By the time the bell sounded for the end of the day Murdo had risen up once, to drain the gourd, then collapsed again. When they reached the yard not a man moved to the supper kettle but instead all watched as the big Scot began crawling toward the stable in slow, agonizing stages, seldom going more than fifty feet before collapsing, each time leaving a trail of blood. Winters and Trent herded the company toward the kettle, but as they ate they silently watched Murdo’s slow, excruciating progress through the dying light. The rangers watched Webb, waiting for an order to rush out onto the field, but the major, with a forlorn glance toward Duncan, gestured them inside. It was dark as the last men reached the entry. Trent was pushing the door shut when he gasped and abruptly retreated. Winters, holding the bar, dropped it and stumbled backward.
A huge shadow was moving toward them. A moment later the tall African materialized out of the darkness with Murdo in his arms. Tanaqua and Ononyot pushed past the overseers and draped Murdo’s arms over their shoulders as the African lowered him. The big man spoke several incomprehensible words in a rich, deep voice, then pointed to Murdo. “War-i-oor,” he said, stretching out the word. “Warrior,” he tried again. He thumped his own chest. “Like Ursa,” he said in introduction, then looked back at Murdo.
“My son . . .” the African began, then seemed unable to find any more English. He pressed his hand over his heart, lifted it and placed it over Murdo’s own heart, then spoke words in his native tongue that had the sound of a prayer. Duncan silently returned Ursa’s nod as he backed away into the night.
Murdo pushed himself away from Tanaqua and, holding onto the wall, staggered into the slave shed. He collapsed onto a platform and closed his eyes as Duncan examined him. When he opened them a few minutes later he lifted his head toward the despairing companions who surrounded him. “I’ve been beaten, damn ye,” he growled, “but I’m not beat.” The big Scot paused and looked with a wrinkled brow at the bundle of feathers, now stained with his blood, that had been wrapped around his arm by the African woman.
Duncan had to touch him to get his attention, then asked him to move his feet and grip each of Duncan’s hands. “He’s built too much like an ox for any serious damage,” Sinclair quipped. Murdo gave an affirming grunt and, as Jaho began washing his wounds, he fell asleep, his fingers on the feather totem. Amazingly, despite his terrible flailing by the metal ball, he had no broken bones. Duncan sprinkled the last of his healing herbs onto the open gashes.
“He needs better food to heal properly,” Duncan declared, looking at Webb but speaking loudly enough for all to hear. “There’s dandelion greens and pokeweed shoots in the field. Gather some for him tomorrow.” He surveyed the gaunt faces. They had no hope of escape if they could not build their strength. “And any other you find eat yourselves.”
THAT NIGHT HE AGAIN FOLLOWED JAHO OUTSIDE, REACHING HIM as Chuga emerged from the reeds to greet the old man. “No, Duncan,” the Susquehannock warned when he realized Duncan did not intend to stay with him. “You will be caught. You don’t know the hills the way I do. I know every outcropping, every blind spot. This is my land.”
Duncan grabbed some mud from the swamp and began rubbing it over his face. “But I’m not going onto the land,” he declared, rubbing Chuga’s head, and then stole away along the bank toward the river.
A sliver of moon reflected on the still water of the Rappahannock. A deer at the edge of the river looked up then returned to drinking. Duncan stripped to his britches in the shadow of a cedar tree then silently eased into the water. He reached the two-masted snow after surfacing for air only three times, then hauled himself up the anchor line, clapped onto the rail, and watched the deck. The cutter and the brig that had recently arrived would have marine guards posted but a trade ship anchored in a quiet river was unlikely to follow such discipline.
There was no sign of life on deck other than a dim lantern at the stern. He moved like a shadow, the way Mohawks and rangers moved through enemy camps to rescue captives. Below the deck his nose quickly led him to the galley. Heaped beside the cold stove were baskets of produce. He filled an empty flour sack with carrots, onions, and potatoes, then dropped in three knives. He was about to throw more utensils into a second sack but thought better and filled it instead with more food. He fastened both the sacks with twine, then tied them together and draped them around his neck.
Back in the water, he carried the food to his pile of clothes on shore then returned to the river. With silent, stealthy strokes he approached the naval vessels, circling the cutter then the brig, pausing often to study their construction and rigging. The cutter had sailed away Sunday afternoon and returned four days later, and Frazier had said that was its usual schedule, as if it were routinely carrying messages back and forth to a place two days away. It made no sense for the ships to spend so much time at Galilee. He might expect an occasional call of a naval ship attached to the Chesapeake squadron but these ships were like fixtures at the remote tobacco plantation.
He pushed himself out into the current, luxuriating in the cool water and the freedom it offered, letting himself float with the slow movement of the river, then swam upriver and drifted past the manor house. He studied the manor house compound and the wharf from afar. The only room showing light was what appeared to be the dining room. Figures moved by its windows, one lifting an arm as if in a toast. The breeze carried faint sounds of laughter.
