The Butcher's Daughter

Chapter 23

Despite his repeated testaments and displays of loyalty, animosity followed Captain Wilkins around every corner. He knew that the small platoon by the river, who Bordon had tossed him to like a discarded handkerchief, would be anything but pleased by his arrival. Company was not in his best interest that night. Solitude, on the other hand, better suited his needs. He was not looking for Mabel. His mind was set on allowing her to perish in the woods and yet, there was the smallest fragment of his heart that harbored both fondness and concern for the little instigator. They were both colonials and bound to South Carolina through Waterford. Assuming she truly was a Casey. Having known Caseys his entire life, Wilkins was almost certain that there was truth to her claim. How she and Solomon's daughter could become so entangled with Colonel Tavington, however, evaded him. Then again, he was anything but the commander that Wilkins had initially longed to serve under. Perhaps he and Mabel weren't so different after all.

Mabel Tavington was not on his mind when he found her. He was deeply submerged in contemplation about another young woman. The woods darkened long before the sky, even in the depths of winter and that black ribbon of river that cut through the boulders and aging stacks of fallen foliage, reminded him of sweet Virginia Hardwick's long, black hair. He remembered laying beside his Virginia in an open field, beneath that same dark firmament. Every strand that cascaded from her crown looped and turned over the ground with the same grace and agility as the waters of the Santee. These days, his loyalties tended towards Virginia and away from his duties. He longed to return to her, but Wilkins dismissed those longings as nothing more than weakness. So, they remained in the painful silence that the deepest desires of the human heart are often banished to.

He saw the red of Mabel's coat first, still and inanimate at the bottom of a deep ravine. From afar, it hardly appeared to belong to a human, just a discarded lump of fabric or perhaps the decaying corpse of another fallen soldier. Wilkins coaxed his horse to where the opening in the earth began and looked over the edge, just for good measure. She was flat on her back with a small puddle of glistening crimson around her head. He would have assumed the worst, but her lips were moving, muttering, as though she was simply talking in her sleep. He did not know this, but she was speaking to Annabelle. The injury looked bad, even from above and the desire to help eclipsed Wilkins' first instinct, to abandon her. It would have been impossible to find his footing on that steep incline, so he rode alongside the trench for several yards until he found a place where the soil was firm and covered with rocks and roots to grab onto. Moments after finding Mabel, her seemingly nonsensical conversation came to a halt. A bit of white linen that had once belonged to a shirt was bunched up behind her head, stopping the blood in its tracks.

"Now, how did you manage to do that, I wonder?" He glanced quickly at the injury before pulling the unconscious girl into his arms. The wound was external, and her skull didn't appear to have split. She was very lucky, he wagered, but continued to apply pressure, nonetheless.

The more that Wilkins moved Mabel, the more her nerves shot to life, making her aware of her pain. As her thoughts blurred, she called out for Annabelle. Then for her father. His arms felt like William's, strong and thick and warm. His embrace and this association were the only things that were keeping her from crying out in pain. She buried her face in his coat, breathing in its fragrance. It contained notes of woodfire and the way that the horses on her farm always smelled when her father let them run freely in the rain. Her weary mind worked through its pain and confusion, allowing a memory to materialize of when she was very small, years before the fire in the schoolhouse took her father's strength away.

It was the eve of her first solo ride, shortly after Buttercup had been trained to wear a saddle. She had thrown Mabel from her back and into the corral's metal fence. Not once, not twice. Again and again, the stubborn little palomino would reject its rider. William would stand by, ready and willing to kiss her wounds and tell her that it was more than acceptable if she never wanted to ride again. Never once did that thought cross Mabel's mind. The tiny, spirited girl, would ask for nothing more than a boost so that she might ascend the horse's back and try to ride all over again. Buttercup pushed her as far as she could go and in that final attempt, jumped the gate and headed out into the field. That was the moment that Mabel knew her calling, when she harnessed the horse's power with her infinitesimal hands, brought the beast to a halt and returned to her to the corral in a steady, obedient trot. She didn't realize how much blood had been drawn, how bruised her little bones were until William lifted her from Buttercup's back and held her close.
He sunk his lips into her chubby cheek just as it became damp with tears. "You, dear girl, are indestructible." That was the origin of Mabel's favorite lie. "I don't know where on earth it comes from."

