Sup with the Devil
Page 30
“Formulae,” corrected Horace automatically.
“Killing is what they’re about,” said Abigail softly. “Isn’t it?”
“I think so, yes,” said the Indian. “I recognized a number of the experiments he’s done. Beelzebub was working with combinations of poisonous vapors—mixtures of sulfurs and phosphorous a hundred times more deadly than the poisoned smokes the Romans used. Vapors that stuck to the skin and remained in the air for hours rather than dispersing.”
“The Chinese used poison smokes, of course,” said Horace. “The Persians, also—everything from balls of burning mustard to clouds of powdered antimony and chalk designed to asphyxiate the enemy . . . beastly. It sounds as if Old Beelzebub took a more scientific approach to produce clouds that would hang for hours in the air after they were shot by means of hollowed cannon-shells into enemy villages.”
“Enemy?” said Thaxter, puzzled. “Who—?”
Weyountah held up the smallest of the sheets of paper, which contained not formulae, but simply writing in a firm, faded hand.
“Evil Heart,” he read slowly, translating as he went. “We the fathers of the Abooksiqun village have smoked over the offer you have made to us to deal with the white men who come against us, who have tried to take our land. We have talked and we have prayed to the spirits that guide us. You say that you can kill the white soldiers who will come to our villages before they can reach us; that you can rub them out before they can see a single warrior of the Nipmuc tribe; that you can stretch them dead upon the ground miles from us and destroy their villages without a single warrior of the Nipmuck ever having to enter there. This you will do, you say, out of thanks to us, for taking you in when your own people had turned their faces from you.”
Weyountah turned the paper over, his strong-boned young face grave and sad in the lamplight.
“This we do not want and will not have. We the fathers of the Abooksiqun village understand the greatness of this gift of death that you offer to us, and thank you that we are in your heart and your thought. Yet we find this gift that you offer us an abomination. This is not what we wish to do or what we wish to become or how we wish our sons to speak of us after we are gone. When we are gone, we want our sons to say, Our Fathers were warriors, not, Our Fathers were cowards who poisoned their enemies from afar.”
“He couldn’t have done it,” said Thaxter after a time. “Could he?”
Horace regarded him in surprise. “Of course he could have. ’Twas only a century ago that poisoned vapors were outlawed, when the French would use them against the Germans during the wars of religion . . .”
“And he had the materials,” said Weyountah. “And notes for the making of phosphorous and other ingredients . . . He had made the vapor in a small quantity already. ’Twas devilish stuff, cleaving to the skin, both outside the body and inside the nostrils and throat. It would blind and blister where it did not kill, and apparently it rendered at least some of its subjects permanently paralyzed. Moreover, it sounds as if he were working on means to make it in quantity, and cheaply, and to lay it down everywhere in the forests where the militia would come to attack the Indian villages.”
“And that’s what Ryland wanted?” asked Katy, both shocked and sad. “Not gold, but a weapon to use on those who stand against the King?”
“Worth a thousand times as much as gold,” John said, from his chair by the little hearth-fire, “if one side has it and the other doesn’t. As Ryland would know. ’Twould be a guarantee of advancement, more so than mere money, in the eyes of the Governor and the King.”
“And the elders of the village decided they’d rather die,” said Katy, a little wonderingly, “before they’d use it. Before they’d let themselves turn into people who would use it.”
“People like Beelzebub,” said Horace. “No wonder he left the village when they told him that.”
“Because he couldn’t bear to see them killed, as he must have known they would be?”
“Or because,” said Weyountah, “he couldn’t bear to see himself through their eyes. We found no evidence, by the way,” he added, looking across at John and Abigail, “that His Excellency had sent anyone to follow Ryland. I’m inclined to think Hutchinson really didn’t know.” He shuffled the deadly papers together, passed them back to Abigail. “He was out in Cambridge this morning—Hutchinson was—and they say he seemed deeply distressed to see Ryland’s body, but he didn’t ask about the books or make any attempt to see his rooms—”
“Which is just as well,” added Horace, “since we’d already moved the books to my room.”
