Eye of the Raven amoca-2

by Eliot Pattison

  "Did you.

  "It was full of smallpox," Marston explained. "He thought if I ran electrical charges through the infected it might help them. I knew there was no hope, but I couldn't say no. He wanted to pay me in furs, but I refused. They all had such desperate hope in their faces when I touched them with my jars. Beautiful children. Old men and women, even some warriors built like bulls who had lost all their strength. Eight out of ten weren't going to survive the week. I didn't argue any more with the French bear. Not long after, I packed up my equipment and came home."

  "But Skanawati knew how to find you."

  "I gave him a piece of paper with my address on it, then placed the Iroquois signs on my door. His people moved me. I had seen too many Indian drunks and beggars on our streets. The city becomes like a trap to them. The missionaries fill them with grand ideas about the equality of all men, the tavernkeepers fill them with rum. Some are kept at the alehouses to perform tricks like tamed bears, throwing tomahawks, shooting arrows and such. Most die of drink, or of some European disease. I wanted to do what I could…. "

  Townsend and Marston, in their own peculiar way, had been friends of the Iroquois, Duncan realized. It was perhaps not so great a coincidence that Townsend's partner had appeared at the Broken Jug tavern, for that was where the two had met in the first place, nor too great a coincidence that Marston had recognized Conawago and gone to help him.

  As his guests digested his troubling words Marston seemed to reflect on Duncan, his brow knitting. "At the tavern, McCallum, it wasn't Conawago who seemed to be in danger, but you."

  "There is a gentleman now residing here who seems to think I am in bond to him. A man who knows my face was unexpectedly in the tavern tonight."

  Marston frowned. "The law is not sympathetic to those who flee from indenture."

  "The bond was transferred to his daughter. She takes a liberal view of my obligation. But he has sworn otherwise in an affidavit. He is a vindictive man, and I caused him much shame last year."

  "Might I know his name?"

  "Ramsey."

  Marston's jaw dropped. "Bestowed with the title of Lord? Cousin to the king?"

  "A distant cousin."

  The scientist sagged. "You pick your enemies well. Since he arrived last year Ramsey has bought his way onto the council of the city, has the governor's ear. His house is like a palace, he is one of Philadelphia's self-declared royalty. If he knows you are in the city he will have men on every street."

  "We will flee soon," Conawago said. "We only seek a Shawnee named Red Hand here."

  Marston shook his head. "As I said, the Indians come and go. And when in the city most stay in the shadows."

  "We can linger but a day," Conawago cast an apologetic glance toward Duncan. "Our real business waits in Lancaster."

  Marston cocked his head. "Lancaster?"

  "The treaty conference. Where Skanawati awaits trial. We mean to keep the rope from his neck."

  Marston's face darkened with the news. He opened his mouth several times but seemed unable to find words. Finally he rose, pulled a news journal from a table under the window, and dropped it onto Duncan's lap. It was an edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette, dated the day before. The first page was nearly filled with notices of ships arriving and departing, listing their cargos and ports of call. There was only one headline. Treaty Conference Adjourned to Philadelphia for Hanging of Iroquois Murderer.

  When he spoke, Marston's voice was tight with emotion. "He dies as soon as a Philadelphia judge hears the evidence and confirms the sentence. A formality. He has two, maybe three days."

  Duncan stared numbly at the paper and did not see Marston leave, only saw him return, carrying glasses and a bottle, which he wordlessly uncorked. "Let us have full explanations, all around," Marston offered solemnly as he poured out the claret.

  Duncan and Conawago told their story first, starting with their discovery of Captain Burke and proceeding through their tour that afternoon of watchmakers, interrupted only by the appearance of a serving woman in a dark blue dress and apron who left a tray of ham and bread. As he listened Marston ate, then cleaned his spectacles on a napkin, looking up with a worried expression as they finished.

