George began to shake his head no and the pressure from the knife increased. Brudloe’s hand, in the gentlest of motions, flicked downwards, and a hot spray of blood flowed into his nose flooding backwards, down into his throat. He opened his mouth, gasping in pain, and the knife’s flat surface slipped in between his lips, over his tongue. Brudloe reached up with his other hand, and tousled his hair in an almost friendly way. “You crossed over on the Dutchman’s ship with me, ain’t that right, Georgie?” he said. “It came to me while I was sleepin’. I remembered yer song after all. You was supposed to be washed overboard, along with Baker. Whatever happened to Baker, do you suppose?”
The blade turned sideways creasing the middle of his tongue and the taste of salted copper sprang into George’s mouth. Brudloe leaned lower still, his eyes vaguely interested in the small trench he had carved in George’s mouth. He said, “Manning ferries, was it? You was an eel boy, weren’t ya, Georgie? A mud-divin’, coal-eatin’ little bastard. I’m damned if I know how ye got off that ship, or how you ended up in Salem, but I’m bettin’ it was the Dutchman, Koogin. I learned a few things from Baker about how to pull secrets from a man. He could skin a man’s ballsack off with a pair of pliers the way I’d peel a boiled plum.” He pressed his lips again to Georgie’s ear. “He always said that the best way to get a man to talk is t’ be patient. But I don’t have the time.”
Brudloe quickly put the knife between his teeth and hauled Georgie onto his stomach, punching him in the kidneys when he kicked out with his legs. Brudloe grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head backwards until Georgie thought his back would break.
“Now, then, who is coming?” Brudloe gave another brutal yank backwards when he saw Georgie’s hand reaching out for the hearth, towards the pouring ladle filled with the melted lead.
Georgie, the skin stretched tightly over his throat, gagged on the blood coursing down his gullet; “D-d-d-d—” was all he could manage.
Brudloe’s jutting chin rested over one of Georgie’s straining shoulders, and he asked, softly, distinctly, “Who… is… coming?”
“D-d-d-d—” Georgie squeezed out. There was no air left in his lungs to speak, and he could feel his awareness begin to fragment and break away, like a reflection of himself in water, fractured by a dropping stone. He thought he had wanted to say “Death,” but he was already forgetting. A slip of wind brushed his thighs, and he wondered if his back had indeed broken, the sensation of cold a prologue to misaligned limbs.
An explosive blow from behind knocked his head forward onto the floorboards, cutting a gash in his chin, and he lay dazed for the fullness of seconds before he realized there was no more agonizing pressure against his back. He heard the grunting and scuffling of bodies, but he lay moaning, his back useless in spasm.
Gurgling, animal sounds came from behind him, somewhere closer to the door, and soon he heard the thudding sound of a falling weight. He turned his head slowly, letting himself fall onto his back, and saw the darkened shape of a tall man framed by the doorway, signaling outwards towards the yard with a swinging lantern, newly lit. The breeze he had felt on his backside, he suddenly realized, had been the door opening silently. Georgie saw Brudloe lying on the floor, an oozing curtain darker than shadows spreading beneath him.
The tall man turned and quickly walked to Georgie, kneeling over him, strong teeth yellow in the lantern light. “Three nights now, boy. I thought the man would never sleep.”
Georgie could hear the creak of a wagon pulling close to the house, and he staggered to his feet, stepping over the body of Brudloe and through the door. The wagon had pulled to a stop, the driver holding a torch aloft to better see.
“Blessed Christ,” the man said to Georgie. Climbing from the wagon he handed the boy a cloth for his face and briefly examined the cuts. Pulling an ax and a canvas sack from under the driving board, he jerked a thumb over his shoulder for Georgie to climb into the wagon, and the man walked into the house.
