Rebecca Wentworth's Distraction (15 page)

Sanborn ran back into his room to grab his own pistols and musket. When he emerged again, at least half-dressed now, he looked down the street toward the nearest garrison, the blockhouse. Nearly everyone that side of town must have been within, for there were only two or three people hurrying along the road. The officer of horse troop rode up and down the central street, sword in hand, calling out advice and moving stragglers along.

“Captain Carlyle!” Sanborn called out as he rushed toward the garrison. Carlyle rode up to him. “Daniel Sanborn,” Sanborn said and held his hand up to the captain. “We met here a few years ago, at Mrs. Sinclair's, and shared a noggin or two.”

Carlyle looked at him as if he were mad. Then a light came into his face. “Oh yes,” he said. “How are you, Sanborn?” They shook hands. “Don't dally in the street, man, or you'll be knocked in the head before you're fully awake.”

“I know. But tell me, sir, what's the true danger?” He looked around. The town was oddly peaceful now.

“War parties. Four or five. Two other towns west attacked before dawn. Quickly, and then they move on. No idea how many dead or captured.”

“And your own men?”

“I've fewer than eight of my own company of horse left. Many were out patrolling yesterday or guarding work and haying parties. They had not yet returned when the attacks began. The savages have skirted the fort, penetrated the scout lines, and gone directly into settlements. Other of my men are sounding the warnings elsewhere, while some remain in garrison.”

“No way of knowing where the savages will attack next.”

“Of course not, but Blackstone's right in the line of fire.” “I see. Can I help?”

“Just take your place, Sanborn. We're making sure everyone is out of the dwellings. Good day to you. Hurry in. Now's the time for prayer.”

He rode off to strike on doors and call out to any laggards. Or anyone fool enough to think it best to fight alone for his property. These alarums of the captain and his men were all that could be heard from within the blockhouse. Everyone inside had taken up a position, either as a musketeer or as a supplier of powder, shot, flints, pipes, tobacco, rum, water, weapons, or medicinal aid. They all had rehearsed this before. Mr. Prescott, who lived in this part of town, took charge within the blockhouse Sanborn had fled to. It was very crowded and still smelled of sleep and unwashed clothing. Rebecca was helping the women with heating water from the well in the cellar and the distribution of dried cornmeal for breakfast. The women who had been making soap yesterday now reheated pots of boiling soft soap to pour down on the enemy. Very few spoke. All were watchful or busy with their tasks.

An hour passed like that. No longer could they hear the captain or his men. No one now knew where the soldiers were. Eventually there was talk of a scouting party. There was talk of returning to their dwellings. There were warnings about savages in hiding until the garrisons emptied once again. A man said he had once seen them hiding by dwellings within bushes they carried before them. But otherwise the waiting endured mostly in silence.

Rebecca, who in this extremity was free to help, brought Sanborn some water and meal.

“Will the Prescotts return to Portsmouth now, if we survive this?” he asked her in a harsh whisper.

“It's impossible to tell,” she whispered in turn.

“Then you must plan to return with me. I'm sure your former guardians would take you in against such clear danger.”

“I don't think they would.”

“Why not? Don't be silly. You can't stay here after all this. And it is only a matter of time before you are attacked again. An hour, a day, a month. It will surely happen.”

“It will be up to the Prescotts,” she said and turned away to continue her deliveries.

He almost went after her, but thought better of it and maintained his post at a loophole on the second floor. He followed Captain Carlyle's advice and began to say the Lord's Prayer to himself, over and over.

But still nothing happened. By midmorning discipline began to relax. Several men, heavily armed, crept out among the back gardens and fields to have a look around. Then the smell of smoke penetrated the garrison.

When the party of men returned, they reported that one by one the houses and barns were being set on fire. They had not been able to see anyone, savage or soldier. Almost immediately after reporting this, several shots rang out.

“Must be Carlyle and his men,” said Prescott, who had been listening to the report.

“That may be,” another man Sanborn did not know said. He looked to have authority, the authority of a large man, perhaps a former soldier himself. “But I say we go out and protect our homes. If there were many of them, they would have attacked the garrisons by now.”

“We cannot say that for sure,” another man said.

Sanborn agreed. The last thing he wanted to do in the face of the fires was to go about the town looking for Indians with torches or fire arrows or cartloads of burning faggots.

There were more sporadic gunshots. Every man with a gun was straining to catch a glimpse of the enemy to shoot at. Desperate to get a shot, two men went up on the roof. The smell of smoke grew stronger.

Finally Prescott gathered a dozen men who volunteered to set out to add their firepower to the captain's, or whomever it was who had been shooting. It was a very dangerous move, and Sanborn did not volunteer. The lands of his chief interest offered no dwellings or barns to burn. If he survived this, he kept telling himself, he would leave Blackstone as soon as it was safe to do so. What in the name of Hades was he doing here in the first place? The town had turned to bedlam.