  "The governor of the province had demanded a treaty," he observed, "and convinced the general that the success of the British military in the north would be meaningless without a settlement of the many issues around the western lands. When Magistrate Brindle reported that the Indian delegations threatened to decamp over the imprisonment of Skanawati, the governor then invited all the delegations to Philadelphia. There he could personally court the Indians, attempting to repair the damage they say Brindle has done. The governor this very night has hosted a dinner for the chiefs in the state house. But the Virginians worry him as much as the tribes. They still thirst for vengeance."

  "The governor understands the tribes. Surely he will arrange for appropriate condolences for Skanawati to be freed," Conawago said.

  "And break with the Virginians? It will be a hollow accord indeed if that is the price. As bad as that Virginia land company may be, they are private owners. If they do not succeed, the Virginian governor will press official claims, in the name of the crown colony. Do not forget Pennsylvania is but a proprietary colony, while Virginia is held in the name of the king."

  Duncan pushed down his bile. He was well-acquainted with the way men's lives could be ruined when those in power invoked distant kings and proprietors. "Magistrate Brindle is a reasonable man," he offered. "If only I could speak with him."

  "It is all out of his hands now. And were he to be seen speaking with you, a fugitive from justice, his own office would be jeopardized. He may be an honored judge, but Ramsey is on the council that reigns over Philadelphia and has the governor over to dine frequently."

  "Operating in the shadows, you mean, like the Indians," Duncan shot back.

  Marston sipped at his claret. "You speak of codes on trees," he said with the scientist's curiosity. "Tell me of them." He listened in rapt attention to Duncan's description, then brightened. "The pigpen code!" he exclaimed. "Boxes and three-sided squares? Open triangles and dots?"

  Duncan leaned forward excitedly. "You know it?"

  Marston's enthusiasm ebbed. "Know of it. Called the pigpen because it is a matrix onto which the alphabet is overlaid, like a mass of pens, some enclosing empty spaces, some dots. But I don't know the arrangement, nor the details of the code."

  Duncan sighed with disappointment. "But in Philadelphia there are people who know such codes, other learned men?"

  "Assuredly. But their codes are secret, and a man's use of such codes always so as well."

  The pigpen. It aptly described the morass of clues in front of Duncan.

  As Duncan now lifted the carving knife and a fork to work on the ham, Marston watched with interest. "You cut with the precision of a surgeon."

  "I completed three years of my medical studies at Edinburgh."

  "Edinburgh! Why, it is the capital of all medical science! This is destiny!" Marston exclaimed. "You can assist me. I need-"

  "The treaty," Duncan reminded him.

  "Forgive me," their host apologized. "Where was I? … The governor assumes that eventually the Grand Council of the Six Nations will come around to the compromise since they will be shamed if they go home without his bounty."

  "Compromise?"

  "It has been the talk of my friends' dining tables ever since we heard of the convoy reaching Lancaster. Virginia receives no land but has its revenge by the hanging. The Iroquois avoid having the covenant chain broken by agreeing that the crime was the work of one man, not an act of war. Pennsylvania maintains the peace, getting all to agree the killings were contrived by the French, emphasizing the need for us all to stay together in common cause. And confirming need for troops at Fort Pitt. That," Marston said with a bitter flourish, "is the stuff of statecraft. It is how we deal with friends of the French."

  The words brought an unexpect
ed sound from the shadows, a choked-off sob. The maid had lingered in the hallway.

  "Catherine!" Marston gasped. "I meant no-" He fumbled with his words, then gestured the woman forward. She was a plain, sturdy woman in her thirties, her careworn face averted as she inched into the room.

  "Do you require anything further, sirs?" she asked in a brittle voice. "Some more claret perhaps?"

  She was, Duncan realized, trying desperately to control her emotions. He looked in confusion at Marston, understanding neither what had aggrieved the woman nor what caused the scientist's discomfort.

  "What I would like most of all," Duncan ventured, "is to ask if you are acquainted with other serving women in the city. I am looking for an unmarried woman, the sister of Mr. Townsend."

  Catherine burst into tears. "I believe, Duncan," Conawago said as he guided her to a chair, "that we have found her."

  Duncan flushed with embarrassment. He should have known. Marston had taken in his partner's sister when Townsend was lost.

