Crow Hollow

by Michael Wallace

  James wanted to dismount and look about, but Cooper and Prudence both begged him not to, so they continued. After that, Cooper grew quiet, refusing to engage in conversation, and later he said that he’d fought a battle in that very spot against a group of Wampanoag, with King Philip himself at the head of the enemy forces. Three English fell, “knocked on the head,” as he put it, and two more were taken captive. Their disemboweled bodies had come floating down the river a few days later. But when James asked if Cooper had been present at the destruction of the Indian village, he refused to answer.

  Prudence kept looking over her shoulder as they left the Indian village. At first, it seemed a nervous reflex, as if she expected the skeletons of the dead to come shambling up the road after them. But as they continued, her interest in the road behind only grew. James watched surreptitiously, growing more suspicious by the minute. Once, she caught him watching and looked quickly, guiltily away. Now he was convinced.

  He came up beside her and grabbed the reins to pull her horse to a stop. “That’s far enough.”

  “What? Why are we stopping?”

  Cooper turned his horse, a scowl playing across his face. “What’s going on here?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering,” James said. “Prudence? What’s on the road?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She sounded legitimately confused. For a moment he was almost convinced.

  “You’ve been studying the road behind us since we left the Indian village. Maybe before, but I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “James, please. We’re almost to Winton. I’m only nervous, is all. Aren’t you worried about an ambush?”

  “I wasn’t before. Now I am. And I certainly wasn’t expecting an attack from our rear. Who would come that way? We haven’t seen a soul. Unless someone knew.”

  “The Indians,” she began. “They might still—”

  Without waiting to see what additional lies she’d try to wedge into place, he jumped from his horse, grabbed her by the waist, and dragged her from her horse. She let out a little cry and suddenly looked terrified. He drew his dagger.

  “You’ve turned into some kind of liar. But you’re not good enough to fool me.”

  Cooper’s initial confusion faded, and he wore his own hard look as he joined the other two in the road. He swept aside his cloak and drew his pistol. He deliberately checked the powder in the pan and rested his thumb on the cock, ready to draw it back from half to full cock.

  Prudence’s eyes darted from side to side, and her bosom heaved as she seemed to struggle for breath. James felt like a wretch for putting her to such terror, but he was more certain than ever that she was up to something, and this was not the time or place to be playing games.

  “Something happened today,” he said, “because you were fine yesterday, and now you behave as if something were amiss. Did you see something or someone at the villages we passed?”

  “No, nothing. I swear it.”

  “Those boys on the road? The man with the cart? Did you pass them a message?”

  “I’ve never seen them before in my life.”

  “Wait. Last night.” He thought about his conversation with Cooper. “You weren’t asleep, were you?”

  She hesitated a fraction of a second. “I slept all night.”

  “Stop lying,” he said in a cold voice. “It is insulting to me. I’m trying to help you and this is the credit you give. Don’t you love your daughter?”

  “James, please.” Her lip quivered.

  “How are you so quick with the lies? What happened to the honest, Godly woman I met in Boston?”

  This was apparently too much for her, because her eyes filled with tears and a little sob came out of her mouth. James felt low and miserable, wanting suddenly nothing more than to wrap his arms around her and offer comfort. Instead, he kept his jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed.

  But he couldn’t maintain his anger. After a moment, he sighed and softened his expression and voice. “Prudie, whatever you did, tell me.”

  “I heard what you said about the charters.”

  “Ah. And you did something, didn’t you? It must have been when you went back to the house. You led us to believe it was your monthly courses, but that was a lie, wasn’t it?”

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and looked at her feet. “Aye. It was a lie.”

  “What did you do?”

  “This morning when I went to the privy, I took my pen and papers. I wrote a letter. I wanted to leave it in the house, but you and Master Cooper were always there. So I contrived to return.”

  A cold fear settled into his gut. “What kind of letter?”

  “A letter for Reverend Stone and Goodman Fitz-Simmons in Boston. I needed to warn them you were after the charter. I promised to pay Burrows if he would deliver it.”

  “Was it sealed?”

  “No, it was open. I didn’t have wax.”

  Cooper put away his pistol, groaning. “Damn you, woman.”

  “Wasn’t it clear?” James said. “We told you, he’s a shifty fellow. Do you know what ‘shifty fellow’ means?”

  Cooper threw up his hands. “It means he’s shifty!”

  “Which you suspected already,” James said. “Or you wouldn’t keep checking the road behind us. You know full well he might have sold us out in Springfield.”

  James cast a glance at the road behind them, but the twisting, snowy trail was empty as it passed through the bare trees.

  “There are people looking for you in Springfield,” Cooper said. “Now Burrows knows who you are. He’s going to sell that information. He probably already has.”

  Prudence looked up, chin jutting out defiantly. “There’s nothing they don’t already know. We’re on our way to Winton. Samuel Knapp is probably waiting for us already. I don’t see what’s such a secret.”

  James stared at her, exasperated almost beyond words. “I’m not a fool, Prudence. Why do you think we were so careful in Springfield?”

