“James,” Hobart whispered. “We have no instructions.”
“What,” Kincaid demanded, “are the names on the stolen commissions? Who are the revenue agents you have hidden from us?”
Duncan pushed down his pain to study the man. He had expected them to press for details of the runner network. Why would the marine lieutenant want to know about names on commissions?
When Duncan did not reply, Kincaid frowned, stepped back, and bent to the ear of the smaller man, who left the building. “Damned Welshman, forever forgetting things,” Kincaid said to Duncan in a conversational tone.
Hobart loomed closer now. A new tool had materialized in his hand. Duncan recalled that the narrow blade was called a stiletto, a treacherous Italian instrument. Hobart languidly dragged the blade along Duncan’s exposed arm, scraping away hair, then very carefully inserted the cold steel into Duncan’s nostril. “When,” he asked in a casual tone, “is the world’s end?” As he twisted the blade Duncan desperately bent his head back. Hobart laughed and withdrew the stiletto. Blood dripped onto Duncan’s lip. “Or should we just speak of your end?”
“It was you!” Duncan spat back. “You were with Francis Johnson in Albany!” Hobart hesitated. Kincaid kicked away the stool.
Duncan’s shoulders erupted in agony as they took the full weight of his body. He stretched, desperately trying to reach the brick floor with his toes. “And you went from there to Onondaga,” he gasped.
Kincaid answered with a punch to his belly, setting Duncan swinging backward, then punched him again when his body swung closer to him. “William Johnson’s son is . . .” his words came in gasps as they took turns punching him, “is a spy for the Krakens.”
Kincaid paused, letting Duncan swing back without a punch, then gave one of his frigid grins. “William Johnson will be killed by trunnel nails and teapots,” he declared. “So why should I care, you interfering weasel!” He hit Duncan on the return.
The swinging became faster, and the punches kept pace. Duncan closed his eyes, clenching his jaw, until suddenly he realized they had stopped. He opened his eyes to see that the Welshman had returned, and was standing on the stool beside Duncan. “They never told you, did they?” Duncan said.
“Told us?” Hobart asked.
“About the curse. That mask you stole. It is very old, like the things left by the Druids in England. You know about Druid relics. They terrify people. I recall a story about a man who stole some from a museum. Within months he and his family were all dead. Where is it?” Neither Duncan nor Tanaqua had given voice to the fear he knew they shared, that the mask had been destroyed.
Kincaid cocked his head a moment, then shrugged. “Five thousand acres of Ohio bottomland if you will sing our song. When will they come to the world’s end?”
“I tend to prefer mountains,” Duncan replied.
Kincaid seemed pleased. Hobart gave a nod.
The pain seared through Duncan’s body like a bolt of lightning.
The Welshman was fastidious about his job, steadying Duncan’s forearm in one hand as he pressed the red-hot iron into Duncan’s flesh with the other. The smell of singed hair and seared flesh filled the little chamber. Kincaid offered Hobart more snuff and they watched in amusement as the short man pressed the iron deeper into his arm.
When he finished, the Welshman carefully poured water over the raw S-shaped brand burnt into Duncan’s forearm, then with a businesslike air tucked the iron under his arm, stowed the stool in the shadows, and left the building.
Hobart reached up with his blade and sliced through the cord binding Duncan, who collapsed onto the bricks.
“S for slave,” Kincaid crowed. “S for spy. S for stamps.”
“S,” added Hobart, “for the simpleton who gives up his life for fools with quills.”
“The committees write for freedom,” Duncan said with a cracking voice.
“Wilkes and corpses,” Hobart cracked as they turned to the door, laughing with Kincaid.
Duncan lay on the floor, his body wracked with dry heaves but then growing much stiller as he stared at the knotted cord tied to his shoulder, lying in front of him on the bricks.
He had a dreamlike sensation of being carried in a barrow and heaved onto a sleeping platform, then finally jerked awake as a cold cloth was draped over his forehead. He opened his eyes to see Tanaqua and Webb.
“Winters let us forego lunch,” Webb explained. “We thank you for the opportunity since it looked like some slop refused by the pigs.” The major propped him up as Tanaqua handed Duncan a mug of the willow brew. As Duncan downed it he deftly reached to Tanaqua’s belt, lifting away the twine he had taken from the dead man on the river. As he stretched the knotted twine between his hands both men went very still. Webb glanced at the door as if to make sure it was closed.
