“Go on,” Manoke urged, nudging Cinnamon gently. “You have to tell him sometime. Now is a good time.”
“Tell me what?” William sat down, cross-legged, to meet Cinnamon’s eyes on a level. The man’s lips were pressed thin, but he did meet William’s eyes straight on.
“What I said,” he blurted. “Before. About why I’m here. I came in case— I thought perhaps—well, it was the only place I knew to start looking.”
“Looking for what?” William asked, baffled.
“For Lord John Grey,” Cinnamon said, and William saw the broad throat move as he swallowed. “For my father.”
MANOKE DIDN’T HUNT much, but was a good fisherman; he’d taught William to make a fish trap, to cast a line, and even to grabble a catfish by boldly thrusting his hand into holes in the banks of the muddy water where they lived, then yanking the fish out bodily when it clamped onto his hand.
An echo of this sensation came back to William now, a brief ripple up his spine and the sense of turbid water rolling cold and sluggish over his head, fingers tingling at thought of the sudden iron clamp of unseen jaws.
“Your father,” he said carefully.
“Yes,” said John Cinnamon. His head was down, eyes focused on the corn fritter he’d been eating.
William looked at Manoke, feeling as though someone had hit him behind the ear with a stuffed eel skin. The older Indian nodded; his expression was serious, but he looked happy.
“Indeed,” William said politely, though his stomach had congealed into a hard mass beneath his ribs. “I congratulate you.”
No one said anything further for several minutes following Cinnamon’s bombshell, Cinnamon seeming nearly as shocked by it as William.
“Lord John is a … good man,” William said, feeling that he really ought to add something.
Cinnamon murmured something inarticulate, bobbing his head, and then reached hastily for a small fried trout, which in his agitation he crammed whole into his mouth, thereafter making only chewing noises, punctuated by small coughs.
Manoke, normally silent, continued to be silent, calmly eating his fried fish and corn fritters with complete disregard for the turmoil in the bosoms of his two companions.
William could barely look at Cinnamon and yet his eyes kept swiveling toward the man in morbid fascination, stealing quick glances before looking sharply away.
Cinnamon clearly bore the marks of mixed blood, though he was handsome enough. And that hair could have come only from a European parent. But those tight, exuberant curls bore no resemblance to Lord John’s thick blond thatch.
Cinnamon rose suddenly from the cracked porch where they’d perched to eat in the growing dusk.
“Where are you going, mon ami?” said Manoke, surprised.
“To tend the fire,” Cinnamon replied, with a jerk of the head toward the smoking pit under the big oak. The burlap covering it was getting too dry, beginning to char and smoke; the stink reached William an instant later.
Cinnamon’s mother was half French. He’d told William that before, when they spent the winter hunting in Quebec. Did Frenchmen often have curly hair?
There was a bucket and a large clay water jug under the tree—William recognized it; it was gray, badly chipped, and painted with two white bands. Lord John had bought it from a river trader when they first came to Mount Josiah. Cinnamon poured water into the palm of his hand, sprinkling it over the burlap, which quit smoking and resumed its quiet steaming, only allowing wisps of smoke from the fire below to seep out under its pegged sides.
Cinnamon squatted and thrust several small faggots into the fire under the rack of drying fish beside the firepit, then rose, his head turning toward the veranda. His face was nearly pale in the gloom. William looked down, crumbling a bit of fritter between his fingers, and felt hot blood rise in his cheeks, as though he’d been caught doing something shameful.
The eyes … perhaps there was something about the shape of the eyes that was reminiscent of Papa— He stopped cold, unable to finish a thought that had the word “Papa” in conjunction with … this …
The thought of it was a blow in the pit of the stomach, every time. Son. Lord John’s son. It was bloody impossible. But there it was, nonetheless.
Manoke never lied. Nor was he a man to be easily gulled. Neither would he ever do anything that might damage Lord John; William was sure of that. If Manoke said that Cinnamon’s story was true … then it was. But … there must be some mistake.
MANOKE’S PRESENCE, WHILE very welcome, had obliterated William’s romantic notion of solitary wandering about the plantation, alone with his thoughts for days on end. John Cinnamon’s revelation had put paid altogether to the notion of retreat. He could walk as far as he liked; he couldn’t escape the reality of the man, big and solid and Indian—and the thought: He’s Papa’s real son. And I’m not.