The Butcher's Daughter

Chapter 18

One evening prior...

Mabel was half-asleep the night that William left camp. Every time that she willed herself into partial repose, the nightmare would force her back into consciousness. She focused on steadying her breath and emptying the contents of her mind during those elongated pauses between sleep. She hungered for rest, for those dreamless slumbers that lasted for only several minutes before turning into something else entirely.

The influence that she had on William and his dragoons was noticeable. They monitored the supply lines and kept rebel conflicts at bay with civility and care, just as Lord Cornwallis had ordered. William refrained from his usual brutality to keep Mabel away from conflict- and this came as a relief to his commander. It was a brilliant tactic on Cornwallis' part, but expressions of undeniable malice moved across William's handsome face like ripples upon still water every time he received news of his "Ghost". That atop the pain that he endured with each premonition of Marigold's and, in turn, Annabelle's fate destroyed William and altered the relationship that he had with his daughter for the worse.

Mabel used to find comfort in knowing that her father was near. She would listen to his feet move across the dampened, wilted leaves of fall and count the paces that he took across the campsite.
"Twenty steps away," she would reassure herself, "there is nothing to fear because my safety is only twenty steps away."

On this evening, she didn't suspect that William, her only real ally in the encampment, had temporarily abandoned her through nothing more than the persuasion of a dream. Like her father, Mabel's dreams were telling. She too could be convinced to venture aimlessly into the woods by their command. But that terrible, recurring nightmare extended a warning. As she focused on the billowing white fabric above her head, a familiar presence entered the space followed by a wordless order to remain still and to listen.

"Your time with your father is coming to an end." Although Thomas' words should have been unwelcomed, they washed over Mabel like a comforting embrace.

The spring that she made into an upright position caused the faintest shift of motion in a nearby tent. Bordon, more than likely. He was a light sleeper. Or rather, his intolerance for Mabel and the noises of her frequent restless nights compelled him to awaken and take note of yet another incident to report to her father. She normally wouldn't have cared, but the marks against her were piling higher and higher, so she decided to remain as silent as possible.

"Thomas?!" Her voice was hushed and her eyes of pale blue sharpened as they adjusted to the low light provided by the moonlight as it bounced off the surrounding wintertime mist. "How can you say that? Fa and I have hardly spent any time together at all!"

"You've been having nightmares," the voice replied, cryptically. "Haven't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Mabel refused to stretch back out on the ground and become comfortable again.

"Talking about them with someone can make them go away," the innocent, almost playful tone that she had come to adore returned to his voice. "I'm here because I know that you are feeling afraid and alone."

"No," she shook her head and smiled only slightly, "you're here to be a jerk. You know the nightmare is about my father and I know that you, like just about everyone else, aren't particularly fond of him."

"Are you certain that it was by his hand that-"

Mabel signaled for Thomas to quit talking. Not because those words were painful to hear, but so that she might revisit the scene that had embedded itself so deeply in her mind. It was true that hadn't spoken of it and secretly longed to confide in someone. "The battlefield is blurry," she struggled, "I know that there are others around us, but I can only see his face and it is filled with such hatred. Like it is every time that he hears of another one of the Ghost's ambushes. It doesn't change until after the cold, sharp blade has moved through my stomach and out my back. Then and only then, do I see a hint of regret on my father's face."