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Preacher on the Run

By Jayna Baas

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MARCH 22, 1771
AYEN FORD,
NORTH CAROLINA

ONE

Robert Boothe had never known county justice Geoffrey Sheridan to barge into a late-night Regulator meeting at the Ayen Ford Baptist meetinghouse. Other folks certainly had done just that. The sheriff, for instance. But not Geoffrey Sheridan. The moment his old friend came through the door, Robert knew those other folks weren’t far behind.
“Sheriff Kendall on his way?” he asked in an undertone, stepping away from the men clustered in the back of the meetinghouse.
“Not only the sheriff this time,” Sheridan said. He was in his mid-forties, only ten years older than Robert, but tonight he looked sixty. “One of the governor’s men is with him. A new man, Colonel Charles Drake. I don’t know what you and your men are meeting about tonight, and I don’t want to know. But you’ve been preaching without a license for fifteen years, and you’ve been leading Regulators for nearly half that. Colonel Drake is looking for trouble. If he looks here—”
“I allow as he’ll find it.” Robert smiled grimly. “Thanks, Geoff. Now you’d best be getting out while you can.”
The only warning was a sudden noise outside and the crack of a musket butt against the door, and then it was too late. No time for Sheridan, or anyone else, to make it out the back way. Robert motioned Sheridan behind him an instant before the door crashed against the wall.
Robert had dealt with the wrong side of the law before. He’d dealt with it in his church building, too. But the last thing Ayen Ford needed was a new agent of Governor Tryon, and the stranger behind the sheriff wore a sword that branded him as a military man. No older than Robert, tall and trim, coal-black hair in a flaw-less queue and eyes that looked right through you and out the other side. Robert said, “What’s this about?”
Ebeniah Kendall was a big man. Robert was solidly built, but the sheriff was easily sixty pounds heavier, made weightier by the knowledge of his own power. He said, “There’s a law against seditious meetings. I’ve seen my share of dissenter preachers calling for rebel¬lion, so don’t try to play holy and innocent with me. And don’t try to tell me this is just neighborly talk, either. This is the kind of thing the governor wants to put an end to. Which is what Colonel Drake and I are here to do.”
“This being Colonel Drake, I gather.” Robert nodded toward the stranger, who appeared to be examining the room. Plain oak walls and simple plank benches, a few windows, a front door that Kendall had forced open, and a second exit behind the unadorned pulpit. Drake pulled his attention from his perusal and wordlessly inclined his head, either bored or simply content to remain quiet. Out of the corner of his eye Robert saw Saul McBraden move restlessly. Lord, help. If Saul got it into his head to knock the sheriff upside the head or some such thing, five and a half feet of musket would blow the pastor of the Ayen Ford Baptists from here to kingdom come. Robert wanted to go to heaven, but not that way.
“Put the gun down, Sheriff,” he said evenly, hoping his tone would give Saul the hint to calm down. “I’ll give you fair warning that you’re on God’s property and He’s watching you, but beyond that I’m not aiming to run and I’m not aiming to fight you.”
Kendall glanced at Drake and started to lower the musket just as Saul McBraden exploded. “But Pastor, they have no right to come on in through here unprovoked and—”
So much for calming Saul down.
“I told you, there’s a law,” Kendall snapped.
“That doesn’t mean the law is right,” Saul muttered. “Or the way you enforce it, either.”
Robert slipped in front of Saul before Drake could see the young man’s clenched fists. Saul’s hair was more blond than red, but every now and then, the red showed in his temper. If Saul got mad enough, and the officials got mad enough, every¬one would get riled and they’d all end up in jail. Which they would any¬way if Sheriff Ken-dall and this Colonel Drake fellow found out they’d been meeting to discuss unjust taxes.
“If you’re here to break this up, then break it up,” Robert said. “There’s no need for it to get out of hand.”
Geoffrey Sheridan came forward a step. “These are good men, Colonel.”
“I’ll be the judge of that, Justice.” Drake’s gaze roved over the small gathering of men, church members and otherwise, before again coming to rest on Robert. But he said nothing more, letting Kendall do the talking.
“Everyone get out,” the sheriff said, motioning with his musket.
The men looked at Robert. Robert nodded. One by one the men moved to the front door and filed out. Robert knew, and they knew, that the colony’s riot act said anyone who didn’t leave a meeting within an hour of the sheriff’s order would be guilty of felony. Sometimes a man had to pick his battles. Saul was last to go, looking like he’d just as soon stay and fight it out with the law.
Robert locked eyes with Colonel Drake, each man gauging the other. Drake was all chiseled edges and poise, dark and polished, how Robert had always envisioned an eastern military man to look. Robert was more a continuation of the rough brown wood of the meetinghouse. Oak-brown hair, bronzed skin, buckskin hunting shirt. Not of Drake’s world at all.
“I would never have guessed,” the colonel said slowly, “that a building as small and plain as this could ever be suspected as the breeding ground of mass rebellion. Or that a man like you should be suspected as the leader of it.”
“Life is full of surprises, Colonel.”
“Are you admitting—”
“Nothing at all.”
A spark of something like humor flickered in Drake’s dark eyes. “I see.” He held Robert’s gaze a moment longer, then wheeled abruptly and motioned for Kendall to follow.
Kendall moved obediently toward the door. “If anything comes of this, preacher,” he said, “we’ll be back. And we’ll be coming for you.”
“It’d not be the first time,” Robert said quietly.
“And you, Justice.” Drake paused at the door. “This is the last time you’ll play with fire.”

