Under a Gilded Moon(110)

Sal felt the strength of his chest, his arms. He was ready to stop Leblanc however it had to be done.

He listened for the sounds of Vanderbilt’s horse receding. But now there were more coming. Galloping from just the other side of the bend in the Approach Road, nearest Sal.

As they burst into his line of sight, Sal crouched lower. But the first rider, his hat pulled low on his face, glanced right as if spotting a movement behind the rhododendrons. Leaning forward and right, he’d plunged with his horse off the road and into the woods before Sal could run more than a few strides.

With all the fury of years of running from a crime he’d not committed, all the anguish of knowing he’d been branded a vicious animal in this country he’d adopted, Sal swept a branch from the ground and spun, arm raised, to face the horseman.

As the horse shied violently left, the rider kept his seat, barely.

“Cabot! Mi dispiace. I thought—”

“You thought I was Leblanc. In which case I can only be grateful my head is still fully attached to my shoulders.”

A second horse—the Arab—broke through hemlocks to join them, George Vanderbilt breathing hard, and behind the Arab this time, another horse, riderless, had been tethered. “Thank God, Catalfamo. We were hoping we’d find you trying to make your way to Bratchett’s place. But Leblanc will look for you there at some point, probably soon. So Nico’s not there. We’re here to take you to him.”



Third in line behind Vanderbilt and Cabot on their horses, Sal leaned forward on the horse they’d brought for him as if he could by sheer force of will leap over the others to reach Nico first. But not knowing the way, he could only remain pitched forward, the gelding turning his head as if to ask why his rider’s body gave signals for speed when the rocky, root-webbed trail and the two horses ahead all demanded nothing above a fast walk.

They rose to a break in the trees. Sal’s eyes adjusted to the blaze of sun as they emerged from the thickly forested trail.

In the clearing stood a scattering of wooden structures. The one straight ahead, a small log cabin with no windows and its door left ajar, stood defeated, its roof collapsed.

Behind the cabin stood another, even smaller structure with some of its boards pulled loose, as if they’d been needed for another purpose. A chicken house sat to the left, its hens and rooster flapping and scuffling to announce the presence of the strangers. From the largest structure, a barn, came a deep bray.

At the barn door, two identical heads appeared, the red of the hair flaming in the clearing’s blast of sun.

“It’s all right,” Jursey MacGregor announced. “It’s not who we thought.”

Tully stood squinting at them down the barrel of an old flintlock.

“I can see that for my ownself,” she said. But did not set the gun down, as if, seeing what she’d seen of the world lately, she’d rather greet these visitors with a weapon already leveled.

“Where is—” Sal began. But no need to finish.

A third head appeared at the barn door—lowered, just a dark swath of hair. And a scuffle of hay as one leg dragged across the ground.

Sal slung himself off his horse, not even bothering to tether the gelding. “Nico!”

Clutching hard to the slight little body, convulsing now, Sal felt his own tears falling into his brother’s hair. “Nico. My Nico. You are safe.”

Words were being exchanged behind them. But Sal held his chin over Nico’s head, kept both arms tight around the slight frame. Let his brother feel safety on every side.

“May we speak with your older sister?” Cabot was asking the twins.

Even holding his brother to him, even flooded with relief to find Nico safe, Sal realized now the tension in the air he’d missed before.

The twins exchanged looks.

Tully gestured for them to follow. “She’s back in here. With our daddy. And some neighbors who’ve come to . . . say their . . .” She looked to her brother.

“Goodbyes.” He reached for his sister’s hand, like he could talk better if he felt his other half. “They come to say their goodbyes.”



Holding fast to each other, Sal and Nico followed the others to the back of the barn into what had been a cow stall, swept clean, its door broken off its hinges. In its middle was a pallet covered in patterned quilts, a man with gray skin unmoving at its center. To one side stood Rema and Kerry. And at the other, Robert Bratchett.

The man on the pallet was trying to speak, lifting his hand toward Kerry. It was his lips more than his crackle of a voice that made the words: “I’m . . . so . . . sorry.”

Then, to Sal’s surprise, the dying man turned his head toward Bratchett. And formed the same words: “I’m . . . so . . . sorry.”

Bratchett’s good arm went to his bad one. He nodded.

For long moments they all stood that way, MacGregor’s older daughter holding his right hand and his neighbor holding his left, Rema with an arm around each twin, and nobody speaking.

Kerry MacGregor bent over her father. “Daddy,” she said, then stopped and looked up to Rema and to Robert Bratchett, like they might know how to finish for her. The two gentlemen who’d ridden with Sal up from Biltmore she didn’t even seem to see as they stood silently behind their circle.

She looked back at the dying man. Tenderness was there in her face, but also anger. A strange mix that had her face pinched. “Daddy. I have so many questions.”