Instead, he had done Marlowe a favor by escorting Elizabeth Tinling and Lucy to the Tinling-the Marlowe-house in Marlowe’s coach, which had been sent down for that purpose. He was well armed, Marlowe had seen to that, with a brace of fine pistols and a musket, and he sat in silence on the seat across from the women. No one said a word. They were careful not to meet one another’s eyes. It was not a comfortable trip.
When at last they arrived at Marlowe’s home, having encountered no one on the road, George spoke.
“Might I have a horse? Any will do. I do not know when I will be able to return it.”
Elizabeth glared at him, made no effort to conceal her dislike. “The horses here are not mine to let out, but under the circumstances I think Captain Marlowe would not mind.”
“Thank you.” He turned to go, then paused and turned back. He had the urge to reach out and hug her, an all-but-irrepressible need for some human contact, a touch, an embrace. But he knew the kind of rebuff he would suffer if he tried.
“Elizabeth…I am sorry. I can say no more than that.”
She had looked at him for a long and awkward moment. “I am sorry too,” she had said, then turned and disappeared into the house.
He slowed the horse to a walk as the loom of the fire from the Wilkenson house became visible over the trees. The road he had taken ran roughly parallel to the river, an almost direct route from Marlowe’s home to the Wilkensons’. The last time he had ridden that way was when they had returned from burning Marlowe’s tobacco. Now it was his own family suffering the ravages of the flame.
He turned the horse down the long road, past the oaks, to the front of the house. The second floor had collapsed. The entire place looked more like a giant bonfire than a home, and even from one hundred feet away he could feel the blast of the heat.
He stopped and watched as the fire consumed the only home he had ever known. He imagined his father was in there somewhere. His funereal pyre was made up of all the things that three generations of Wilkensons had struggled to accumulate in that new world, all the dreams of wealth that had first brought them over the wide ocean.
George shielded his eyes from the blaze and looked off to the side of the house. The stable was still intact. The fire had not managed to jump across the fifty feet of close-cropped grass that separated it from the main house. That much at least was a relief, for the Wilkensons’ horses were the only thing left on earth that George cared about.
He flicked the reins against his horse’s neck and the animal headed off toward the stable, taking skittish steps away from the burning house and looking at the fire in wide-eyed fear. Under a less-skilled rider the horse would have bolted already, but George Wilkenson had a certain authority with the beasts. It had always been a source of pride for him, one of the few.
Around the far side of the burning building he caught a movement, a flickering shadow against the yellow and red flames. He pulled the horse to a stop. There was someone there, a figure darting away from the house. He watched the
man, black against the background of the fire. He moved with rapid, jerky movements. It had to be terribly hot so close to the flames.
And then the figure abandoned whatever he was trying to do and raced away from the flames, toward the stable, but George’s vision was damaged from looking into the fire and he lost sight of him.
He swung the horse over to the nearest stand of trees, slid off, looped the reins around a sapling. He stepped across the lawn, toward where the man had disappeared, his footfalls on the grass nearly silent and masked by the crackling fire.
He saw the person at last, just outside the door to the stable, hunched over, his attention on whatever he was doing. George pulled one of the pistols from his belt, one of Marlowe’s pistols, a beautiful weapon, light and balanced in the hand, and stepped closer.
He was five feet away before the man sensed that he was not alone. He turned, his face illuminated by the burning house.
“What the devil…” George could think of nothing else to say. It was the shifty little man whom Matthew had hired to run the river sloop. “Ripley…?”
“Oh, Mr. Wilkenson…” Ripley’s rat eyes darted to the pistol and then to George’s face. His tongue flicked out and licked his lips.
“God, but ain’t it horrible, what they done?” Ripley continued, nodding toward the burning house, his eyes never leaving George’s. “I told your father, ‘You don’t want to have no business with them pirates,’ but your father, he wouldn’t listen, not to no one.”
“Where are they? The pirates?”
“They gone back to their ship, I reckon. Anchored just off the Finch place, down by Hog Island.” Ripley half turned and pointed across the field. He was being very helpful.
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh, well, when I heard, I come to see if I could help, maybe defend the place. I didn’t reckon it would just be aban
doned, but I was too late. I…ah…I tried to save what I could, I got some of it, tried to save it for you and Mrs. Wilkenson and the others, so’s you don’t lose everything…”
George’s eyes moved down to Ripley’s feet. There was a horse blanket lying on the grass, half tied in a bundle. Spilling out of it were various bits of silver service, an old clock with gold inlay, a couple of china cups.
George looked up at Ripley, astounded at the depths of the man’s depravity. “You were looting. You were looting my home.”
“No, no, I was trying to save a few things from them fucking pirates, beg your pardon…”
George raised the pistol up until it was pointing at Ripley’s forehead, just three feet away. Ripley took a tentative step back, and George cocked the lock.
“No, Mr. Wilkenson, I was-”
Those words, that pathetic, lying protest, were the last words that former pirate quartermaster Ezekiel Ripley ever uttered. George pulled the trigger. The gun jolted in his hand, and he had a vague image through the smoke of Ripley blown backward, arms flung out, onto the grass.
The gun dropped to George’s side. He took a few steps forward and looked down at Ripley’s earthly remains, sprawled out flat, dead eyes staring at the sky. Much as Matthew had been.
He had thought about this moment many times, what it would be like to kill a human being. He had always imagined terror, revulsion, guilt. But he felt none of that. Just a vague curiosity, no more. He wondered if this was how Marlowe had felt after putting a bullet in Matthew. He never seemed to have been stricken with guilt or any form of remorse.
George stood over the body and reloaded the pistol. It seemed likely that he would need it again before the night was through. He went into the stable, pushed the stable doors open wide, and opened all of the stall doors as well. If the stables did catch fire, the horses would be able to get out.
He found Marlowe’s horse, mounted it, and rode toward the fields. He paused to look down Ripley’s body one last time. He still felt nothing. He touched the horse’s flanks with his heels and headed off in the wake of the pirate horde.
It was easy enough to follow them. The trail was blazed with burning buildings and markers in the form of discarded bottles and loot dropped or tossed aside along the road that ran beside the river. The mill was all but gone, as was the Page house and the Nelson house. The fires were burning down at last, the flames having sucked all of the life they could from the wood and plaster and cloth until there was no more left to consume.
The Finch house was nearly dark, with only an orange ember here or there, a punctuation of light in that dark, charred heap. There was nothing left to indicate that the huge, smoldering fire pit on top of the small rise had once been a house.
George could smell the now familiar odor of a burnt house, could hear the crackling of the burning timber, but here the crickets were chirping again, and he could smell the woods and the mud near the river as well. Things were already returning to their natural state.