Soul Seekers (10 page)

25

‘We can’t hide down here all day,’ Jude said.

Cas squatted against a damp wall in the cellar and wracked his brains for some way out of the city without attracting attention.

‘Worse than that,’ Siren added, ‘we’ve got to make it all the way back up the Concord Turnpike to Lincoln. I can’t remember every detail, but I know the British forces retreated from George Washington’s militia on that route.’

‘We’ll have to use back roads,’ Joshua said, ‘or maybe just move at night.’

‘How far is it?’ Cas asked his father. ‘To Lincoln?’

‘About ten miles,’ Joshua replied. ‘Maybe three hours on foot, twice that through the woods.’

‘What about horses?’ Emily asked. ‘Siren can ride.’

‘The rest of us can’t though,’ Joshua pointed out. ‘Besides, a horse is much harder to hide. At least on foot we’ve got a chance of staying out of sight. We’ve got a day, right? That’s plenty of time if we can get out of the city.’

Cas nodded. They had enough time, but only if nothing got in their way. The Hessian officer they’d escaped from would certainly be hunting for them, and it wouldn’t take long for them to figure out where they had gone.

‘We’d better move, then,’ he said finally. ‘We can’t risk them doing a door to door search and finding us.’

Emily laughed. ‘Boston is huge,’ she said. ‘It would take months to search every house.’

‘Boston’s not huge in 1776,’ Siren explained. ‘It’s less than ten per cent of the size we’re used to. They could search much of the city in a single day if they’ve got enough men available.’

Joshua stood up and looked at Siren. ‘Okay, let’s go. How far is it to Boston?’

Cas looked up at his father in confusion. ‘We’re
in
Boston.’

Joshua blinked and shook his head. ‘Yeah, right. I meant Lincoln, how far is it?’

Cas got to his feet. ‘Are you okay, dad?’

His father swayed slightly on his feet and rubbed his eyes with his hands. ‘Just tired I guess. It’s been a long couple of days.’

Jude glanced at Cas. ‘Doctor Harrison said people get sick if they stay too long in the past.’

‘Who’s Doctor Harrison?’ Joshua asked.

Cas grabbed his father’s hand and made for the steps that led back up out of the cellar.

‘It’s started,’ he said. ‘There’s no more time to waste.’

As he reached the steps Cas saw a book lying on a shelf nearby. It looked like some kind of ledger, maybe records for the tavern above them. His father reached out for the book and tucked it under his arm.

‘Disguise,’ he said with a conspiratorial wink.

Cas led him up the steps to the doors. Siren moved alongside him and together they hefted the wooden brace out of its brackets and set it down. Cas peaked out of the doorway into the alley.

The cobblestone street was deserted, the smell of damp timbers and trickling sewage tainting the air. Cas edged out into the alley, followed closely by Joshua, Emily, Jude and Siren, who loosely position the cellar doors back in place.

‘Where to?’ Jude asked.

Cas glanced to his right to one end of the alley, where he could see a larger street with people and horses milling about. He looked left and saw the alley end alongside what looked like a small harbour ringed by a wall out in the water. Beyond it, across more open water, was Charlestown.

‘We’ll have to go south,’ he said finally. ‘We can’t get across the water.’

‘But that means we’ll have to go back through the town,’ Emily said.

Cas nodded, but Siren gestured to the water. ‘Why not take a boat?’ she asked.

‘We’ve got no money,’ Jude sighed.

‘I didn’t mean pay for a ride,’ Siren scowled at him. ‘I meant
take
a boat.’

Cas was entertaining this when his father starting singing in a mumbling voice. ‘Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream….’

Siren shot Cas a serious look. ‘He’s losing the plot Cas’, we’ve got to move.’

Cas turned and headed for the water, one hand clasping his father’s as they hurried out of the alley and onto a narrow quay. Fishing boats and small cutters were everywhere, sailors and fishermen loading, unloading, stitching canvass: the entire scene was filled with local people all going about their business.

And three of them trying to hold down a powerful stallion.

‘That’s the horse I borrowed,’ Siren said.

A voice rang out from behind them. ‘There they are! That’s them!’

Cas whirled to see half a dozen Hessian soldiers running up the alley behind them, their long barrelled muskets aimed at them.

Siren jumped down into the nearest vessel moored alongside the quay, a small cutter with a single sail furled neatly around its mast.

‘Get in, now!’ she yelled.

Jude and Emily tumbled into the boat as Cas hauled the mooring lines off the quay. A gunshot crashed out deafeningly loud behind him and a musket ball zipped past his head and smacked into the cutter’s mast. There was no time left. Cas ducked out of sight of the charging soldiers in the alley and yelled at Siren as she grabbed the oars.

‘Get as far away as you can! Hide the boat in the crowd and then get to the Charles River!’

Cas grabbed his father’s hand, whirled and dashed down the quay.

‘Cas’?!’ yelled Emily.

Cas didn’t look back. He ran as fast as he could down the quay, leaped over a pile crates and boxes, weaved past the big horse and then clambered over a towering pile of coiled ropes. He looked back to see his father right behind him, the ledger still clutched under his arm.

