The Constable's Tale: A Novel of Colonial America

by Donald Smith

  Du Plessis allowed him to leave with a free batch of spices.

  *

  Abel and Reuben were having ale with friends before the fireplace at Speight’s when Harry next saw them. Though only midafternoon, it was nearly dark outside owing to the early winter twilight and a thick cover of clouds that hinted at snow.

  “Is that Constable Henry Woodyard at the door?” said Abel, squinting to see.

  They shifted around their table to make room. The serving girl brought a wooden flagon topped with a mound of foam.

  “I don’t know what your fine friends over at Cogdell’s are going to make of you coming in here,” said Reuben. “Have you forgot where you belong?”

  “Wherever I want to drink a health to old friends, that’s where I belong,” said Harry. “I’ll still go to Cogdell’s, but if they don’t like me coming in here, too, it’s not my concern.”

  This statement was met with a surprised silence.

  “Well, that don’t seem to have stopped you from wanting to get rich,” said Reuben. “Or, should I say, richer. I heard you bought some more land.”

  “A nice piece of acreage came up for sale on the north end of our place. The turpentine was good this year, so I was able to get hold of it. I already signed contracts to bring over three more indentures to help me clear some space for planting. Might have to build another tobacco barn, too.”

  “These new workers you’re getting, any coming over from Wales?” Abel asked with a mask of innocence. Knowing chuckles around the table.

  “The best bargains these days are coming from up toward Scotland, the borderlands in the east, if you want to know.”

  Reuben said, “I’m seeing more and more Africans working these fields, just like the big operators have up in Virginia. Seems like the easiest thing now is just buy them right off the ship and have done with it.”

  “I will never own a man, no matter how much cheaper it might be. The idea makes me sick.”

  Abel lifted his wooden cup and said, “Well, here’s to our old mate. Welcome home, Harry boy.”

  *

  Riding through his new holdings a few days later with a map, trying to figure out where the boundaries were, he caught a whiff of roasting chicken.

  Comet Elijah was on his haunches at a makeshift spit. The carcasses of two small animals turning a nice golden brown before him. He was wearing woolen trousers, mismatched boots, a woman’s dirty pink overcoat, and a beaver hat.

  “Come sit beside me, Harry,” he said without looking up. “I put on an extra bird for you.”

  Harry hitched Annie to a tree. The mare was looking frayed. He wondered if she would last out the winter. He had chinked up cracks in the plank siding of the barn and banked the outside of the north wall with brush and dirt and whatever else he could find lying around to block out the wind. But the return from Canada, which involved long stretches aboard ships and two storms, had worn her out, and her old energy had not come back.

  Though in a cheerful state of mind, the Indian was not helpful when it came to satisfying Harry’s curiosity about how he broke out of jail. “That kind of thing calls for special knowledge that you don’t just pick up anywhere,” he said. “Maybe someday you’ll be ready to have it but not just yet. You might hurt yourself. I’ll see if I can teach you later on, if you’re still interested.” After a reflective pause, he added, “If I don’t die first.”

  “You’ve been talking about dying for a good while now,” Harry said. “The idea doesn’t seem to bother you.”

  Comet Elijah lifted the sticks from the fire and put the chickens on two tin plates he got from a knapsack. It was a handsome outfit that looked like something one of the better-heeled members of the militia might bring on muster day. Harry let pass an itch to know how he came to have it.

  “I’ve died many times, always come back. I thought I told you that before. Pretty soon you learn not to make a big to-do about such things.”

  He got out a tin flask and two cups and poured out a pinkish brown liquid that smelled like old apple brandy. Harry put away his reluctance, gulped his down, and accepted Comet Elijah’s insistence on another.

  They talked some more while they ate and drank. Harry told him about Canada, giving an especially detailed description of his fight in the cornfield. The whole time feeling he was just confirming what Comet Elijah already knew. When they were finished they got onto their feet and stamped out the fire.

  “You know, you should really leave the Pamlico,” said Harry. “They’re not making any effort to find you now, but that could change. And if somebody happened to catch up with you in these woods . . .”

  Comet Elijah interrupted. “I’ve already decided to go away. I have people in the south, where the Spanish are.”

  “Florida?”

  He nodded. “They stay warm the whole winter long down there. To tell the truth, I’m tired of cold weather.”

  “Well, it’s a good idea to leave here. I’m the only one who knows who really killed the Campbells.”

  Comet Elijah had been adjusting himself, arranging the kit he had loaded onto his back. Eyes moving here and there over the ground, looking for stray property. Now he stopped and looked at Harry.

  “And how do you know that?”

  The question startled Harry. Maybe he had wounded the old warrior’s pride by seeming to suggest he was no longer able to hurt anybody.

  “Since you asked, I’ll tell you. But it is something you must swear never to repeat.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “No, you must swear to me. Because if this got out, it could complicate my life very badly.”

  “I swear I won’t tell anybody, even if they torture me.”

