Blood of the Oak: A Mystery

by Eliot Pattison

  I have a boy, the innkeeper had pled, as if asking for forgiveness. “Joshua Townsend?” Duncan asked.

  The youth nodded, then stepped closer to Duncan as if for protection. His face bore fading bruises. “I thought I could be a runner. But they took me before I could carry my first message. They gave me one of my father’s doses and threw me in that black coach.”

  “Who took you?”

  “I had never seen them. But I spotted them last week patrolling the perimeter road. Some of those bullies Gabriel calls his pharaohs.”

  “Our misery started with spies,” Morris said with growing impatience. “They ain’t succeeding with interrogations so it’s about time they tried something else. The killer himself would know everything you just told us.”

  Duncan tried to ignore the accusation, though he saw the suspicion on the faces that surrounded him. “There is a secret group in London,” he explained. “The Kraken Club. They support Grenville in keeping America under London’s thumb.” Murdo Ross took up the explanation, acquainting the prisoners with how messengers had been intercepted and killed at sea by a naval ship, and how the Krakens were now following the network inland.

  “You’re daft,” Larkin rejoined, and gestured to the men around him. “Boys, anyone notice a frigate cruising down the Wagon Road?”

  “But we see the navy here every day,” put in a slight, nervous man in his twenties who stood with the Virginia rangers.

  It took a moment for Duncan to understand. “Some masts extending above the riverbank doesn’t mean the navy. Surely there are merchant ships that call.”

  Sergeant Morris stepped in front of the young ranger. “Devon, git on with ye. Ye know nothing of such things.”

  But Devon would not be silenced. He shifted a step as if to avoid Morris’s reach. “They stepped up patrols on the Chesapeake,” he declared.

  “How would you know?” Murdo asked.

  “I grew up on the water. I’m the last of the water runners.” Devon paused and glanced uneasily at Morris, as if he had said too much.

  “Blue coats,” came a gravelly voice. They turned to see that old Jahoska was close, and had been listening. “Blue,” he said, running his hands along his torso. “But red here,” he said, placing his hands, crossed diagonally, on his shoulders.

  “Red lapels,” Duncan said. “Marines. The Kraken Club started in the Admiralty. Where are the marines?” he asked the old native.

  “On the ships standing guard,” Jahoska replied. “And in their sleeping place. Sometimes mixing with the overseers. When they walk around the manor grounds they dress like schoolmasters.”

  “You mean they sleep off the ships?”

  “Some do. In the big wheelhouse. Water for bread.” As he spoke old Jaho extended a finger in the air and laughed, moving it as if drawing invisible figures. He seemed not to notice them anymore, and the company nervously parted to give him wide passage as he wandered down the aisle.

  “Feathers for brains,” Larkin muttered.

  “What did he mean, the wheelhouse?” Duncan asked. No one was paying attention to the aged Susquehannock, except for Tanaqua, who watched intently as he settled onto the floor at the far end of the building, in the darkest shadows, where blankets had been fastened against the wall to form a small tentlike structure. The aged Indian blew into a bowl and coaxed a wisp of smoke from it. Duncan caught the faint scent of cedar and tobacco. He was invoking his spirits.

  “Old Jaho’s been here since long before any of us arrived,” Larkin explained. “Crazy old bird. Sits for hours at night spouting that mumbo jumbo. Said once he had been here for all of time. Says that going into his little tent is taboo, that it would bring a curse on any European who tries.” The northern ranger shrugged. “But when in his right senses he can explain the environs right well, even tells stories of days long past that have the ring of truth.”

  Duncan withdrew his writing lead and pointed to a blank space on the wall. “Show me what you know of Galilee.”

  Corporal Larkin drew quickly, after the fashion of one accustomed to making battle maps. He inscribed the curving bank of the river on the wall, showing a small bay formed by a long point of land and the bend of the river where the docks and manor house lay. “Sunday mornings they take us to the bay to wash away the stench,” he explained. Around the point, over the ridge beyond the manor house, he drew a tributary stream with a cluster of buildings beside it.

