The Fiddler's Gun Read online

  Fin listened at the window to trying to hear what was going on. She couldn’t make out words, just broken sounds. Carmaline was talking to the scarred soldier and she didn’t look pleased with what he was telling her. Then Carmaline turned and caught up her skirts in her hands and huffed toward the dining hall. Fin rushed to the door to meet her.

  “Phinea, the soldiers demand we grant them room and board. How soon can you feed them?” asked Carmaline, her face flushed with anger.

  Fin balked. “Sister Carmaline we can’t! That man, he’s—”

  “He’s prepared to take what he wants by force and burn our home if we don’t accommodate him. Now, do as I say, child!” ordered Carmaline.

  Fin’s mouth worked for words. She couldn’t believe what was happening. Carmaline hurried out the door and waved the soldiers to follow her into the dining hall. Fin ran into the kitchen to escape notice. She listened in horror as the door opened and boots clomped in. She heard the clatter of muskets being propped against the wall as they came through the door. Chairs scraped the floor and men’s voices filled the room.

  “I’m starving,” said a voice from the table.

  “The food will be ready soon,” said Carmaline before she hurried into the kitchen.

  Fin was backed up against the wall. She looked at Carmaline and shook her head back and forth. She couldn’t go out there. He’d see her. He’d remember. She couldn’t.

  “Phinea, hurry up! These men are hungry and we’ve no reason to make them more so,” said Carmaline. “I’m going to fetch Sister Hilde from the chapel and prepare beds. Get the food on the table and everything will be fine.”

  Without looking at Fin again, Sister Carmaline hurried out of the room and left the building. Fin was alone with them—with him.

  From the other room she heard their voices, grumbling and fussing at each other.

  “Get on with the bloody meal!” one called out.

  She had to move, had to act. She tried to shake off her fear and called back, “Almost ready, just few minutes.” She gathered her wits and went to check the stew. It was ready. She hurried to the oven and removed the loaves of bread. The voices in the other room were restless and growing angry. She looked around for bowls and her eyes fell on the fiddle case. Betsy was in there. She should load Betsy just in case he recognized her. At least she’d be ready this time. She softly plucked the case from under the cupboard and placed it on the tabletop. She lifted the lid and Betsy stared up at her. The engravings on the barrel seemed to smile. Fin reached out slowly, hesitant to touch it. She knew how to load a musket, knew how to shoot one; Peter had taught her. But she’d never shot a blunderbuss. They didn’t call them “hand cannons” for nothing.

  The barrel was over an inch in diameter, and it wasn’t made to load with a single ball like a musket. It was made to scattershot anything that was packed into it: rocks, metal, salt, anything you could find. She looked around for something to load it with. She ran to the shelves where the spices were kept and shook the tins and bottles, looking for something hard enough to be dangerous.

  “What’s going on in there!” called a voice from the other room.

  “Just finishing up,” she called back.

  She couldn’t find anything. Then she remembered. She put her hand in her pocket and brought out a handful of nails. She picked up Betsy, dumped powder from the horn into the barrel, dropped in the nails, then tore off a piece of her shirt and stuffed it in as wadding. She pulled out the rod and packed the barrel. It was done. She lay Betsy back down in her case, closed her eyes, and tried to slow her breathing.

  “Where’s the bloody food?” called an angry voice.

  “Coming!” shouted Fin. There was nothing left to stall over. She was going to have to go out there. She closed the fiddle case.

  “Well, looky here,” said a sharp, cruel voice from the doorway. It was him. It was him, and there was no mistaking the recognition in his eye. He scrunched up his face to blink then came into the room. Fin couldn’t move. He was grinning. The sounds and smells of that night came back to her in terrifying flashes. The smell of his companion burning on the fire. His sharp cry of pain as Bartimaeus’s blade scarred him.

  “What’s going on in there?” called a voice from the other room.

  “Quiet!” shouted the scarred soldier without taking his eye off her. The eye winked at her again and looked her up and down, his smile widened.

