Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Historical Fiction
Publisher: K.M. del Mara
ISBN-10: 0988396777
Pages: 392
Copyright: Feb 28, 2016
ISBN-13: 9780988396777
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
When war threatens, do you stand and fight, or flee for your life?
Sisters. How can two girls raised in the same household be so different? Bronwen tolerated her annoying younger sister, Mariah, and somehow they managed to coexist without declaring all-out war. The gulf between them widened, though, when a real war intervened. On the eve of the American Revolution, their father insisted their Loyalist family flee their beautiful New York home and make their way, through the wild northern wilderness, to Montreal. They got as far as the frontier town of Albany when the sisters were left to shift for themselves. Not only were they forced to rely on each other now, they were chosen as the only logical choice to deliver a warning to the British troops at Ticonderoga. Desperate rebels and Green Mountain Boys stood in the way. Where could two young girls find someone to help them reunite with their family? The journey was long, and where did they end up? Not in a place that anyone ever expected.
Excerpt
Night has fallen. A cloak of silence blankets the world. All along the North River, boats rock gently in darkened harbors and lamps wink out in riverbank villages. Shadows steal down from behind the mountains. Slick as prowling cats, they slide through the streets of the towns.
“All is well,” cry over-hasty night watchmen, looking neither right nor left. Until they have passed, Danger pulls himself back into the shadows and makes not a sound.
The town of Albany is dark as the far side of the moon. The night watchman was seen stumping down the street at the ten o’clock hour but he has been long-gone when a peddler creaks his wagonload up toward the old fort. What he is doing out and about at this hour is anybody’s guess. Does he realize that the weary clomp of his horse’s hooves covers the sounds of three passengers dropping off the back of the wagon? If he knows they are there at all, the peddler never turns his head to wish them godspeed.
One is a man, dark clothes, dark skin. He turns to take the hand of a tall dark-skinned girl. She jumps to the ground and takes a bag from a smaller girl. The man hurries them both into a dim doorway and they wait in silence for a few moments, catching their breath.
He points to another door across the way. They peer into the black night, up, then down the narrow street. He nudges the older girl’s shoulder and she crosses to the doorway, gives a rhythmic knock: one—one two. He sees no crack of light as the door opens a slit, hears no quiet exchange of words as she disappears into the dark house.
As soon as she does, the black man holds tight to the younger girl’s hand, and they also run for the doorway. Her legs are going like a windmill when, from out of nowhere, they are tackled. Both of them are thrown to the ground. The girl tries to scramble to her feet. She grips the black man’s sleeve with both hands but the mud of the street is slimy in the chill spring night. She struggles to get off her knees.
“Go!” the black man hisses at her. “Run!” She doubles over, sick with terror. The black man turns and savagely drives his fist into the body of his attacker but the man has already raised the butt of his heavy pistol. He smashes it hard against the black man’s head and knocks him face down into the mud.
Over his inert body, the attacker leers at the black girl. Ready to spring, he stops for a surprised instant when he sees the color of her eyes. Grey? A white track runs down her cheek, like the trail of a tear. Hesitation loses him his quarry, for in that moment another man reaches out of the nearby doorway, grabs the girl’s arm, and yanks her off her feet. The attacker leaps after her but is met by the barrel of a musket held in strong hands. He lunges away as it fires. He tries to return the fire but misses his target. Keeping his gun trained on the doorway, he bends and with one arm hauls the unconscious body of the black man out of the mud. Dragging his captive as a shield, he backs down the street. He heaves the inert man across a waiting horse, then mounts and gallops away.
Later, after he finds out who the girl is, he is furious that she slipped through his fingers. But now he does not regret losing her, since she isn’t really a Negro. White girls were sometimes sold, it was true, and he certainly knew of ready customers. But it was dangerous even in this northern wilderness, and he had no time for such negotiations. It was incredibly easy to sell a black man though, and the sale of this particular man would bring him fierce satisfaction, not to mention a tidy sum in silver. Possibly he could even torture some information out of him, inflicting wounds that left no visible marks so he would not jeopardize his sale. Yes, he had ways to find out what he wants to know. He laughs to himself as he rides away.
Back inside the dark house, the man with the musket lights a candle and turns to look at the two girls trembling in his hallway. He realizes grimly that now a plan to save a settlement of over three hundred people has fallen squarely onto their narrow shoulders. Nevertheless, war is closing in, clutching everyone in its talons. There will not be a single soul, young or old, who will escape its torment.
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