The Constable's Tale: A Novel of Colonial America

by Donald Smith

  Scroggins was talking fast, words tumbling out as if he feared letting such a rare chance to address an audience slip by.

  “This whole mess could have been headed off if Sheriff Carruthers and them other fine gentlemen had listened to me in the first place. I told them there was a savage in the woods up there, and they would be sorry if they didn’t lock him up to where he couldn’t do nobody no harm. They didn’t pay no attention, and now you see what has happened.”

  Seeing some begin to drift away, he added in a still louder voice, “Did you know they found bones up where he was camped? That’s right, human bones. They was all boiled up. The meat gnawed off to where they was smooth and white as eggshells.”

  Several who had been passing by stopped to listen.

  “Oh, yes. They ain’t let on nothing about that, has they? They is keeping that part quiet.”

  Harry could abide it no longer. “Nobody found any human bones,” he said. Eyes pivoted to where he was standing on the church steps. “All that Indian was eating up there was chickens.”

  “That’s what you say,” Scroggins countered. “I went there myself. I seen pieces of arms and legs strewn about. And ribs, too. Lots of ribs. They was just scattered here and yonder, all around.” He made circular motions with his arm. “See, they don’t want you to know about them bones, does they?” He made a wider gesture that encompassed Harry and the church, as if to include in his accusation the whole membrane of authority in Craven County. “I seen ’em with my own eyes. Them bones was just as big and white as could be.”

  Scroggins paused, savoring the effect he was having. All movement of people turning away had ceased.

  “You remember what Parson Reed preached in there? Jehovah is punishing this place for its low-down ways. He hath sicced that demon upon us, that Indian. It is a test. Now that we done caught up with him, God wants us to punish him in accordance to the amount of evil he has done. If we don’t do what he commands, he will turn on us again, hurt us like we never been hurt before.”

  “We ought to just hang him now and be done with it,” said somebody else. Harry recognized a boyhood mate, a small outlying plantation owner by the name of Berry. “Ain’t no use in messing around with this any longer than necessary.”

  “That’s not the way we do things in Craven County,” said Harry. “I have known for years the old man they’ve got locked up. Many of you don’t know him because you’ve arrived here in recent times, but he is an old and faithful friend to this town. He will be proved innocent when his trial comes up, if not before.”

  “I hear he’s been bounded over to the Superior Court, and that don’t even meet until October,” said Berry.

  “I wouldn’t wager that Indian staying around that long,” said Scroggins. “They is wily ones. They can’t be held by no white man’s jails.” A murmur of agreement passed through the assembly. “Besides, who’s to say that courthouse crowd won’t just let him loose once the fuss has died down? I wouldn’t put it past them. You included, Henry Woodyard.”

  “Yes, Woodyard,” said Berry. “That Indian being an old friend of yours don’t mean he didn’t kill nobody.”

  Harry was not used to being included in the people who ran the village. He could not quickly think of a good response. And no one seemed to be waiting for one. People had begun sliding away again. In low natterings of conversation, Harry heard someone say, “It was his raising-up. He’s half savage himself.” Someone else said, “Gets it from his granddaddy.”

  Harry felt a hand on his shoulder. It was du Plessis.

  “Don’t pay any mind,” he said. “We have some ill-informed people among us.”

  “Thank you for that,” Harry said.

  “I’m glad I caught up with you. I’ve been thinking about that object you were showing around at the judge’s house. The brooch. I have a friend in Williamsburg who deals in Masonic jewelry. It would be long odds, but he might be able to tell you something. If he didn’t sell it himself, maybe he could at least identify it, say where it was made. Maybe even translate those markings on the back.”

  “I thank you for your concern,” said Harry. “But Williamsburg is a long ride. And I don’t know that I could afford the fare for a boat to go by sea.”

  Du Plessis spread his hands. “Harry, you are a valued customer. I would be more than pleased to advance the funds you’d need.”

  “But I already owe you so much money.”

