January 1782
Outer Banks, North Carolina
Wiping away more tears from her tear-sore face, Beti Boatman wondered how she could have gotten the entire distance to Doctor Campbell’s before she remembered the treasured memento. It seemed nothing could go right today. And so it should be, her spirit jabbed. Laying her father in the earth had been the hardest thing she’d done yet. To do it twice? It wasn’t really twice, but going through the motions at the empty, decoy grave had upset her nearly as much as the true burial. Grief swelled her chest so full she could hardly breathe. She secured her father’s dogeared Bible in her saddlebag. Magnus nickered and sidestepped. Beti stilled.
No one should be here now.
The meager three guests had left hours ago. She stepped gingerly toward the open door. Bruised from the events of the day, Beti tucked in as close to the door as she could, barely letting an eye show. She watched with that one eye as two men started to dig in the freshly mounded earth.
Looters.
Shivers wobbled her spine all the way to her fingers. She needed to get out of here before they discovered she was here and alone. Quickly she stepped to her horse. Beti let her hands slide down Magnus’s crest to his withers. Warm and strong, he wouldn’t let her down. She primed the pan of her firelock. She took a deep breath and peered out at the men once more. Only one was fully visible.
Tall and rounded topped by a dark tricorn and covered in a frock coat, he ordered the other man. The other man hunched just out of eyesight. A growing mound of earth masked their horrible work. The tall one spoke, his voice lost to her in the wind. She had to hurry, only a few minutes would bring their fury to the house. Hot anger took root in her belly and burned the shivers to cinders.
It was people like this that caused her to have to leave the home she loved so dearly. People who came after them year after year looking for a buried treasure that as far a she knew didn’t exist.
Not to mention townspeople who couldn’t accept a pardon whether it came from the King of Heaven or the Kind of England. Her father had both. She slipped the firelock into the saddle sheath. Soon she would be gone, and no one would trouble her again. Beti pulled leather gloves over her wrists careful to tuck her mother’s bracelet under the gauntlet.
Beti mounted Magnus and turned him to the back entrance of the barn. It would buy her a few seconds. Once she’d gotten down the long drive, the road to town was fairly straight. Doctor Campbell’s house was just on the outskirts. On a good day she could get there in thirty minutes. If Magnus flew, she’d make it in fifteen. If she had to duck into the woods, she wasn’t sure how long it would take. Beti prayed. She didn’t want to shoot anyone, but those men didn’t want to cross her today.
“Ready, boy.”
Magnus stamped. She squeezed her legs and whispered “Get up!”
They bolted out the door. Down the dirt path. A quick look over her shoulder told her the men were just finding out the earthly remains of Ethelred the Black didn’t reside in the mound they’d excavated. The tall man looked up. She couldn’t see his face, but she could feel the menace of him reaching for her. Sharp talons of fear sliced through her belly chilling the angry fire she’d used to nurse her courage. She urged Magnus forward down the familiar road. Her cap hadn’t a chance against the gallop. She swiped it off her head, and her closely pinned hair began to fly. They reached the canopy of the wood. Normally she would feel safe under its covering. Forgotten were the number of times she’d safely hidden from the townsfolk among its welcoming branches.
A blur of white and silver blazed by to her left. What was that? Fear bristled her neck prickling down her spine. It appeared to be man-sized yet it moved without sound . Whatever it was moved through the trees faster than Magnus on the best day. Beti leaned in over the pummel. “Come on boy.”
She was halfway to town before her heart stopped racing with Magnus’s hoofbeats. The men hadn’t followed. The blur disappeared, but the feeling that she was being watched had not abated. She kept her pace all the way to Doc Campbell’s. Stopping only when she’d arrived a few paces from the stable.
Rosalee met her in the yard wiping her hands on a snowy apron followed by Beti’s favorite person her sheepdog Nellie. Fear slid off her shoulders as she alighted.
“Go in the house,” Beti ordered. “I shall see to Magnus then tell ye all.”
Once inside the stable, where neither of them could be seen, Beti took a deep breath and listened. She motioned to Tim, Doctor Campbell’s man of work, to stay quiet. Nellie sat obediently at her feet. Beti squatted down to give her a welcome scruff all the while listening for the sound of hoofbeats.
Nothing.
Tim reached for the reins. “I will see to him, miss.”
Beti pulled the loose lines to her side bringing a panting Magnus closer. “Thank ye, but I shall take care of Magnus tonight.”
Tim headed toward the back of the stable.
Beti smoothed her hand down Magnus’ crest and rested her head against him. His steady strength reminded her she was not alone. She pushed away the peace she knew she should feel at the comforting thought. “Ye saved me today.” She righted herself to look in his eye. “Thank ye.”
The stallion nodded. Beti unbuckled the saddle and began to brush him down.
Each stroke of the brush replaced the shaking fear she’d felt as she’d galloped to the Campbells’ with white hot anger. How dare they dig up her father’s grave?
