where Orion grew up?” Her voice was weak, but she sounded very much herself. “Then—it wasn’t a dream—”
“What wasn’t?”
“The Hand of the Lord. Bargest. He was standing by my bed. Not that I ever saw him in my life, but he looked exactly like”—her voice stuck a little on his name—“as Orion described him to me.”
“He spoke to you of him, then?”
“Heavens, yes. I’ve been helping him edit those nasty sermons of his for a year and a half now. Poisonous, dirty-minded, and so vain.” She leaned against the fence-rails: Abigail felt them shift in their sockets, smelled the moldy stink of the blanket she wore. “I asked him, why did he put up with that man’s interference. Constant finicking—nothing ever right. Everything we’d settle on, Orion would ride back there for approval and there was always something wrong. I knew he was getting nothing for it. He said, I owe the Reverend more than I can ever say.”
“What he owed him,” said Abigail softly, “is that the Reverend knew that Orion had killed a girl here. Two girls.”
She heard the hiss of Rebecca’s breath, and felt slight movement through the fence-rail. Wondered if her friend had so far forgotten her conversion, as to cross herself.
Rebecca whispered, “He is mad.”
“Bargest, or Orion?”
They moved off again, following the line of fence-rails. “I think—both. Orion—it wasn’t a nightmare, was it?” Rebecca stumbled, and Abigail, immediately behind her, caught her.
“No. I think Bargest told him that Mrs. Pentyre was one of the Nine Daughters of Eve—”
“God, not that horrible thing! He polished that sermon like a jewel—Orion said he must have given it once or twice a year, the whole time Orion was growing up here. Simply vile! All Woman’s fault, that Man sinned—” She stumbled again, with a soft sob of pain.
“Here, m’am, this won’t do.” Muldoon’s voice sounded very close, and by the swish of clothing and the fence-rail brambles, Abigail guessed he’d picked Rebecca up again. “Up you come. You good for another piece, then, Mrs. A?”
Abigail sighed. “Lead on.”
It was harder to speak softly enough for safety, and still be heard. She whispered, “Gilead’s about ten miles from Townsend, but we must stick close to the Salem road. John and others will be coming. I know they’ll be coming.”
“Well, if we start wanderin’ about in the woods we’ve had it for sure,” remarked Muldoon matter-of-factly.
The fence became a stone wall, and they followed the wall in the blackness. The harsh wind carried the smell of open fields and smoke. Behind them, Gilead was a cluster of coals around the dimming ruby of the blockhouse. The trees on their right muttered like live things disturbed in their sleep. Abigail said, “They can’t let us escape.”
And Muldoon said, “Aye. That they can’t.”
“Pentyre owns most of the land under the Gilead fields,” she explained softly, as the young sergeant helped her over the wall. “Bargest was swindled when he bought the place, it sounds like. The case has been in the courts for years—”
“I know. Half those sermons were about how the Chosen of the Lord is being persecuted for his beliefs—”
“For his belief that he can do whatever he likes, maybe—including bigamy and fornication, which Pentyre had him up for as well. Perdita was her husband’s heir, of course. The next heir would never come back to this country to straighten things out. Bargest sent Pentyre a letter, threatening him and Perdita with murder by the Sons of Liberty. Signed with one of John’s names, which he must have got off a pamphlet.”
“Fly old duck,” muttered Muldoon. “You got to admit, ’tis clever.”
“If he’s so clever,” murmured Rebecca, “will he have his men waiting for us at the road?”
Abigail felt as if she were eight years old again, and that her brother had struck her in the wind with a chunk of firewood. Sick, and cold, and suddenly too tired to move another foot. “They’ll have found the horses—”
“That shanty’s a bit off the track,” said the sergeant, as they moved on. “Watch it here, m’am—” A hand groped for her elbow in the dark, supported her where the ground turned to a morass whose surface ice crunched sharply underfoot. “As I said, we can’t leave the road. And if we don’t get ’em, sure they’ll catch us by daylight come mornin’. I been watchin’ for torches coming this way from the village, and seen none, but that doesn’t mean they’re not usin’ a dark-lantern. We’ll just have to take a