  The thought came to Harry that if Comet Elijah was so good at poking through peoples’ minds, he should know about his finding the medallion and the nautical chart of Pamlico Sound on the floor under the crib. His thoughts went back to that first gleam of gold. How he had got up from the table, gone down on all fours to look. The medallion of the Freemasons, sitting atop the chart of Pamlico Sound. Stacked so neatly. Harry recalled now that he had wondered if someone had placed them there, instead of their having skittered across the floor haphazardly. He had puzzled over this but only momentarily in his haste to have a better look at the objects. After that, things had moved so fast he had forgotten about this little piece of the puzzle that did not quite fit. This small nattering voice, so quiet that it had been all but drowned out. Only now he realized it never really had gone away.

  “I guess I never told you about the monster,” Comet Elijah said.

  “What monster?”

  “The one I had a fight with. I thought I told you already. The truth is, it’s getting harder to remember what I said in the last few minutes, much less days or weeks ago. But that’s not important now.” He looked up at the sun through the filter of pine tops. It was beginning its long downward slide in the southwestern sky. “Anyway, it’s getting late.”

  Harry put a hand on Comet Elijah’s arm as he turned to leave.

  “Tell me about the monster.”

  The Indian got fussy, tried to shake him off. Said he needed to get started so he could find a place of shelter before nightfall. He could discuss the monster episode later on, if Harry was still interested.

  Harry kept his hold. Half coaxing, half demanding. He needed to hear it right now.

  They sat down again. Comet Elijah seemed to warm to the subject as he talked. Maybe a little flattered by Harry’s interest. He made hand gestures, furnished descriptive details, filled in color and the illusion of movement as a painter does to make a canvas come alive.

  It seemed like Harry could see it unfolding.

  *

  It was an hour or so after the rider had passed by. Still well before dawn, the murky part of night when spirits are about. The storm had tapered off to almost nothing. Sleep ruined anyway, he thought to go into the town, see if he could find some dry, safe place to recollect himsel
f. Someplace where he would not draw attention until returning to the forest at first light.

  He was moving at a good pace down the new-cut road when he saw a light ahead. A farmhouse. He sprang onto the porch like a cat and peeked into one of the windows. Inside was a woman, young and good-looking, with red hair. She was staring straight at him. He ducked back down and got ready to run, then realized she must have been looking at her own reflection in the glass. He stole another glimpse. She was touching up her hair with her hand and messing with her blouse, all in a sly way, like she did not want anyone to notice. The way women sometimes do when they are around men who are not their husbands.

  He lowered his head, waited a minute or two, then looked again. Now her back was turned and she was facing a table where two men were sitting. One was wearing dirty breeches and a loose-fitting hunting shirt made of coarse material. The other was better dressed, but everything was damp, including the man’s matted yellow hair. A fancy robin’s-egg blue jacket was drying out on a chair next to the fireplace. A baby’s crib in a corner. The only other person he could see was a little boy standing near the chair. He was looking at the jacket.

  The yellow-haired man was eating and taking draughts from a metal cup and talking between mouthfuls, going back and forth in conversation with the other man. Comet Elijah could not see what was on his plate, but watching his jaws work made him hungry. He had a thought to knock at the door and ask for something for himself. He had not eaten in three days. But before he could act on the idea, he noticed the little boy reach inside one of the jacket pockets. The adults were tangled up in their conversation and not paying attention.

  As he watched, the boy drew something from the pocket. Comet Elijah caught a glimpse of gold. Then the boy reached back in and pulled out a folded-up piece of paper. He looked back at the table where the adults were. Seeing he had not been seen, he squatted and put both objects, the gold piece and the paper, underneath the crib. Maybe thinking to look at them more closely later on.

  By and by, the men got out of their chairs and shook hands. The yellow-haired one pulled on his jacket, shaking his head no. Likely turning down an offer to stay the rest of the night.

  Comet Elijah crept to the side of the porch and jumped down onto the ground and stayed there until he was sure the man had gone. Then he circled back around to the steps, walked boldly up, knocked on the door, and asked if he could have some food.

  The man and woman looked surprised but got over it. In a short time he was at the table having a meal of roasted corn, red beans, and collards flavored with pork bits.

  That is when the monster showed up.

  Comet Elijah had seen such things among his own people. A child will be going along just fine, acting normally, like children do, when all of a sudden something will get into it. It will start yelling and screaming for no reason or twitching or talking in some unknown language. Just like a demon had got hold of it. And that is exactly the case. The child acts like whichever type of devil has come inside of it. It can be a dangerous proposition if the child is older or big for its age or if the parents just let it go on without doing anything. Like these parents were. Either they were afraid or just being too lenient, letting the little boy get away with whatever came into its little monster head to do.

  The parents seemed like good people. Comet Elijah could see they would appreciate having somebody step in and show them how to handle the situation. He got out of his chair and walked over and picked the child up and threw it nearly all the way across the room.

