could feel the blast of the heat.
He stopped and watched as the fire consumed the only home he had ever known. He imagined his father was in there somewhere. His funereal pyre was made up of all the things that three generations of Wilkensons had struggled to accumulate in that new world, all the dreams of wealth that had first brought them over the wide ocean.
George shielded his eyes from the blaze and looked off to the side of the house. The stable was still intact. The fire had not managed to jump across the fifty feet of close-cropped grass that separated it from the main house. That much at least was a relief, for the Wilkensons’ horses were the only thing left on earth that George cared about.
He flicked the reins against his horse’s neck and the animal headed off toward the stable, taking skittish steps away from the burning house and looking at the fire in wide-eyed fear. Under a less-skilled rider the horse would have bolted already, but George Wilkenson had a certain authority with the beasts. It had always been a source of pride for him, one of the few.
Around the far side of the burning building he caught a movement, a flickering shadow against the yellow and red flames. He pulled the horse to a stop. There was someone there, a figure darting away from the house. He watched the
man, black against the background of the fire. He moved with rapid, jerky movements. It had to be terribly hot so close to the flames.
And then the figure abandoned whatever he was trying to do and raced away from the flames, toward the stable, but George’s vision was damaged from looking into the fire and he lost sight of him.
He swung the horse over to the nearest stand of trees, slid off, looped the reins around a sapling. He stepped across the lawn, toward where the man had disappeared, his footfalls on the grass nearly silent and masked by the crackling fire.
He saw the person at last, just outside the door to the stable, hunched over, his attention on whatever he was doing. George pulled one of the pistols from his belt, one of Marlowe’s pistols, a beautiful weapon, light and balanced in the hand, and stepped closer.
He was five feet away before the man sensed that he was not alone. He turned, his face illuminated by the burning house.
“What the devil…” George could think of nothing else to say. It was the shifty little man whom Matthew had hired to run the river sloop. “Ripley…?”
“Oh, Mr. Wilkenson…” Ripley’s rat eyes darted to the pistol and then to George’s face. His tongue flicked out and licked his lips.
“God, but ain’t it horrible, what they done?” Ripley continued, nodding toward the burning house, his eyes never leaving George’s. “I told your father, ‘You don’t want to have no business with them pirates,’ but your father, he wouldn’t listen, not to no one.”
“Where are they? The pirates?”
“They gone back to their ship, I reckon. Anchored just off the Finch place, down by Hog Island.” Ripley half turned and pointed across the field. He was being very helpful.
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh, well, when I heard, I come to see if I could help, maybe defend the place. I didn’t reckon it would just be aban
doned, but I was too late. I…ah…I tried to save what I could, I got some of it, tried to save it for you and Mrs. Wilkenson and the others, so’s you don’t lose everything…”
George’s eyes moved down to Ripley’s feet. There was a horse blanket lying on the grass, half tied in a bundle. Spilling out of it were various bits of silver service, an old clock with gold inlay, a couple of china cups.
George looked up at Ripley, astounded at the depths of the man’s depravity. “You were looting. You were looting my home.”
“No, no, I was trying to save a few things from them fucking pirates, beg your pardon…”
George raised the pistol up until it was pointing at Ripley’s forehead, just three feet away. Ripley took a tentative step back, and George cocked the lock.
“No, Mr. Wilkenson, I was-”
Those words, that pathetic, lying protest, were the last words that former pirate quartermaster Ezekiel Ripley ever uttered. George pulled the trigger. The gun jolted in his hand, and he had a vague image through the smoke of Ripley blown backward, arms flung out, onto the grass.
The gun dropped to George’s side. He took a few steps forward and looked down at Ripley’s earthly remains, sprawled out flat, dead eyes staring at the sky. Much as Matthew had been.
He had thought about this moment many times, what it would be like to kill a human being. He had always imagined terror, revulsion, guilt. But he felt none of that. Just a vague curiosity, no more. He wondered if this was how Marlowe had felt after putting a bullet in Matthew. He never seemed to have been stricken with guilt or any form of remorse.
George stood over the body and reloaded the pistol. It seemed likely that he would need it again before the night was through. He went into the stable, pushed the stable doors open wide, and opened all of the stall doors as well. If the stables did catch fire, the horses would be able to get out.
He found Marlowe’s horse, mounted it, and rode toward the fields. He paused to look down Ripley’s body one last time. He still felt nothing. He touched the horse’s flanks with his heels and headed off in the wake of the pirate horde.
It was easy enough to follow them. The trail was blazed with burning buildings and markers in the form of discarded bottles and loot dropped or tossed aside along the road that ran beside the river. The mill was all but gone, as was the Page house and the Nelson house. The fires were burning down at last, the flames having sucked all of the life they could from the wood and plaster and cloth until there was no more left to consume.
The Finch house was nearly dark, with only an orange ember here or there, a punctuation of light in that dark, charred heap. There was nothing left to indicate that the huge, smoldering fire pit on top of the small rise had once been a house.
George could smell the now familiar odor of a burnt house, could hear the crackling of the burning timber, but here the crickets were chirping again, and he could smell the woods and the mud near the river as well. Things were already returning to their natural state.
He paused and looked at the remains of the Finch home. He thought of all the times he had danced in those rooms, or played piquet or whist, or sat down to dinner with his neighbors. What would they do now? What would any of them do?
He pulled the head of his horse around and rode off toward the water. He had no plan, did not even know why he had followed the pirates. It seemed a long time since he had had a rational thought; the night had been made up of feelings, instincts, impressions, pushing him along through no conscious decision of his own.
He came at last to the edge of the water. He could see where the pirates had come ashore, the mud and plants trampled by the many, many feet, the long grooves cut in the bank where the boats had been pulled up.
The James River was nearly a mile wide at that point. George could just make out the masts of the ships-it seemed
there were more than one-against the night sky, but their hulls were lost in the darkness.
For a long time he just sat, staring at the dark, skeletal masts with the same morbid disinterest with which he had looked at Ripley’s dead body, the round hole in his forehead. Anyone who heard the tale of his going to plead with Marlowe would think it an act of altruistic humility, but that was not all of it. His family had nothing now, nothing but their good name, and if LeRois lived to tell of his father’s entanglements with the pirates, then that too would be gone. He needed LeRois destroyed, and he hoped and prayed Marlowe could do it.
His eyes moved over to a clump of bushes on the bank twenty feet away. Behind the bushes he knew he would find a canoe. The Finches had kept one there for years, to use for fishing or other recreation. He looked out at the pirates again, then back toward the canoe. Was there anything he could do to hurry the pirates’ destruction along?
The instinct that had been driving him that night forced him to ride down to the bushes, to dismount, to see that the boat was still there and the paddles still lying on the thwarts. He looked out toward the pirate ships. He had no idea of what he might do.