“Red Jacob had one of these,” Duncan said to the Mohawk. “Just a string, I thought, the kind a forest traveler might keep for any number of tasks. But then the dead man on the Susquehanna had one. I thought he had used his last strength to preserve his enameled box but the box was just a way to anchor the string, wasn’t it? That’s why you took it, not for the box but for the string. It was a message from Philadelphia.”
Tanaqua did not disagree.
“Duncan,” Webb began, “it’s better that you don’t—”
“Don’t know what I am going to die for?” he snapped. “They kept asking about the world’s end. I thought it was a macabre joke, a reminder that we are meant to die. But it’s a place, isn’t it? When at the world’s end, they want to know. They wanted me to name commissioners and reveal the time at the world’s end.”
“It’s the secret they covet most of all,” Webb confessed. “No more than a handful know. They await word in Williamsburg.”
“It’s in Lancaster,” Tanaqua said. “Captain Woolford and I ate a venison pie there once.”
“An inn? The World’s End is an inn?”
“It was a very good pie,” the Mohawk added.
Webb sat beside Duncan and Tanaqua slipped away to a window, keeping watch.
“There’s going to be a congress, Duncan,” Webb explained. “The men on the committees are going to meet, gathering members of colonial governments, before the end of the year. They will seek resolutions to bind the colonies against the stamp tax. If it happens the Krakens know it means London is losing control of the colonies. They are furiously trying to stop it. Even postal carriers are being stopped and searched by government agents. Without correspondence the congress will never happen.”
“But surely they can’t prevent a public gathering of prominent men.”
Webb nodded agreement. “So long as the planning is done in secret. At a meeting among the leaders of the committees.”
“At an inn called World’s End,” Duncan concluded. “But they learned of the inn weeks ago,” he added after a moment. “I saw a rebus letter that used symbols for it, written to Peter Rohrbach by a young doctor in Philadelphia.”
“Rush?” Webb asked. “Benjamin Rush?”
As Duncan nodded Webb sighed. “Rush is well-intentioned but is so naive. He was sworn to secrecy but he knew Rohrbach already had the secret. But the date is still well guarded, kept in the hands of the Iroquois, using their system. Sir William and Captain Woolford insisted on it. They had gone to Johnson Hall to receive the date and carry it down through the network.”
My God, Duncan thought, so simple, so open, and, in the hands of the illiterate natives who were so casually dismissed by the British, so ingenious.
Tanaqua stepped closer. “It is a way we have used for more years than can be counted,” the Mohawk said. “A date is the simplest of things, especially if we use the English calendar, which most English think we don’t understand. My father, he could send a whole story of a battle on a string of sinew, telling of who had won, how many prisoners were taken, how many dead of which tribes.”
Webb took up the explanation. “New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachuse
tts have sent confirmation of the date. Their confirmation comes in the form of one of the strings, accepting the date.”
Duncan recalled the strange jumble of letters encoded with Franklin’s fossils. Massnyconnri. He studied the string, then counted nine double knots and seventeen single ones. “Ralston had been bringing Pennsylvania’s confirmation. September seventeenth” he whispered, then looked up at his companions. “They would kill to know it.”
“They have killed to know it,” Tanaqua corrected.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In the dark heart of the night Duncan slipped out of Jaho’s blanketed hatch and darted to the bank of the swamp. A figure was receding out on the water, and in the light of a half moon he could dimly see the slightly muddy water where the man had passed, the track of the narrow path of firmer ground that twisted its way through the beds of quicksand.
For more than half an hour Duncan followed the old man down the narrow, treacherous path, fighting his fear when clouds briefly obscured the moon and he lost the trail. One false step and he could be pulled into the killing mud, and if he lost sight of his ghostly guide he knew he would be hopelessly trapped. In the silence, mosquitoes bit at his ears and bubbles gurgled as they burst, reeking of decay. He quickly pressed on as the moon emerged, past islets of willow and sedge, through water that was at times up to his thighs, until suddenly the moon disappeared again. He stumbled, lost his footing, and dropped into a thick ooze.
