The Butcher's Daughter

Chapter 26

The marksmen were watching in the trees, waiting to have their vengeance, when Mabel and Captain Wilkins approached the camp. William wasn't far at all, he could have seen and heard everything if it hadn't been for the darkness of the woods and the splashing of the river. He was cornered; cornered by his Ghost. Every dragoon was being held at point-blank range and the attack would commence after Benjamin Martin fired his first shot. They listened and waited, hearing only a hushed conversation between the two redcoat captains. It was about the trustworthiness of Mabel, which Bordon did not believe in. Wilkins held on to the unexpected friendship that he had formed with the child hours ago. What she had told him that morning, a simple antidote that had fallen from the lips of his own descendent as he waded through the bottomless grief of losing his young love, soothed him.

Mabel had listened to Darren Baako speak to her godmother as she perused the rows of riding boots in his store. What he had told her was this, "Tristan exited the stage of life too early, yes, but she is not far. She is watching patiently in the wings for this performance to end. There will be other chances, other costumes, sets and scripts- other names that we will go by with new motivations to pursue. I used to think that our forever had ended, but it did not. I am living it right now and will live it again. That is what forever means to me." To know that he was irrevocably bound to Virginia and would remain with her for all eternity was a gift, but there was no explaining this. For now, it was merely a secret that Mabel had passed on to Wilkins. Soon, their conversation became a quarrel that Mabel did not only hear, but that broke every dam within her soul and unleashed every tempest, every blazing fire that flowed through her veins.

"You killed the Martin boy?!" Wilkins stepped away from his comrade, shocked and sickened by what Bordon had revealed. He meant Gabriel of course, but Mabel did not know this. It was still so easy for her to stake the blame that belonged to her father on someone else and Bordon was the ideal scapegoat. "Do you realize what you have done?! You've turned our ghost into a monster!"

Mabel was unarmed, save for the dagger that she carried in her boot. The gap that Wilkins had naturally made between his body and Bordon's was just wide enough for her to move into. One swift motion later, and his back was against a tree and her blade was against his throat. "You?! I thought that it was my father all this time and it was you?! I should have known!" As her voice swelled, it carried through air, sifting through the trees as effortlessly as a cloud of fog. Benjamin lowered his weapon, but not his eyes. They stayed locked on William's and watched as the threat that he wore so naturally dissolved into surrender and concern. "Yes, he is my father!" Mabel continued to blare in the distance, her fury growing, "Yes, I am the butcher's daughter! But the only butcher I see here is you!"

"I beg you," William's strong form buckled under the pain of emotion, "on bended knee, Sir, I beg you. Do what you will to me, but do not harm my child."

There was no initial shot. But the moment that the Ghost decided to spare the Butcher, Bordon unveiled his truth to Mabel and every onlooker in and around the encampment. "I did not kill Thomas Martin," he told her, almost sympathetically. "That was your father. Let me tell you, Mabel, I could not look Tavington in the eye for days thereafter. He had to coax me away from the farm because I was so aghast. No children. We would not kill children. That was his promise to me when we left New York. I did not kill Thomas Martin," he repeated, "I killed the other one. The older one because he wished ill on my own son. I regret it every day and will carry that regret for the remainder of my life. How could he possibly have known? Why I, a common man from New Jersey, fight so ruthlessly for the crown? It is because of what the rebels did to my son when he was only five years old." The pressure on Bordon's throat was relieved and before he could proceed with his explanation, he spied a young militiaman in the trees, who had moved out of position, intent on avenging Gabriel Martin. "To arms!" Bordon cried to the others. "To arms!"