Blood of the Oak: A Mystery

by Eliot Pattison

  AS HE PASSED A STABLE, A YOUNG EUROPEAN MAN BOUNDED around the corner, eyes locked over his shoulder, running so fast that Duncan had no time to avoid a collision. The man stumbled over his foot and with a cry of alarm tumbled heavily to the ground.

  “I beg you sir! On the soul of dear mother I meant no harm! Please!” The stranger clasped his hands together toward Duncan.

  Duncan looked up to see half a dozen warriors racing down the street. He grabbed the terrified fugitive by the arm and led him back down the bank, out of sight of the pursuers, then up another path that lead to the rear of the nearest tavern, where they took refuge in the woodshed.

  The man’s chest was heaving. His expensive waistcoat and britches were soiled and disheveled. Strands of his long brown hair hung over his face. One arm was pressed against a parcel of rolled-up leather. Duncan realized he was the man whom Mother Brumbach had chased from the cemetery.

  “I thank”—his words were truncated by deep gasps—“you, kind sir . . . those bucks had rough intentions I daresay.”

  “What have you done?” Duncan demanded.

  The stranger pressed his hand against his chest as if to calm himself. “I don’t speak their language. I should have waited for Ralston to come back from sketching his birds. He knows the Indians, went into the wilderness two years ago with his uncle.”

  “What have you done?” Duncan asked again.

  “It’s a matter of anatomy, is all.”

  An angry shout rose from near the river. Duncan peered through an open knothole in the flimsy plank door. The pursuers had spread out along the landing and were searching among the canoes and stacks of cargo. “Anatomy?”

  “My name is Rush, Benjamin Rush. I am a student of the healing arts, apprenticed to a doctor in Philadelphia. Ralston and I were just doing a favor for Dr. Franklin and his friends. He loves his birds, and the anatomy of the aboriginals is of especial interest to me. I have measured the facial features of twenty natives in Philadelphia, though of course the Indian beggars on the waterfront there do not make the best specimens for science. I corresponded with a journal in London. They said they would publish my work if I could submit a body of evidence to support my thesis.”

  Duncan stared at Rush in mute disbelief. He was only a few years younger than Duncan but looked like a lost boy. He pushed him down on a splitting block. “Mr. Rush, if you have any hope of surviving your journey you’ll need to do a much better job of explaining yourself.”

  Rush propped his arms on his knees and buried his head for a moment. “This is my first venture into the frontier. They said it was tamed. Ralston and I saw it as something of a holiday.” He calmed as he spoke, and his voice became that of the educated young gentleman of America’s greatest city. “I have long opined that the American natives are of a different human stock. Consider their lack of reaction to severe elements, the epicanthic fold of their eyes, their inability to perspire, the fantastical way they run for hours, the extra ridge of bone many have on their feet, their lack of facial hair. I have reason to believe the digestive tracts may have different structures than those of Europeans.”

  Duncan eyed the tied leather roll Rush had carried through his ordeal, now resting on the pile of logs beside the young scientist. Rush sighed but did not stop him as he unrolled it, exposing a row of silvery instruments, each in its own sewn pocket. Surgical knives, tweezers, a metal rule, a small bone saw, probes, long needles with silk thread, and a reed-thin stem of metal with a tiny mirror at its end.

  “An odd arsenal for the frontier,” Duncan observed.

  “I am a philosopher, sir. A student of humanity. When I prove the aborigine to be of a different species, just think of the lines of inquiry I will open!”

  Duncan eyed the tools uneasily. “What exactly in God’s name are you doing here, Rush?”

  “Gathering evidence of course. With doctors in Philadelphia paying three pounds a body, there is no end of cadavers there. But it’s damnable hard to find a native specimen.”

  A chill ran down Duncan’s back. “What were you doing when those men accosted you?”