Georgie crawled onto the wagon bed and lay on his quivering back, panting, his knees drawn up towards his chest. He let his matted eyes track the constellations in the sky, grateful he still had sight, and thought about the Rat on the Dutchman’s ship, the mute cabin boy who had rescued him from Brudloe and the others, who had fed and comforted him, pointing out to him with a sure and steady finger the constellations of the Bear, the Hunter, St. George’s Dragon. The Rat had cried voiceless, inconsolable tears when Georgie left the ship at Boston, but Captain Koogin understood that the young landsman would never make a good seaman.
He could feel his tongue beginning to swell, the pain in his mouth now greater than his other wounds. He parted his lips to better breathe, spitting out blood from the back of his throat, and wondered if he himself would ever be able to speak again.
It was Koogin who had taken him overland from Boston to the home of a man named General Gookin. The captain had told Georgie by way of introduction, “This, boy, is my brother.” He regarded Georgie’s surprised face and then, in the sandy soil at their feet, etched the name “Koogin.” Rubbing out the k and the g with his fingers, he transposed the letters, turning Koogin into Gookin. Standing, he erased the name with the sole of his shoe and said solemnly in parting, “I am no more a Dutchman than you are, lad. And I am not a pirate, though some would have me so. My ship serves the general, my brother, and you could do no better than apprenticing yourself to him.”
It was the general who had enlisted Georgie and Robert Russell, along with a network of spies, to the scheme of ridding the colonies of the assassins come to kill the man who had dared to take the head of a king, or so Georgie had been told.
Georgie Afton, named for the eight Georges before him, a fourteen-year-old eel boy from London sold into slavery to murderers, was one of the only remaining colony men alive who knew the face of Brudloe, and one of the few who had the mettle to put himself in harm’s way for the general’s sake. He had been changed greatly in the few months since being abducted from England, but he believed it was only Brudloe’s fixed obsession with killing the Welshman that had bought him time before being discovered. He had often thought on this moment: Brudloe’s blood running freely in the dirt.
Georgie heard the thunking sounds of an ax chopping against a soft target, and Robert Russell and the wagon driver soon walked out with the ax and the sack, now filled. They climbed onto the driving seat, and a dry rushing sound, followed by a growing light within the house, caught Georgie’s attention. The three of them watched the flames growing in strength, consuming the dry, untended wood with startling speed.
The wagon driver clucked at the reins, and Robert, tipping his head towards his companion on the driving board, said, “Georgie, greet your close neighbor, Goodman Daniel Taylor.”
Daniel winked at him and said, “Welcome to the brotherhood.”
Gingerly, Georgie propped himself up on his elbows, watching the growing conflagration, gray smoke pouring from the windows and door. The house was small and it would not last long, but its very compactness serviced the flames into a yellow-white wall of wavering phosphorescing light, and he could feel the pulsing heat even at a distance.
A dark shape emerged from the blankness of the yard like a partial eclipse, floating in front of the burning house, and resolved itself into the shape of a man. Shaken, Georgie saw that the man’s height was greater than the topmost frame of the door, and he palmed his eyes, brushing away the clotted blood at his lashes, thinking his perspective was muddled by distance and injury. The man turned his back to the flames, and the punishing heat, and stood watching the departing wagon.
Georgie raised himself onto his knees, and uttered thickly, “Sweet Jesu.”
Robert turned to look and quickly signaled for Daniel to halt the wagon. He reached for the sack, the bottom dripping with bloody matter, and climbed from the wagon, loping at a fast clip back towards the house. Georgie could clearly see Robert’s form, distorted by waves of heat and smoke, coming to stand in front of the gian
t, and he watched as he pulled from the sack Brudloe’s grimacing, seeping head. Robert held the head aloft like an offering, and the two men regarded for a moment the remnant with its backlit features, open-mouthed and fixed, and the giant then turned and disappeared into the woods.
Georgie gazed over his shoulder, staring at Daniel with the slack-jawed, trembling look of the battlefield injured, his eyes questioning.
Daniel gently wrapped his greatcoat around the boy’s shivering frame and held his shoulders with a fatherly steadying grip. Gesturing to Robert, standing alone in front of the already diminishing fire, he said, “He’s paying a debt, boy.”