When Robert got home, Susanna’s piping seven-year-old voice instantly called from the bedroom. “Is Papa home? Can I get up and say good night, Mama? You said I could if I was awake. I’m awake.”
“So I hear,” Magdalen Boothe murmured as Robert leaned down to kiss her.
“Let her wait a minute,” Robert whispered into Magdalen’s hair. Thick dark bronze ringlets, loosely bound back, smelling of lye soap and thyme. Robert’s manservant, Gunning, entered the room and hastily edged back out. Gunning could wait, too.
Magdalen gave Robert the minute he’d asked for plus a little more, then pulled away and called back to Susanna. “Come say good night. Then back to bed.”
Susanna padded out, her light blond curls wisping out from under her nightcap, her cornflower-blue eyes suspiciously heavy. She stopped a few feet short of Robert and asked, “Why are you holding Cricket?”
Once, while Robert was loading his rifle, Susanna had watched him close the frizzen, the hinged steel that struck sparks over the priming pan. It squeaks, she had said, just like a cricket. The rifle had been named Cricket ever since. Persistent squeak notwithstanding, Cricket was a beautiful gun. Tempered .45 caliber bore, flame-maple stock, brass fittings, scrolled carving that Robert had done himself on long winter nights. The flint was knapped sharp, the trigger as smooth as any he had ever known. He’d take Cricket and a good horse over any other advantage a man could name. But there were times, like to¬night, when a good rifle was not the answer.
“You know Papa brings his rifle down to the meeting¬house with him sometimes,” Magdalen said smoothly.
“Can I go with you next time, Papa?”
“Depends how late it is and what I’m doing.” Robert reached around her and set Cricket in the corner.
“What were you doing this time?” Susanna wanted to know.
“Talking with some men.”
“About the vestry tax?”
Robert frowned. “Who told you about that?”
“Benjamin told me,” Susanna said.
That explained it. Benjamin Woodbridge, older brother of Susanna’s best friend, was twelve and knew everything.
“And I heard you say it to Mama after church last Sunday,” Susanna added.
Robert glanced at Magdalen, wondering what else Susanna had overheard in days past. “The vestry tax is a mighty heavy subject for so late at night, Susanna. And a mighty heavy subject for a curly little head like yours.”
Susanna would not be deterred. “But what is it?”
“Money we have to chunk in to support the Church of England,” Robert said. “Even if we don’t agree with the Church of England.”
Susanna’s forehead puckered. “But that’s not right.”
“Well, some of us don’t think so.”
“Rob . . .”
The soft southern in Magdalen’s voice turned his name into a syllable and a half, a quiet warning that it was late, that this was no time to rehearse one of his worst grievances. So he amended his statement in silence, thinking, A whole slew of us don’t think it’s right. Baptist, Presbyterian, Quaker, who knows what else, all of us hate it. All except the Anglican clergymen it profits.
But Susanna was not satisfied. “Does everybody have to pay the vestry tax? Benjamin said so.”
“Everybody around these parts has to,” Robert said.
“Supposed to, leastways.” This from Gunning, who came all the way into the room this time. “Sorry, Master Rob, I didn’t mean to walk in on you and the missus while you were—uh—”
“No harm done, Gunning.” Robert winked at Magdalen.
“While you were what, Papa?” Susanna piped up.
“Nothing, pumpkin. And neither is the vestry tax. Nothing to bother your head about, that is.” Robert didn’t mind explaining things to his daughter—but how did one explain a decade and a half of injustice to a seven-year-old who didn’t know what “extortion” meant?
“Papa,” Susanna said, “what’s extortion?”
“Benjamin again?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I figured,” he said.
“I don’t hear anything that sounds like good night,” Magdalen hinted.
“Good night, Papa,” Susanna said obediently, lifting her face for a kiss. Robert complied and gave her a gentle nudge in the direction of the bedroom.
Gunning said, “How was the meeting?”
“You just heard. Nothing to bother your head about.”
Gunning gave him a look. “That might work on Miss Susanna, but not on me, no sir.”
“It doesn’t work on her, either,” Robert said wryly. “John Woodbridge needs to grub up more work for Benjamin to do. Aye, we were meeting about the vestry tax. More than that, though. The scouts say that four days ago Governor Tryon got permission from his council to muster his militia and march our way. We’ve got a conference of Regulators planned for the twenty-seventh, but in the mean¬time, we’re studying on what to do. We didn’t get far before Sheridan came to warn us.”
He gave them the short version of the night’s events and his encounter with Colonel Drake, passing lightly over the details, not wanting to frighten his wife. Not that Magdalen Davies Boothe was an easy woman to frighten. She had left her life as the privileged daughter of a plantation owner to follow Robert to his mountain circuit, where she had known things far more frightening than officials with overinflated views of themselves.
“Is there anything you can do to—prepare?” Magdalen asked.
“Get a license,” Robert said with a humorless smile. “That’s all a man like Drake wants—control over what I say and where I say it.”
“He thinks he’s got more say over it than the Lord does?” Gunning’s smile was equally mirthless.
“If he thinks he does, he’s wrong,” Robert said. “The county has no authority to limit where and when a man may preach the Word. But even Geoffrey Sheridan doesn’t seem to understand that, obliging as he’s been. I didn’t tell him how some of the boys and I are fixing to preach on the street tomorrow. I don’t think he’d have taken to that idea, though he’d know better than to think he could change my mind.”
“Give him time, love,” Magdalen said gently. “The Lord didn’t show you everything in a day.”
“Geoff’s had nine years,” Robert said dryly. “But you’re right, of course. You always are.”
“I try to be.” Abruptly the teasing left her voice and she said, “This man Drake who came with the sheriff—did he know who you are? How you’ve organized the Regulators here and led petitions and all?”
“If he did, he didn’t say so,” Robert said. “Which is what worries me.”

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