Here Comes a Candle

  HERE COMES A CANDLE

  Jane Aiken Hodge

  Kate Croston hid her beauty behind a quiet manner. But from the start, Master Jonathan Penrose knew she had touched his heart.

  He knew little about her past—only that she was English and had fled to America and was now alone and penniless. She had told him nothing of the ugly, terrifying experience that had brought her here.

  When Jonathan offered her the position as companion to his beautiful, but emotionally disturbed little daughter, he had not anticipated the anger of his elegant and haughty wife.

  Kate, however, was prepared for the jealousy of Mistress Penrose. But she was not prepared for the nightmare that had haunted her to rise up once more to threaten the happiness of them all...

  ONE

  “For God, and King George!” The rifle dropped from the old woman’s hands and she fell slowly, loose-jointed, to the ground, a puppet in a gray, flannel nightgown. Hurrying forward to kneel beside her on the cold, half-thawed earth, Kate Croston felt the pulse in the thin wrist flicker and go out. The Americans’ aim had been too true. There was nothing more she could do for her only friend in Canada—in the world. Except blame herself bitterly, uselessly, for those few moments of exhausted inattention that had let old Mrs. McGowan find the rifle and get out of the house. To her death. She found she was muttering to herself, a strange mixture of prayer and apology. Very gently, with a hand that shook, she closed the staring eyes and came back from the shadow of death to the facts of her own position.

  Only a thin straggle of trees and bushes at the end of the garden screened Mrs. McGowan’s house from the center of York, and part of her mind had been aware, all the time, of the sounds of marching feet, of command and counter-command, as the Americans took over the town. Now a small group of American militia burst through the trees and paused for a moment, in oddly unmilitary conference, staring at her.

  At last one of them pushed forward, plump and furious in his gray uniform. “Who fired that shot? Who winged my sergeant?” And then, seeing the rifle that lay under the old woman’s hand, “Her, was it? Don’t you know York capitulated an hour ago? What do you mean by letting the old crone loose with a rifle? She’ll be lucky if she ain’t strung up here and now.”

  “She is lucky.” Kate faced him across the limp body. “She’s dead. You’ve killed her, gallant soldiers that you are. An old woman, ill, a little mad, who didn’t know what she was doing. She thought it was the other war, George Washington’s war.”

  “Dead is she?” He confirmed it with a casual glance. “Well, so much the better, I guess. It don’t much matter which war it is, ’75 or 1812, when it comes to breach of truce. Maybe she was old and mad, but that don’t help my sergeant. He won’t be walking for weeks, will Sergeant Mackelford. I reckon you’ve got something to answer for, if you were in charge of her. What were you thinking of, letting a mad woman loose with a rifle?”

  “I thought she was asleep.” The long, anxious nights of nursing had left Kate too tired to think, too tired to care. Anyway, he was right. It was her fault. I’m a Jonah, she thought; I bring disaster wherever I go. I infect whatever I touch. She raised tired brown eyes to the militia captain’s. “Shoot me, then,” she said. “Why not? It’s all of a piece with killing a woman old enough to be your mother.”

  “That’s about enough out of you!” And then, the fatal comment she had been expecting. “You speak kind of queer. You’re English?”

  “Yes. And proud of it.”

  “Proud! A fine lot you’ve got to be proud of. Impressing our sailors, searching our ships, sinking them when it takes your fancy. The Canadians are one thing—they’re our kin, misled maybe, but we’d as lief not fight them, if they’d just have the sense to join us, but you bloody English are another matter. I’ve hated you since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. What d’you say, boys? I reckon she put the old dame up to shooting Sergeant Mackelford. Just the kind of thing a dirty Britisher would do. Shall we string her up, and be done with it?”

  There were shouts of “yes” from several of his men, but others demurred. “After all,” said one, “she’s only a girl. It was the old one did the damage. I don’t reckon this one had much to do with it. Dearborn’s orders was mighty strict, remember, about respecting civilians.”

