“Secret punishment for the secret committees of correspondence. They call us the Judas slaves. Most of us were runners for the committees.”
Duncan’s words struck the man like a physical blow. He sank back down onto the platform. “Dear God . . .” he gasped. “They wouldn’t dare . . .” He sagged and Duncan took his arm and lowered him onto the platform. He buried his head in his hands. “Not now, surely not now of all times!”
“There is food outside,” Duncan said. “If you don’t eat before dusk there will be nothing until tomorrow. Eat, then we will clean your wounds.”
The stranger did not respond. They left him still holding his head, stricken, muttering “no, no, no” to himself.
Minutes later the new slave stepped outside. He seemed drained, so weak he clutched at the door frame. Sturgis, one of the Virginians, ran to him, helping him to a seat on the nearest log before bringing him a slab of bread and a piece of dried fish.
Duncan gave him a few minutes to eat before approaching.
“It’s Major Webb, sir!” the Virginia runner explained to Duncan.
He studied the weary man. Atticus had been the only one to know all the runner marks, except Webb, Devon had declared in front of the company the night he died. It could be no coincidence that Webb was now a prisoner.
“Not anymore, Private,” the gentleman said with a sigh, then looked up and extended his hand to Duncan. “Just Elijah Webb, farmer and owner of a dry goods store in Louisa County now. I have been remiss in my manners, Mr.—”
“McCallum. Duncan McCallum.”
“The major was our senior officer in the militia,” Sturgis explained. “When we came back after whomping the Shawnee above the Shendandoah, didn’t Colonel Washington say he prayed he could find ten more just like you?”
“The war’s over, son.”
“Then why are good soldiers in a prison camp, sir? Perhaps a new war is beginning.”
Sturgis’s words seemed to shake Webb. The intense, worried stare he aimed at his former ranger was broken by Sergeant Morris, who, finally recognizing the officer, gave a sharp whistle. Moments later six men stood in a line before Morris, including young Townsend, who saluted Webb with a knuckle to his forehead. They were a ragged, battered company but each was clearly heartened to see their former officer.
Webb struggled to his feet, declining help from Duncan, and shuffled along the line, ignoring the rattle of his chains, greeting each man by name. “Braford, is that young boy of yours up on two feet yet?”
“Prancing like a young buck, sir.”
“Sturgis, still have that fast thoroughbred?”
“Swift as a Chesapeake eagle.”
“Preston, did you ever find that lost hound?”
It was the first time Duncan had seen the tall, scarred man smile. “Just went into the woods to have young ones. Came back with eight whelps on her heels.”
Webb studied the file of weary men, who were struggling to remain erect like good soldiers. “All of you were runners?”
Braford nodded vigorously. “Liberty and Wilkes, sir.”
“How long have you been here? What is your sentence?”
Braford swallowed hard. “Death by hanging, says Mr. McCallum. Let him have a look at your wounds, sir. He’s a medical gentleman—.”
Webb stared at Duncan in disbelief. “Death? Ridiculous. Why would you put such a horrid notion in their heads?”
“The men behind this rolled up all the runners,” Duncan explained. “Several of them are already dead, murdered and mutilated, the rest imprisoned here.” Webb shuddered, and held his belly again. “Please sit, sir. We should wash your wounds while we still have light.” Webb complied, and Duncan explained his journey from Edentown as he and Jaho tended the torn flesh on the major’s back.
“But who would do such a thing?”
“The ones you warned Philadelphia about,” Duncan replied. “What caused you to send the warning?”
“A letter from London reported that several supporters of Mr. Wilkes disappeared mysteriously. One of the lost men reached a merchant ship owned by a friend that was docked in Jamaica, his back riddled with pitiful scars and burning with fever. Said he had been knocked on the head in London and awakened in chains on the high seas, then taken to a slave plantation in Jamaica. He seemed raving mad, but used his last breath to say Wilkes had to warn his American correspondents about the Kraken Club.”
“The Krakens use the runner marks for deception,” Duncan observed. “Devon said you knew them all.”
