Джон Джейкс - North and South

"Stupid pious bitch, I'll deal with him as I want," Windom shouted. He cuffed her on the side of the head.

She staggered, slammed her shoulder hard against the mantel, cried out.

The pain somehow destroyed her allegiance to the Savior. Her eyes flew open wide. She spied the fallen poker, snatched it, and raised it to threaten her husband. It was a pathetic gesture, but Windom chose to see it as one of great menace. He turned on her.

Frightened and angry, Joseph grappled with his stepfather. Windom beat him off. Bess, terrified, fumbled with the poker, unable to get a firm grip on it. Windom easily ripped it from her hand and, while Joseph watched, used it to hit her twice on the temple. She sprawled on her face with a thread of blood running down her cheek.

Joseph stared at her for one moment, then in uncontrolled rage lunged for the poker. Windom threw it against the wall. Joseph ran to the hearth, seized the kettle chain, flung the hot stew over Windom, who screamed and pressed his hands to his scalded eyes.

Joseph's hands were burned but he hardly felt it. He raised the empty kettle and smashed it against Windom's head. When Windom fell, his cries subsiding, Joseph wrapped the chain around his stepfather's neck and pulled until it was half embedded in the flesh. Windom finally stopped kicking and lay still.

Joseph ran out into the mist and vomited. His palms started to burn. He began to realize what he'd done. He wanted to break down and cry, to run away, but he didn't. He forced himself toward the open door. Once inside the cottage again, he saw his mother's back moving slowly. She was alive!

After many attempts, he got her on her feet. She muttered incoherently and laughed occasionally. He put a shawl around her and guided her down the misty lanes to Giles Hazard's cottage, two miles distant. On the way she faltered several times, but his urgent pleas kept her going.

Giles came grumping to the cottage door, a candle illuminating his face. Moments later, he helped Bess to his still-warm truckle bed. He examined her, then stood back, fingering his chin.

"I'll run for a doctor," Joseph said. "Where do I find him?"

Old Giles couldn't conceal his worry. "She's too badly hurt for a doctor to do any good."

The news stunned the boy, bringing tears at last. "That can't be."

"Look at her! She's barely breathing. As for the barber who serves this district, he's illiterate. He can do nothing for her, and he'll only ask questions about the cause of her injuries."

The statement itself was a kind of question; Joseph had only blurted that Windom had hit her. "All we can do is wait," Giles concluded, rubbing an eye.

"And pray to Jesus."

Joseph said it out of desperation. Giles put a kettle on the fire. Joseph sank to his knees by the bed, folded his hands, and prayed with every bit of his being.

There was no sign that the prayer was heard. Bess Windom's breathing grew slower, feebler, although she survived until the river mist floating outside the cottage began to glow with light. Gently, Giles touched Joseph's shoulder, jogged him awake.

"Sit by the fire," Giles said, pulling a coverlet across Bess's battered, peaceful face. "It's all over with her. She's gone to find her Jesus, and nothing else can be done. It's different with you. What happens to you depends on whether you're caught." Giles drew a breath. "Your stepfather's dead, isn't he?"

The boy nodded.

"I thought so. Otherwise you wouldn't have come here. He'd have tended her."

All of Joseph's hurt went into a single cry. "I'm glad I killed him!"

"I'm sure you are. But the fact is you're a murderer. Archer won't employ a murderer, and I can't say I blame him. Still —"

His voice softened; his pretense of sternness had been a failure. "I don't want to see you hanged or quartered, either. What can we do?" He started pacing. "They'll search for Joseph Moffat, won't they? All right, you'll be someone else."

The decision made, Giles inscribed a paper with a statement that the bearer, Joseph Hazard, a nephew, was on an errand of family business. After a moment's hesitation, Giles signed his own name, adding the words Uncle & Guardian and several flourishes beneath; the flourishes somehow lent it authenticity.

Giles promised to bury Bess in a Christian manner and insisted the boy could not afford to stay and help. Then, giving him two shillings and some bread tied in a kerchief, instructions about avoiding main roads, and finally a long, fatherly hug, Giles sent a bewildered Joseph Moffat out of the door and into the mist-grayed hills.

On a lonely road in Gloucestershire, something made Joseph pause and look up. The night was flawlessly clear, with thousands of stars alight. Eastward, above the roofline of a dairy barn, he saw a streak of white. Something afire, dropping very fast toward the earth.

Iron. God was sending iron to man, just as Giles had said. The boy could understand why ironmasters were so proud of their calling. It was a trade born and blessed in heaven.

Awed, Joseph watched until the white streak vanished near the horizon. He imagined a huge chunk of star iron smoldering in a fresh crater somewhere. There could be no more potent material in creation. No wonder wars were won, and distances conquered, by machines and equipment of iron.

From that moment, the direction of his life was never in doubt.

Joseph pressed on toward the port of Bristol on the Avon. He was not stopped once, nor required to produce the paper Giles had prepared so carefully. Showed you how much the world valued Thad Windom, didn't it?

Joseph mourned the loss of his mother but felt little regret over having slain his stepfather. He had done what had to be done; vengeance had come as a companion to necessity.

On the journey he found himself thinking strange new thoughts, many of them about religion. He could never subscribe to his dead mother's faith in a gentle, forgiving, and apparently powerless Christ. But he discovered a new sympathy with the Old Testament. Bess had read him many stories about strong, brave men who didn't flinch from bold action. He felt a strengthening kinship with them, and with their God, as he trudged through fields and forests to the great port of western England.

After several false starts, he located a ship's master who soon would be sailing for the New World — a part of the globe in which many Englishmen were finding second chances these days. The man was peg-legged Captain Smollet, his vessel the Gull of Portsmouth . The captain's proposition was straightforward.

"You sign a document indenturing yourself to me. In return, I'll provide you with passage and keep while you're aboard. We'll be calling at Bridgetown, Barbados, then going on to the colonies in America. They need skilled workers there. If you know iron working as well as you claim, I should have no trouble placing you."

The captain peered at Joseph over the rim of the ale pot he was just lifting to his mouth. The boy felt no resentment of the captain's hard bargain; indeed, he rather admired it. A man determined to succeed always had to make difficult choices, he was discovering. So it had been with the heroes of the Old Testament. Abraham. Moses. If he was to be like any man, it would be one of them.

"Well, Hazard, what's your answer?"

"You haven't told me how long I'll be a servant."

Captain Smollet grinned admiringly. "Some are so lathered with excitement — or so guilty over past crimes" — Joseph kept his face absolutely calm, ignoring the probe — "they clean forget to ask till we're on our way down the estuary." He eyed the contents of his drinking pot. "The indenture is seven years."

At first Joseph wanted to shout no. But he didn't. Smollet took his silence for refusal, shrugged, and rose, throwing coins on the soiled table.