  “That was before they blew up General Pike,” said the captain. “I reckon that’s a breach of the rules of war, and once they’re broken, anything goes. Well, look what we’re doing back there, firing the Assembly Buildings.”

  “Yes, and I guess old Dearborn will just about blow his top when he gets out of bed and hears about that.” This was a man who had not spoken before, and Kate found herself thinking, with strange detachment, how oddly these American soldiers behaved. Imagine an English private speaking up to his captain like that.

  “I tell you what, boys,” said the captain now. “Let’s do it the American way. Let’s vote on it.”

  This precipitated a hot argument as to how the vote should be taken. Listening, Kate was amazed to care so little. In ten minutes, five perhaps, she would probably be dead. Well, and why not? It would only finish here what Charles Manningham had started and Fred Croston prevented in England. Poor Fred. It was she who ought to be dead, not he, not Mrs. McGowan. I should never have run away, she thought. It was waiting for me, all the I time. And yet, oddly, now at this last moment when, she saw, her captors had agreed on a secret vote, she felt a sudden urge to go to them, to plead for her life, to try to I escape ... The spring sun was warm on her back; somewhere in the trees an unknown bird was singing; eighteen is young to die.

  Hurrying toward his grandmother’s house, Jonathan Penrose slowed his pace at sight of the little group of militiamen busy casting their votes in their captain’s hat. Beside them, the girl looked so tiny that he thought her a child at first until, getting closer, he saw the widow’s weeds and the thin, brown face so drawn into hopelessness that he stopped for a moment, despite the urgency of his errand.

  “What’s going on here?” He had recognized the militia captain as a fellow passenger on the crowded American transport that had brought them across Lake Ontario from their base at Sackett’s Harbor.

  “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Penrose.” The militia captain was delighted to see him. On board the Madison this tall, bronzed New Englander had been treated with the respect due to an old friend and fellow captain of Commodore Chauncey’s. Now, meeting the piercing gaze of blue eyes under bristling brows that should have belonged to an older man, he thought he saw how to avoid a difficult decision. “You’re a civilian, sir, and a friend of the Commodore’s. Maybe you might know better than me what’s best to do. It’s a question of truce-breaking, see? That old hag down there got loose and shot my sergeant. He won’t be walking for months. Well, we’ve disposed of her all right and tight, as you can see. But. what’s to do with the young one who let her do it? There’s half of us says string her up, here and now, as an example. But the other half ain’t so sure. And nor am I.” Oddly, he found he had changed his opinion under the stare of those penetrating blue eyes. “We say she’s just a young thing and mebbe it would be best to let her go with a caution. So if you’d just give us your casting vote, Mr. Penrose, I reckon we’d be almighty obliged to you...”

  His voice trailed off. Jonathan Penrose had stopped listening and moved forward to stare with horror at the corpse. “Dear God,” he said. “It’s old Mac.” And then, to the girl: “Liz! What happened?”

  She raised dark-shadowed brown eyes to gaze at him dully. “I’m not Liz McGowan,” she said. “I’m Kate Croston. Not that it matters. And you?”

  “Jonathan Penrose. Mrs. McGowan’s grandson. The American one.”

  “At last! But why didn
’t you get here sooner? She was so sure you would. She said she’d written ages ago. After Liz went, she looked for you all the time.”

  “Liz gone? I don’t understand anything. I’ve had no letters. When I heard how things were on this front, I came as fast as I could. Too late. My dear old Mac.” He brushed a hand across his eyes. “I was going to take her home. Her and Liz. To look after them. But what happened? The fighting’s over. York surrendered an hour ago.”

  “That’s just it.” The American captain sounded anxious now. “I’m mortal sorry, sir, if the old lady was kin of yours, but she still shot my sergeant in the leg one whole hour after the truce had been signed. I reckon the young lady’s got some explaining to do.”

  “She was ill.” Kate Croston said it wearily, as if nothing mattered any more. “She’d been ill all winter. Liz told me. She said she thought it was as much misery over this war between her two countries as anything. You should know about that.” She turned almost accusingly to Jonathan Penrose. “Liz said that even though she’d lived in Canada ever since the other war, she still loved America, loved you particularly. Every time there was news of another raid across the St. Lawrence, Liz said, she’d be worse. And not hearing from you was the last straw.”