Duncan pushed with his hands, his feet, his knees, but could find no purchase in the sucking mud. He was drawn down, his shoulders going under, as he frantically tried to keep his head above water, fighting the mud that wanted to swallow him. The water touched his chin, his lips, then the foul mix was in his mouth. Sputtering, choking, he made a final desperate twist that caused him to slip further, sending his head under. As he lost consciousness the teeth of the mud bit into his arm.
Duncan awoke slowly, watching as through a fog, as a monk prayed at an altar by a crackling fire. Gradually he recognized the shapes of crumbling lodges and overgrown fire rings, even what looked like old fish-drying racks. He sat up, spitting the grit from his mouth, and saw that he was on an island of tall pines and cypress. His arm ached and his clothes were lined with damp mud. Rising unsteadily, he staggered for a moment, then a furry creature pushed against his leg to keep him upright. Duncan looked down into Chuga’s black eyes, which stared at him with an oddly worried expression. As he approached the fire the murmuring of the man at the altar turned into wheezing laughter.
“Three times Chuga has pulled me from the deathsands,” Jahoska declared. “He has always been an energetic retriever, glad for the practice. Now get your shirt off so we can pull away the leeches. Stand in the smoke to keep the blood bugs away.”
As Jaho stretched his shirt between two sticks by the fire, Duncan saw now that the altar was the bottom of an inverted, rotting dugout set against the fallen trunk of a great cypress. Arrayed on and below the altar were small skulls, old stone mortars, chipped pots with intricate but faded designs of birds and fish.
As the old Susquehannock plucked the leeches from Duncan’s torso, he saw now that the old man had not been praying, but simply singing as he worked on a heavy clamshell with a small blade. He was making an intricate image of two small children flanked by a man and a woman. Beside him on the altar were more than a dozen other such shells, each inscribed with a scene of tribal life. On one, men were dragging a massive fish out of the water; on another, what may have been a hummingbird hovered over a man and woman. A European ship was surrounded by canoes on a shell, while on one more a crude fortress was fired on by cannons.
When Jaho finished, Duncan stepped closer to the chronicles, until halfway down the row he saw the small black stone Jaho had shown him in the field. He lifted the fossil and looked up. “It was always on the altar in our Council House when I was a boy,” the Susquehannock explained. “It was believed to hold great power. Our war chiefs carried it into battle.”
The old man took the fossil and held it toward the moon. “My mother said such seed stones were proof that though time always takes life, the messages of life endure through time.” He bent to a squarish block of stone below the altar and slid back the top. The stone inside had been carved out to create a container. Inside was an object wrapped in what looked like eel skin. Jaho carefully unwrapped the flat rock it covered. “This too was always on our altar, from years long ago. My mother said it too was a kind of seed stone.”
Duncan took the rock as Jaho extended it, not understanding. It was no fossil, of no particular geologic interest, the patterns on it seemingly random works of nature, but when he held it closer to the flames the lines took on an order. He dropped to his knees, his hands trembling. He had seen such signs as a boy, carved into the boulders of the Hebrides.
“They’re called runes,” he finally said. “How did you . . . where would . . .” He looked up to see Jaho’s wrinkled face lifted in a smile again.
“People can reach across time,” the old man replied. “The messages can tell you who you are.”
“These were from mighty warriors who rode the sea,” Duncan said, “dozens of lifetimes ago.”
The Susquehannock dropped crosslegged in front of the fire, listening with the eagerness of a young boy, as Duncan told him of the ancient northern adventurers who left rune stones on the shores they visited. By the time he finished Jaho was rocking back and forth, his eyes out of focus. Over the past weeks Duncan had seen the ravages of advanced age on the old man, and now he realized Jaho’s mind had gone somewhere else. He stared at Jaho a long time, trying to understand why he was sharing so many secrets with him. At last he returned the rune stone to its container and paced along the altar, studying the other clamshell chronicles and finding a bowl of loose wampum beads waiting to be strung, similar to those in the strand Atticus had carried in his death. Here before him were the lost treasures of a lost tribe.
At last Chuga nudged the old man and he snapped out of his trance. “You’re right,” Jaho said to the dog as he rose. The moonlight fades. He turned to Duncan and put a hand on his shoulder. “Sometimes you have to die a little to know how to live,” he said, and gestured him back into the swamp.
