‘You are enough to drive any man to it.’
He kissed her. Smith’s fists clenched.
‘He will seek us out. I shall never feel safe.’
Smith carried a blade in his belt, the legacy of the civil war when no man was safe from sudden assault. He took it now and unsheathed it, holding it up to the moonlight. This, beyond doubt, was the man who had deflowered his Evangeline. This was John Calderwood, coven master and fugitive.
Before he had considered the consequences, Smith forced open the door. Evangeline screamed and hid behind Calderwood, who rose to his feet.
‘Speak of the devil,’ he sneered.
‘It is you! You who are the devil,’ blustered Smith, beside himself. ‘You are the evil influence on this village and you must be flushed out.’
Calderwood swaggered up to him until their faces almost touched.
‘Say you? Evil? It was not I who caused innocent women to swing. It was not I who forced a maid to wed against her wishes.’
‘It was not against her wishes. She consented.’
‘In fear of her life, yes.’
‘She is my wife.’
‘No, Preacher, she is mine. We are wed, perhaps not in a ceremony you would recognise, but a true knot was sealed, some months ago.’
‘You have not wed her, you have simply violated her. That is not a marriage in the eyes of God.’
‘You have no claim on her.’
‘She is mine.’
‘Shall we let her choose? Shall we make that Evangeline’s decision?’
‘It is God’s will that she be mine.’
‘Who do you choose, Evangeline?’ Calderwood tossed the question over his shoulder. ‘Only you can end this quarrel.’
‘You know I choose you. I choose John Calderwood.’
Smith made an incoherent sound of mingled rage and pain. The blade he clutched recalled itself to him and he drew back his hand.
Calderwood saw it too late.
‘Now this is not –’ he said, but he never finished the sentence. For the blade plunged deep into his heart, putting an end to all words.
It seemed to Smith that he took a long time to die. Evangeline rushed to him, screaming and sobbing, putting her hand over the wound, trying to stop the blood that pumped everywhere, including all over Smith.
All he could do was watch. The world had slowed down. Perhaps it might even stop and there would be Calderwood, suspended between life and death forever while he, Tribulation Smith, experienced an eternity of the knowledge of his mortal sin.
After an age of mourning and wailing and blood, Calderwood hit the dirt floor, all the light out of his eyes, the shell of the man who had stood there seconds before.
I have killed a man.
Evangeline looked up at him once and he shrank from the anguish and hatred in her eyes.
‘You have killed the father of my child,’ she said.
Smith, unable to bear the implications of her words, took flight.