‘Stop him!’

Cas glanced over his shoulder as they ran. Three of the soldiers had burst from the alley and pursued him while the fourth was peering out across the dozens of boats in the harbour, trying to locate the one that his friends had escaped aboard.

‘Stop boy!’

One of the soldiers dropped onto one knee and aimed at Cas. Cas froze in mid stride as he saw the musket aimed right at his chest, Joshua skidding to a halt alongside him. The soldier was about to fire when a small crate flew from aboard one of the fishing vessels and smacked the weapon to one side. The musket fired a spout of flame and blue smoke but the shot slammed harmlessly into the quay.

‘Arrest that man!’ the soldier screamed in fury.

‘Arrest what man?’ came a muted reply from the fishermen’s vessels. ‘I didn’t see nothin’.’

Cas glanced at the fishermen on the quay but nobody looked up. He turned and sprinted away, hauling his father along with him and then turned into an alley. Four more soldiers charged toward him, alerted by the gunshots. A pair of mounted cavalrymen followed them at a canter and one of them pointed at him. Lieutenant Du Pont’s pig-like face screwed up with malice.

‘There he is!’

Cas dashed away from them, further down the quay into another narrow alley that led toward the larger ships moored and anchored on the city’s east side. He burst out onto the quay alongside a huge trade ship, her towering masts reaching high into the cold sky.

He looked left and right but there was nowhere to run, the quay packed with people all looking at him. He looked up at his father, who stared back down at him with a blank expression.

‘Where are we?’ Joshua asked in confusion. ‘And who are you?’

Cas knew he had only seconds to think of a way to hide.

*

Lieutenant Du Pont dashed onto the quay and came up short as he looked left and right.

‘Where is he?’ he shouted, looking at the workers crowding the quay. ‘Where did he go?’

‘Where did
who
go?’ a voice called back from high in the rigging of the ship.

‘The boy!’ Du Pont bellowed. ‘The boy who was right here with his father!’

The sailor rubbed his chin for a moment and then shook his head.

‘Nope, don’t recall seein’ a boy here.’ He looked across at another man dangling precariously from the yard arms. ‘Oi, Pete, did you see anyone?’

‘Not a soul,’ Pete replied, ‘apart from that boy that ran out a moment ago. Darndest thing I ever did see!’

‘Where did he go?’ Du Pont asked.

‘Well, blow me down if he didn’t sprout wings and fly out over the sea!’

A chorus of laughs drifted down from the rigging as one of Du Pont’s men moved alongside him. ‘They all hate us, sir. They’re not going to tell us anything and we don’t have the time to arrest and question them all.’

Du Pont scowled and looked around the crowded quay.

‘Split up,’ he ordered. ‘Search the docks for them and don’t come back empty handed.’

Du Pont stormed away from the docks, leaving his men with the laborious task of searching endless warehouses. One of them saw an old man sitting against the wall of a warehouse, his knees tucked up under his greatcoat and his shoes poking from beneath it. He had wrapped his arms around his knees against the cold and his long straggly beard was filthy and unkempt.

The soldier stormed across to the old man. ‘Did you see him?’

The old man squinted up at the soldier and held out a hand. ‘Penny for an old soldier, son?’

The soldier scowled and stormed down the quay to vanish into the crowd.

The old man waited for a minute or two, and then he unbuttoned his greatcoat and looked down. ‘You can come out now, son. My knees are killing me.’

Cas burst from underneath Kip’s Hardy’s greatcoat into the fresh air as the old man got painfully up off his knees.

‘Thanks, Kip,’ Cas said.

‘Least I could do after your friend cut me down from the gallows,’ Kip replied. ‘One good turn deserves another.’

Cas turned and hurried up the boarding ramp of a small schooner moored alongside the quay. Immediately, the sailors aboard opened a hatch on the deck and Joshua clambered out.

‘Here you go lad, right as rain,’ the schooner’s captain said in a thick Bostonian accent. ‘Not every day we get one over on one of those damned Hessians!’

Cas smiled his thanks and led his father off the schooner and onto the quay. He turned and looked out across the harbour. The cutter was lost amongst countless other vessels making their way out to sea.

‘We need to get out of the city,’ Cas said to Kip.

‘You and me both,’ Kip replied. ‘That’s why I came to the docks, hoping to hitch a ride aboard one these grand vessels. You want to come with me?’

Cas shook his head. ‘I’ve got to get to Lincoln.’

Kip’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘Son, are you lookin’ to get yourself killed?’

Cas shook his head. ‘I’m looking to keep us alive. I need your help, Kip. Do you know of anywhere safe we can go that’s in or near Lincoln? They’ll be looking for us.’

Kip stroked his long, ugly beard with hands weathered by the passing of countless years, and then he nodded.

‘Right enough, I can,’ he replied. ‘Where are your friends?’

Cas jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. ‘We’ll meet them on the opposite shore.’

* * *

26

Lieutenant Silas Du Pont sat astride his magnificent horse as the soldier stood below him and pointed to the docks.