  “Unfinished business we got, eh?” he said, almost a whisper. Fin backed up against the table. He advanced. Two quick steps and he had her throat in his hand, squeezing it until she could scarcely breathe.

  “What’s wrong, lassie?” His voice was lowered but cruel. “No sport left now that your old man ain’t around to blind me other eye?” He heaved his words out on billows of rotten breath. Spittle flew from his lips. Fin closed her eyes. It was happening again. “Make a sound and those men will arrest you and everyone else in this traitor’s nest of a town.”

  Her hands searched the tabletop for Betsy. The case was to her left. She reached out her hand, but she was too far away; she couldn’t reach it. Then her right hand felt something long and cold. A kitchen knife. She found the handle and thrust the knife into his chest. His good eye bulged and rolled madly. His mouth opened and closed, gasped for air. Then he fell forward onto her and she suppressed a cry as he slid to the ground. She dropped the knife and it clattered on the floor. The soldier rolled onto his back and clawed at his chest, working for air. She heard a sickening wheeze from the wound. Hellish, liquid sounds escaped his mouth.

  “Sergeant?” called a voice from the dining hall.

  They’d be coming through the door any second. Fin threw open the fiddle case and grabbed Betsy. There was no turning back now. She would not hang like Bartimaeus. She hurried to the door and peeked out. The soldiers had all set their muskets against the wall next to the front door, at least ten feet from the nearest man and fifteen feet from her. Five soldiers. One shot from Betsy. One shot each from six muskets—if she could get to them in time—if they were even loaded. It was madness. She stood at the doorway while her mind raced to think of another option. But there was no time. The scrape of a chair on the floor and the clomping of boots coming toward the kitchen made the choice for her. A shadow fell in the doorway, a man was coming. Fin took a long breath and stepped out into the dining hall.

  The approaching man stopped in his tracks. Confusion spread across his face. Fin stood in front of him and slowly raised Betsy.

  “What—” The soldier took a step back and Fin pulled the trigger. Betsy exploded into the dining room. The redcoat in front of her collapsed instantly. Two more at the table fell back screaming, one with a hole in his neck, the other bleeding from his chest. Fin threw Betsy aside and ran for the door. One dead already, three dying.

  One of the two soldiers at the table, snapped out of his shock and realized Fin was heading for the muskets. He raced her for the door. Fin got there first, picked up a musket, and thrust the bayonet into the man’s belly. He opened his mouth in a silent, agonized plea. She pulled the trigger and the musket blew him back onto the table. She threw down the weapon and picked up the next one. The last soldier was still sitting at the table with a look of horror and surprise on his face. He was no older than Peter. She leveled the musket at him.

  “No.” He said it softly and put his hands in the air.

  But Fin was lost. She pulled the trigger.

  One of the wounded men groaned and spat blood onto the floor in front of her. Shouts were coming from the courtyard. She could barely see through the smoke in the room, and the acrid tang of gunpowder was sweet in her nostrils. The man on the floor cried for help. Fin picked up another musket and put it to her shoulder. The wounded man pulled himself up and braced himself on the table with one hand. With his other hand he drew a knife from his belt and pointed it at her. He twisted his face into a hateful snarl that vanished in smoke when Fin pulled the trigger.

  The door o
pened behind her and she turned. Sister Carmaline was in the doorway, peering into the smoke-filled room. Fin emerged from the haze like a ghost. Her face blank, her hands and clothes splashed red. Sister Carmaline looked at her in horror and then her eyes fell to the floor and saw the dead. She rushed in to examine them. Sister Hilde ran into the room and looked around.

  “What have you done?” shouted Hilde. “What have you done?”

  Outside in the courtyard the younger children were crying. Several of the older boys were running up to the dining hall to get a look at what had happened. Sister Hilde turned and herded the children away. Fin walked across the dining hall and picked up Betsy.

  Sister Carmaline looked up from one of the dead men. “Are you hurt, Phinea?”