  “I’m sure we could work out something. Would another few pounds on the ledger really make a difference? Besides, I’m sure there would be a reward involved if you brought the real killer to justice. I would certainly argue for such.” Du Plessis produced one of his calling cards and wrote down a name on the back. “This will serve as an introduction to my friend in Virginia.”

  Their route back to Harry’s house brought them near the waterfront. He caught sight of a three-masted schooner ghosting downriver on the tide, headed toward the open sound. He pictured Maddie aboard as it picked its way through the shallows, following the winding, ever shifting channel until it reached Ocracoke and beyond that the Atlantic. A short run north along the coast, a turn into the Chesapeake Bay, and up the James to Williamsburg.

  Toby and Noah had gone ahead to get the horses. Harry was glad she had not heard his conversation with du Plessis. He tried to imagine explaining that he needed to spend a week or two away during planting season so he might make a two-hundred-mile journey to another colony on the slender chance a stranger might offer some clue as to who had killed the Campbells. And, by the way, he wanted to finance the trip by borrowing more money. On the other hand, it was very likely that Comet Elijah would die without some intervention. Harry could prove his innocence only by catching the killer.

  CHAPTER 10

  86: In Disputes, be not So Desireous to Overcome as not to give Liberty to each one to deliver his Opinion and Submit to the Judgment of the Major Part especially if they are Judges of the Dispute.

  —RULES OF CIVILITY

  “YOU HAVE TO GO, NO MATTER THE COST,” TOBY SAID.

  “Good on you, girl,” said Natty.

  They were sitting on Harry’s porch in rockers and a swing the next afternoon: Toby, Harry, Talitha, Natty, and Noah. Staying out of the sticky heat that had built up inside. Martin and the others were in the yard cleaning off the plank table, where all had eaten dinner. Talitha seemed distracted. She kept looking over at them as if not entirely satisfied with the way they were stacking plates or folding table linens, despite their years of practice.

  “You’re the one who talks about our debts,” Harry replied. “You’ve near about convinced me no good can come of owing people money.”

  “Maybe you won’t have to borrow it.” Toby hesitated, as if making up her mind about something. She got up from her chair and went inside, leaving Harry and the others to puzzle. When she came back, she placed in Harry’s hands a heavy hemp sack.

  “What is this?” he said.

  “Have you never seen a guinea?”

  “No. Heard of them, though.” He untied the drawstring, peeked inside, and saw gold coins. From their weight he recognized they amounted to a small treasure.

  “My father gave me these when I left Swansea. They were to be used for emergencies. I think this qualifies.”

  Overcoming a moment of speechlessness, Harry said, “This is my emergency, not yours. I can’t take this.”

  “I didn’t say you could have it all,” she said with a quick laugh. “But I’ve heard you and Natty speak of Comet Elijah, what he means to you. I don’t think I could bear the sorrow of your finding him, only to lose him again.”

  She retrieved the bag, counted out eight coins, and forced them into Harry’s hands.

  “Here in North Carolina each one is worth one pound, ten shillings, as best I can determine. Do you think that will be enough for taverns and ferries and such to Williamsburg and back?”

  “With some to spare, I imagine.”

  “Martin a
nd I and the others can manage the plantation until you get back. Just don’t spend any more time than you need. I’ll miss you.”

  “So it’s settled,” said Natty. He was using a small knife to pry scraps of pork shoulder and collards from his teeth. “As far as I know, this will be the first time a Woodyard has been in Virginia in, oh, about a hundred years.” Turning to Harry he said, “If you chance to run into any more Ayerdales while you’re up there, tell them that Robert Woodyard’s grandson sends his greetings.”

  “Your grandfather knew the Ayerdales?” said Harry.

  “Used to work for ’em. Grandpap was a bonded servant.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “You never took no interest in where we come from. And why should you? Why should anybody? In this country, what matters is what you do with your own life here in the right now. Not what some grandpap did with his.”

  “Amen to that, friend Woodyard,” said Noah.

  Harry said, “I guess I just kind of thought we’d always lived around here.”