  "As Catherine steadfastly reminds me," Marston said, "there is no proof certain that her good brother is dead."

  Duncan sighed and looked away for a moment, dreading the pain of the words he had to say. "Your brother had an elegant wooden box, with a clever sliding lid and an inlaid pattern of diamonds on the front."

  "I gave it to him when he finished his schooling!" Miss Townsend exclaimed.

  "I have that box in my pack. It was returned to me by some Iroquois. With tribal markings scratched on the cover."

  The woman quickly turned away. She brought her apron to her face.

  "No one has produced his body," Marston asserted.

  "I fear the wilderness swallows up bodies," Conawago observed.

  The woman, Duncan reminded himself, had first reacted not when Duncan had mentioned her brother but when Marston had mentioned the French. "Many good souls have fallen in the western country these past months," Duncan said. "Captain Burke. A surveyor named Cooper and his Indian wife. Mr. Bythe."

  At the mention of the Quaker's name the woman's grief disappeared. "The devil collected that one at last," she spat, and for the first time Duncan heard a hint of Irish in her voice.

  "Bythe had been investigating secret French involvement in the killings," Duncan told her.

  "A pox on him! My brother was no traitor! He was a leader of men, hired to assure the others it was safe and honest work. He was only being a good Christian when he helped the others get hired."

  Marston handed the woman a glass of wine.

  Duncan lifted one of the ladder-back chairs and sat close to her. "Mr. Bythe," he explained, "has suffered the same fate as Captain Burke. Those particular bodies I have seen. What exactly was Mr. Bythe suggesting?" Duncan asked.

  The reluctant answer came from Marston. "When surveyors began disappearing there was a meeting called by justice Brindle. It was just the war, he told us, the price we all pay when kings feud. We should just stay away from the frontier until the hostilities end, he warned. But someone asked how Philadelphia surveyors were marked for death by the French, how the French could know them all. It was as if half a dozen particular birds had been scattered across the wide wilderness, someone said, yet each one found and dropped by the French. The meeting grew unruly. Men started shouting that the French were being told, the surveyors were being betrayed.

  "Some trader pointed out that the French could slip in and out of Shamokin with impunity. A trapper pointed out that Townsend had been moving in and out of Shamokin, that he was the very one to have arranged for the first surveyors to venture west, the only one to know them all."

  "Simpletons!" Miss Townsend cried. "Francis never so much as whispered against the king!"

  Marston, in obvious discomfort now, quickly finished his tale. "Bythe's appointment to the trading post at Fort Pitt allowed him to investigate. Some say it was why he was given the appointment in the first place. He held rank as a militia officer, took out militia patrols sometimes hoping to capture the raiders who worked with his suspected spy, make one talk. There were reports, even in the Gazette, of runaway slaves carrying messages for the French. A clever ploy, that. A runaway would already have great incentive to avoid notice. Bounty men from Virginia are known to keep watch even in Shamokin sometimes."

  "Would your brother have reason to speak with such runaways?" Conawago asked.

  The woman shook her head from side to side.

  "Then tell me something else," Conawago continued. "Your brother arranged for other surveyors. But who arranged for him?"

  "There's a Virginia merchant," Marston said. "He runs tobacco and timber ships up Delaware Bay."

  Marston had not answered the question. "Did he hire your brother, Miss Townsend?" Duncan pressed.

  "Not that merchant. He but takes messages. All of the surveyors were hired directly by the company, by one of the gentlemen directly," she replied. "He even invited us to dine at his booth in the City Tavern. Francis was the key. He knew the wilderness, had just come back from it, told everyone how safe it was, how the Iroquois had behaved like perfect gentlemen, how our burned house was a different matter altogether. Francis was hesitating at leaving us so soon after his return, but we had lost the house, and the gentleman said he would publish one of his works on American birds after the survey was complete."

  "Which gentleman?"

  "An owner of the Monongahela Company, the Virginia land venture. Winston Burke. After my brother agreed, they sat together to interview the others. A young man from Connecticut. A Dutchman with two watches. One or two others."