  Fin didn’t answer. She went into the kitchen and put Betsy away. She latched the case, picked it up, and walked to the door.

  “Phinea, where are you going?” said Carmaline.

  Fin stopped.

  “They’ll come for me, like they did for Bartimaeus,” she said. “I’m leaving.” Then she walked out the door. In the courtyard the children stared at her open-mouthed. She walked passed them and through the gate.

  People were coming out of houses all down the street and edging their way toward the orphanage, trying to see what the gunshots had been about. Some stared at Fin in her blood-spattered clothes. Others rushed passed her.

  When she passed Mr. Hickory’s house, he was standing outside.

  “You hurt, Miss Button?” he called to her.

  She didn’t answer and walked away. Peter was waiting. Mr. Hickory stared after her then turned and jogged down the road toward the orphanage.

  What have you done? Sister Hilde’s words. Her life was ruined. She couldn’t marry Peter. She couldn’t live with him on a farm outside of town. Not now, not anymore. She’d murdered six men. Six British soldiers. If she didn’t leave, they’d come for her. If she hid, they’d tear the town apart to find her. This was what Bartimaeus felt—and he chose to stay. Fin couldn’t do that, wouldn’t do that. This is what it’s like to be truly alone, she thought, to be empty of hope, cut off, lost, with no road home. This is what it feels like to be abandoned by God. All the devils in hell between.

  Fin reached the spot where the road turned off toward a green field surrounding a freshly built house with a nearly finished porch, and she stopped. Peter was down there. He was waiting for her. But how could she explain it to him? What could she say? She couldn’t bear to see him, to see the look on his face when she told him she had to leave. She didn’t want to see that beautiful green field that until an hour ago nurtured the seeds of her future and dreams. She wanted to forget that she’d ever been happy. She wanted to forget that Peter loved her. She wanted to forget that she’d ever stood in her bell tower and seen the trees stretching across the world to the horizon, and she wanted to forget she’d ever longed to go out and see what lay beyond it. She was alone and empty, and so she ran. She turned east and fled into the vast Georgia wild.

  Part II

  Across that Foamy Deep

  CHAPTER XIII

  Fin staggered through a grey world of leaf-barren trees, each step carrying her farther from the riven life behind her. She kept near the roads and hid in the hollows or behind trees when a rider or wagon passed. Each time she heard someone approach, she expected soldiers, but none ever appeared. Night came on and still she walked, by moonlight, shivering in the damp and cold. When the moon passed out of the sky, she settled down onto a stone jutting out of the hillside and attempted to sleep, but couldn’t. She opened the fiddle case and lifted the instrument to her neck. She tried to play, but her shaking hands wouldn’t allow it. She wanted to find a way, like Bartimaeus, to turn pain into beauty, but she scarcely believed the world held beauty at all, much less that she could create or add to it. She laid the fiddle back in its velvet cradle and latched the case, and soon dawn began to warm the sky.

  She climbed to her feet and picked up the fiddle case then crested the hill to look down on the waking city of Savannah. She intended to lose herself there, to drown her old life, to forget. If there were any beauty left for her, she would find it in forgetting.

  With the lightening of the horizon came sounds on the breeze, first of knockers-up rapping with their poles and calling the city to life, then of bells and wagons on cobblestone and roosters crowing. The city awoke by slow degrees as she descended from the hills, and when she reached the first cobbled streets it had come fully awake. But all the wonder it stirred when last she saw it was gone. Now the city was a nightmare of suspecting eyes and threatening glances as if she wore her crimes upon her like a brand. The sight of soldiers induced beads of sweat to her face no matter how often she told herself they could not know. In her ragged clothes she drew distasteful stares from tidier, more properly dressed folk, and she felt a degree of relief when she emerged at last from the town proper and onto the clamoring waterfront.

