaten, its hearth cold and the fire long dead. And yet it had sheltered a family, had witnessed a meeting of the Continental generals, had given Uncle Jamie refuge when he needed it.
“Bidh failbh ann a sith,” he said quietly to the house. “Go back to the earth in peace. You have done well.”
Patience clutched the pommel like grim death and he could feel her shivering against him, despite the several layers of flimsy garments she wore.
“Have ye ever been on a horse before, lass?”
She nodded, breathless.
“Daddy would put me and Pru up on his nag now and then. But we never did more than walk round the yard.”
“Well, that’s something. Ehm … your father’s dead, I take it?”
“Maybe,” she said sadly. “Mummy thinks the militia shot him because they thought he was a Loyalist. Me and Pru think maybe Indians took him. But he’s been gone since before Chastity was born, so he’s likely dead. Otherwise, don’t you think he would have got free and come back to us?”
“I do,” Ian assured her. “But ken, Indians can be good folk. I’m a Mohawk, myself.”
“Thee is?” She turned round in the saddle to stare at him, with a combination of interest and horror.
“I am.” He tapped the tattooed lines that ran across his cheekbones. “They adopted me, and I lived wi’ them for some time. I stayed wi’ them willingly, mind—but I did come back to my family at last. Maybe your da will do the same.”
And if he did, he wondered, looking at the wraithlike shapes of Silvia Hardman and her daughters on the horse ahead of him, what would he do when he found out the shifts his absence had put his wife to?
And what shifts has Emily been put to, without a man? She’d have people, though … A Mohawk woman would never be alone in the way Silvia Hardman was alone, and that thought comforted him slightly.
When they reached the Philadelphia road, he dismounted carefully, led his horse up to Silvia’s, and tied a neck rope to the pommel of her saddle, in case Patience should lose hold of the reins.
“Ye’ll go on ahead,” he said to Silvia, and pointed down the road, which was broad, clear, and empty in the waning light. “Ye mustn’t be anywhere near me while I’m taking care of Mr. Fredericks.”
She shuddered at the name, casting a haunted glance back at the humped shape on the third horse’s back.
“With luck, I’ll catch ye up within half an hour,” he said. “There’s nay moon, but it’s a snow-lit sky; I think ye’ll be able to see the road, even after full dark. If anyone offers to molest ye, tell them your husband is behind ye and ride on. Give them your bundle if they want it, but don’t let them get ye off the horses.”
“Yes.” Her voice was high with fear, and she coughed to lower it. “We will. We won’t, I mean. Thank thee, Ian.”
HE TOOK THEM half a mile down the Philadelphia road, to be sure they could manage the horses. They were only walking, but ye never kent when something might happen, and he warned them about paying attention and keeping hold of the reins.
Patience’s eyes were round as saucers when he slid off and tucked the reins into her hands.
“Alone?” she said, in a very small voice. “I’m riding … alone?”
“Not for long,” he assured her. “And your mam will be holding the rope. I’ll be back, quick as I can.”