A Different Flesh Read online

  "I shot, but I missed," Cooper raid morosely.

  "It's a poor trade for a ground squirrel, Henry," Wingfield remarked.

  His hunting partner's scowl was midnight black. "The mangy pests grow too bold. Just the other night they slaughtered a hound outside the stockade, hacked it to pieces with their stones, and were eating the flesh raw when at last the sentry came round with his torch and spied them. He missed, too," Dale finished, with a sidelong look at Cooper.

  "And would you care to draw a conclusion from that?" the guard asked.

  His hand caressed the hilt of his rapier.

  Henry Dale hesitated. As a gentleman, he was trained to the sword. But liverish temper or no, he was not a fool; Cooper had learned in a harsher school than his, and survived. At last Dale said, "I draw the same conclusion as would any man of sense: that our best course is to rid ourselves of these pestiferous sims forthwith, as wolves and other vicious creatures have long been hunted out of England."

  "I hold to war, Henry, on being attacked, but not to murder," Cooper said. "Mind, we must seem as outlandish to them as they to us."

  "Killing a sim is no more murder than butchering a pig," Dale retorted.

  The endless debate started up again.

  Having no desire to join in another round, Wingfield took his share of the game back to his cabin. Anne was changing Joanna's soiled linen.

  She looked up with a wan smile. "There's no end to't."

  The baby kicked her legs and smiled toothlessly at her father. He felt his own tight expression soften.

  He plucked the songbirds, skinned the polecat, set the hide aside to be tanned. He gutted the birds and tossed their little naked bodies into the stewpot whole. He threw the offal outside for the pigs or dogs to find. The black and white polecat required more skil ful butchery, for it had to be cut into pieces before the scent glands were removed.

  "Thank you, dear." Anne rocked Joanna in her arms. "She's getting hungry, aren't you, sweet one? What say I feed you now, so you let us eat in peace afterwards. Can you tend to the stew, Edward?"

  "Of course." He stirred the bubbling contents of the pot with a wooden spoon. Now and again he tossed in a dash of dried, powdered herbs or a pinch of grayish sea-salt Joanna nursed lustily, then fel asleep. The stew began to smell savory. Anne was about to ladle it into bowls when the baby wet herself and started crying again. Her mother gave Wingfield a look of mingled amusement and despair.

  "Go on with what you were about,*' he told her. "I'll tend to Joanna."

  Anne sighed gratefully. Wingfield tossed the soggy linen into the pile with the rest for tomorrow’s washing. He found a dry cloth, wrapped the baby's loins, and set her in her cradle. Anne rocked it while they ate.

  Joanna tolerated not being held, but showed no interest in going back to sleep.

  She squawked indignantly when Anne made the mistake of trying to turn her onto her belly, and remained irritated enough to stay awake even after her mother picked her up.

  Her fussy cries rang loud in the small cabin. After a while, Wingfield thrust a torch into the fire. "Let's walk her about outside," he suggested. "That often seems to calm her."

  Anne agreed at once. She rocked the baby in her arms while her husband held the torch high so they would not stumble in the darkness.

  With his free hand, he batted at the insects the torch drew.

  The James River splashed against the low, swampy peninsula on which Jamestown sat, and murmured as it flowed by unimpeded to the south.

  Above it, on this clear, moonless night, the Milky Way glowed like pale mist among the stars of the Scorpion and the Archer.

  Elsewhere, but for silver points, the sky was black.

  Even blacker against it loomed the forest to the north. Suddenly Wingfield felt how tiny was the circle of light his torch cast: as tiny as the mark the English had made on this vast new land. The comparison disturbed him.

  From the edge of the forest came the cries of sims, calling back and forth. Wingfield wondered how much meaning lay behind them. Those bestial ululations could hardly be true speech, Henry Dale was right there, but they were much more varied, more complex, than a wolfpack's howls.

  Anne shivered, though the night was warm. "Let us go back. I take fright, hearing them so close."

  "I mislike it also," Wingfield said, turning round. "We are not yet here in numbers enough to keep them from drawing nigh as they wish.