  “Nothing! I swear it! I tried to make them understand what I needed. I showed them my coin. I asked about the recently dead. They did not seem to understand. Only one spoke any English, and that poorly. So I pulled out a surgical blade to help him understand. He asked what it was and I told him, very slowly, to help him grasp the word. Then he pulls out his war ax and shouts at me.”

  Duncan stared in mute astonishment. “You must have an angel hovering over you to have survived so long.”

  “Sir?”

  “You come from Philadelphia, where they pay bounties for Indian hair, you show him your coin then display your blade, naming it your scalpel.” Duncan repeated the word, slowly, the way Rush must have done. “Scalp-el.”

  The color left Rush’s face. “Dear God! I didn’t . . . I never meant to suggest . . . dear God!” he repeated.

  Duncan stared at the forlorn man, wondering not for the first time how learned men could be so unwise in the ways of the world. He cracked the door and looked outside. “They’ll likely get thirsty and give up the search in some tavern. Make a hiding place at the back of the woodpile and cover yourself until dark. Then find your friend and make haste for Philadelphia.”

  Duncan had taken several steps toward the church when he paused. Analie sat on the bank with a vigilant expression, as if keeping watch over the vessels in the convoy. She seemed relieved when he asked her for the mink cap. No one had said the words aloud but they all knew the dead man had worn it. Benjamin Rush waited for his naturalist friend from Philadelphia, who had gone upriver to sketch birds. But there had been no one upriver except a well-dressed gentleman without a face.

  He turned the cap over. It was the work of a fine craftsman, who had created it by sewing pelts into a broad tube, then closing one end and doubling the open end up over itself, anchoring it with heavy stitches that created little pockets around the rim.

  Duncan inserted his finger into one such opening and pulled out twigs and fish scales. Between two more stitches were several duck feathers. From the next opening he extracted a small piece of oilcloth folded around a slip of paper. On it four names had been written in a refined hand. Peter Rohrbach, Red Jacob, Captain Woolford, and Patrick Henry. It was signed with a flourish at the bottom. Franklin.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Duncan stared at the words with a chill in his heart, then finally returned the note to its hiding place, rose, and made his way back to the little church. Mother Brumbach was on her knees, transplanting violets onto the fresh graves as she sang a German hymn in a low, consoling voice. Duncan knelt and helped with the digging.

  “That man you chased away today. Had you seen him in Shamokin before?” he asked.

  She patted the earth around Rachel’s cross as she considered her answer. “Gentlemen in fine clothes come from Philadelphia most every week. Land company men mostly. Our missionaries from Bethlehem and Nazareth. Government men sometimes. Men recruiting for the southern plantations, though they get few takers here. We used to get few such strangers but now they just come and go. I never pay much mind.”

  “But Peter knew some of them?”

  “Peter was apprenticed to a printer in Philadelphia.”

  Duncan chewed on the words a moment. “So he was a journeyman?” he asked, referring to those who had recently completed their apprenticeships and traveled to find work.

  Mother Brumbach shook her head. “After only three years he came north.”

  Duncan sensed the tightness in her voice. They both knew the term of apprenticeship was seven years. “He broke his bond?”

  “He just said he was done with Philadelphia and had new work to do for his master.”

  “New work? Those were his words? He was clearing fields and building a cabin for a Philadelphia printer?”

  The German woman winced. “He was a good boy. I wasn’t going to pry.” She indeed suspected that he h
ad fled his servitude, which meant he would be a fugitive from the law. There were bounty hunters who specialized in tracking down such men.

  “Had he friends who were soldiers? Rangers perhaps?”

  “I doubt that. The church tells us armies cause more trouble than they solve.”

  It seemed impossible that the dead man would have a secret message for Patrick, but Rachel’s aunt had spoken of a captain who could easily have been his friend. “What about a man named Patrick Woolford, who often travels with Iroquois?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Her brow furrowed. “There was a nice young man with an Oneida brave visiting once when I brought bread. He was reciting Shakespeare to Rachel. ‘Oh beauty, till now I never knew thee,’” I remember. She lowered her hands a moment and spoke toward the cross with the strips of ermine. “And then, ‘Is she kind as she is fair?’ following her with his hands uplifted as if praying to her, the rogue.” Moisture welled in the German woman’s eyes again. “Rachel was laughing like a young fraulein.”