THE FORK AND SPOON RETRIEVED BY DUNCAN WERE BEING TRANSFORMED into weapons through long hours of scraping. The frame of the window slit by the door became pockmarked, for the sling throwers practiced by aiming for the narrow slit from the opposite side of the building. Stones flew, rocks scraped, and six more lines had been marked by the door before trouble hit again. One of the African work crews had worked its way close to their company, planting the last of the sotweed, when an adolescent boy tripped and dropped one of the baskets, spilling and crushing several seedlings as he fell. It was the boy with the bright, inquiring eyes who often delivered their lunches. To his misfortune, Gabriel was riding by on one of his inspections. The superintendent screeched his displeasure then sprang from his horse and bounded toward the boy, reversing his whip to use its heavy metal ball.
Suddenly Murdo Ross was bent over the boy, back toward Gabriel, who did not check the swing of his stick. His fury enflamed by the Scot’s interference, he pounded it into his back, then through the shredded cloth into his skin. “You brainless ox!” the superintendent screamed. “Do not—” the ball struck again, “get between me—” it struck once more, “and my sotweed monkeys!”
But Murdo would not move. The big African whom Duncan had often seen watching them work now advanced, clenching his fists. The huge man, dark as walnut, gestured for the boy to flee, and the young slave ran into the arms of a weeping woman. The tall slave hesitated, clearly fighting the compulsion to intervene. The lines of decorative scars on his face moved up and down as he clenched his jaw. He looked toward Duncan, who shook his head in warning, then frowned and retreated to the woman’s side.
Gabriel gave full vent to his wrath, slamming the metal ball down with sickening force, again and again, until at l
ast the sturdy Scot broke, collapsing onto all fours then onto his belly. Gabriel had found a release for the wrath he felt toward Duncan and his friends. The superintendent only stopped when the blood began dripping down the shaft onto his fingers. “No one touches him!” he screamed. “No one! If anyone tries I’ll feed them to my dogs! Not now! Not the rest of the day! Not tonight. Let him crawl in his filth back to his quarters!”
Tanaqua, sensing Duncan’s own impulse, clamped his hand around Duncan’s arm. Murdo’s companions, rage in their eyes, seemed about to charge the superintendent, but then Webb appeared, pushing them back, pointing to the pharaoh riders who were now watching from the edge of the field with their dogs, waiting for the command to unleash their fury. Gabriel mounted his horse and rode off with one of his grotesque laughs.
Duncan stood motionless, gazing at his friend in despair, until Tanaqua finally pulled him back to the work crew. For over an hour Ross did not move. The blood oozed out of his back, staining the soil. Crows landed beside him, and Duncan was about to charge at them when several well-aimed stones scattered them. The big African man with the scarred face was throwing them, as if standing guard from a distance, and when he hit one, stunning it, the others flew away. When Ross finally moved, it was only to lean up on his elbows before collapsing into unconsciousness again.
Duncan knew his spine could be broken. His brain could be bleeding under a crushed skull. Lesser wounds had killed men. Black thoughts seized Duncan. Jessica Ross appeared in his mind’s eye. He had failed her again.
Another crow landed and another stone was flung from a different direction. To Duncan’s surprise he saw Trent, tossing a second stone in his palm as if waiting for another bird. Winters grabbed Trent’s drinking gourd from his belt and emptied it on Ross’s back before taking his own water gourd from his belt and dropping it beside the Scot’s outstretched hand.
“Ai ya yi yo wayaka.” An African woman started singing, a rhythmic chant in a strange tongue that was soon taken up by all the women in the crews working nearby. One of them, nervously watching Winters, inched forward and knelt, putting her hand on Murdo’s head while raising her other hand in a beseeching gesture toward the sky, murmuring low, emphatic words. She pulled off her necklace, bearing a pendant of what looked like twisted roots and feathers, and tied it to Ross’s arm. The big black man with the ring of scars around his head slowly advanced. Trent raised a restraining hand but the man did not halt until the woman rose and grabbed his arm, pointing toward the boy, who stood watching, crying now. Duncan realized he must be looking at the boy’s parents. The man shook the woman off then stared toward the manor house, where Gabriel had disappeared. He began his own chant, aimed at the manor compound, more angry and much louder than that of the women, then with a finger drew symbols in the air. The Judas slaves could not understand his words but they all recognized a curse.
Blood of the Oak: A Mystery Page 25