He encircled her tightly, her soft lower ribs shifting under the force, and then he moved to open the cloth of his breeches. He kissed her, biting her hard on the lip, as though to distract her from the pain, the tearing of the small veil of tissue between her legs, the skin straining for an instant, like the belly of a silvered trout, torn on a barbed lure.
After that there was very little pain, only the sensation of dying by slow measures, the blood swimming to the surface of her skin like resurrected bounty brought up from some polar sea. She could feel the beginnings of pressure marks on her arms and thighs, the scalding of her flesh by the uncut bristles of his face. She wound her arms more tightly around his neck, impressing herself onto him, promising to wear the unintended bruises like the flags of a new country.
CHAPTER 21
THE HOUSE WAS darkening, the sky where the sun had set banded with the filtered, wavering red of calamitous fires. George Afton, his face reflected crookedly in the fractured glass of the common room window, looked out once more into the yard but saw no one approaching. He caught in his reflection the broad streaks of soot he had purposefully rubbed onto his cheeks, and the first downy growth of chin whiskers erupting, and thought he had succeeded in making himself appear older than he was.
He hunkered back close to the hearth, feeding the low flames carefully with small, dry pieces of wood, keeping the smoke through the chimney thin and unobtrusive. His job, he knew, was to wait, but the hours spent alone had eaten away at his spleen until his hands trembled on the grip of the pouring ladle, causing the molten lead within to spill. He had been filling bullet molds for hours and had a small pile of twenty or so musket balls cooled, ready to be trimmed.
He steadied his hands, carefully pouring the lead into the grooves in the molds, but the shadows were making it difficult to be exact. He replaced the ladle by the hearth, setting aside the mold blocks. Taking up a knife he began to trim the tits, the extruded tips of lead, from the group of already set balls, and thought about his hunger. The supply of meat and bread was almost gone and his stomach pinched painfully; he had had nothing to eat since that morning. He tried humming a bit of a song, a habit he had long had, to distract himself from discomfort. He was always singing or mumbling a tune, especially in times of danger or stress, and it brought no end of annoyance to his most recent employer.
He pulled his woolen cap farther down towards his ears, causing his hair to form a ragged fringe over his eyes, further obscuring his face. He thought longingly about sneaking a pinch of bread from the remaining hoard of food. The house where he tended the fire had been deserted by a family ravaged by the pox and there was not so much as a speck of flour left in the larder. There were no beds either, or quilts; the house was quite abandoned. But then, that was precisely why it had been chosen: an empty house hidden by dense trees and bracken; an intact roof and a working flue; but most important, within walking distance of the Welshman. Remembering to check the cooling molds, he turned towards the hearth and felt the rustling swell of a breeze at his back.
Wheeling around, he saw a dark form slipping into the room over the threshold. “Jesu!” he shrieked, losing his balance off his haunches onto the floor.
Brudloe stood at the open door, the door that had been greased by George himself into silence. “I fuckin’ told you to be alert, boy, didn’t I?” When he spoke, his parted lips showed the gap of the two top missing teeth, and he strode to the fire, slinging his flintlock against the wall. “Didn’t I tell you?”
George nodded and made more room for Brudloe at the fire. The man smelled of hibernating animals, George thought, the warm, half-rancid odors rolling off him in waves. Brudloe nodded for food, and relieved to have an excuse to move, George went to the oilskin and unwrapped the last of the supplies. He was glad he had suppressed his desire to take some of it; Brudloe would have known, and there would have been trouble.
Taking off his outer coat and wiping the dirt from his hands on his greased leggings, Brudloe tore off a piece of bread sideways into his mouth. His top lip had been split from the attack that took his teeth, and he had an odd habit of distractedly running the tip of his tongue through the opening like a water spaniel.
Brudloe had told George of the raid he had been compelled to join by his captors, a large tribe of Abenakis, against a hunting band of Iroquois. They had by stealth attacked during the hour before dawn, the skirmish lasting less than a quarter of an hour but bloody in the extreme. He had stabbed a young buck as he lay sleeping, but had missed the vital killing spot, and the warrior’s hands came up thrashing to gouge out Brudloe’s eyes. Brudloe’s hands closed around the Indian’s throat and squeezed with increasing fury, even when the man under him had picked up a rock, smashing Brudloe in the face repeatedly. He felt his teeth break away, swallowing his own blood and part of his lip, but he kept the pressure on until he felt the gristle of the man’s windpipe break apart and collapse under his hands.
After that raid, Brudloe had said, he was considered a sanoba, a “true man,” and was not watched over as a captive. Soon after, he made his escape, walking for weeks, from settlement to settlement, until he was taken in by French trappers and then carted southward back to Massachusetts by various tradesmen. He said he had been lucky not to have been shot or bludgeoned to death by the trappers as he had worn native clothing, his hair shorn to a topknot. Even now, with the war lock partially hacked off, his scalp looked exposed and mangy.
George realized he had been staring at Brudloe’s head when he felt the older man’s eyes on his own grime-covered face. Brudloe scrutinized him in a way that made George feel it prudent, while with his partner, not to close his eyes in true sleep without a witness. George turned away, continuing to trim the lead musket balls, and willed his pumping heart to slow. It was in Salem, three days before, that he had been placed in Brudloe’s hands as an accomplice to the murder of one man. The Royalist agent with whom Brudloe had stayed had given assurances that George was up for the task: a pack mule who worked on the cheap, and who would keep his mouth shut afterwards. But since then, Brudloe would often look at him as though reconfiguring a complicated, vexing puzzle.
George asked, “Did you see the Welshman?”
“I saw him,” Brudloe said. His upper lip parted obscenely and George realized with a jolt that the man, in fact, was smiling. “I watched him for hours. In and out of the barn like a fox in a hole. I could’ve shot him a dozen times over from where I perched. But he wasn’t alone.”
Brudloe tossed George the remainder of the bread and, getting up, walked to the window, his back to the room. He regarded the fast-fading light, scanning the yard like a sentry, and said, “Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow’s the day if I have to slit every throat in the house to do it.”
A wind, shearing up the trees in the yard, blew leaves over the open threshold. Slowly, almost thoughtfully, he kicked the door closed with the toe of one boot before sauntering back to the fire. He sat resting against the wall and, sliding the flintlock across the floor to George, said, “Clean it.”