  The streets bustled with commerce. Sailors sang cadence as they muscled capstans and loaded their holds. Wagons and horses weaved and darted up and down the streets like ants on a broken mound. Vendors hawked everything from fruits to firearms, and laborers loaded and unloaded goods from the world across. Men of all colors, smells, and tongues busied themselves around her: black men with downcast eyes and broad backs, hairy white men with taut round bellies tanned dark by the sun, long-coated gentlemen with monocled eyes and stuffy airs. Shirtless sailors called out orders from toothless mouths and hefted crates with their sinewy, tattooed arms. The only things most of them seemed to have in common were a lack of couth and a precise command of vulgarity.

  Hundreds of ships clogged the harbor. Their thousand masts jutted into the sky like the withered trees of a dead forest. Great merchant vessels lined the piers, and men heaved crates, pallets, and sacks filled with sundry exotics out of every hold. Other ships lay at anchor in the harbor and ferried goods to shore by smaller vessels and barges. The smells of salt, fish, and sweat ripened the air. This was the life Bartimaeus had known when he was young. Fin devoured it. She was drawn to it as if from among the crates of mysterious cargo she might reclaim his company from the stuffy closet of grief.

  She set down the fiddle case next to a lamppost and sat on it to observe the comings and goings around her. At first, everything appeared chaotic, but gradually she began to see patterns emerge from the madness. Spectacled clerks counted goods and scurried between the dock and their shipping companies to deliver accountings of what was loaded or unloaded. Sailors delivered their goods to warehouses as directed by the proper dock masters; then most visited the shipping offices for pay. Couriers delivered mail in marked satchels. Captains argued over and paid docking fees and money-clerks received them and scrawled the collections down. Pickpockets strolled casually through the crowd, bumping into people and begging pardon with sly grins. For hours, she watched and tried to imagine her own place out among them all.

  When night came, she ducked beneath the dock and looked for a place to sleep. Ragged forms lurked in the darkness. Men gaunt as the dead and clothed in sackcloth huddled in shadows and stared at her with empty, inhuman eyes. Some cried out to her for food or money, but most simply studied her as she passed and muttered to themselves in madness. Rats, dogs, and other unidentifiable creatures scurried over her feet and between her legs as she stumbled through the black forest of barnacle-encrusted pylons beneath the quay. Here and there, refuse chutes descended from the pier above and vomited their waste into rotten piles of decay. Two dogs circled each other, snapping and biting as they vied for some rotted pound of meat.

  At length, she curled up into a depression in the filth and tried to sleep but did little. She wondered if Peter was looking for her; surely he would be. More than anything she wanted to open her eyes and see him standing over her, bending to take her up and hold her and bear her home. He didn’t come, though, and she couldn’t even cry for him. Her tears were gone, swallowed up by the numbness of d
espair. When sleep did come at last it was haunted by dreams of murder, and morning came without renewal.

  For a week, Fin lived the unlife of a vagrant. Her only food was what she scavenged in alleys or refuse piles. Nights beneath the docks gave her solitude but offered no rest. She prayed for death if only to suffer no more of life, but that too was withheld her.

  Without work she had no money, and without money, no food, no board, nothing. In a world without family, friend, or love, only engagement to the beast of commerce sustains life. She needed to find purpose again; she needed to find work.

  On a moonless night she stepped out of her clothes and washed in the briny filth of the port. She scrubbed herself and her clothing with handfuls of sand, and when the morning came she went up to the streets. She looked far from what the sisters would consider presentable. Her pants were torn at the knees and too short to cover the tops of her tattered leather workboots. Her shirt, once white, was stained and mottled brown and hanging open at the left shoulder, but as she considered her homely state she noted that she bore a distinct similarity to many of the sailors trafficking the streets. For once in her life, she fit in.

  Work was less likely to find her than she was to find it, she reasoned, so she worked up her not inconsiderable gumption and went forth. She’d forgotten what day it was, and the first person she spoke to told her it was a Tuesday.

  “Sir, I’m looking for work,” she said to a friendly looking sailor walking off the pier.

  “What you asking me for?” he said. “Check at the shipping office if I was you.”