CHAPTER 22
Transcript of General Court Session, Town of Billerica 23rd day of the 10th month, 1673
Presided by: General Daniel Gookin, Magistrate of Concord, Carlisle, Bedford, Wilmington, and Billerica
Formerly in Dispute, Now Resolved: 3 Acres land, promontory lying southerly to Treble Cove on the Concord River, bounded by Billerica Great Common Field to the North, Concord River to the West, Fox Brook Road to the East, and Main Street to the South, sufficiently bounded by Marked Trees and Pillars of Stone.
By Jonathan Danforth, Surveyor
It is jointly agreed between Daniel Taylor, of Billerica, and Asa Rogers, late of Salem, that the aforementioned Daniel Taylor shall make sale of designated land, becoming Seller, giving assurances that the three acres shall be granted to aforementioned Asa Rogers, becoming Buyer, with full rights of ownership, and that such Seller does hereby, fully, clearly, and absolutely give up his whole interest, right, and title to land; and that subsequent to affixing his signature and transference of settled price, Asa Rogers can make sale of and dispose of land as he sees fit for his person, his assigns, and estate.
Asa Rogers, as Buyer, hereby agrees to make said purchase for Four Pounds Sterling upon execution of this Document.
Witness my hand the day and year above
Written, together with Buyer and Seller
Gen. D. Gookin
Daniel Taylor
Asa Rogers
Copied by Town Clerk: Tho. Adams
Post Script to Mr. James Davids, New Haven, Connecticut:
Dear friend James,
Forgive these hasty scratchings as I have much withal to concern me: meetings of the governor and General Council and, more important I believe to the immediate welfare of these wilderness settlements, the visitation of Indian villages. There has been of late much unease regarding relations between the colonists and the natives, and I have endeavored to begin a work which I hope to publish for the benefit of peace: “The Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indian.”
More to the point of this missive, I have sent the above copy of a court transcript for your enlightenment as it concerns the carter Daniel Taylor, also your agent in the surrounds of Boston. Goodman Taylor solicited me to help settle a land dispute between Asa Rogers and a hired man, one Thomas Morgan, a rumored regicide.
It will please you to know that Morgan is popularly believed to have been executed by bounty men, his head struck from his body (the head of which I, being responsible in part for His Majesty’s Will and Charters in the colonies, have myself witnessed). This disjointed head, I must add, is most decidedly small for such a reputedly large man, the forehead cross-hatched with a multitude of scars. The skull is to be conveyed back to England on the ship The Swallow with a captain of our very close acquaintance, Captain Koogin, for the satisfaction of the Crown. On the shipping barrel will be writ, no doubt by some wayward scoundrel: “Here lies the head of Thomas Morgan, regicide; to which state every head of state must someday find.” His Majesty will want to know, through endless correspondences, I am certain, how we, the colonists, hold in regard the Royal Court to make such rustic jokes and bite our thumbs at Consequence and Ceremony.
Once Thomas Morgan had proven to be officially dead, and therefore unable to make a claim upon the Taylor land—a cunning well-ordered spot on the Concord—Asa Rogers stepped forward most vigorously to claim it for his mill (bringing poignantly to mind that “the mills of the gods grind slow, but exceeding fine”). Rogers paid in full, and hurriedly, for his plot of land. He, upon some reflection, has taken my word as a magistrate that Thomas Morgan is gone from this earth. The more so after describing to him, in most painstaking detail, the attendant hackings, burnings, and dismemberments by Indians that may take place upon a settler without the protection of the militia, under my command.
To more felicitous duties. I had, upon completion of the sale of land, the satisfaction of officiating in the marriage of one Thomas Carrier of Billerica to a Martha Allen, late of Andover, and cousin to the wife of Goodman Taylor. As they stood, still and solemn before me, making their vows—he as exceptionally tall a man as I have ever seen, and she wearing a fine green-gray cloak—they brought to my mind stone carvings I had seen in a great abbey in London. There, resting in a shadowed, forgotten nave, were likenesses of some long-absent king and queen, both alike in dignity, their brows crimped in imponderable thoughts. And though their eyes were closed, their heads inclined together, speaking to the onlooker, “We have endured.”