“You can have a look through them,” offered the Indian. “They’re just perfectly ordinary old books, you know. We had a look through them this morning when we got back—here’s the list of them—” He withdrew a handwritten sheet from his jacket pocket and held it out to John. “The cover-papers had all been slit with a paper knife, and to judge by the smudges everywhere, Ryland had searched through them pretty well.”
“That may have been before he got word back from Mrs. Morgan that what he’d hoped was the formula for a poisonous gas was just some old notes for blackmail,” surmised Abigail. “Since afterwards, he certainly didn’t waste any time trying to get his hands on the other books. Which is just as well,” she said slowly, “because even if he had not intended the deaths of Seckar and George, having encompassed them, he would have to cover his guilt . . . in any fashion that he could until he had the formulae and equipment in hand. I don’t imagine—”
Sharp knocking sounded on the front door, making them all look around. John rose and opened the study door as Pattie’s swift footfalls passed in the hall. An instant later a familiar voice called, “John, it’s Sam—”
Sam Adams strode into the study, greatcoat flapping open and a small portmanteau in his hand. “I’ve just come from the harbor,” he said. “The Duke William’s been sighted coming past Calf Island—from London. She’ll be docking at Castle Island before dark.”
“Anyone go out to it?” asked John, with an eye on the portmanteau.
“The harbor pilot. And some traders with water and rum.” Sam’s voice was grim. “General Thomas Gage is aboard—the commander in chief of the British armies here up ’til last year . . .”
“They’ve sent him back?” asked Thaxter, a little apprehensively.
“They’ve sent him back,” replied Sam. “Not only as commander in chief . . . He’s now Governor of Massachusetts as well.”
“Governor—” began Abigail, shocked.
John’s voice was hard and strange. “They’ve put a military commander as our Governor?”
“Has he troops?” asked Weyountah.
Sam’s mouth twisted, and he picked up his portmanteau. “Some. And you can bet your Sunday hat there are more on the way. From Halifax, from Ireland . . . And that’s only the beginning. The King has signed something called the Boston Port Bill; it goes into effect in June. They’re closing down the port of Boston: no shipping, no trade, no vessels of any kind to land at all until we knuckle under and give them money for their damned tea. Justices in the Colony Courts are henceforth to be appointed by the Crown. Juries selected by the Crown. All town governments in the colony—not just Boston—are to be disbanded . . . There are other provisions, but I’m not waiting here to learn of them. John—” He clasped his cousin’s hand. “Can I rely on you for messages? John Hancock and I are bound for Concord. The militia’s already starting a weapons depot there, where a British warship can’t shell us—”
“Won’t they be watching the gates?” asked Horace, and Sam grinned.
“We’ll make a patriot of you yet, my boy. Hancock’s got a couple of lads who’re taking us across before the warships turn up in the harbor in earnest. Nab—” He turned to Abigail, bowed over her hand. “Barrett in Concord tells me you had sent on from Framingham about thirty pounds of sulfur you’d found in old Whitehead’s fortress. You didn’t happen to find anything of that mythical treasure th
ere as well?”
He spoke lightly, but as the dying fire set up a little spurt of light, it seemed to find reflection in his eyes: anxiety, fighting-spirit, a mind that was already sorting a thousand things at once and racing ahead. Mentally rallying his troops and readying his response . . .
Troops coming into Boston.
The British military commander made Governor of the colony . . . and of how many other colonies, she wondered, besides? Town governments disbanded—to be replaced by what? The Crown controlling the courts. She was aware of John watching her, of the rough, worn texture of the papers beneath her fingertips on the table. British troops converging on Boston, and how long before they were marching out into the countryside? To Lexington where the militia was drilling. To Concord where the weapons would be hidden . . .
She took a deep breath, gathered the papers together, and said in her lightest voice, “I fear that a myth is all that it was, Sam. Myth and rumor that reached the degree of obsession, to the point that men would kill for what might only be a myth in their dreams.” She crossed to the hearth, with the air of a woman tidying up the last household details before starting her mending, and dropped the papers into the flames.
“If there was treasure there,” she said, “’tis gone now. We will do what we can, within the bounds of honor, to defend ourselves against the British.”
“And more than that,” added John, and in the new, sharp flare of light from the burning paper, he caught her eye and nodded his agreement, “more than that, we cannot do.”
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SUP WITH THE DEVIL