Page 5 of King's Man

Nate bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.

No one dies from a tarring and feathering, he told himself desperately. Once Holden was gone, Nate would scrape the tar from Sam’s skin and hair, he’d kiss away his hurt. And harangue him into leaving Rosemont. If there was no other way to save him, he’d put him in a damn sack and carry him away himself.

But then Holden seized a torch from someone in the crowd. “Now what?” he hollered, walking in menacing circles around Sam with the torch held aloft. “What shall we do with the Tory scum now?”

Nate’s skin flashed cold in sudden dread and Reed’s hand bit into his arm. Around him, the mood of the crowd shifted. Growing uneasy.

Holding the naked flame close to Sam’s face, Holden hissed, “I could make a torch of you, Hutchinson.” Dancing firelight flickered over the tar dripping through Sam’s hair. “I could watch youburn.”

Desperate, Nate lurched forward, but Reed pulled him back and stepped forward in his place. “Stop this!” he shouted. “You’ve done enough, Amos. Stop.”

Holden turned his head, his smile sly. “Ah, Reed. Come to defend your clerk?”

Fear turned Nate’s stomach liquid as he watched Sam on his knees, sucking in great wracking gasps, but he dared not go to him for fear his grief and terror would betray them both. He couldn’t risk giving Holden that weapon.

“You go too far, Amos,” Reed protested. “Would you make murderers of us all?”

Behind him, the anxious crowd shifted. Silently, they watched. Waiting.

“The British will do worse when they come,” Holden spat. “They’ll torch the whole town and —”

“Then we must be better! Otherwise, why are we fighting at all?”

A deathly pause followed, closing around Nate’s racing heart like a fist. Holden glared, a wild light in his eyes, and Nate braced himself to fight. But then Holden barked a laugh and swung away from Sam, throwing his torch to the ground.

The nervous crowd laughed with him, the tension breaking, and Nate’s knees wobbled in relief. But he hadn’t even caught his breath before Holden shouted, “Bring the wagon.”

“What?” Nate turned to see a horse being led into the pool of torchlight, a cart at its back. “Holden, what’s this?”

Holden ignored him as Mather and his accomplices dragged Sam to his feet. His poor, bare feet stumbled forward as they pushed him towards the cart, his hands still bound behind his back. He didn’t look once in Nate’s direction, though he passed so close they could have touched. It pierced Nate’s soul with grief.

Then they manhandled Sam into the cart, and he scrambled up onto to his knees, still defiant. His face was hidden behind the grotesque mask of tar and feathers, but his furious gaze glinted in the moonlight. Full of bravado, Holden set a lit lamp next to Sam in the bed of the cart, its naked flame a dancing threat. “There’s no room for your kind in Rosemont,” he snarled. “You aren’t fit to call yourself an American.”

The crowd cheered, the driver tapped the horse’s flank, and the wagon lurched forward. Rooted to the spot, heart seared, Nate felt like a man trapped in a nightmare. Unable to move, unable to wake up. Helpless, he watched as the hooting, hollering mob surged around and past him, following the cart out of town.

At the last moment, Sam stood up, struggling to balance. A final act of defiance, perhaps. But, no, he had a purpose. His gaze roved across the crowd, searching for something, and Nate’s pulse skipped when Sam’s eyes found his for one last look of utter betrayal.

And Nate knew that everything had changed.

Their bond was broken, shattered by the implacable wheel of history that forged ahead, heedless of the little lives and loves it crushed along the way.

Part Two

Chapter One

Five years later — July 22nd, 1783

London, England

Samuel Hutchinson drank cheap gin because it didn’t remind him of home.

And if he kept his eyes fixed on the door of the sordid little room, one hand on the burly shoulders between his legs, this wouldn’t remind him of home either. But then the man — Sam hadn’t wanted his name — took him in his mouth with a groan so resonant Sam felt it at the root of his spine and his head hit the back of the chair.

“No.” He gripped the man’s shoulder but couldn’t quite bring himself to push him away. “Don’t.”

The stranger lifted his head. In the tallow light his eyes could have been any color, his hair a dirty straw, but his accent had a harsh London rasp. “I reckon you like that, Yankee.” He said it with a grin, wet lips gleaming.

And Sam did like it. “I asked you not to.”

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