  “So they wouldn’t catch us on the road?”

  “No, so they wouldn’t see that we were going to Winton and not south to Hartford like they believed.”

  “To Connecticut? Why would they think that?”

  He forced patience into his voice. “What’s the first thing they did when they discovered we’d fled Boston?”

  “They attacked us on the highway.”

  “First they had to determine that we’d left Boston in the first place. The men at the gates confirmed that, together with the missing carriage and Robert Woory. And I told Woory we were going to Hartford. He marked the transaction in his ledger. So when they checked Woory’s records . . .”

  She scoffed at this. “They’d never believe that. Not when your business was in Winton and Crow Hollow. Even I could recognize such an obvious lie.”

  “She has a point,” Cooper said. He had lowered his pistol and now put it away. “Nobody would expect you to tell Woory your true destination.”

  “I left my sea chest in the guest bedroom at the reverend’s house. There is a hidden panel at the bottom, quite easily and intentionally discoverable. I left a letter purportedly written to the Crown.”

  “How does that alter the situation?” Prudence asked.

  “I said that Peter had disrupted services, enraged Fitz-Simmons, and so we could no longer trust the deputy governor to carry out the king’s wishes. Instead, I was going to Hartford to meet with Governor Leverett directly.”

  Prudence’s defiance evaporated from her face, replaced once again by uncertainty.

  “Finally, when we were in Springfield, I had Master Cooper post a letter with my seal to the royal governor of Virginia, telling him I’d be in Hartford but would come down to settle some matters in Jamestown when I finished. Do you know who the postmaster is in Springfield?” James put away his dagger. “Francis Knapp, Captain Samuel Knapp’s brother.”

  “I see,” she said. “And the road goes sou
th from Springfield to Hartford, so we might really have been traveling that direction.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What if they sent men in both directions to look for us?” she asked.

  Cooper grunted at this as he remounted his horse.

  “How many men do you think these traitors have?” James asked. “Come on. We’d better hope we reach Winton first.”

  “Not likely,” Cooper grumbled. “We’re on the slow road, remember?”

  “It all depends on how quickly Burrows sells us out,” James said. “Exactly how shifty is this fellow, anyway?”

  “He’d sell his mother to the devil himself for the right price. Believe me, they know. They’ll be after us.”

  They picked up the pace, but it was slow travel along the snowy, rutted road.

  “James,” Prudence said a few minutes later.

  He turned and looked at her.

  She licked her lips. “I’m sorry, really. But you must understand. It’s our charter, our liberties. You must understand its importance.”

  “Is it more important than your daughter?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “No.”

  “You should have trusted me.”

  “Will you still help me find her?”

  This, he didn’t answer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  James led the others cautiously into Winton. Women were out sweeping snow from in front of their houses, while men chopped wood or tended to stock. The sound of a hammer rang through the air. He saw nothing to raise his suspicions, but he stayed wary all the same.

  “Do you see that trail?” Prudence said when they’d passed the first few houses.

  She pointed to what looked like a sheep path, nothing but a slight indentation in the snow. It traversed a field, bisected a stone wall, and disappeared into the woods beyond.

  “That leads you to Sachusett,” she said. “The old Nipmuk village. It’s no more than a mile away. The two villages lived side by side, peacefully—a full twenty years with no trouble.”

  “A shame,” James said.

  “They always said in Springfield that if trouble came, the Winton militia wouldn’t fight,” Cooper said. “They were too cozy with the Indians.”

  “Why would we?” she said. “Captain Knapp came through, trying to rile us up. We’d go fight against the Narragansett, yes. Or even against the Nipmuk besieging Springfield. But we had no quarrel with our neighbors. The sachem of Sachusett had pledged peace and eternal brotherhood.”

  “Eternal up until the bloody attack, that is,” Cooper said. He sounded more bitter than angry.

  Prudence looked away with a sorrowful expression.

  “I assume the Indian village is destroyed now,” James said.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “Must have been. But the Indians carried me away before it happened.”

  “Aye, it’s gone,” Cooper said. His voice was hollow. “I was there. After the Battle of Winton, we sent a revenge party to Sachusett. It was ugly business.”

  “War is never pretty,” James said.

  “You know that Indian village we passed through earlier?” Cooper asked. “That’s what Sachusett looked like when we were finished.”

  James turned in the saddle to study the Indian road as they passed. Such a modest trail, it was hard to believe that it had led to so much violence in both directions.

  “Anyway,” Cooper continued after a moment, “if you continue that way, ford the creek and follow the Connecticut River, you’ll be in Indian territory by nightfall.”

  “So the Nipmuk aren’t exterminated,” James said. “They have more villages?”

  “Oh, they’re gone, so far as we know,” Cooper said. “But there won’t be any English settlement north of the creek any time soon. Because there’s always another tribe, isn’t there? No matter how far you go, you’ll always find another enemy. And to the north you also find the French trappers and missionaries.”

  “No doubt whispering lies about us,” James said.

  Cooper nodded. “Always.”

  “There’s something else on the end of that trail,” Prudence said. “Crow Hollow.”

