the Rebellion Of Jane Clarke (2010) by Gunning Sally

Author:Gunning, Sally [Sally, Gunning,]
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-01-14T19:16:16.671000+00:00

THE NEXT MORNING JANE brewed up a tea of yarrow, catnip, mint, and sage to treat Otis’s fever and received permission from Aunt Gill to carry it around. At the corner outside the tavern she recognized Colonel Dalrymple, the officer Phinnie Paine had introduced her to, and slowed. He was speaking low to another red-coated officer, “Between us, sir, Mr. Robinson beat the other most excessively.”

Dalrymple’s remark may have been the first Jane heard on the street but not the last. Otis was very rascally treated . . .’Tis a man’s right to ask for satisfaction and to be answered like a gentleman . . . An attempted assassination is what it was! And twice the same rumor blew by on the breeze—that the customs commissioners had gathered after the brawl to pass and receive congratulations all around.

In the front hall at Otis’s Jane found her grandfather and Adams, deep in conversation. Jane’s grandfather’s angular face would carry the wear of life more plainly than Adams’s plump one, but between them the pair looked as carved up as a postdinner fowl.

“We’ll get naught against the military,” Jane’s grandfather was saying.

“A civil action, then,” Adams answered. “Breaking the king’s peace.” He saw Jane and broke off. “Ah, Miss Clarke. Perhaps you might help us as to the nature of Mr. Otis’s scalp wound. ’Tis being said a cane—”

“ ’Twas no cane did that. He was cut to the bone.”

“They found five bludgeons and an empty scabbard on the floor.”

“The scabbard. A sword. I might have laid two fingers in the wound.”

The men stood silent.

Jane said, “How does he fare?”

“Fevered now.”

“And the state of his mind?”

The two men exchanged a look.

Jane climbed the stairs to Otis’s room and heard him before she saw him. She thought that perhaps by now his wife had been fetched back to town, but it was only the servant girl sitting by the bed, looking almost as wild-eyed as her charge. “He calls out. He calls out nonsense. He thinks me his sister now!”

Jane went to the bed and picked up the cup on the table next to it. It was half-full of brandy. She filled the cup the rest of the way with the tea and held it to Otis’s lips. When her hand was at a distance he didn’t seem to see it, but as she drew closer he saw the hand and followed it to her arm, from there on up to her face. He said, “You.”

“Yes, sir. I’ve a good brew here to heal you.” She held the cup closer; he covered the hand that held it with his own. She could feel the weakness and didn’t dare release the cup to him, so he drank with their hands combined, his eyes fixed on her. He said again, “You.”

She put her hand against his forehead and felt the heat. He said, “ ’Tis a great bird—I think a gryphon—he claws at me. He darts about trying to blind me. I should greatly appreciate it, miss, if you would chase him off.

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