Webb paused and twisted to look about the company. “Was Devon captured then? Let me speak to the boy. I never meant to cause him trouble.”
“He was murdered, sir. The very night he spoke your name.”
The Virginia officer shook his head slowly from side to side, as if he might deny Duncan’s words. “The knaves! The king will not abide such treachery!”
“If the king is told treason is afoot he will abide very much indeed.”
“Treason! We simply engage in political discourse. Have they not heard of the Magna Carta? The liberty of Englishmen is protected!”
As Trent began herding them inside for the night Hughes extracted a piece of hickory from his pocket and tossed it to Webb. “They will question you about the runner marks and commissioners. They will not be polite,” he added.
They left the major staring at the deep bite marks on the wood.
As the men settled onto their pallets, Duncan helped Webb find a place to sleep. “This is a nightmare,” the major said. “Surely I will wake up in my featherbed in Louisa County and recall that I drank too much claret last night.”
Duncan grabbed his arm as he swayed again. “You have a bruised rib, cuts on your face, lash marks on your back, and a broken tooth. What more evidence do you need? You are a slave with the rest of us. We are dying day by day and you may be the best chance we have to leave this place alive.”
“Best chance?”
“You know who is in that manor house. You know the roads, by both water and land, and the way of the tobacco trade.”
They spoke no more until the door was locked behind them.
“We are on the Rappahannock, perhaps fifteen miles of deep channel from the Chesapeake.” Webb shrugged. “How does that help you? The navy is on maneuvers on the bay. You can’t throw an oyster shell without hitting a government ship. The river offers no escape.”
It was not the news Duncan wanted to hear. “Who is in the manor house?”
“It was built by the Dawson family. The elder Dawson was a kind Christian who ran his farm to help the needy and his nephew continued his good works.” Webb shrugged. “I have heard nothing of the family these two years and more.”
“The tobacco. Who sells the tobacco? We need to understand who controls this place.”
Webb paused, considering the question. “I suspect one of the companies seeking to take over the Oronoco market. The Rappahannock Company, I’d wager.”
“And who controls the company?”
Webb shrugged. “Their proprietors hide behind lawyers and clerks. There’s several such companies, given charters by the king. Shares change hands in London and Williamsburg.”
“The Krakens must control it,” Duncan suggested. “They must. This is their lair, where secret killers are dispatched to serve their masters and secret prisoners are punished.”
“It’s an old tale,” came a raspy voice behind them. Larkin had been listening. “An old seafarer spoke of the krakens when I served on coasters as a boy. Great beasts that would rise up from the darkness and rip apart men and ships with their tentacles. I said surely then we must sail closer to shore to avoid them and he said it didn’t matter, that a kraken moved like a ghost. It could creep right up a river and snatch one of us. And so it did,” the former sailor insisted. “Poor Devon said he that he alone survived the water route. The beast took offense. It stalked him and squeezed the life out of the poor lad.”
CHAPTER TH
IRTEEN
The days became a blur of pain and toil. The crack of a cane and the bray of “sotweed!” grew as constant as the drone of flies. At night men collapsed onto the sleeping racks but in the small hours Duncan often heard them talking in their sleep to loved ones they might never see again. Friends whispered to each other of simple things, like picking apples with a son or kittens delivered on a hearth on a snowy night. Duncan, lying on his pallet in the dark, found himself spending more and more time thinking of Edentown, and the contentment he had known in the years since the war.
Sarah and Duncan were joined by a young Oneida girl, who skipped between them, holding their hands, as they approached the grove of maple trees. A spring sugar camp was always a joyous time for the tribes, but this camp was cause for special celebration. The Edentown settlement, newly enlarged under Sarah’s guidance, was busy with arrival of new craftsmen, new lambs, even two new Percheron foals in its pasture. The first year of the schoolhouse, which counted several tribal children among its students, would soon be celebrated with a picnic. Sarah had been moved beyond words when Adanahoe and four other Iroquois elders from Onondaga had arrived to share the bounty of their sugar orchards.