  Be glad, though, you were stil in dear England those first two years, when they thought us and ours some new sort of prey for their hunting."

  He touched the knife on his belt. "We've taught them better than that, at any rate."

  "I've heard the tales," Anne said quietly.

  Wingfield nodded. As was the way of things, though, not all the tales got told. He had been one of the men who brought John Smith's body back for burial. He knew how little of it rested under its stone, awaiting the resurrection.

  To his mind, the sims' man-eating habits gave strong cause to doubt they had souls. If one man devoured another's flesh, to whose body would that flesh return come the day of judgment? As far as he knew, no learned divine had yet solved that riddle.

  Such profitless musings occupied him on the way back to the cabin.

  Once inside, Anne set Joanna back in the cradle. The baby sighed but stayed asleep; she probably would not rouse till the small hours of the morning.

  The embers in the fireplace cast a dying red glow over the single room.

  Wingfield stripped off his clothes; in the sultry Virginia summer, nightwear was a positive nuisance.

  Anne lay down beside him. He stroked her smooth shoulder. She turned toward him. Her eyes were enormous in the dim light. "Here it is, evening," he said, at the same time as she was whispering, "This even, is it not?" They laughed until he silenced her with a kiss.

  Afterwards, he felt his heart slow as he drifted toward slumber.

  He was hotter than he had been before, and did not mind at all; the warmth of the body was very different from that of the weather. He did not know why that was so, but it was. Anne was already breathing deeply and smoothly. He gave up thought and joined her.

  He was never sure what exactly woke him, some hours later; he usual y slept like a log til morning. Even Joanna's cries would not stir him, though Anne came out of bed at once for them. And this noise was far sofoer than any the baby made.

  Maybe what roused him was the breeze from the open cabin door.

  His eyes opened. His hand went for his knife even before he consciously saw the two figures silhouetted in the doorway.

  Thieves, was his first thought. The colonists had so few goods from England that theft was always a problem, the threat of the whipping-post Not withstanding.

  Then the breeze brought him the smel of the invaders. The Englishmen bathed seldom; they were of often rank. But this was a thicker, almost cloying stench, as if skin and water had never made acquaintance. And the shape of those heads outlined against the night. Ice ran through Wingfield. "Sims!" he cried, bounding to his feet.

  Anne screamed. The sims shouted. One sprang at Wingfield. He saw its arm go back, as if to stab, and knew it must have one of its sharpened stones to hand. That could let out a life as easily as his own dagger.

  He knocked the stroke aside with his left forearm, and felt his hand go numb; the sims were devilish strong. He thrust with his right and felt his blade bite flesh. The sim yammered. But the wound was not mortal.

  The sim grappled with him. They rol ed over and over on the dirt floor, each grabbing for the other's weapon and using every fighting trick he knew. The sim might have had less skil than Wingfield, but was physically powerful enough to make up for it.

  A tiny corner of Wingfield's awareness noticed the other sim scuttling toward the hearth. He heard Anne shriek, "Mother Mary, the baby!" Bold as a tigress, she leapt at the sim, her hands clawed, but it stretched her senseless with a backhand blow.

  At almost the same moment, the
sim Wingfield was battling tore its right arm free from the weakened grasp of his left. He could not ward off the blow it aimed, but partially deflected it so that the flat front of the stone, rather than the edge, met his forehead. The world flared for a moment, then grayed over.

  He could not have been unconscious long. He was already aware of himself, and of the pounding anguish in his head, when someone forced a brandy bottle into his mouth. He choked and sputtered, spraying out most of the fiery liquid.

  He tried to sit; hands supported his back and shoulders. He could not understand why the torch Caleb Lucas held was so blurred until he raised his arm to his eyes and wiped away blood.

  Lucas offered the brandy again. This time Wingfield got it down.

  Healing warmth spread from his middle. Then he remembered what had happened with one sim while he fought the other, and he went cold again.

  "Anne!" he cried.

  He looked about wildly, and moaned when he saw a blanket-covered form on the floor not far from him. "No, fear not, Edward, she is but stunned,"

  said Allan Cooper's wife Caite, a strong, steady woman a few years older than Anne. "We cast the bedding over her to hide her nakedness, no more."