Her father had used his real name when he’d been pardoned by the king and moved to North Carolina. Calling himself Billy Boatman didn’t stop seekers from finding Ethelred the Black. Throughout their time on the Outer Banks, greedy men came to hunt for fabled treasure now and again. Billy always dealt with them with kindness and generosity. He believed God brought the men to North Carolina so Billy could tell them the story of salvation. That alone had won hearts. The infamous Ethelred the Black, Red the Black, telling them of kneeling at the cross of Jesus. Beti watched the faces of the men as they listened to her father. Some believed. Some listened with gleaming lascivious eyes that made her shudder. The last looters to grace their presence came at least three years ago. She’d not planned for a renewal of the assault on their home when her father died. Although when she thought about it that way there was a certain logic to it. Red was gone, there was no one to defend the mythical treasure now.
True, the house was no longer hers as of tomorrow, but that truth did not satiate her fury. She wouldn’t have to leave her home and her only friends if it had been more hospitable.
Tim returned with a feed bag as Beti finished grooming her stallion. She gave Magnus his feed and with a nod at Tim retrieved her prize from the saddlebag. The soft leather bent with many readings, she clutched her father’s Bible to her chest. She wasn’t going to let it out of her sight until she’d tucked it safely away in her trunk. Beti paused as the familiar words played in her mind.
“Where’s the treasure?” They’d threaten.
“The treasure is here.” He’d point to his well-worn Bible. The treasure is here. How many times he’d pointed to this very book and said the words. To every greedy soul who’d braved a journey to confront the wicked Red the Black.
Beti looked carefully before crossing the yard to the house. She had no desire to be caught by something or someone lurking in the shadows of the deepening twilight. Nellie arrived at her side.
“That will do, Nellie. Ye know Rosalee will not let ye in the house.” Beti petted her faithful friend before the dog trotted off to the warm bed Tim had prepared.
Rosalee met her in the hall outside the parlor. “Tell me what happened.”
“Two men showed up just as I was about to leave.”
Rosalie opened her arms, and Beti stepped into the embrace of her mother’s maid. The only person left who’d known her since she was a child.
“All the more reason ye should stay with us.” All the more reason she could never stay with them.
Rosalee kept her arm around Beti leading her to the parlor. Dr. Campbell’s white, perpetually windblown hair glowed in the firelight as he rose from his seat.
Beti loved this room with its bookshelves and large stone fireplace. She’d often visited with her father. Listening with knitting pins in hand while the two old friends argued and laughed. Last year Doc finally gave up his bachelor existence to wed. Now Rosalee’s preference for pink dotted the room with doilies, dried flowers, and embroideries.
“Rosalee said there was trouble?” Doc removed the spectacles perched on the end of his nose. The lines in his face spoke of weariness and the loss of his good friend. And the farce they were forced to play to protect her father’s remains.
The three of them took seats around the small gaming table they’d taken to using for tea each evening since her father’s death.
“Looters?” Doc pinched the bridge between his eyes.
“Yes. They took to digging without so much as a tour of the house.”
“Thank God for that.” Rosalee filled a cup and passed it to her husband. She filled another and handed it to Beti. “Now ye see why it would be wiser for ye to stay with us. It is not good for a defenseless woman to send herself off to the west with no protection.”
Beti tossed a glance at the aging friend of her father’s. Her heart filled with love for these two people who’d stood by her during her father’s illness. Who’d been her friends when she had no others.
“I must go.” If for no other reason than to protect them from those with gleaming eyes who’d not taken to heart the truth Red had shared. Those men would be back, and others, always searching for what they could not find. She would not risk the lives of these two precious people. “This is my chance to make a whole new life. No one will know me in Kentucky. And if they have heard of Red the Black, they will not have heard of Beti Sigridsdatter.”
“So you have decided to take your mother’s name.” Rosalee smiled.
“Not until today.”
“Be careful. We don’t win when we play with the devil’s tactics.” Doc Campbell blew on his dish of tea.
Beti nodded her ascent. “It won’t be for long. Once I get to Kentucky, I will use my own name. All my money is in my real name.”
“At least Billy left you well taken care of.”
“Aye. With that and the sale of our home, I have plenty.”
They fell into silence.
“Can I ask ye—” Doc put his teacup down and laced his fingers over his belly leaning forward. A twinkle lit his eye reminding Beti of the long-standing joke between her father and his friend. “Are ye sure there’s no treasure?”
“Aye, sure there is,” Beti retrieved the worn leather Bible. “Tis here, old friend.”
It was the first laughter since her father’s death. Weariness threaded down her shoulders. If only she could stay.
For two days Beti kept close to the house, one ear tuned toward the dirt lane to town. Doc attended the sick in the small office attached to the house, and Rosalee offered reasons why Beti should stay with them in their cozy little dwelling. Beti longed to accept the generous offer no more so then when she sat near an open window adding rows to the latest project on her knitting needles. Sitting in this room where they’d sat so often. Her father’s laughter ringing into the night. His voice still so vivid. She didn’t want to think of the time when it would soften to a whisper. Tears spilled down onto the fiber.