They stopped at a huge maple and Duncan helped the girl lift the birch-bark bucket from its tap, which she cradled in both arms to take back to the boiling kettles.
“We’ve done it, haven’t we?” Sarah said.
Duncan wasn’t certain of her meaning until he saw the contented way she watched the girl entering the joyful camp of natives and Europeans. We’ve made our oasis in the forest—she meant the sanctuary she had dreamed of. “You’ve done it,” he replied.
She took his hand. “I could never have done it without you, Duncan. You were my strength. You made me believe it was possible.” She squeezed his hand and seemed about to embrace him when Conawago, with an Iroquois toddler on his shoulder, called out for Duncan to come join an impromptu lacrosse game.
They did not find each other until long after sunset, when the kettle of venison and squash stewed in sap was empty, and everyone was exhausted from singing many rounds of harvest songs of the Iroquois, the Scots, and the Germans. Sarah had her sleeping blanket draped around her neck and from behind her she produced Duncan’s blanket. He had led her to a bed of moss at the edge of the camp and they were lying down when several of the Iroquois children ran up and laughingly wedged themselves between Sarah and Duncan. Sarah cast Duncan a disappointed smile, then began telling the children the English and Iroquois names for the constellations overhead. As the children quieted she reached out to hold his hand, but the children had stretched them far apart. Only their fingertips could connect, and they fell asleep like that, fingertip to fingertip.
ON SUNDAY THEY WERE ESCORTED TO THE RIVER, WHERE THEY joined the other slaves in the weekly bathing and clothes washing. The sinister pharaohs watched over them from the shore, aided by two guards in separate dinghies anchored along the mouth of the little cove where the slaves were allowed to bathe.
Some of the Africans had children who splashed naked in the water and threw balls of mud at one another. At first Duncan, stripped to his britches, stayed with Webb and several of the Judas slaves who just sat in shallow water to let the river soothe their ravaged backs. Soon he ventured into the deeper water, pretending to wash his own clothes but keeping his eye on the wharf. The cutter was moored along the long dock, guarded by a marine in a scarlet tunic. In the deeper water at the end of the wharf was a broad-beamed trading snow unloading the big hogshead barrels that would be used later in the season to ship the tobacco crop to market.
Set behind the wharf was the manor house, a structure of brick and white clapboard that was not at all elegant, but certainly spacious. It had obviously been built around a farmhouse now serving as the rear wing, probably where kitchens and servant quarters were located. A low white-pillared portico extended a hundred feet from the entrance toward the wharf, flanked by flowering lilacs. A blonde woman in a blue dress was cutting the flowers, handing them to an African woman with a basket on her arm.
“The fool’s asleep,” Murdo whispered at his side. “Too much ale on Saturday night I wager.”
Duncan followed his gaze toward the farthest dinghy, where indeed the solitary guard sat stiffly with a musket between his knees, his head braced on one hand. He studied his weary companions. Escape would be impossible if they had no will to do so. Broken men would never be able to summon the speed and courage needed for flight from the well-armed enforcers of Galilee, and the spirit they had briefly shown had flagged since the night they had burned the tax commission. Hope was steadily fading from their eyes. “How many do you think can swim?” he asked.
Murdo made a show of bending and running water over his head as he replied. “All of us from the western isles, which would be eight. Half the tribesmen and rangers perhaps, no more. But eight or ten be too weak to carry themselves. And there’s not a chance for anyone in manacles.”
From the moment Duncan had seen the expanse of water, much wider and deeper than he had expected, his mind had been racing. His hand had gone to the spirit pouch that always hung from his neck. The totem inside, given to him by Conawago five years earlier when scores of lives had depended on his swimming impossible waters, called him to the deeper channel. He could easily escape right there, reaching the far bank underwater, surfacing only every two or even three minutes. But he could not leave his companions. “Then it’s the swamp,” he said. “We will flee into the swamp where their horses and dogs will be useless.”
“May the blessed Mary preserve us,” Murdo said with a grim nod. “And pray the serpents and quicksand and leeches ignore us in favor of the damned pharaohs.”