Everyone inside the garrisons had to wait. There was enough gunfire that people said that the other garrison must have also sent men out. They could see a few houses that had not been set afire yet. Most of everything else in sight was burning, and now the smell of burning animal flesh was in the air.

Within another hour wounded men were being brought in, gunshot mostly. The French had seen to it that the Indians would be well supplied. Outside, the shooting was dying down, returning to sporadic pops and booms again. The prevailing sense was one of helpless confusion.

Captain Carlyle, bleeding from a head wound, was brought in. “They are retreating,” he said two or three times, as if that were all he could say. But he might have been reporting accurately after all, rather than in delirium, for soon the gunfire stopped almost completely. More wounded arrived, and the smell of smoke began to give way on a noon breeze to the close smell of blood and sweat and wounds enclosed within the building.

Rebecca and Mrs. Prescott were among the women nursing the wounded men. One of her suitors was among them, Sanborn discovered from Mrs. Prescott. He did not know whether she even liked the young man. She had never said a word of suitors.

It was decided that the rest of the men should go out into the town in parties of five or six, paying special attention to any buildings not yet burning. It was too late to save anything that had already been torched. Sanborn went along with one of the parties. They met no Indians; Captain Carlyle had been right.

But Sanborn's party made a gruesome discovery. Mr. Prescott's mutilated body lying among three of his men, all of them scalped. Only one of the bodies appeared to be alive, but it was doubtful the man would live long. For some reason a strange thought surprised him: How much were the French paying for English scalps? The English were paying fifty pounds for Indian scalps, about ten times the bounty on a wolf. Sanborn now believed that when these men went out to join Captain Carlyle, they were engaging a larger party than Carlyle had anticipated. Had more men left the garrison, more would have been killed and wounded. Why had the savages not attacked the garrisons then? A sufficient number of Indians might have overwhelmed them. They might have had many valuable captives, including women and children.

The devastation to property was massive, and that seemed to be their principal purpose, by the look of it. They simply must have assessed quickly how to do the most damage with fewest casualties of their own. They had succeeded admirably, if, Sanborn thought, one might admire the devil. He was confused to see no bodies of slain Indians as well, given the whole morning of attacks, affrays, and skirmishes. He asked Mr. Congreve, who led his party, why this was the case.

“They conceal their losses,” he explained, “by crawling under fire to their slain comrades, fixing a tump line to the body, and cautiously dragging it to the rear.”

And what of the Prescotts now? Who would tell Mrs. Prescott? Congreve ordered the men to carry Prescott's body to the burial ground and begin digging a grave. No one wanted his wife or children to see him. They would explain afterward, and beg forgiveness. But it was a necessity, given the circumstances. Other men of stature in the town started coming into the burial ground as the men dug the grave. Congreve explained what had happened, and there was general agreement that this was best, if highly irregular. An elderly man began to read the burial service in a monotone voice.

They would have to tell his widow that he had been disfigured, but without details, and that it was best for no family members to see him. They would assure her, though they were unsure themselves, that the disfigurements had been perpetrated upon a corpse, not a living man. They would tell her that he died quickly from gunshots and that the barbarisms were committed later, after his party had been killed and scattered. And they would hold for him a proper Christian service, Congreve explained, and then added, “In the midst of life we are in death.”

It was crazy of Prescott to have endangered himself, Sanborn thought, as they took turns by twos digging the grave. He was no hero, no young blood, but a middle-aged merchant and proprietor. What had compelled him to do such a thing? What askew sense of duty? He should have sent only others, even Sanborn himself. That would have made more sense, he thought. Sanborn had to admit that he was greatly relieved. He was no soldier or fighter, but, yes, even sending one such as himself would have made more sense.

Chapter 23

A
DAY LATER
Sanborn was ready to leave. The captain, much bandaged about the head, was leaving as well, and one of his men with him. His lieutenant was to gather and take charge of the small scouting company he had raised. Carlyle was heading to Portsmouth to report to the governor on the toll of recent skirmishes and war raids. He was hoping that an army would be raised for several major attacks against the Indians and Canada. It was hopeless, he said, unless they blunted the enemy with a series of offensive strikes. Head wound and all, he would make his case.

That morning before they left, Sanborn went to the Prescotts. By some strange twist of the violence, theirs was one of the few dwellings left unburned. Mrs. Prescott had taken to her bedchamber upon hearing about her husband and had not come out. Her children nursed her. A neighboring woman who had come to help out reported that she was delirious.

Immediately, Sanborn found Rebecca, who had been set free by the rigors and terrors of the attack, and took her aside. He told her he was about to leave for Portsmouth.