  James was of half a mind to take a detour through the site of Knapp’s massacre of the unarmed Indians, but they were coming into Winton proper. Now that they were closer he could see signs of past violence. Empty, rubble-filled lots left gaping holes between the standing houses, many of which had been rebuilt. Of the two meetinghouses sitting across from each other on the commons, the first, larger building was missing its roof and the rear wall. Snow covered the floor inside and clung to the charred beams. The pews had burned.

  “Looks safe enough,” Cooper said, glancing around. “A few nosy Puritans staring at us, that’s all. Maybe I was wrong about Burrows. Most likely he took the money and bought strong drink when he was in Springfield, came home roaring drunk, and never noticed Widow Cotton’s letter.”

  “Sooner or later Burrows will sober up,” James said. “And then we’ll have trouble.”

  Prudence winced.

  He should let her twitch for a bit—this was a snare of her own making—but mostly he felt sorry for her. And maybe he should have trusted her more, told her his plans for throwing Knapp’s men off their trail. She might have been more circumspect in her actions.

  James turned to Prudence. “Your old servant—Goody Hull, was it?”

  “Aye.”

  “And is she trustworthy?”

  “She is. You wish to speak with her?”

  “She survived the attack, remained in Winton after you were carried away. Mayhap she possesses information that yet eludes us. Where does she live?”

  Prudence gestured with her chin. “Go past the new meetinghouse. See that lane? Follow it to the end. It’s the last house before the forest.”

  They rode down the commons, which wasn’t flat but swelled to a small hillock in the middle, maybe a dozen feet high. Several paths had been carved in the snow to its top, and two girls went sliding down on a sled made of planks atop two wooden runners. On the opposite side, three boys were building a snow castle.

  “I never thought I would see children playing here again,” Prudence said. “Not after what happened on this very spot.”

  “People carry on,” James said. “Memory fades.”

  A young girl hurried past dragging a sled, and Prudence watched her go with big, sorrowful eyes. “I only hope that someday my Mary . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “I’m sure that she will,” he said. “Have faith.”

  “Thank you, James. That is kind of you to say.”

  The last, fading remnants of his anger vanished. There was no use carrying it any further. She’d made a terrible blunder, make no mistake, but it had apparently cost them nothing.

  One of the boys looked up and pointed. “Look, it’s Widow Cotton!”

  “Hurry,” Cooper urged, “or there’s bound to be a disturbance.”

  They urged the horses to pick up the pace. When they reached the end of the commons, Prudence drew short. She stared forward. It took James a moment to figure out what had alarmed her.

  They were in front of the new meetinghouse. It was smaller, the wood still pale and unaged, the icicles on the roof draping from fresh cedar shingles. The doors were painted a somber brown. But surrounding the building was grisly evidence that Winton was fighting back against the wilderness.

  At least twenty wolf heads leered from where they’d been nailed to the building, with fresh blood in several cases running from the severed heads to congeal against the boards. Even more gruesome was the pair of human heads resting on poles. These had been there some time. The lips and noses had rotted away, the eyeballs had been plucked out by crows, and the straight black hair had half fallen out.

  The poles stood right next to the road. The hollow eye sockets seemed to gape at them as they approached.

  Prudence looked away, her face turning pale. “I don’t want to go past.”

  “They
’re dead,” Cooper said. “The vermin can’t hurt you now.”

  “They’re not vermin, they’re human beings.”

  “They proved themselves nothing but savages. And if the heathens return, they’ll take one look and know what happens to savages in these parts.”

  Cooper’s voice was so hard that James almost forgot that his former companion had himself adopted an orphan girl from these same savages. It was a strange contradiction.

  Prudence looked up. “I knew these men. That is Mikmonto, the sachem. That’s his half brother, Nimposet. During the battle he killed an English woman by crushing her head with the blacksmith’s hammer. He kept hitting and hitting.”

  “He has his reward, the brute,” Cooper said. “I hope they made him suffer.”

  “Hold your tongue,” James told him. “Look away, Prudie.”

  A shudder worked through her, and she gripped the reins so tightly her knuckles were white. But she nodded and obeyed.

  Perhaps smelling the wolf heads, the horses grew jittery as they rode around the meetinghouse to the lane Prudence had identified earlier. They didn’t calm until the wind had shifted and they no longer faced the grisly scene. The three companions rode down the lane to the very end, where they came upon a small brick house with a clumsily patched roof and a yard overgrown with the bare, thorny branches of brambles jutting from the snow.

  James glanced back up the lane. Two women stood at its head, staring after them. One whispered in the other’s ear.

  “Take the horses around back to the barn,” he told Cooper as the three of them dismounted. “Find them water and something to eat, if you can. But keep them ready to go. And check your powder, make sure it’s dry.”

  Cooper did as he was told. James took Prudence’s elbow and led her up to the door. She still seemed to be suffering under the spell of whatever memories had come clawing up when she’d spotted the Indian heads.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Honestly, I’m not sure I can face the widow. I saw her husband die and did nothing to stop it.”