But Duncan knew they would never find an escape if they could not even find hope. “They need to see that it’s real, that we make progress,” Duncan observed as he surveyed the half-starved men. “Murdo, if that man in the boat wakens make a distraction. Shove someone. Fight over a piece of clothing. Anything to keep his eyes on you.”
“Christ, Duncan, don’t be foolish. The river is swift underneath. It will take ye to the bottom and we’ll ne’er see ye again.”
“As a bairn I lived in the water so much my friends called me the McCallum seal,” Duncan replied. He touched the spirit pouch that hung from his neck, then began working his way toward the handful of men who were bathing in chest-deep water. A minute later he was among them, then slightly beyond them, dipping his head in the water, even fully immersing twice with motions of washing his long, streaming hair. The third time he did not surface.
Farther from the bank and the churning of the slaves, the water cleared. Minnows swam among long strands of weed. A hulking catfish nearly as long as Duncan himself lolled on the bottom, watching him with black pebble eyes. He surfaced silently in the shadow of the dinghy. The sentry’s broad back was toward him, and the low snoring told him Murdo had been right. He could not dare put his hand on the boat for fear of rocking it, but he was able to wrap his ankles around the trailing anchor line and push up gently enough for his arm to clear the gunwale. He explored the items on the rear bench with his fingers and chose three, securing them into his britches before relaxing his grip on the line and letting himself sink into the dark water.
The Galilee rules gave them only half a day’s rest on the Sabbath but they were able to linger in the stable yard as they waited for their midday meal. Duncan motioned Tanaqua and Murdo inside the stable and led them to the shadows of the necessary bench, where he revealed his bounty. A fishing knife with a long slender blade. A coil of thin rope, and a pouch which yielded a fork and spoon. “Good metal,” he said of the utensils. “With enough work on a stone, their handles can become blades.”
“Y’er a bloody magician!” the big Scot exclaimed.
“Just a swimmer.” Duncan watched as Tanaqua tested the strength of the rope and looked up in query. “If we are going through the swamp the men will be tied together.”
T
anaqua considered his words, then nodded. “Because of the quicksand.”
“Tell only the men you trust from home,” Duncan warned his friends. “Devon’s killer is still among us.”
As Tanaqua kept watch, Duncan climbed onto Murdo’s back and hid their treasures in the rafters. By the time the company was led out to the fields, the Pennsylvania Scots and Iroquois had a new light in their eyes.
After an hour of readying the last row for planting, Duncan felt the gaze of old Jaho, who stood in the field as if waiting for him. Trent, like Winters, had begun giving the Susquehannock more latitude, and walked by the old man without a word. When Duncan reached him Jaho extended his hand, enclosed around an object. Duncan hesitantly offered his open palm, thinking the old man wished to give him something, but Jaho instead extended his other hand to enclose Duncan’s in a tight grip. “Ononyot says you are the Death Speaker,” the Susquehannock said, “that you are touched by the spirits, and do their work.”
“I respect the spirits,” Duncan said in a tentative tone, “and try to understand what they desire.”
Jaho nodded. “Have you ever considered, McCallum, what bears dream about in their winter sleep?”
Duncan found himself grinning at the extraordinary question. The old man seemed to live in more than one world, and Duncan had no way of knowing which the old man was in now.
“The old spirits, the ancient ones, are like sleeping bears,” the Susquehannock, still gripping Duncan’s hand, explained. “They only wake now and again but they have dreams and those they touch may walk with them in those dreams. Actual dreams, my mother called them. Messages between worlds. Sometimes messages between ages.”
Duncan had no reply, and Jahoska seemed to expect none. His leathery face wrinkled with a smile, then he released Duncan’s hand and opened his own closed hand. Duncan’s heart skipped a beat. On the old man’s palm was a fossil, the kind the scientists called a trilobite.
“A seed stone lies at the intersection,” Jahoska said. “The Death Speaker will need to see that.”
Blood of the Oak: A Mystery Page 23