Free Dominion by Calvin Baker Page B

his way back under the covers, but let him try to sleep.
    In the morning Merian repeated his routine of the day before, uncertain how she had made her way back on just three legs but determined she would not do so again. This time he led her even farther away, by back roads he was confident she had never trod. That night the mule was at the house again, same as any other day in the last four years. Sanne helped her husband feed the animal, and stroked the back of the poorman’shead when he lay down to sleep. The next day he tried once more but to no avail.
    â€œI know,” was all she said, when he led the mule in the third night.
    Despite the pretension of taking a name for the house, he knew it was senseless to keep and feed a used-up animal. That morning he faced the task as it was laid out for him, taking Ruth Potter by a long tether—as she was used to having when she had any—into the same field, where he leveled the musket against her temple. His anger, though, flashed and welled up as he saw how innocent she looked at him and munched dumbly on the summer’s sweet grass. “Goddammit, Ruth Potter, what good is it letting you loose if you don’t know what to do with yourself?” he growled at her. “If you don’t know that, what sense is there in living?” He fired the musket into the animal’s head. She fell where she stood, in a tumult of limbs, and he dug for her a grave, which he did cover back up with dirt and sweet grass.
    As he made his way home late that morning his heart blazed with emotion, as the sun itself fires false things true.

eight
    A train of princely coaches thundered over the road the first passable day of spring that year. A herald out front proclaimed its origin, and the king’s standard flew high overhead, guarding it against inhospitable actions. Its presence so far out was a confounding mystery to Merian and Sanne, and it was continuing on even farther—to an outpost that had cropped up more than two days’ journey from them, for it was a long time since they were the final dwelling on the road.
    The mystery of the coach remained unsolved until Merian’s provisioning trip a few weeks later, when he stopped for his usual draught, and Content mentioned the self-important travelers who had stayed over at the inn about three weeks earlier.
    â€œWho were they?” Merian asked. “What was their business?”
    â€œI guess you didn’t hear”—Content nodded, offering him another pint—“but we’re going to be a colony of our own.”
    â€œDon’t you think Dorthea and Sanne might be a little upset by that?”
    â€œIt’s no jest,” Content countered. “The colony is dividing in two.”
    â€œOn what grounds?” Merian asked, though he didn’t see how it could make a difference to them out there, whatever the case.
    â€œRulers and ruled upon. Anglicans and Presbyterians. Plantation and freeholder. Crown and colony,” a man sitting in shadow at the end of the bar interjected. “Past and future. However you want to square it. There’s not a whole lot of grounds where things aim to stay the same.”
    â€œThat’s all dukes’ and governors’ business,” Content said. “It won’t matter any to us out here.”
    â€œYou are an optimist, my friend,” the man at the bar argued, standing and coming over to join the other two, “as well you should be, all the way out here with no arrow in yer skull. But it will have everything to do with what goes on. Mark that, both of ye.” The stranger looked intently between them, and when he said, “Mark that,” Merian recognized his costume as one and the same with the fellow whose carriage he had fixed out on the empty road a few years past.
    â€œYou’re one of those wandering preachers, aren’t you?” Merian asked him. “One of your kind passed this way