  “A mill,” Duncan suggested. “He said water for bread. He meant where grain is crushed into flour.” He glanced back at Jahoska. Tanaqua had taken a candle to him, and now both Tanaqua and Ononyot were seated beside him on the floor. In the brighter light Duncan saw leather braids pinned to the wall above the little blanket tent, holding feathers, bones, and bundles of fur.

  “None of us have seen it, but aye,” Larkin offered, “that was the sound of it. Most plantations have their own mill.”

  “A mill where His Majesty’s marines sleep and conduct business,” Duncan said. “Men with bayonets were guarding the wagon that brought us here. Is it marines who interrogate you?”

  “No uniforms, but they wear sash belts sometimes,” the Conococheague man named Burns stated. “And take them off to strike us with them.” Duncan remembered Analie’s report. Erskine Burns’s wife waited at the end of the lane to tell him he was going to be a father.

  “They’re just overseers, you fool!” Sergeant Morris insisted. “If they meant real harm we would know it. It’s the way the overseers have of keeping us in line. The Navy has no business with the likes of us, they just need a rest station for the patrols. Like I keep saying, they need us until the crop comes in then it will be fare-thee-well and good riddance. Just keep y’er noses down, lads, and stay away from fearmongers,” he said, then stepped in front of the runners, and glared at Duncan.

  Duncan returned his stare for several breaths, then reached down to untie one of the buckskin leggings he still wore around his shins. The runners watched uncertainly as with his teeth he ripped apart the seam and extracted the paper hidden inside.

  Frazier’s eyes went wide as he saw it, then he took it from Duncan and stretched the paper for all to see.

  “Mary Blessed Mother!” Larkin exclaimed. The prisoners who had already stretched out on the platform sat up. “A sheet of London’s stamps, lads! One that McCallum got away from the goddamned lace caps!”

  His words brought excitement to the weary faces.

  “That many fewer tax payments for those bastards in Parliament!” Burns boasted.

  “For the bastard the king,” Morris spat.

  Burns straightened, closing his fists. If Murdo Ross hadn’t placed a restraining hand on his shoulder, Duncan suspected the man would have struck the Virginia sergeant. “The king is my country,” Burns said instead. “Do not ask me to hate my king. Our grievances are with Parliament.”

  Frazier, still holding the sheet of stamps, gave an impatient grimace, as if he had heard such words before. “That would be the king who massacred the Jacobites and laid waste the Highlands.”

  “We’re not all Scots here,” Morris protested. “And ye weren’t gathered up because y’er Scot.”

  “Exactly,” Duncan said, taking the stamps from Frazier. “You are bound by something other than blood. Do you not see the bold stroke across the sheet?” He read the words inscribed across the stamps given to him in Conococheague. “Death to the tax! And signed by an Irish baronet! Sir William Johnson risked his freedom by signing that paper, then letting it be carried by strangers into the south.”

  His words did not have the effect he had hoped for. Some men were still frightened. Others shrugged in disinterest. “Don’t know that northern prince,” one of the Virginia rangers said as he spat tobacco juice onto the floor.

  “Easy enough for Sir William lying in his comfortable castle in the north,” Larkin said. “I don’t see him being caned while working the sotweed from dawn to dusk.” He looked down at the floor. “I told my
wife and son I had to go, because I owed Captain Woolford. Told them I’d been gone for three weeks. That was four months ago. No one to do the planting.”

  As the men dispersed, taking up pallets along the long platforms, the blond youth lingered. Duncan suspected the bruise on his face had not been made by overseers. “You said a freed slave died,” Joshua Townsend said.

  Duncan recalled his conversation with the boy’s father, and the older Townsend’s grief over the news of Atticus’s death. “I’m sorry. Your father said Atticus was your friend.”

  Young Townsend clenched his jaw, fighting a wave of emotion. “It wasn’t his fight. He had won his fight and could have made a new life up in Pennsylvania. The fool slipped onto the fields last week and worked alongside the other Africans until I was in earshot. I could not believe it when he called out. I begged him to flee. He said he had come to see our faces, to make sure we still lived. I didn’t understand.”

  “He was going to bring help from Pennsylvania.”