  “In the Pamlico, with all these fancy people?” said Natty. He let out a poof of air. “Maybe it’s time to enlighten you as to our origins. If you really want to go back, our people was originally border-country Scotch. Somehow we wound up in Ireland. Don’t ask how, because that ain’t entirely clear to me. Anyway, Grandpap was a young bucko of sixteen when he signed up to work for a big landowner in this place across the ocean called Virginia. The man had a bunch of plantations. The biggest was called Rosewood. That’s all Grandpap knew when he took the contract. Turned out the Ayerdales had been gentry folk back in England, connected to the king somehow.”

  “Important people,” Talitha said.

  “That’s right. Thank you, Talitha, for saying what I just said. Well, they got themselves caught on the wrong side of the civil war.”

  Seeing Harry had never heard of the civil war, Natty added, “That was a big scrap they had over there between the king and Parliament. But the Ayerdales, they was smart.”

  “Real smart,” said Talitha, nodding her head.

  “They’d started buying land over here in Virginia long before the shooting busted out. By the time the king and his head separated, they’d stitched together near about fifteen thousand acres. And that was just to start. Soon as they moved over here, they bought up more countryside. Probably had a good twenty-five, thirty thousand acres by the time Grandpap Robert got there.”

  Noah let out a low whistle.

  “Now, us Woodyards, we was Scotch Presbyterian. Good hardworking folks.”

  “The salt of the earth that our Savior spoke of,” said Talitha.

  “Anyway, my great-grandpap, he’d owned a farm back in County Antrim. Not big but nice. But Robert had ambitions of bettering himself, and that was just not possible back in Ireland. The recruiter what signed him up painted a pretty picture of Virginia, said life there was nothing shy of a sweet dream. Animals to hunt. Fish to fish. Crops that would just about plant themselves.”

  “A real Garden of Eden,” said Talitha.

  “Turned out it waren’t that easy. Especially not on a big place like Rosewood. And them Ayerdales was nasty bastards. Especially the old man.”

  “Treated his servants horrible.”

  Natty said, “Talitha, are you going to tell this story or do you want me to? You’re throwing me off track.”

  He took Talitha’s sigh as a sign for him to go ahead.

  “The only thing old man Ayerdale was interested in was getting his hands on a lot of cheap labor to work all that land he had. By the time Robert came along he’d started just buying people outright, hauling up black Africans from Barbados. And he didn’t treat his bondsmen much better than his blacks. Didn’t feed ’em like he’d contracted to nor give them proper clothing. He’d beat you at the wink of an eye, slave or servant, man or woman, didn’t make no difference. Well, young Robert didn’t care for that kind of treatment. It waren’t the way he’d been raised up back in Ireland. Then, on top of all that, the old man was always messing around with his girl servants. One of them happened to be somebody Grandpap had taken a liking to his own self. Truth is, they had become sweethearts.”

  Natty broke off long enough to look around, see if they were still following his story. Sometimes people’s attention started to wander off when he talked for long periods of time. Seemingly satisfied, he continued.

  “Well, one day Robert and the girl who was to become my grandmam up and ran off. Headed south, straight down the middle of the Great Dismal. Figured the swamp would put a damper on anybody coming after them. And they was right. I guess in time old man Ayerdale got over losing his best bonded field hand and his little bed warmer. Pardon the expression, Talitha.”

  Talitha waved her hand in the air as if to say that was not the worst thing she had heard come out of her father-in-law’s mouth.

  “They built them a place down toward the south end of the swamp, one of the patches of dry land after the marshland runs out and the Albemarle begins, and started having young ’uns, and they in turn had their own. One of them was me. I had a good growing-up there, did just about anything I wanted, ate and drank as I liked, chased pretty ladies, and ended up sticking with one. I met Harry’s future grandmother at a funeral. Then, when I turned forty, I made a right smart piece of money off a Spanish ship that had the bad luck to smash up in the waves out near Chickahawk. Not a proper fortune you might say but not too bad. I would of spent it all on women and rum, but my new daughter-in-law at the time”—he paused here to nod respectfully to Talitha—“convinced me to buy us some land down here in the Pamlico.”

