Time's Convert

“Those cowards just stood there, and watched while we fed off people they knew?” He would never have let de Clermont feed on Vanderslice or Cuthbert or Dr. Otto.

“You take the little one,” de Clermont said, dropping a few coins by his soldier’s face. “I’ll have the other.”

* * *

—

BY THE TIME THEY REACHED the Connecticut River, Marcus had fed from old men and young men, sick men and hale men, criminals and runaways and even a rotund innkeeper who never woke up from his fireside slumbers while Marcus drank. There were a few tragic accidents when hunger got the better of him, and one rage-filled attack on a man who had been raping his way across New England and who even de Clermont agreed deserved to die.

Marcus and Matthew boarded a ferry and crossed the water. When they landed on the other side, Marcus realized that he was close to Hadley. He looked at de Clermont, unsure of why his father had brought him here.

“You should see it again,” de Clermont said, “through new eyes.”

But it was Marcus’s nose that first registered the familiarity of the place. It was filled with the scents of fall in western Massachusetts—leaf mold and pumpkins, cider presses filled with apples, woodsmoke from chimneys—long before the MacNeil farm came into view.

The place was in much better condition than it had been on the day Marcus killed his father.

A woman laughed. It wasn’t his mother’s laughter—he would have known that silvery, infrequent sound in a heartbeat. He stopped his horse to see who lived here now, and de Clermont stopped with him.

A young woman of twenty or so came from the henhouse. She was blond, sturdy looking and strong, with a red-and-white apron over a blue dress that was simple but clean. She had a basket of eggs in one arm, and a pail of milk slung over the other.

“Ma!” the woman called out. “The hens laid! There are enough eggs to make custard for Oliver!”

It was his sister. This young woman—she was his sister.

“Patience.” Marcus kicked his horse and started forward.

“It’s your decision whether or not you speak to your family,” de Clermont said. “But remember: You can’t tell them what you’ve become. They wouldn’t understand. And you can’t remain here, Marcus. Hadley is too small to harbor a wearh. People will know you’re different.”

Then his mother came from the back door of the house. She was older, her hair white, and even at a distance Marcus could see the wrinkles that were etched into her skin. Still, she didn’t look as tired as the last time he had seen her. In her arms was a baby wrapped in a homespun blanket. Patience kissed it on the forehead, talking to it with the rapt adoration that new mothers lavished on their children.

My nephew, Marcus realized. Oliver.

Catherine, Patience, and Oliver formed a small family knot around the door. They were happy. Healthy. Laughing. Marcus remembered when fear and pain hung over the house in a dark pall. Somehow, joy had returned when Obadiah and Marcus departed.

Marcus’s heart stopped in a spasm of grief for what might have been. Then it started up again.

This was no longer his family. Marcus did not belong in Hadley anymore.

But he had made it possible for his mother and sister to find a new life for themselves. Marcus hoped that Patience’s man—if she still had one and he had not been killed in the war—was good and kind.

Marcus turned his horse’s head away from the farm.

“Who is that?” Patience’s question floated through the air. Had he not been a wearh, Marcus might not have been able to hear her.

“It looks like—” his mother began. She stopped, seeming to consider whether her eyes were playing tricks.

Marcus faced resolutely forward, eyes on the horizon.

“No. I was mistaken,” Catherine said, her voice tinged with sadness.

“He’s not coming home, Ma,” Patience said. “Not ever.”

Catherine’s sigh was the last thing Marcus heard before he put all that he once was and might have been behind him.

22

Infant

NOVEMBER 1781

Portsmouth’s harbor was filled with ships waiting to load and unload their cargo. Though it was well past midnight, the docks still bustled with activity.

“See if you can find a ship called the Aréthuse,” de Clermont told Marcus, passing him the horse’s reins. “I’ll ask at the tavern to see if anyone’s spotted her.”

“How big?” Marcus studied the sloops, schooners, brigantines, and whaleboats.

“Big enough to make it across the Atlantic.” De Clermont pointed to a ship at the very edge of the harbor. “There. That’s her.”

Marcus squinted into the dark, trying to make out the name. But it was the French flag flying off the stern that convinced him de Clermont was right.

De Clermont jumped into a small skiff and pulled Marcus in after him. The sailor on watch was horribly drunk and barely noticed that the vessel in his charge had been taken. De Clermont made quick work of reaching the Aréthuse, pulling mightily on the oars so that the boat’s pointed bow rose up with every stroke.

When they reached the ship, someone flung a rope ladder over the side.

“Climb,” de Clermont commanded, holding the skiff steady against the hull.

Marcus eyed the ship’s steep side with concern.

“I’ll fall off into the sea!” he protested.

“It’s a long way, and the water is cold. You’re better off taking your chances on the ladder.” A disembodied voice floated down to them. Then, a square-jawed, clean-shaven face appeared over the railing, wreathed in shoulder-length golden hair that had escaped from the cocked hat perched, backward, on his head. “Hello, Uncle.”

“Gallowglass.” De Clermont touched his hat in greeting.

“And who’s this with you?” Gallowglass asked, squinting at Marcus with suspicion.

“Let’s get him up there before you start questioning him.” De Clermont took Marcus by the scruff of the neck and lifted him up the first two rungs of the rope ladder while the skiff rocked underneath them.

When he reached the top, Marcus fell onto the deck in a dizzy heap. He was not, it turned out, very good with heights anymore. He closed his eyes to let the sea and sky return to their proper positions. When he opened them, there was a giant wearh hovering over him.

“Jesus!” Marcus scrambled away, afraid for his life. He might be hard to kill now, but he was no match for this creature.

“Christ and his apostles. Don’t be daft, boy,” Gallowglass said with a snort. “I’m hardly going to attack my own cousin.”

“Cousin?” The family connection did nothing to soothe Marcus’s fears. In his experience, family members often posed the greatest danger.

An arm the size of a howitzer shot forward, palm open, bent at the elbow. Marcus remembered how John Russell and de Clermont had said their greetings and taken their farewells. Wearhs must all be Masons, he thought—or perhaps this was a French custom?

Marcus gingerly clasped the proffered arm, elbow to elbow, aware that his cousin could break it like a twig. Anxious at the prospect of further injury, Marcus’s fingers tightened on Gallowglass’s muscular arm.

“Easy there, pup.” Gallowglass’s eyes creased in warning as he lifted Marcus to his feet.

“Sorry. Don’t seem to know my own strength these days,” Marcus mumbled, embarrassed by his inexperience.

“Hmph.” Gallowglass’s mouth tightened as he released his grip.

De Clermont swung himself from the ladder to the deck with the lithe self-assurance of a tiger. The man he called Gallowglass turned and, in a blur of fists, landed two blows to de Clermont’s jaw.

Cousin or no cousin, Marcus’s protective instincts howled to life and he launched himself at the stranger. Gallowglass’s paw held him off with lazy ease.

“You’ll be wanting to ripen a bit more before you take me on,” Gallowglass advised Marcus.

“Stand down, Marcus,” de Clermont said once he had realigned his jaw and worked it open and closed a few times.

“What the hell were you thinking, Uncle, making a baby in the middle of a war?” Gallowglass demanded of de Clermont.