The Butcher's Daughter

Chapter 8

William crouched on a large, flat rock just outside of camp and covered his face with his hands. His throat was sore and raw from screaming at his subordinates. The billowing smoke from the Whitley Farm irritated everyone's eyes and William's just enough to conceal the tears that he shed as they rode away. Now, he was free to submit to the pain if he so desired. He fought through the words, those angry demands that he had given his dragoons. Particularly the promises to slash to ribbons the lives and careers of any who gave full account of the executions that he had ordered earlier that day to Lord Cornwallis.

Although countless innocents would die before his role in the war was over, the Casey and Abbott children were the first youths to perish by his order. He had engaged Annabelle that day, threatened her with a similar fate and she didn't back down. Even after the shots rang out from the corral, that fair and fearless girl of nineteen remained unbroken by the menacing glare of Colonel William Tavington.

He should have spared them. Had he been in his right mind, William would have suspended his order. But that girl, that silly girl who so formally and conversationally introduced herself as "Annabelle Casey" and pleaded to reason with the monster who masqueraded as William- she was his greatest threat.

As long as she continued to taunt his mind with the verses that rolled over her pink tongue and out those petulant lips, as long her slender, virginal form skipped innocently through his dreams- his lust for her would continue. Like a cat pursuing a butterfly, he was unsure if he wanted to possess her or rip her to shreds. At this point, William simply believed that he wanted to do both. The dreams would continue, surely, and his focus on anything progressive or important would continue to be tragically thwarted.

He allowed the images in his mind to transition to the indulgent picture of her bare shoulders and long, white neck. His strong hands tensed in one moment as he imagined snapping it in two like an aspen twig- in the next, however, William contemplated on the reverberation in her throat and could almost hear her cheerful humming. He placed a fiery kiss on the nape of her neck as it appeared in his mind.

Dusk had fallen and with it, a sparse population of fireflies. He removed a small sketchbook from his breast pocket and started to trace the young woman's shoulder and braid, but the fireflies had other plans and inspired a sketch of an empty jar that he would soon fill with imaginary light.
"Seven tiny stars," he thought aloud and his somber face birthed his signature sideways smile. "Silly girl. Silly, wonderful, beautiful girl..."
William's smile fell as he remembered the horrific crime that he had committed by destroying her family. "We shall not meet again. Or your purity and innocence will surely tarnish in the darkest corners of my mind." He finished the unimpressive sketch and was ready to rip the page from its binding and crumple it into oblivion when a terrible commotion arose from the encampment. William slammed the book shut.

"There is a rebel town nearby, you ignoramus swines!" He hissed to the cluster of half-dressed soldiers. The source of the noise was difficult to place at first, but the nearer he drew, William was able to diagnose whatever strangeness had occurred. Several of the soldier's horses had spooked and uprooted the young tree that they were tied to. "Whose handiwork is this, I wonder?!" William sneered as he turned towards his men, broken branch in hand. "How ironic it is that you questioned my authority earlier! Half of you can't tie proper knots and the other half choose to tie your mounts to the forest's most callow tree! Retrieve your horses. If you are shot at in the woods, you are on your own, Gentlemen." His eyes moved down the row of horses whose bonds remained unbroken and he cursed under his breath upon discovering that his was among the escaped.

Silence was no longer an option and yet, the herding progressed with as much order as William could request from his men. His own pursuit, the finest horse he'd ever rode and had named "Bellamy" out of sheer formality, was finally collected and all others were left to search the woods alone. He would have returned to camp. In fact, he was about to when the instigator caught his eye. Less than a hundred feet away, an unbranded chestnut mare had engaged in a hostile confrontation with one of his men's horses. William prepared to fire. It would have ended all for the poor creature had a lanky brown-haired girl not emerged from the woods and grabbed hold of the reins.