  “Where all the finer people were going,” Talitha added, quickly holding up both hands to promise she would say nothing further.

  “And that was that. It’s old history now, but I’d say we Woodyards have done right smart well for ourselves in North Carolina. And without no slaves.”

  “Hurrah for the Woodyards,” said Noah.

  “I got no idea what kind of man this here Richard Ayerdale is,” said Natty. “But you need to know, Grandson, you got no reason to doff your cap to him, no more than anybody else you see walking around on two legs.”

  “I don’t plan to,” said Harry. “Don’t know that I’d even see him while I’m up there anyhow.”

  Talitha said, “Are you going to ask Judge McLeod if he minds you running off like this?”

  “Do I need to?”

  She straightened up in her chair and folded her hands in her lap, as if to give a color of importance to what she had to say. “You’re not just a private citizen anymore, Harry. You are an appointee of the chief justice of the peace of Craven County. Don’t you think it would be a good idea to check with him, maybe the sheriff, too, before you go off on such an errand?”

  Harry looked at his grandfather. His expression had taken a disagreeable turn.

  “Talitha, in my opinion, you worry too much.”

  “I am only trying to offer my child wise counsel.”

  “What if somebody says no?”

  “Now, why would they do that?”

  “Who knows what cockadoodle reason they might come up with? Carruthers might just want the chance to kill an Indian. Far as I’m concerned, when you decide you need to do something, you go ahead and do it.”

  Talitha handed Natty a stern look. But her next words had a mollifying tone.

  “Son, I just would hate to see you spoil what we’ve worked for, you especially, how you’ve lifted up yourself and the Woodyard name. I’m so proud of you. Especially after the stumble you took, what has it been now? Ten years ago?”

  Natty said, “If you’re talking about what happened between him and that fine young girl Maddie McLeod, she had something to do with that herself.”

  From a corner of his eye Harry noticed another questioning glance from Noah. He guessed that before much longer he would have to talk about what had transpired, the events that had seemed so calamitous at the time but that ha
d sent him down his current path toward respectability.

  Of one thing he was sure: he had to save Comet Elijah.

  *

  He spent the early part of the next day getting ready to go. To burden Annie as little as possible, he packed only one extra set of clothes and little else. He left off his rifle, doubting he would need to hunt. Ordinaries were strung out along the old post road about a day’s ride from one to the next. He did lay out a pair of pistols, along with his knife and tomahawk, as defense against possible bandits.

  The rest of the day he devoted to looking over his forest operations, visiting every section of trees then under tap. Getting pleasantly dizzy from the smell of pine sap draining out of the living wood and pooling in tin buckets hanging from pegs. He and Martin talked over when to change the locations of the rigs in case his trip took longer than he expected.

  Noah followed close behind, taking down notes. He said he wanted to write something about the longleaf pine, its phases of life and methods of harvesting sap and processing it into tar and pitch. He hoped to make it good enough to be approved by the Royal Society, the association in London he had spoken of before in connection with his father. If the head men approved, they would send his letter to members around the world through their journal. By the reverential way Noah spoke, Harry gathered this would be a great achievement.

  “I want to go with you to Virginia, too,” said Noah on their way back to the house. “I’d like to see what other plants and animals live between here and there. I’ll pay my own board if you can furnish a horse.”

  “I thought you’d turned your back on your father’s interest in nature.”

  “I just don’t care for his blindness to the rest of the world. And, too, I guess things you’re exposed to as a child have a way of sticking.”

  “I’d be glad of the company. I’m sure Martin can spare the gray for a week or two.”

  After another minute Noah asked if Harry was going to say anything to the judge.

  “I’ve given it a good deal of thought. My mother has her points, but so does Natty. I’m not going to put my intentions at risk by giving anybody a chance to say no. Maybe I can even be back before they know I’m gone.”