  "Oh, God be thanked!" Wingfield gasped.

  "But, " Cooper began, then looked helplessly at his wife, not sure how to go on. He seemed to make up his mind. He and Lucas bent by Wingfield. Together, they manhandled Wingfield to his feet, guided his stumbling steps over to Joanna's cradle.

  He moaned again. It was empty.

  Anne sat on a hard wooden chair, her face buried in her hands.

  She had not stopped sobbing since she returned to her senses. She rocked back and forth in unending grief. "God, God, God have mercy on my dear Joanna," she wailed.

  "I will get her back," Wingield said, "or take such a vengeance that no sim shal dare venture within miles of an Englishman ever again."

  "I want no vengeance," Anne cried. "I want my darling babe again."

  The colonists' first efforts at pursuit had already failed. They had set dogs on the sims' trail less than an hour after`

  the attack. With the blood Wingfield had drawn, the trail had been fresh and clear. Only for a while, though: the ground north of Jamestown was so full of ponds and streams that the dogs lost the scent.

  Further tracking had to wait for daylight and with every passing minute, the sims took themselves farther away.

  "Why?" Anne asked. The question was not directed at anyone.

  "Why should even such heartless brutes snatch up a defenseless babe?

  What are they doing to her?"

  Wingfield's imagination conjured up a horde of possibilities, each worse than the one before. He knew he could never mention even the least of them to his wife.

  But her first agonized question puzzled him as well. He had never heard of the sims acting as they had that night. They kil ed, but they did not capture he felt heartsick anew as he worked out the implications of what Caleb Lucas said, "I fear me they but sought special y tender flesh." He spoke softly, so Anne would not hear.

  Wingfield shook his head. The motion hurt. "Why take so great a risk for such small game?" He gritted his teeth at speaking of Joanna so, but went on "They would have gained more meat by waiting until one of us stepped outside his cabin to ease himself, striking him down, and making away with him. If they had been cunning, they might have escaped notice till dawn."

  "Wherefore, then?" Lucas asked. Wingfield could only spread his hands.

  "What do you purpose doing now?" Al an Cooper added.

  "As I told Anne," Wingfield said, rising. His head stil throbbed dreadfully and he was wobbly on his feet, but purpose gave his voice iron. "I will search out the places where the sims encamp in their wanderings, and look for traces of Joanna. If God grant I find her living, I'll undertake a rescue. If it be otherwise, "

  Henry Dale stuck his head in the cabin door. His lips stretched back in a savage grin. ", Then kill them all," he finished for Wingfield. "

  'Twere best you do it anyhow, at first encounter."

  "No," Wingfield said, "nor anyone else on my behalf, I pray you.

  Until I have oertain knowledge my daughter is dead, I needs must act as if she yet lives, and do nothing to jeopardize her fate. A wholesale slaughter of sims might well inflame them al ."

  "What cares one pack of beasts what befalls another?" Dale asked scornful y.

  Allan Cooper had a comment more to the point."Should you fare forth alone, Edward, I greatly doubt you'd work a wholesale slaughter in any case, more likely the sims would slay you."

  That set off fresh paroxysms of weeping from Anne. Wingfield looked daggers at the guard. "I can but do my best. My hunting has taught me somewhat of woodscraft, and bul et and bolt strike harder and farther than stones." He spoke mostly for his wife's benefit; he knew too well Cooper was probably right. Still, he went on, "You'd try no less were it your Cecil."

  "Oh, aye, so I would," Cooper said. "You misunderstand me, though. My thought was to come with you."

  "And I," Henry Dale said. Caleb Lucas echoed him a moment later.

  Tears stung Wingfield's eyes. Anne leapt from her chair and kissed each of his friends in turn. At any other time that would have shocked and angered him; now he thought it no less than their due.

  Yet fear for his daughter forced expedience from him. He said; "Henry, I know your skill amongst the trees. But what of you, Al an? Stealth is paramount here, and clanking about armored a poor preparation for't."