  Duncan stared at the woman, then stepped to the tray, poured himself another glass of claret, and drained it. He wasn't fitting pieces of the puzzle together, he was simply finding more impossible pieces.

  "There is a small band of tribesmen," Conawago inserted after a heavy silence. "Banded together to no good purpose. Where would such men shelter in the city?"

  Marston shrugged. "The ones on respectable business visit me or stay at a government house. The others could be anywhere."

  "I have heard of places," Miss Townsend put in. "Especially one. Most unsavory. I heard a gentleman say it was a blight, as bad as an opium den in London, but he was grateful to have a den that drew the drunken savages from our streets."

  "You know this place, Catherine?" Marston registered disbelief.

  The woman seemed to summon up her dignity. "Acting as a housekeeper puts me in the market with many serving types. Tongues can wag."

  "And this is a place where a fugitive might shelter? Do you hear of specific warriors? Red Hand? Ohio George?" Duncan asked.

  Her eyes now grew wide. "Ohio George? You seek Ohio George?"

  "Surely you did not know the man?"

  "There was an entertainment staged months ago. Real warriors demonstrating their savage ways, war whoops, arrow shooting, dancing about a fire in a big iron pot," Miss Townsend blushed. "Some of the ones who spoke English told of attacks on other tribes. This Ohio George told of fighting fifty Hurons, of being captured and taken to a great western ocean where he fought terrible sea monsters. He pranced back and forth in his nakedness, with naught but a cloth over his loins!"

  All of which meant that Ohio George had made himself known in Philadelphia as a violent, English-speaking Iroquois, one not above engaging in deception if it put money in his pocket.

  "This place," Duncan asked, "the lair of the tribal castaways, can you tell us where it is?"

  "A great barn in the fields above the northern docks, used for a dairy herd before they were moved farther from the city."

  "You're not going into that nest!" Conawago protested. "If they wanted you dead in Shamokin they have even more reason now."

  "Red Hand has all the answers," Duncan shot back. "I will not be a coward with Skanawati about to be hanged. We will return to the stable for our weapons. The night is yet young."

  After a moment Conawago spoke in a slower, more contemplative voice. He looked with new qu
ery at Marston. "No. We need no weapon if our shield is strong enough."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Constables would not be looking for a family strolling back from an evening engagement, so Marston and Catherine Townsend had put on more elegant attire to join them as they walked along the Market Street cobblestones. With a tricorn hat and full waistcoat borrowed from Marston, Duncan played his part, even responding to Marston's banter about the celebrated Dr. Franklin as they passed the compact, comfortablelooking house where the great man lived when in Philadelphia. As they approached the brick wall that surrounded the large structure that was their destination, Conawago slipped into the shadows and shed his waistcoat, letting his braids down over his shoulder, affixing a feather to one of them, even lifting his ever-present amulet from underneath his shirt. By the time they reached the squad of militia that sleepily guarded the gate, Marston and Miss Townsend had faded into the shadows and Conawago and Duncan were engaged in a lively, loud discussion in the Iroquois tongue.

  "Have we seen you in the treaty delegation?" inquired the soldier who appeared to be in command. He lifted his musket across his chest and blocked the gate.

  "God's blood, corporal," another guard guffawed, "they all look the same to me."

  Conawago shot back an impatient torrent in Iroquois words, using Brindle's name twice.

  "You're no red man, sir," the corporal pressed Duncan.

  "The tribal delegation is permitted advisers, corporal," Duncan replied in an impatient tone. "It would be indeed unfortunate if we had to summon Magistrate Brindle."

  The soldier hesitated, then stepped aside.

  The government house that had been set aside for the tribal delegation was a commodious two-story brick house, sparsely furnished but large enough to accommodate a dozen visitors. Conawago seemed to know his way around the building, leading Duncan straight through a large sitting room, then a dining room, and through a kitchen where four members of the house staff sat playing whist in a candlelit corner. They looked up but said nothing as Conawago led Duncan out the rear door.