“You must come with me,” he said firmly. “Get a few things, your portfolio, other necessities. I have a horse for you outside.”

“But, Mrs. Prescott—”

“The woman is delirious. Understandably. Her children are here to help her. Other townsfolk. I'm sure she and her children will leave this place once she regains herself. And if you stay here there is no telling when the people might turn on you again, perhaps even extend your blame to this savagery just endured. Their minds were distracted by enthusiasm, and now by destruction and terror. But you and I must go now. The captain is leaving for Portsmouth and we may accompany him.” He touched his hand to her back as if to propel her toward her room and things.

She turned against him. “I can't go now—” she started to say.

“Rebecca! You're going with us. If the captain and I have to bind you and throw you over my packhorse. You'll be well looked after in Portsmouth. I'll see to it, I promise. Now get your things.”

She looked at him boldly, staring into his eyes. He did not flinch but stared back. He could feel her resistance. He was nearing desperation, ready to throw her to the floor if he had to.

Perhaps she saw or felt his desperate determination. She relaxed her whole frame finally, the rigidity gone out of her. But she did not move.

“I am, I do not doubt, saving your life,” he said. “Along with my own. I'll do what I have to in order to see you out of here. Now, please,” he repeated each word slowly and firmly, “get . . . your . . . things.”

Without another word or a look, she went upstairs. When she returned she wore a dark traveling cloak and carried a bag full of he knew not what—clothing, he expected, and her beloved drawings. She refused to speak to him further. He headed them out the door.

S
ANBORN,
Rebecca, Captain Carlyle, and one Sergeant Grimke rode out of town on horseback. Sanborn looked back at the village. Smoke still rose above the remains of dwellings and barns; planting fields were in ruins. He assured himself that these disheartened and wounded people would care nothing now for the missing Rebecca.

It would be all they could do to rebuild their lives here or flee in desperation.

The men on horseback were heavily armed. Rebecca, hidden in her great hooded cloak, rode like a man astride Sanborn's packhorse. They rode quickly, the dogs loping ahead of them, every mile east a milestone to safety. They stopped briefly and only to water the horses, dismounting and fanning out in a tight perimeter, dropping on one knee, muskets at the ready, while Rebecca tended the drinking horses. Along their road, the way stations were closed up, empty, against further raids. One station, about halfway to Portsmouth, had been burned to the ground, smoldering, still, like so many buildings at Blackstone.

Stopping to water the horses shortly after the smoldering way station, they formed a perimeter while Rebecca led the horses to the side of the stream. Carlyle's dogs, who were trained to patrol the perimeter about thirty feet in front of the men, stopped their movement and, heads and ears lowered, teeth bared, fur up, began to growl in the direction of a large boulder perhaps another dozen feet beyond the dogs.

“Get down, Rebecca!” Carlyle called to her, “and hold the horses well.”

Without a word, Rebecca wrapped the reins doubly about her wrists and, leaving her hooded back to them, crouched low along the bank.

The dogs stood their ground, awaiting Carlyle's orders. The three men turned their muskets in the boulder's direction and Carlyle called out “Choboy!” Both dogs broke into a dash for the boulder, growling and barking furiously. Their fearsomeness flushed out four Indians in ambuscade. All three men in Carlyle's party fired at once and two of the enemy dropped.

The dogs pursued the other two into the immediate woods, but Carlyle soon called them back. On their return, the dogs stopped over the two bodies, as if to test them for life, and then sat beside the slain Indians waiting for Carlyle to come up.

“Stay with Rebecca,” Carlyle said to Sanborn, who was recharging his musket. Carlyle and Grimke approached the bodies cautiously.

Sanborn went to Rebecca, who had not moved from her position, and spoke her name. He put his hand on her and she looked up at him from beneath her hood. “It's over,” he said.

She stood up slowly and handed his horse to him. “Yours and mine became awfully jumpy,” she said. That was all. She tried to get the other three horses to drink, but they were too wary.

Sanborn looked over to Carlyle and Grimke. The sergeant was just finishing with the scalp of the second Indian.

“Don't turn around yet,” Sanborn told Rebecca.

The men finished with the bodies and the dogs patrolled until they were appeased that nothing more lurked nearby. Carlyle and Grimke came over to Rebecca and Sanborn.

“Have they watered?” Carlyle asked. His dogs joined them and slurped lustily at the stream. Grimke washed his hands.

“These two just now. Finally,” Rebecca said, handing over the two horses.

“Then mount up and we'll be off,” Carlyle said.

They did not stop to camp or rest. They pushed the horses without mercy, assuming all their lives—the three men, the woman, the horses, the trusty dogs—depended on relentless flight.