  "Fear not on my score," Cooper said. "Or ever I took the royal shilling, I had some nodding acquaintanoe with the Crown's estates and the game on them." He grinned slyly.

  Wingfield asked no more questions; if Cooper had made hisliving poaching, he would never say so straight out.

  "What will the council say, though, Allan?" Dale demanded.

  "They will not take kindly to a guardsman baring off at wild adventure."

  "Then damnation take them," Cooper replied. "Am I not a free Englishman, able to do as I will rather than harken to carping fools? Every subject's duty is to the king's; but every subject's soul is his own."

  "Wel spoken! Imitate the action of the tiger!" cried Caleb Lucas, giving back one quote from Shakespeare for another.

  The other three men were careful y studying him. Wingfield said, "You will correct me if I am wrong, Caleb, but is't not so your only forays into the forest have been as a lumberer?"

  The young man gave a reluctant nod. He opened his mouth to speak, but Dale forestalled him: "Then you must stay behind. Edward has reason in judging this a task for none but the woodswise."

  Wingfield set a hand on Lucas's shoulder. "No sense in anger or disappointment, Caleb. I know the offer came in al sincerity."

  "And I," Anne echoed softly. Lucas jerked his head in acknowledgment and left.

  "Let's be at it, then," Cooper said. "To our weapons, then meet here and away." Wingfield knew the guard had no hope of finding Joanna alive when he heard Cooper warn Henry Dale, "Fetch plenty of powder and bullets." Dale's brusque nod said the same.

  Before noon, the three men reached the spot where the dogs had lost the sims' scent. As Wingfield had known it would, the trail led through the marshes that made up so much of the peninsula on which Jamestown lay. By unspoken consent, he and his companions paused to rest and to scrape at the mud clinging to their boots.

  His crossbow at the ready, Wingfield looked back the way he had come, then to either side. For some time now, he had had a prickly feeling of being watched, though he told himself a sim would have to be mad to go so near the English settlement after the outrage of the night before.

  But Cooper and Dale also seemed uneasy. The guard rubbed his chin, saying, "I like this not. I’m all ajitter, as I've not felt since the poxy Spaniards snuck a patrol round our flank in Holland."

  "We'd best push on," Henry Dale said. "We'll cast about upstream and down, in hopes of picking up tracks again.

  We
re things otherwise, I'd urge us separaTe, one going one way and two the other, to speed the search. Now", he bared his teeth in frustration, "'twere better we stayed in a group. The bushes quivered, about fifteen paces away. Three weapons swung up as one. But instead of a sim bursting from the undergrowth, out came Caleb Lucas. "You young idiot! We might have shot you!" Cooper snarled. His finger was tight on the trigger of his pistol; as a veteran soldier, he always favored firearms.

  Lucas was even filthier than the men he faced. His grin flashed in his mud-spattered face. "Send me back now if you dare, my good sirs.

  These past two hours I've dogged your steps, betimes close enough to spit, and never did you tumble to it. Have I not, then, sufficient of the woodsman's art to accompany you farther?"

  Wingfield removed the bolt from his bow, released the string. "I own myself beaten, Caleb, for how should we say you nay? The damsels back in town, though, will take your leaving hard."

  "They'll have plenty to company them whilst I'm gone, and shall be there on my return," Lucas said cheerfully.

  "And in sooth, Edward, are we not off to rescue a fair young damsel of our own?"

  "Not wondrous fair, perhaps, since the little lass favors me, but I take your meaning." Wingfield considered. "We'll do as Henry proposed before your eruption, and divide at the streambank.

  Caleb, you'll come with me this way Henry and Allan shal take the other. Half a mile either way, then back here to meet. A pistol-shot to signal a find; otherwise we go on as best we can.

  Agreed?"

  Everyone nodded. A sergeant to the core, Cooper mutted, "As well I don't have Caleb with me I want a man to do as he's told." Unabashed, Lucas came to such a rigid parody of attention that the others could not help laugh.

  Caleb and Wingfield hurried along the edge of the creek, their heads down.

  Herons and white-plumed egrets flapped away; frogs and turtles splashed into the turbid water. "There!" Lucas said.