  “That’s him. Patrick Woolford. The one who killed Peter almost killed him as well. Why was Woolford there?”

  “I assumed they had met in Philadelphia. They had common friends. They had business to discuss. Peter gave the man papers. Letters, I think. They talked about committees. They talked about Parliament.”

  “Committees?”

  Mother Brumbach shrugged, “I know, silly talk for the frontier. Not my business. The only committees I know of are for building churches and helping the needy. Or maintaining cemeteries,” she added in a whisper.

  Duncan looked back at the crosses, joined by the snakeskin. Conawago would say Shamokin lay at the junction between many worlds, the most important of which was that between the European and native spirit worlds. He sensed that the answers he sought might lie at that intersection. He glanced at the church. “Mother, I . . .” He did not want to give offense.

  “The Death Speaker wants to see his things again.” She gestured toward the church. “Take whatever you wish. Anything that brings the wrath of God down on the devils who did this.”

  He dipped his head to the woman and had nearly reached the door with the cross on it when she called out. “That brute of a Dutchman was looking for you. He is very angry. He said you stole something of his on the river and he wants it back.”

  “Bricklin? I stole nothing,” Duncan replied, casting a wary glance toward the street.

  “Says he has salvage rights on what’s taken off the water by his convoy. Then he asked about a Rush. I said rush yourself, right away from here. He said Rush was his. I told him I know no man with such a name and to please take his overfed, unholy face away from my holy grounds.”

  Duncan returned to the little corner closet where she had secreted Rohrbach’s valuables. He took the strange letter of symbols and letters, then lifted the Bible. A slip of paper lay inside the cover. It was another verse:

  Let’s talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs;

  Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes

  Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.

  His confusion was like a physical pain. He stared at the foreboding words, which kindled anew his grief for the young couple in the churchyard.

  It made no sense that amidst the urgent, mysterious work these men were engaged in they would take time to speak of Shakespeare, to memorize passages, first from King Lear and now this one, from Richard the Second. He examined the paper more closely. On the back, dimly inscribed, was the numeral 4. He extracted the slip Red Jacob had carried and turned it over to confirm his recollection. It held the numeral 5. He shook his head in bewilderment, then took all of Rohrbach’s treasures, leaving only the dog-eared Bible.

  The river was streaked with a gold and purple dusk when Duncan finally left the church, holding the letter from Rohrbach’s box in his hand. He did not hear Analie approach but suddenly she was pulling his arm. She guided him into the shadows between two buildings but before she could speak he thrust the cryptic images before her. “Tell me what you see, tell me what you would call these images,” he asked her, and pointed to the little drawings that substituted for words.

  She cocked her head, then began pointing at images she recognized. “A deer, a tree like a pine or yew,” she said, “I see a toe, an eye, a saw, a world, an oinker, then cattails,” she said of the last.

  “Cattails,” Duncan repeated slowly, then he shook the girl by both shoulders. “Of course! You have settled accounts between us, Analie!” he declared. He thought back on the message at the graves. An evergreen, the word go, a drawing of a toe, a grate, an r, the word ha, a pie, and a nest. You go to greater happiness, it had said. “I will speak with the Moravians about you before I leave. I am sure you can stay with them. They can write letters for you.” He turned and motioned her toward the church. But the girl pulled his arm again.

  “Tanaqua sent me. He says Bricklin and Teague and some of those others from the convoy are asking in the taverns for you. They are carrying clubs.”

  They stayed in the shadows until they reached the riverbank, then Duncan sent the girl on her way and turned to the woodshed where he had left the ungainly man from Philadelphia. He was fifty paces away when he saw the gang of tribesmen who had chased Rush that afternoon, drunk now and waving war axes as they resumed their search. He quickened his pace and had nearly reached the shed when he saw Rush sitting outside, reading a book in the fading light, oblivious to the danger. Duncan grabbed him roughly. “You are about to become evening sport for some unpleasant gentlemen,” he warned when Rush tried to shrug him off.