  “He said I mustn’t think bad of my father, who was a good man being used by bad men.”

  “How long have you been here?” Duncan asked.

  “Three months.”

  Duncan offered a grim nod. “They took you so they could force your father to help them.”

  Joshua returned his nod, then looked back toward the end of the stable. Old Jaho still sat before his little tent of blankets. He was reaching out to cup the fragrant smoke and rub it over his limbs.

  “Atticus told me once that as a boy he had been the fastest runner in his village, that he had often been sent to deliver important messages to warrior chiefs on the field of battle. He said being a runner between chiefs in America meant his life had completed a circle of destiny.” Joshua looked back at Duncan. “Did he suffer?”

  Duncan tried to push back the image of Atticus’s mutilated body. “He died a warrior’s death” was all he said.

  IN THE MORNING EVERY INCH OF DUNCAN’S BODY ACHED. HE stumbled in his chains, collapsing onto one of the long logs in the yard as porridge was served out in the filthy wooden bowls used the night before. When he stumbled on the way to the work site Tanaqua and Ononyot were instantly at his side, lifting him by the shoulders. As they worked the field, the Iroquois prisoners stayed close to him, putting added effort into their hoes to make up for his weakness. Half the rangers and several of the Pennsylvania men still watched him with suspicion. At lunch some of Ross’s friends spoke with him of Scotland, and after learning that the McCallum clan had been shipbuilders and island drovers, they warmed to him, offering tales of sailing among whales in the Hebrides and of shaggy cows tangling in washlines. With a nostalgic sigh Murdo explained how as a boy he had watched a great hairy bull plant himself on a pebble beach in a gale, and when he had appeared the next morning with his horns and body draped with kelp, his aunt had fled with a terrible shriek, insisting he was a waterhorse come to eat them.

  More than once Duncan leaned on his hoe, trying to connect the strange company, and the events that had brought them to their misery. Their shared suffering seemed to have done little to unite them. The Virginian runners, who had fought in the last Indian war together, stayed to themselves, working and even sleeping near each other, as did the Pennsylvania men. Only the northern rangers and Iroquois mixed, because the Iroquois had run the woods as rangers themselves.

  Nearly half the men, their backs scarred with lashes and several bearing brands on their forearms, joined the ranks of submissive slaves who mumbled “yessir” and dutifully bent when an overseer yelled, “sotweed,” apparently the universal command for slaves to focus on the crop. Some, including all the natives, seemed unaffected by their servitude. Duncan did not miss the way each of the Indians in his own way paid homage to the spirits, frequently touching the totem pouches that hung around their necks, sometimes leaving little cairns of stones along the rows they worked, pausing to whisper toward the ospreys that sometimes drifted overhead. When an eagle flew low, Ononyot shouted to the creature in his native tongue, earning a blow from Trent’s knob. The Oneida had been close enough for Duncan to hear. “Tell them on the other side,” the young warrior had called out to the majestic bird then, ignoring Trent’s second blow, “we are not ready to cross over!”

  Most of the others, rangers and Scots, were angry and resentful, though when their epithets were heard by the overseers they paid with slaps of the split canes or Trent’s knob against tender scars.

  When they reached the end of a row old Jaho conferred briefly with Winters, then slipped away to the perimeter road to strip bark from willow branches at the edge of the swamp. Trent chastized Winters, even tapped the younger overseer on the shoulder with his staff, but, as if the Susquehannock were invisible, both overseers ignored Jaho when he returned and extended the bark for Duncan to chew. The old native opened his other hand, exposing a handful of a pasty solution that looked like swamp water mixed with a root that had been chewed. He ran his fingers over the bruises on Duncan’s shoulder, which were now assuming blue-green arc shapes, then covered them with the paste.

  The tribal remedies pushed down his pain, and as he grew more alert he began studying the fields and the manor house. The smaller of the ships was gone. There was a steady stream of workers, both African and European, to and from the small outbuildings scattered around the manor. A wagon pulled up and loaded new casks from what must have been a cooperage. The hammer of a forge rang out and he could see an ox in front of a low shed with a chimney, patiently standing as it was fitted with new hoof plates.