‘We followed them sir, but they got away.’

‘Got away where?’ Du Pont demanded.

‘The boy fled into the city with his father,’ another of the soldiers reported, ‘but the rest of them got into a cutter and went out into the harbour.’

Lieutenant Du Pont looked out across the city to where the larger ships were moored. Boston was home to a thriving fishing fleet as well as the commercial harbour trading with the West Indies and Europe. But the escaped prisoners were neither traders nor fishermen, and would have nowhere to go except…

‘They’re spies,’ he said finally. ‘And spies always do the same thing once they’re on the run.’

The soldier standing below him smiled a gap-toothed grin. ‘They try to go home.’

Lieutenant Du Pont turned in his saddle to the twenty mounted soldiers amassed behind him.

‘Gentlemen, your quarry is a small fishing cutter that will probably try to make landfall somewhere near the Charles River. Ride forth, and bring at least a few of them back alive!’

The cavalry team galloped away toward the Boston Neck, the southern end of the city where the road led to Roxbury at then turned north-west toward the Charles River. Du Pont turned his mount and rode across the common to the powder house, where he reined his horse in.

The morning breeze was buffeting the surface of the water between the islands opposite a spot on the mainland called Little Cove. A series of gun batteries there looked out over the city, placed to prevent a naval force from blockading the port and the entrance to the Charles River. That terrain was in the hands of the rebels, but they did not have the manpower to patrol the entire coastline. Du Pont’s men would easily be able to ride out and arrest the escaped criminals.

Du Pont knew that all of the fishing vessels would be heading out to sea at this time of the morning or already far out in the ocean. When he spotted a little cutter fighting its way against the current toward the opposite shore, it’s sails flapping and poorly adjusted to the wind, he knew he wasn’t looking at fishermen.

He reached down and lifted a spyglass from a pouch on his saddle. He raised the glass to his eye and focused in on the little boat on the choppy waters.

‘I spy a spy,’ he uttered to himself in satisfaction, then closed the spyglass and turned to his aide de camp. ‘Send a signal to the gun batteries: warning shots only. Let’s encourage them to get ashore, shall we?’

Moments later, he was riding hard to catch up with his cavalrymen.

*

‘Row harder!’

Siren rowed powerfully as Emily hauled on her oar, the heavy wood grinding through its clasps and dragging slowly through the grey, cold water.

‘It’s too heavy,’ she complained.

Jude took her place, letting her rest as she stumbled toward the stern. The boat was rocking on the waves, and they didn’t know how to use the sail properly so were forced to row against the strong current surging between the city of Boston and its islands.

‘We’ll be ashore soon,’ Siren gasped between rows as she glanced at the broad cove ahead. ‘They’ll be coming after us though. We can’t be hard to spot.’

‘What about Cas?’ Jude asked. ‘They might have caught him and Joshua for all we know. If they don’t make it back, they’ll both be stuck here forever.’

Emily’s expression of worry collapsed into something close to panic. With Cas and Joshua gone, they both instinctively looked to Siren. Siren gritted her teeth as she rowed.

‘We get back to Lincoln,’ she said, ‘and wait as long as we dare.’

‘He could be hanged!’ Emily said.

‘So could we,’ Jude replied, ‘if we don’t keep moving.’

‘What are we going to do when we get ashore?’ she asked again.

‘Shut up!’ Siren growled. ‘The current’s pushing us away from the shore. Get on the rudder and keep us on course.’

Emily shot Siren a scorned look but turned and stomped toward the stern.

‘She’s right,’ Jude said. ‘We don’t have a plan for when we get ashore.’

‘We don’t have a plan at all!’ Siren snapped back. ‘Just keep rowing, we’ll figure out what we’re going to do later, if we get that far.’

A boom thumped the air and rolled across the waves around them. For a moment nobody knew what was happening, but then Jude saw the spurt of smoke drifting from what looked like a thick stone wall on a hill overlooking the shore.

A high pitched whistling sound was followed by a crash of white water that erupted in a towering column barely twenty yards from the cutter. Emily screamed as the little boat rocked violently on the plunging waves.

‘They’re shooting at us!’ she yelled.

‘Thanks for letting us know!’ Jude shouted back.

‘Keep rowing,’ Siren snapped at him. ‘We’ve got to get under the guns!’

‘What do you mean
under
them?’

‘That was cannon fire,’ Siren explained as she heaved on her oar. ‘They can only adjust them to fire at certain angles. If we get close then they can’t aim low enough to hit us!’

Jude rowed with renewed strength, the cutter slicing through the waves as more shots erupted from the gun emplacements. Blasts of white water drenched them with icy showers as they rowed, but gradually the shots fell farther away as they approached the shore.

‘See?’ Siren gasped as she heaved. ‘They can’t shoot at us anymore.’

Jude nodded but he suddenly stopped rowing and stared at Siren.

‘Not with the cannons, anyway,’ he said.

Siren frowned and realised that Jude was not looking at her but past her, toward the shore.

There in the cove stood a dozen horses, each with a soldier astride them and pointing a rifle at the cutter.

* * *