  Rush did not resist as Duncan pulled him down the slope, desperately looking for a vessel. Grabbing his pack and rifle, stuffed between the cargo bales where he had left them, he shoved Rush farther down the river landing. A shout rose from the group of natives, followed a moment later by one from a tavern porch. Bricklin and his men had spotted them.

  “McCallum!” came the Dutchman’s angry shout.

  Duncan ran to the one boat that still lay half in the water, Bricklin’s own dugout, shoved Rush into it, and then jumped into the river to pull it afloat, scrambling over its side as it drifted free. The shouts increased, and as Duncan clumsily extracted the paddle lying under Rush, the boat rocked with a new weight, then sank deeper a moment later under a second, heavier weight. The big dugout shot forward and Duncan paddled frantically to leave their pursuers behind. He did not turn around until the shouting behind them subsided. Analie wore an amused smile. Tanaqua only nodded and kept paddling.

  “MUST I READ IT TO YOU, BENJAMIN?” DUNCAN DEMANDED OF Rush as they sat by their small, struggling fire. He had lost all patience for the inept scholar who seemed so blind to the death that surrounded him. “Your own letter? Mother Brumbach suspected it was black arts. I didn’t dare tell her it was just a bumbling pedant who enjoys confusing people with a rebus. You knew Peter and his wife but instead of telling Mother Brumbach you just lurked about their graves as if you had something to hide.”

  They had paddled for four hours, with Analie perched backward, watching for pursuers on the moonlit waters, then hid the dugout and lit a fire on the far side of an outcropping, hidden from the river.

  Duncan held the letter that had been saved by the dead Rohrbach near the flames, pointing to the opening with the images of the deer, for dear, the pea pod for the first half of the addressee’s name, and a human toe for the second half. “Dear Peter,” he read, then pointed to the syllable comm followed by a human eye, a teacup, then an ax and the word cept followed by a small globe, the words end aft, then another toe, the equation 2+2= and the syllable er. “The committee,” he deciphered, “accepts world’s end after summer.” He ran his finger along the other combinations of letters and images, indicating a saw, a star with a tail, a knife, and a pig, interspersed with human eyes. “Then perhaps I saw a comet and I dissected a pig.” He pointed to the final image at the bottom of the letter—the cattails. “Rushes. It’s your way of signing. I
think you were there when Peter and his wife died. Their murders might easily have been accomplished with scalpels. There are scratches on your hands, as from a struggle.”

  Rush pressed a hand against his mouth as he was wracked by a dry, heaving sob. “Dear God, no! I beg you, do not suggest such an unthinkable thing! Peter and I had become particular friends. We wrote each other often. He said he and Rachel always enjoyed my rebus letters. He said they helped Rachel learn to read. I was going to surprise him. I had a gift for the new baby, a little linen blanket. They knew I was coming but not the day of my arrival. Ralston insisted he needed to go up river, so I decided to spend the day with them. When I found the cabin empty I looked in the outbuilding. But they were already . . . tied to those posts, their eyes unseeing.” He hung his head. “The horror. I think I shall never sleep again. I covered dear Rachel’s head with the blanket and ran. I fell in the woods and cut my hands.”

  “What are the committees?”

  “Not for me to say. I gave a vow.”

  “Why would they speak of the ending of the world?”

  “It’s all secret. There are words used between those who know. Identifying words.”

  “To what end?”

  Rush just stared into the fire.

  “How many of these have you sent? How many rebus letters?”

  “A few.”

  “By post?”

  “Of course.”

  “Meaning they passed through at least a score of hands. Do you have any idea how most would view such letters? Dark business. Codes are used by spies, and worse. And if someone wanted to pierce the conspiracy, you pointed them right to Rohrbach, the recipient.”