Marcus covered her lips before his sister screamed.
“Quiet, Patience,” Catherine said. There was a red lump under one eye. Obadiah must have struck her in his frustrated search for alcohol.
Patience nodded. Marcus removed his hand from her mouth.
“You killed Pa. What are we going to do now, Marcus?” his sister asked in a whisper.
“We could bury him,” Catherine said calmly, “out under the elm.” The tree had sheltered Marcus as he made the fatal shot.
Marcus hadn’t considered the future when he pulled the trigger and killed his father. The only thing he had been thinking of was his mother, his sister, and their safety.
“Lord save us.” Zeb stood by the corner of the house. He took in Obadiah’s body, Patience’s red-rimmed eyes and torn dress, and Catherine’s bruised face. “Go hide in the woods, Marcus. Joshua and I will come find you after dark.”
* * *
—
IT TOOK ZEB AND JOSHUA until the early hours of the morning to convince Marcus that he had to leave Hadley.
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” Marcus said numbly. The shock of the day’s events had begun to affect him. Marcus felt cold, jittery, and anxious by turns. “This is home.”
“You have to leave. You shot your father on a Sunday morning. No one hunts on the Sabbath. Someone will have heard the gun go off. And folks are going to remember seeing Obadiah in town,” Zeb said.
Zeb was right. A gunshot on their farm would not go unnoticed. And plenty of Hadley residents had walked by the place on their way to meeting. Even Tom Buckland had heard rumors that Obadiah was back.
“If you stay, you will be arrested. Your ma and Patience might even be accused of being involved,” Joshua said.
“And if I run, it will be an admission of my own guilt, and they will be free of responsibility.” Marcus put his head in his hands. The morning had dawned so bright and full of promise. He had smelled freedom on the autumn air out in Hatfield. Now he could lose not only his liberty but his life.
“Take the gun and go south, to the army. A man can lose himself in war. If you survive, you can make a new life for yourself. Somewhere else,” Joshua said. “Somewhere far away from Hadley.”
“But who will take care of Ma? And Patience?” Winters were always difficult, but with the war and the poor harvest it would be an even greater struggle to survive.
“We will,” Zeb said. “I promise you.”
Reluctantly, Marcus agreed to their plan. Joshua spread goose fat through Marcus’s hair, and followed it up with dark-colored wig powder that clung to the oily strands.
“If anybody is looking for a blond boy, they’ll look straight past you. Wait until you reach Albany before you brush it out,” Zeb said. “And nobody has seen your pockmarks. You only have a few small ones on one cheek, but even so the justices will be looking for someone smooth faced.”
Zeb had run away before, and knew a thing or two about how to hide your real identity.
“Stick to the highways for speed, then take less-traveled routes out of Albany until you reach New Jersey and Washington’s troops,” Joshua added. “That’s where the army is now. Once you’re that far south, if you haven’t read about yourself in the newspaper or been caught, I reckon you’re safe.”
“What name will you answer to?” Zeb asked.
“Name?” Marcus frowned.
“You can’t tell people you’re Marcus MacNeil,” Joshua said. “You’ll be caught for sure if you do.”
“My middle name is Galen,” Marcus said slowly. “I’ll use that. And Chauncey. Ma always said I was more Chauncey than MacNeil.”
Joshua placed his own hat on Marcus’s powdered head. “Keep your head down and your wits about you, Galen Chauncey. And don’t look back.”
13
Nine
21 MAY
Dozens of drinking vessels covered Freyja’s expansive mahogany dining room table: shot glasses inscribed with the names of bars around the world; heavy crystal wineglasses favored at the end of the nineteenth century with faceted stems that cast rainbows on the walls; a tiny jam jar from Christine Ferber; a silver julep cup; a Renaissance covered cup more than a foot tall with a horn bowl and gilt stem.
Each was filled with a mouthful of dark red liquid.
Fran?oise pulled aside the pale blue draperies to let in more light, revealing fine scrims of silk that filtered the sunshine. Even with that veil of protection, Phoebe blinked. The brightness was as mesmerizing as Freyja and Miriam had warned her it would be, and she was momentarily lost among the dancing dust motes.