  “But I did write. Of course I wrote. I suppose she never got them. But where is Liz? What’s she thinking of, to leave her grandmother alone with a stranger at a time like this?”

  Something flashed in the tired brown eyes. “What else could she do? You didn’t come. Nobody came. But, of course, you say you’d not heard.” Doubt in her voice. Did she believe him?

  “Heard what? Pull yourself together, girl. Explain!” Impossible not to speak impatiently to this wraith of a girl who stood and spoke like an automaton, without even a tear for old Mac’s death.

  She was beyond resenting his tone. One thin brown hand pushed the tumbling curls back from her forehead as she marshaled her thoughts to answer him. “About your cousin Mark,” she said. “He was wounded on the Lacolle River last autumn. He’s been in hospital at Montreal all winter, very ill. Mrs. McGowan only heard a few weeks ago. She sent Liz to him at once. She said it didn’t matter about her. Besides, I was here to look after her.”

  “This is all very fine,” the American captain broke in impatiently, “but what we want to know, miss, is how you came to let the old”—he remembered Jonathan Penrose—“the old lady loose with the rifle.”

  “I must have fallen asleep for a moment,” Kate replied. “I’d been up all night, with Mrs. McGowan restless, and the panic in the town. The doctor said it would kill her to move her.” She turned to Jonathan Penrose. “So there was nothing for it but to stay. Dr. Brown said he’d come this morning; let me know how things went. I suppose he’s been too busy. It was horrible. When the firing started, she roused up and started talking about her husband, about Bunker Hill. I didn’t understand at first. It was all I could do to keep her quiet. At last I managed to give her some of the drops the doctor left ... the firing had slackened ... I thought she’d fallen asleep ... I sat down for a minute in the chair by the bed. The explosion woke me—only it woke her first.”

  “Yes, that explosion!” said the captain. “The mine that killed General Pike. We’ll not forget that in a hurry.” Behind him, the Assembly Buildings, burning fiercely now, gave grim point to his words. Through the trees, they could catch glimpses of American soldiers going about the sordid business of the sack. And yet it was oddly quiet now that the firing had stopped, since almost all the able-bodied inhabitants of York had taken to the woods when the Americans landed. “So you just went off to sleep!” The captain had not finished with Kate Croston. “And left her loose to fire on us?”

  “I’ve sat up with her seven nights running,” said the girl. “And nursed my husband before that. But why should you care? Yes—I did drop off, just for a few moments. When I woke she’d got the rifle up from the cellar. I didn’t even know it was there—still less loaded. Liz should have told me ... She turned it on me. Said I was a rebel ... Said all kinds of things ... about Gage, and Prescott, and Putnam. I didn’t understand for a while. I just thought she’d catch cold.” Savage irony in her tone.

  “Bunker Hill,” said Jonathan. “Her husband—my grandfather was killed there. That’s when she came to Canada. Poor darling, she was always homesick for Boston,” And then, turning with sudden fury on the American captain: “Don’t you think you’ve done enough? You’ve killed a harmless old woman, who thought she was fighting another war, in another country. And now you talk about hanging a girl whose only crime seems to have been her willingness to stay and risk her life nursing a stranger. You make me ashamed to call myself American. Must we become barbarians because we are fighting a war that was not of our choosing? Look! Look there beyond the trees! It’s not just the Assembly Buildings that are burning, though that’s bad enough, the library’s gone, the archives, everything. I tell you, the fires you’ve lit here today will be paid for sometime, in blood and tears.” He and the captain had both turned, as he spoke, to look at the burning buildings. Now the sound of scuffling made him turn back in time to see two of the American soldiers manhandling the girl toward the open door of the house. One of them had his hand over her mouth. Above it, her eyes met his, without hope. “Stop it!” His voice was different now, commanding, the sea captain’s voice, used to carry above wind and weather.

