Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [12]
Her slight body crumpled onto the rocks.
Without thought, I slid Hartah’s knife between his ribs and twisted it.
His big body went rigid. One arm raised to grab me, and I stepped backward, pulling out the knife. Instantly blood gushed from his side—so much blood! It pooled among the rocks, mingled with the rain, splashed when Hartah fell to his knees and then, after a long terrible moment when time itself seemed to stop, onto his face beside Aunt Jo.
The knife dropped from my slack fingers.
“Soldiers!” someone screamed again, and then they were pouring down the track, slipping in the mud, dozens of them in the rainy dawn. There was no other way off the beach except out to sea, where the ship broke up even more with each crashing surge of the waves. Some of the wreckers fought back, but it was hopeless. Only two of us were taken prisoner, me and the youth with the yellow hair, and there was no way Cat Starling would ever, ever have kissed either one of us.
5
I LAY FACEDOWN on the ground in the clearing above the beach, bound hands and feet, my mouth shoved against the wet dirt. The yellow-haired wrecker lay beside me, similarly bound. The rain had slowed. Soldiers dressed in rain-sodden blue milled around, and shouts sounded continuously as horses, Hartah’s old nag among them, hauled wagons up from the beach. Every so often a boot kicked me in the leg or the belly, and painfully I brought my bound arms up to shield my head as best I could.
What would these soldiers of the queen do to me?
All my life Hartah had told tales of soldiers torturing prisoners, but even in my fear I knew I would not be tortured here. The soldiers didn’t need to force a confession. They would hang us on the evidence of their eyes.
“A priest!” the yellow-haired man cried. “It is my right to see a priest before I die!”
Two pairs of boots stopped on the muddy ground, inches from my head. “He’s right,” said a voice. “It’s the law.” “And did they have law in their minds when they wrecked
“And did they have law in their minds when they wrecked the Frances Ormund? ” demanded another voice, rougher than the first. “Sir.”
The Frances Ormund. That must be the name of the ship. Again I saw the bodies on the beach, the tide pools red with blood, Hartah and the others shouting in triumph as they snagged the cargo washing ashore. The killings. And I had killed, too. The knife sliding so easily between Hartah’s ribs, like butter into good cheese . . . And just before, the heavy wooden box, smashing down onto my aunt’s head . . .
My mind shuddered away from both images, and from the knowledge that I was a murderer. And yet I did not regret killing him. The thought astonished me. I, who had shrunk from killing a rat that had crawled into the wagon, a snake in the house, when we had a house. But it was true. I should have killed Hartah long ago. And I should have no fear of death now. After all, I—of all people!—knew that both he and I would continue on across the grave, in the peaceful country of the Dead.
But I did not want to go there. Not like this, not forever. What had Mrs. Humphries said to me? “It is not your time. Not yet.”
The first soldier said, “Nonetheless, Enfield, I am bound by the law.”
“Sir, these scum don’t deserve the law! Begging your pardon, sir . . . but ten hands dead, with only two survivors! And a woman aboard, the captain’s own wife!”
“I demand a priest!” the yellow-haired youth screamed. A boot kicked him hard in the side. He gasped and writhed on the ground.
“Enfield,” the other voice said, but without warning. All at once I was seized by the arm and hauled to my feet.
“Sir, let him at least see what he’s done before he hangs! Let him face the survivors!”
The officer made no objection. Enfield dragged me to the cabin. As we went, one soldier spat in my face.