Rosalee joined her with her work basket.
“Did ye father ever tell ye of yer mother’s family?”
Beti sensed a story and tucked her feet under her skirts and brought her needles to rest in her lap. “I know they were seafaring.”
“Of course, he would tell ye that part.” Rosalee smiled. “Did he tell ye the situation of her family?”
“That her father was a hard man with no tender heart for his daughter?”
“Ye mother thought ye father would tell ye, but perhaps he ran out of time and forgot? No matter. Yer mother was a princess.”
Beti’s eyes filled. “Father always said she was the queen of his heart.”
“Yes, but she was a real queen.”
Beti dabbed her tears with the slightly damp handkerchief she’d been using all afternoon to help contain her grief as the image of her father’s face twinkling at her swam before her mind. “What do you mean?”
“Up in that cold northern place that she came from she was a princess set to inherit the throne when her father died. Haaken lived a long life. By the time he was gone, Sigrid had already made a new life with yer father and ye.”
Beti stilled as memories stacked and played across her mind. So many indications, so many unexplained allusions now plain as a raindrop. How could he not have told her? What else hadn’t he told her?
“Why did she leave?”
Rosalee shrugged. “She was so young. She said she fell in love with yer father, and that was that. She could imagine no other life.”
“Was there a palace?”
“She did not say to me about that. She told me her mother died when she was a little girl.”
Beti nodded. She knew that part.
“If it had not been for that attack, she never would have left ye.”
Grief swelled her heart once more, this time for the lost time with her mother. Beti allowed the memory of that day to play across her closed eyes. Sigrid Boatman had been out by the river washing clothes. Beti had stayed near the house as her mother instructed. Her father sat on a stool outside of their cabin doing something with his hands. They heard a scream. Her father ordered Beti into the house. He ran to Sigrid. Beti waited in the darkened cabin under the bed dreadful fears gripping her heart until her father banged on the door. She opened the door to find him carrying the beloved queen of his heart.
Beti opened her eyes to find Rosalee full of concern.
“Ye should stay with us.”
“What if those men find their way here?”
Rosalee scoffed with all the confidence of true love. “Ben will drive them off. Ye will be safe here.”
Doc Campbell was fifty if he was a day. Of course, he could take care of Rosalee, but he’d be no match for the vile men who came to call on Red. Men who would dig up a dead man to find a mythical treasure. Anger wove through her sorrow and squeezed the air out.
“I think I will check on Silas.”
Rosalee nodded and turned again to her needle.
Nellie came to her side once she stepped onto the porch. Silas and his five ewes munched grass in the pen attached to the Campbell’s small barn. Rain hung heavy in clouds that dipped low enough to touch the treetops.
Someone pounded on the front door. Beti stepped back into the house, Nellie at her heels.
Doc opened the door as usual. Beti slipped into the backroom Rosalee had made into a bedroom for her stay.
“How may I help ye?” Doc’s friendly salute rang down the hall.
Beti’s heart drummed as she waited for the answer. Hopefully it was just a townsperson come for help. Not that she wished anyone to be sick—
“Dr.Campbell?” The voice was rough and thick with an accent not from here. Beti breathed slowly from her mouth so as not to make a sound.
“Yes. What can I do for ye?”
“I be Harry Peebles and this be Kurt Jagger. We come to visit an old friend—”
“We found his grave—folks in town tell us ye cared for him.” A new voice, this one smooth and deep.
“I care for everyone in this town. Who was ye friend?”
“He went by the name Billy Boatman,” the first man spoke again.
Beti retrieved her firelock. She primed the pan. She willed Rosalee to stay in the parlor with all her soul.
“Yes, I cared for him.”
“He had a daughter,” The voice of second man continued. “Would ye know where we might find her?”
“We’d like to pay our respects,” the first piped up again.
“She removed to Alexandria. She had family up there,” Doc replied smooth as butter. Beti couldn’t help but remember his admonition about using the devil’s tactics as she prayed they’d believe him.
“Billy didn’t have no family ’ceptin his kid.”
“He had a wife,” Doc reminded them steel in his voice.
“Them townsfolk musta been wrong then, cause they said they seen her here with ye and yer missus.”
“Alexandria.” Doc moved to close the door.
“Did she leave ye with a direction? We’d like to make a visit—”
“Afraid not. She was rather distraught. When the family came, they left without any direction at all.”
Doc closed the door. Beti flew up the stairs. Hiding just behind the curtain she watched the men who’d raided her father’s grave head back toward the woods.
Doc came to stand at her elbow.
“I need to leave,” she said.
“At least wait until they’re gone from the area.”
Beti nodded. It would take a couple of days for her to ready the wagon and animals for her trek to Kemp’s Landing. Surely she could find a wagon train heading to Kentucky from there.