  As the sun reached its zenith, men around him began watching the perimeter road, and soon a cart appeared with the kettles and kegs of the field lunches. The Africans were fed first, and as the mule cart finally progressed toward them, Winters left to meet it on the track. The young overseer, away from his duties, seemed more relaxed, even appearing to jest with the boy who led the mule, the same youth with the inquisitive eyes who had fed Duncan the day before.

  By midafternoon he was feeling stronger, and even joined in an old Iroquois work chant used by the natives when tending maize fields. The Africans, never closer than a stone’s throw away, also sang, more loudly, and their rhythmic songs, echoing of unknown lands, filled the emptiness of the long afternoon. On the doors of the sheds where they slept he saw strange symbols. They may have been invocations of gods, or perhaps, more likely, hex warnings against strangers entering the buildings. He found himself watching the Africans closely when his work permitted. Most, but not all, of the men were very tall and heavily muscled, and when their workpaths grew closer Duncan saw that many wore patterns of scars on their faces and necks that reminded him of the adornment often used by the woodland tribes. One of them, a heavily muscled man towering inches above Duncan’s own six feet, paused to return Duncan’s stare. He pressed his hand to his heart, then opened his palm outward in what Duncan took to be a greeting. When Duncan returned the gesture the big man grinned for an instant before feeling the sting of his overseer’s cane.

  Duncan sat with the natives as they ate their meager supper. Old Jaho acknowledged that he had worked on the plantation since its first days, and at Duncan’s prodding he explained how it had started long ago as only a few cleared acres along the river, served by boats that came up from the bay once a month. With a faraway look he spoke of how before those times there had been a village of his people, a southern haven from the ravages of war and disease they had suffered in the prior century, a place made safe by the great maze of swampland that bordered it to the south where they could hide when European tempers flared. Although he did sometimes seem to drift away as if suffering some infirmity of the mind, when Jaho was cogent, the twinkle in his eye and the gentleness of his demeanor reminded Duncan so much of Conawago that a new ache rose in his heart. He looked toward the north. Conawago had begun speaking openly of the approaching day when, after decades of fruitlessly searching for his family from Nova Scotia to the Mississippi, he would finally greet the
m in the next life. In the past few months every time Duncan had parted company with the Nipmuc, more like family to him than anyone else alive, he had found himself praying he would see the old man on his return. He had always assumed when they were finally separated it would be by the old man’s death but now, battered and enslaved, Duncan realized it could just as easily be by his own.

  As the sun touched the horizon, young Winters, assisted by an older African wearing a leather apron, used a hammer and metal rod to at last pop the pins that bound their manacles, then motioned Duncan and his friends to the entry, where Trent sullenly counted off the company as they stepped back inside. Candle stubs were lit, and one of the tribesmen produced a pouch of black and white pebbles and crouched by a circle that had been inscribed on the floor, launching one of the Iroquois gambling games. Soon most of the natives and Pennsylvania Scots were watching or playing, using buttons, beads, and seedpods for their wagers.

  Duncan rubbed grease around his chafed ankles then applied it to the strange arc-like bruises on his shoulders.

  “He came back for you,” came a low voice. Duncan looked up to see Devon, the young Virginian, staring at Duncan’s bruises.

  “I don’t catch your meaning,” Duncan said.

  “The lieutenant. He has a special club with a saddle brass fixed at the end, with a little anchor set in it. We always know when he has used it at the smokehouse interrogations because it leaves the mark of the anchor. When he returns from his travels he always grabs a bottle of rum and takes one of the African girls to the mill but when he arrived with your wagon he went straight to retrieve his club.”

  Duncan twisted his head and saw now that the curving marks on his shoulder did indeed resemble an anchor.

  “He hates all of us but he has a special hatred for you,” Devon observed. “You must take care around him. What did you do to him?”

  “You mean Hobart is a lieutenant?”

  Devon nodded. “The men at the mill call him Mr. Hobart, though once I heard him called lieutenant, and the man earned a kick for it. Hobart was one of those in the smokehouse asking questions, but then disappeared weeks ago. Wanted to put needles under our fingernails but the doctor wouldn’t let him.”