Day of Honor 01_ Ancient Blood - Diane Carey [73]
“Jeremiah, you deceive yourself,” Sandy blazed. “You are not one of these rabblers. The Crown and the European system has given you everything. It set these Colonies into business. Gave you land, and the tools to work it. Provided you trade and market, protected you, sent you food and tea—we have built you. If this shabby, backward place were to somehow become a country, it would only be by the grace of your country and your King. And now you, an aristocrat, will spit in his face?”
Jeremiah’s face turned rosy with emotion and he shifted as if aware of all the eyes, all the judgments, upon him. “I cannot be Tory any longer,” he said simply. “The class system does not work in the New World.”
“Because malcontents cannot work it!” Sandy shot back. And he stood very straight.
Picard deliberately said nothing. He was watching the two men, but also watching Alexander, who had stepped forward in rapt attention to what was happening between his ancestors. The complexities of human history, so often simplistic in the minds of spacefaring races, was coming to light for the boy.
And for his captain, guilty sometimes of the same charge.
Before Jeremiah could respond, someone knocked on the front door.
“Please, stand away.” Jeremiah became suddenly nervous, and his wife crowded him as they both went to the door.
He opened it, and luckily its method of opening prevented anyone standing outside from seeing the trestle table and those who sat or stood around it. Picard motioned for the men to remain quiet and still.
“Thank you, Angus,” Jeremiah said, and immediately closed the door again. Whoever had been there had said nothing at all.
As Jeremiah closed and latched the door again, he now held a piece of cloth, rolled and folded. He turned to his wife, and together they opened the tiny package. Inside, Picard could see a message scrawled on the cloth, and a large hand-forged square-headed nail.
Jeremiah glanced at Picard. “It’s from Elder Nethers. He owns the nailery.”
“Ah!” Sandy impugned. “Communicating with the elite, are we? Let us by all means sup with the nailer, the chandler, the cooper, the cobbler, and let us not snub the butcher, else we starve.”
Jeremiah looked up sharply. “Have a care, Sandy.”
“Cousin,” Amy Coverman chided softly. “You insult us.”
Glowering at her, Sandy responded, “You insult yourselves, madam.”
“What does the note say?” Picard asked, hoping to scope out a plan of action that didn’t end in these two men having a duel under some crooked tree.
Jeremiah almost answered, then suddenly looked at Sandy. Picard noticed with regret Jeremiah’s abrupt realization that he might not be able to trust one of the dearest people to his heart in the world.
In that terrible instant, he crossed the line into distrust. He and Sandy became enemies.
And a sad thing it was to witness.
Jeremiah shielded his sorrow in the act of folding the note and stuffing it into his waistcoat; then he stepped to the mantel over the fireplace and placed the forged nail into a tin box with several others of its kind. Clearly, there had been messages before from the nailery.
Anxiety crawled through despair in Jeremiah’s eyes as he turned with resolve to Sandy once again.
“I am a patriot,” he quietly proclaimed. “We are decent people who want charge of our possessions.”
“Decent?” Sandy shook his head. “Are your Committees of Safety decent when they arrest loyal British citizens? Tar and feather them? Seize their property because they fail to embrace your selfish rebel causes? Send them to prison? For people who speak of rights and freedoms, you suspend those for any who disagree with your politics. Have a care yourselves, Jeremiah, for frivolity is devil’s play. Beware burning too many candles. The whim of the day is a dangerous tool with which to govern.”
“Whim?” Jeremiah’s tone turned abrasive for the first time. “Who exactly are you to come here with your powdered wigs and tell us what to do with the fruits of our pursuits?”
Sandy Leonfeld