Goodman Taylor was witness to the ceremony and discreetly presented the bride afterwards a fine down quilt, such as is rarely seen in the colonies. In a peculiar aside, I overheard him say quietly to her that there was, within, an accounting book, a red one, if such extravagances can be believed.
“Keep it well, cousin,” he told her, “until such time as it can be brought forward to illuminate a world more equal to its subject.”
The couple being poor, and they being of remarkable fortitude for work, I have offered them, along with Carrier’s man, John Levistone, a good plot of land from my own holdings, in return for some period of labor and a gold coin given to Goodwife Carrier by her father.
Thomas Carrier accompanied me to Boston to deliver Morgan’s head, kept from corruption in a salt barrel, to the ship at Boston Harbor. Along with us came my new aide, George Afton, who is an able lad (formerly an eel boy in London, such is the greatness of opportunities in the colonies for inventive men). Along with Morgan’s head was found a scroll wrapped around a small wooden stake. After gaining my permission to open the scroll, Georgie began to read aloud to us the words inscribed by the hand of the great Lord Protector of England, whose orders of battles, instructions to Parliament, and writs of execution I have seen with my own eyes. This scroll will be sent to England along with Morgan’s remains.
The words are from Revelation, the meaning, and signature, of which may serve to confound and torment His Majesty everlastingly:
“You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals… and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom.
Oliver Cromwell”
In God’s trust, I remain,
Gen. Daniel Gookin
CHAPTER 23
ONCE THE HEAD, as it came to be known, had been presented to Charles Stuart in his private chambers, accompanied only by an examining audience of the Earl of Arlington, the Duke of Buckingham, and Sir Joseph Williamson, nothing was ever again right for the sovereign.
The viewing of the barrel’s contents had begun before it had even left the dock. Advance news spread across the city that the remains of the executioner that took the head of the first Charles had landed aboard the ship The Swallow, and carriages of nobles, titled ladies, and serving orderlies mingled with curious, rude ’prentices and common people, who all gawked, for a fee, inside the barrel. After all, the dock courier reasoned, its lid had not been secured, there being no royal seal, and the captain of the escorting guard was amenable to retaining an accommodation fee for himself. Very quickly, the joke had been had; the shrunken, tarred head with its ridiculous topknot and the scribbling on the barrel itself, alluding to the inevitable fate of kings, brought first knowing smiles and then waterfalls of derisive laughter. Tiernan Blood, cloaked and hood
ed within the crowd, drew near for a peek and, recognizing the cross-hatching scars, laughed the loudest.
An old poem by a court wit was resurrected and circulated:
After a search so painful and so long,
That all his life he has been in the wrong;
Huddled in the dirt the reasoning engine lies,
Who was so proud, so witty and so wise.
Artists made sketches of the relic to be engraved onto pamphlets, which were circulated within hours to a wider populace whose dissatisfaction grew daily, pinched as they were by the taxes for the third Dutch war and the outrageous expenses of keeping the king’s whores and bastards fed and housed. The secret, dishonorable pacts by the second Charles Stuart with the Catholic French, the betrayal of a morally upright Protestant Dutch king, and the lack of legitimate successors to the throne had all brought disenchantment to the English people for their bonny wayward boy-king who was now an aging reprobate: a cynic and a secret heretic to the Anglican Church.
Charles replaced the lid on the barrel, his lips curled into the public show of insouciance. Throwing the accompanying scroll of parchment, along with the little wooden stake, into the fire grate, he gestured for Arlington to dispose of the barrel. The king would now visit his mistress Louise de Keroualle and their infant son. As he left, the dozens of timepieces in his chamber struck to twelve, the sound of their gongings and tinklings following the king’s footsteps, along with the clattering of the royal spaniels, roused to partner his stride. Arlington bowed as the king departed and then directed Williamson, who in turn directed Chiffinch, to remove the offending object. Buckingham had left the chamber even before the parchment had finished burning.
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