  The man was upon Comet Elijah in an instant. Clearly he had misjudged him. Suddenly aware he might lose a combat with a younger, stronger person, he had no choice but to finish it quickly with his knife. The woman started in on him next. He figured he might be able to fight her off without hurting her too badly, but in the uproar he accidently stuck her in the side. She fell back to the floor bleeding like a pig in a chute, then started dragging herself off into the next room.

  While that was happening, the little boy demon recovered enough from its injuries to run out the front door. Comet Elijah pulled the man’s rifle down from over the fireplace—he already had noticed it was primed and ready—and shot him in the back.

  The baby was awake and squalling now but offered no threat.

  The woman finally finished breathing. Regretting what had happened, though none of it had been his fault, as a gesture of respect he arranged the family in dignified positions. Even plucked a sprig of rosemary from the garden and put it at the boy’s nose to emphasize his sorrow over the outcome of his fight with the monster. An apology to the dead people’s souls.

  Comet Elijah stopped talking. Finished with his story. He stared at the ground in silence. Harry also stayed quiet, trying to take in the enormity of what he had heard. He looked into Comet Elijah’s thickly lined face, wondered what was going on inside that dark, all-but-bald head. Maybe now that he had relived it fully, maybe for the first time, the experience weighed him down as it had not before.

  “You may be right,” Comet Elijah said finally, once again correctly reading Harry’s thoughts. “Maybe I acted too quick. Some of my own people used to criticize me for that kind of thing. But a lot of it was just jealousy of my bold leadership style.”

  He struggled to regain his footing as old men do when they have been sitting for a while. He came onto all fours, straightened his legs, tried to push off with his arms. That did not work. Finally, he accepted Harry’s offer of a hand. Then there was the chore of recovering his kit again. Several pieces of flatware, and who knows what else, had spilled out of it.

  Harry’s mind raced as he helped restore order. Was the story believable? It seemed too detailed and too close to what Harry knew to be true to have been made up. Unlike riddles, whose answers were arbitrary and depended on wordplay, solving puzzles demanded the use of logic. In this case logic ruled out every possibility except that Comet Elijah had just confessed to killing the Campbells. Albeit with the occasional embellishment. Harry did not believe the business about jumping around like a cat, for example. But he could not have been describing just some elaborate dream, some vision he’d had, with himself inserted into it. Comet Elijah killed the Campbell family. And Harry could not rule out the possibility that he might do something similar again if allowed to go free.

  As he sifted through pine needles, pretending to look for lost objects, Harry sorted out the ramifications. It would seem that duty demanded he bring Comet Elijah back with him into New Bern to stand trial. He tried to imagine just getting him there. A struggle was possible. Harry weighed the odds of being overpowered by some Tuscarora conjuring, the kind that had allowed Comet Elijah to escape prison. But logic again intervened. It seemed more likely he had stolen away through some dereliction on the part of his guards, not by climbing up a wall like a fly and melting through a bullet-glass window. For all the posturing about strength and agility, given equal combat without the advantage of surprise, Harry was sure he could whip Comet Elijah. At least he was passably sure.

  He pictured in his mind the trial and its certain outcome: hanging from the gibbet in front of the old courthouse. The man who, with Natty, had raised Harry. Taught him everything he needed to know about life and survival in the world outside the genteel haunts of colonels and judges and young cadets and all their rules of civility. Sheltered him from the cold.

  He wondered what Natty would do.

  Although absorbed by these thoughts, he had not failed to notice that Comet Elijah had begun to wander away. There was less and less of him to see, as the trees and patches of underbrush were breaking up the picture. Harry realized that by not acting, he was making a choice. Maybe he already had.

  He walked toward the place he had last caught a glimpse of dirty pink. When he got there all he could see was more forest. Something moved off to his right, and he started in that direction. He had not gotten many steps along when he saw another pink patch, this one even dimmer, still farther to the right. He tur
ned that way. Then realized that if he continued on like this he would be going in circles.

  He looked back at what he took to be his original position. There was no sign of Annie. The pine forest seemed to have closed in behind him. It was quiet except for a woodpecker hammering at a tree, short bursts of stutterings so close together they sounded like the swinging of a rusty hinge. That, and a low babbling that somewhat resembled human laughter, but was probably coming from the creek.

  Suddenly, there was Comet Elijah. Or at least his face. It was nestled among some fully leafed pine limbs thirty feet off the ground. Smiling down at him.

  Harry stood there for a while trying to ignore it. Tired of tricks. Or maybe it was just the apple brandy. He took deep breaths to help resettle his mind. Remembered a snatch of what Toby had put down in her diary, something about pieces of time forever flowing by. His own life had taken a sharp turn over the past four months. He had not been aware of it while it was happening, but now he could see it as plainly as a hawk can make out a twist in a river from high in the air. Another marked change of course had occurred ten years earlier, when old man Rollins had caught him and Maddie in a hayfield. He could bring back neither of those times, make them turn in a different direction. And it would do him no good to wonder if he and Maddie somehow ever might have had a future together. Those moments were locked in the past.