  The two men stopped in the doorway, but still held the girl, not gently. “She tried to escape,” said one of them, and winked broadly at his captain. “You all saw her try to run for it, didn’t you? I reckon anything goes after that. But not hanging—that would be kind of a waste, I guess.” His free hand, moving down over her shoulder, gave point to his words. She writhed against it, her eyes still fixed, with that gaze of mute despair, on Jonathan.

  The captain looked frightened. “But General Dearborn said—” his tone as he began the protest warned Jonathan that he was a broken reed, a soldier for Sundays only.

  One long stride and he had the two men by their collars, tearing them away from the girl. “I say you’re to leave her alone.” He stood there, unarmed, in his civilian black, staring them down.

  There was an odd, ugly moment of silence. But this angry young man was a friend of Commodore Chauncey’s and everyone knew that only the American Navy had distinguished itself so far in this war that no one wanted. Besides, he was clearly not to be trifled with. “If I were you,” he went on more mildly, addressing himself to the captain as if he were still in command of his men, “I’d be inclined to get back to the assembly point. Dearborn doesn’t much like stragglers. I’ll take care of the young woman. And be answerable for her to the authorities, if necessary.”

  “Oh, in that case...” The captain reached for dignity, but achieved only the tones of heartfelt relief. “We’d better get back to work, boys. But you’re responsible, sir, don’t forget.”

  “I won’t.” He was furious with himself as he watched them go. Madness to have saddled himself with the responsibility for this poor little brown thing who was leaning now against the door of the house, shuddering as if she would never stop. “It’s all right.” He said it as kindly as he could manage. “They’ve gone.”

  “Yes.” She raised dull eyes to his and he found himself wondering what in the world the Americans had seen in her. “I should thank you. You saved me—” she clenched her teeth on her lower lip to stop it trembling.

  “Oh, as to that—” Impatiently. “I don’t imagine you were in any real danger. We’re not, in fact, barbarians, we Americans.”

  “No?” Disconcertingly, she left it at that.

  He turned away from her with a spasm of irritation as much at himself as at her. “Get her bed ready, would you?” He bent and picked up his grandmother’s body. “My dear old Mac.” Holding the limp little corpse in one arm, as if it weighed nothing, he bent to brush straggling gray hair away from the forehead.

  She watched dully for a moment, surprised at the stre
ngth he showed, then turned away to hurry indoors and smooth the sheets on the narrow bed. Now, at last, tears she had not shed for herself began to flow easily down her cheeks.

  “I should be crying, not you.” He drew the sheet up gently over the lined old face. “I could, too.” She could see that this was true. “But there’s no time. If I am to protect you, I must know more about it all. Who are you? How do you come here?” And then, angrily: “And what are you doing?”

  She had been moving about the kitchen-living room, putting a few things into a shabby carpetbag. “I’m nobody,” she said. “Nothing. I’m grateful, of course. I’ll not trouble you further.”

  “Nonsense!” Once again, the anger was as much for himself as for her. He wanted to be rid of her, but could not let her go. “You can’t go now. I’d not let a dog out there today. Besides, you heard what I said. I’m responsible for you. When I can, I will be happy to escort you to your friends.”

  “Friends? I have none. Or rather—she was my friend, and look what I did to her. It’s not safe to be my friend.”

  “Ridiculous!” The anger warmed him. “You’re tired out and talking nonsense. Sit down, pull yourself together and tell me what’s been going on here.”

  The tone of command worked. She let herself fall limply into the old rocking chair by the stove, and he felt a quick pang, remembering it as sacred to his grandmother. “Well, I told you,” she said. “Most of it. Mark, your cousin, was ill in Montreal. Liz didn’t like to leave Mrs. McGowan alone. You see, she’d been ill all winter. They were almost frantic, the two of them. The letter about Mark came through when the trails were still open—before the thaw. He needed Liz—needed nursing. So when we were billeted here—and Fred died—she said I was a godsend. Liz did.” And then, with a surprising, wry touch of humor. “She almost said it was. Fred’s death. Poor Liz. So she left the same day. You couldn’t blame her. And I had nothing else to do.”