4
The sounds of gunshots were unusual these days, and it didn’t take long for reports of the noise to make the rounds in Donovan’s small community of fifty people. He, himself, had heard the single gunshot as he was coming out of the stable, leading a horse on either side. He must have tensed, because one of the horses shied and had to be calmed. Although it was impossible to tell which direction the sound came from, instinctively he looked toward the Woodson cottage. He noticed his sister-in-law, Caitlin, standing by her tent watching him and he nodded curtly toward her in greeting. Gavin came running from across the central camp cook fire.
“Da! Did you hear that? Sounds like it came from over near the Woodsons’. Me and Danny’ll check it out, eh?”
Mike handed the horses off to a young teenage girl who materialized on his left. “Take these two, Nuala,” he said to her. “Put ‘em in the paddock for now.”
“Not the south pasture, Mr. Donovan?”
The girl was earnest and hardworking, Donovan knew. Pretty, too, but she didn’t seem to realize it.
“Not just yet. Go on now.” He turned to Gavin, who was standing in front of him bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“Where’s young John?” he asked.
Gavin pointed to the other side of the cook fire. “Fiona’s got him plucking chickens,” he said.
Donovan followed his glance and saw that John was, indeed, standing with Fiona, a pile of feathers at his feet. But he was looking in the direction of his home.
“Send him to me,” Donovan said. “And you go. But mind! Be sneaky about it. If there’s trouble over there, I want information not grandstanding.”
Gavin was off before Mike had finished speaking. He watched him grab John by the shoulder and point to Donovan before sprinting off in the direction of the house. Mike saw John struggle between the desire to follow Gavin and obey the order to come to Mike. He turned and trotted over to Donovan.
“You hear a gunshot?” Mike asked him.
“Yes, sir. Over at our place.”
“We don’t know that. Gavin’s off to check on it and I’ll be needing you to stay here until we know what’s going on.”
“But, I…” John was clearly moments from tearing out after Gavin and Mike couldn’t help but think it a blessing that just the day before he’d the opportunity to impress upon the boy that he was to be obeyed at all times. If young John’s backside hadn’t still been smarting from his recent shellacking—and Mike had no doubt that it was—he might have been tempted to ignore Mike’s wishes. As it was, he looked in frustration in the direction of his house.
“Go on, now,” Mike said. “Finish your chores. Gavin’ll be back in a tick if there’s anything to report.”
Mike watched John trudge back to the campfire, where Fiona waited for him. She gave Mike a questioning look but he merely shrugged.
They’d find out soon enough.
Sarah sat in the back of the wooden cart, her hands tied in front of her, a gag in her mouth, her head leaning and banging against the rough wood sides of the bouncing cart as it jostled over the once-smooth country roads. The time between David being shot and her placement in the cart felt like a sequence in a dream. She didn’t remember how she got here, if she walked or was carried. She didn’t remember if the men spoke to her after they’d killed David, or laughed, or just turned away from the carnage. She didn’t know how long she had been sitting in the cart or how long it had been traveling down the long, bumpy road.
Three women huddled with her in the bottom of the wooden cart but Sarah didn’t look at them. The smell of vomit, and worse, pooled on the floor, and with her mouth bound she was forced to breathe every vile gust through her nose. One of the women, a girl it sounded like, was crying softly, almost noiselessly.
The sound began to push the image of David to the forefront of her mind and she fought to sink back into her numb state. She couldn’t think of him. She couldn’t remember her last vision of him. Dear God, she would go mad. She couldn’t remember any of it right now. Later. She would remember it later.
She tried to tell herself, as the cart lurched down the road, that none of this was real.
How? How could it have happened? The cottage was hidden from the road, was virtually invisible.
As she fought to keep the images and thoughts from overwhelming her, she looked back at the cottage from where she sat in the cart. A heavy tarp was thrown over the top, but afforded a wedge of a window to the outside world. She thought, inanely, of the lone cooling loaf of bread on the counter in her kitchen at the same moment that she saw the long telltale smoke from their chimney and her cook stove heralding the way to their sanctuary.
Donovan didn’t believe he had ever been more exhausted in his life.
It was well past dark as he packed his saddlebags and gave out his last orders. Fiona and Gavin stood in the stables, silent as mutes, watching him secure his bedroll on the saddle.
“Why can’t I come with you?” Gavin asked the question without conviction. Donovan knew he didn’t have to explain why Gavin needed to stay.
Fiona was another matter.
“We need you here,” she said fiercely. “Send someone else after her.”
Donovan tugged down the stirrups on the saddle and turned to her. “I can’t.” He glanced at Gavin and held his arms out. The boy came into them and Gavin held him close and long. This was something little John would never be able to do again, he thought. He’d never again know the warm and secure feel of his loving father’s arms around him. The least Mike could do was make sure the lad got his mother back.
Like that’s the reason I’m going.
He released Gavin and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Watch over the camp, but err on the side of caution. Take no chances. No heroics. If someone comes, gather everyone together and hide in the caves like we practiced, you hear?”
Gavin nodded solemnly. “I’ll take care of the place.”
“I know you will, son.” Donovan gave Gavin’s shoulder one last squeeze and the boy turned and slipped out of the stable. He glanced at Fiona. “Who would you have me send, then?”
Fiona rubbed the chill of the autumn night from her arms as she looked wildly around the stable as if trying to find someone else. “I don’t know,” she said finally. She looked at him quickly. “And I love her, too, mind. It’s just, we can’t afford to lose you.”
“You won’t lose me.”
“I’m sure that’s what David said too,” Fiona said tartly.
The exhaustion pierced Donovan and his shoulders sagged with the weight of it. It was nearly impossible to believe that David was gone. When Gavin had come running back with the terrible news, Mike had gone himself to see. The sight had nearly made him sick.
From what he could see by the boot prints in the damp earth by David’s body, there had been two of them—and Sarah. He could tell that Sarah had been dragged away. He followed the tracks to signs of a heavy cart moving due east from the Woodson cottage. Whoever they were, they were traveling loaded and slow. He should have no trouble in overtaking them.
He mounted and leaned down to pat his sister on the shoulder. “Take special care of young John.” The boy had been devastated, naturally. His tears—and his bravery—had nearly broken Mike’s heart. “Tell him I’ll bring his mother home. He’ll believe it because I will.” As Mike spoke, he felt his throat closing up again and he knew he was telegraphing his emotions to Fi.
Yes, it had been horrifying to find David—the man had been so vital and alive just a few hours before! Yes, it had been upsetting for the whole community to be reminded that such horrors could still happen. But the real agony? The gut-wrenching, bone-watering agony that Mike struggled not to let overwhelm him?
They’d taken Sarah.
They had her, whoever they were. They must have her bound and probably hurt, because there was no way Sarah wouldn’t put up a fight not to be taken from her son.
Just the thought of her, hurt, helpless and heartbroken herself, made Mike put his heels to his horse’s flank, exhaustion be damned.