"From watching you. I want to be just like you, Fa." As memory and reality reached their intersection, Mabel mumbled those same words, just loud enough for Wilkins to hear. They made no sense to him, no sense at all, but registered, instead, in Mabel's heart. There was no parting from that image, that deep ambition that had followed her around since birth. She would never stop idolizing her father, regardless of his sins. Her path was set in stone, imprinted deeply by his footsteps, she would follow him to the ends of the earth, across every plain of reality. That was why she was there. To follow William to whatever end. She slept soundly, cradled by Captain Wilkins and encased in that sensory memory of her father. He was out there, somewhere in those same woods and that thought seemed to bring her peace.

William knew exactly where he was going. It was not the journey or the distance that weighted him, nor was it the endless possibility of riding past a wounded or defeated Mabel without seeing her. He did not realize the peril that he was in because the loss of Annabelle had caused his other wound to go numb. His party was broken, scattered throughout the marshland and he was vulnerable, alone, a glaring red target for any nearby marksman to take down. The musket ball that he had taken to the thigh, moments before Annabelle left him, burrowed deeper into his muscle with every stride. He did not think of stopping, he only thought of Mabel's tenacity. Something inside of him, be it intuition or a foolish whim, told William that it was through his example that Mabel found her strength. To further that meditation, however, he also knew that the girl who had mysteriously, miraculously proved to be his daughter, was so much stronger than he would ever be.

"She is safe," the winds seemed to say. "You must look after yourself now."

If the noise of his breaking heart had been only a fraction softer, William would have heard Annabelle's voice in full, reaching out for him on the breeze. As it was, her watchful presence only made him mourn deeper. The lavender on her flesh, the waves of rose that lingered in her hair, wrapped around him. She was trying to comfort him, but it was anything but comforting. Her memory was torture. He had dreamt of every agonizing moment that followed Marigold's death, but it had not prepared him for feeling the life leaving Annabelle's body or standing beside her silent, white form in a pool of candlelight. By ensuring him that Mabel was safe, the ghost of Annabelle was inadvertently encouraging him that his mission was complete. That he had her permission to join her in death.

He turned the reins, if he could set Bellamy on the path to Fort Carolina, the horse would run there instead of to the encampment where Mabel had been taken. It was not an honorable way to die, it was a coward's death, one that would revoke his name of any honor. But William knew that after he had taken away his own life, he would simply fall into Annabelle's arms and find peace. The forest path untangled itself, turning straight as an arrow once it found the river. He remembered the night that he watched her bathe in its waters. It was not long ago, at all, when his only pain was the desire to ravish his poetess on the riverbank and fall asleep on her heaving breast. He alone would forever change her thoughts and exchange her innocence for wisdom and lust as he stole away her breath and altered her beating heart. It should have been his love to do this, not gunfire, not death. It should have been painful to dismount and walk across the ground to the black, ice cold waters. He left all of his possessions behind, carrying only his pistol and a single round of ammunition. As he limped, the ribbon that he had tied to the weapon's handle fluttered in the breeze.

"There is poetry," he whispered as he cut through the waves, kneeling halfway through so that the shallow water rose halfway to his chest, "... there is poetry, is there not? In the end that I have chosen for myself? What if our two spirits can reside in this intrepid river? Will we live forever, then? Will our souls wash ashore every century or so, live out our destinies and twist and flow and turn again after we are gone? Is there anything on earth, Annabelle, that is so fearsome and calm? So timeless and unending as a river and the mighty sea that birthed it? I once sought immortality through victory, through how many accomplishments I had to my name. Not once did I suspect that my one glimpse of immortality would come in the form of a sweet girl and her jar of fireflies. Your words, those darling poems that everyone in Waterford so hatefully dismissed reached closer to immortality than my merits as a soldier ever did. If I do live forever, it will be by love and so, it is through love and the pain of love lost that I choose to die."