Half an hour later he was back at the stable, dropping the bag of food and knives in the shadows before sprinting along the long drainage ditch across the fields, painfully aware of the consequences if he were caught by the night patrols. He lay in the ditch, watching as two men on horseback passed the African sheds, but did not rise for several more minutes. A whippoorwill called from the hills. Frogs sang in the swamp. When he heard the crickets renew their chorus he stole to the nearest of the sheds.
Inside, someone was chanting again. He began dropping the food into one of the window slits. After the first three onions, a strong hand reached out to take the food, then when he was finished, Duncan extended his own hand. The slave inside squeezed his hand tightly and spoke a few words in an unfamiliar tongue. They sounded not so much like an expression of gratitude but as a quiet vow.
THE NEXT AFTERNOON DUNCAN WAS PULLED OUT OF THE WORK line by Winters. “Go with Trent back to the stable. Wash up,” he ordered. “You’re going to the compound.”
Duncan received the news with a chill, and found himself clutching the still-painful burn on his arm. He had told himself he would not be sent to interrogation again so soon. With a stab of fear he realized he may have been seen the night before. Murdo and Tanaqua stared at him with worried expressions. Larkin handed him one of the little slats of hickory, riddled with teeth marks.
Trent gauged him with a disapproving eye when Duncan finished washing his hands and face at the water barrel, then motioned with his baton toward the perimeter road. Duncan tried to push away his fear by putting a label on each of the buildings as they approached the compound. The smithy, the carpenter’s shop, the cooperage, the laundry shed where aproned women now toiled at a soapy kettle, the root cellar, then with a chill he found himself staring at the squat brick building with the wide chimney. Why, he asked himself, would he need to be cleaned to go back into the smokehouse?
His relief at being led past the smokehouse was momentary, for he spied the servants waiting with impatient expressions on the back portico. As he climbed the steps, a young African woman filling buckets at a pump paused and watched him with sad eyes.
Trent led him past the servants through the kitchen door.
A rotund woman wearing a bright yellow apron pounced on them. “Not a step further!” she ordered, raising a rolling pin.
Trent backed away. “It’s him,” he muttered.
The woman’s eyes went round. “This?” she scoffed as she paced around Duncan, inspecting him.
“From the stable,” Trent reminded her. “The Judas slaves.”
; The woman stroked her chin, rubbing flour into her cocoa-colored skin. “Titus!” she called.
A remarkably graceful man in black waistcoat, white linen shirt, and britches over white stockings appeared from a side door. He was long-boned and thin, with greying hair and a row of small, subtle decorative scars that ran from one ear into his collar. He was as tall as the big slave who had helped Murdo, but with much lighter bone structure and a narrow, refined face. Duncan was beginning to realize that Africans, like the American natives, had many different tribes.
Titus bowed his head to Duncan and led him back out onto the rear portico. With a few quick commands he launched the lingering servants into a frenzy of activity. The woman at the pump brought a bucket of water. A teenage girl dressed as a housemaid removed Duncan’s filthy waistcoat with a disapproving grimace and slammed it against the wall several times before roughly brushing it. He was shoved down onto an upturned keg, his head was jerked back, and with painful tugs another began using a comb to untangle his hair. The girl from the pump arrived and giggled as she pulled off his shoes and tattered leggings. He watched, confused and no less apprehensive, unable to shake the feeling that he was still bound for punishment, just one more refined than he had expected.
“Blessed Jehovah!” the plump cook exclaimed as his filthy shirt was peeled away. The Africans all paused, their levity gone, as they silently stared at the scars and scabs on Duncan’s back. She called for a clean cloth and began dabbing cold water on them, then paused as she saw the livid brand on his arm. “Poor boy,” she muttered, and stroked his arm with a motherly touch. “Poor, poor boy.”
A quarter hour later he was for all appearances a new man. Fresh stockings, shoes, and a shirt had been fetched for him. The pink, nearly raw flesh of his brand had been rubbed with witch hazel and powdered over before the clean shirt was pulled over his shoulders. His waistcoat had been cleaned, sprinkled with lavender water, and a tear in its fabric hastily patched. His hair was straightened for the first time in weeks and a blue ribbon bound it at the back.
“Better,” the woman in charge declared in a tone that made it clear she did not entirely approve. “Pity no time to shave you,” she said, then with a finger on his shoulder pushed him deeper into the great house.
Duncan followed her down a wood-paneled hallway lined with paintings onto an ornate staircase and up to the second floor. In a bedroom overlooking the river, a man lay with a compress on his head. On the bedpost hung the jacket of a British naval officer.
“It’s the malaria,” came a soft tight voice from the shadows behind him. Duncan turned. The cook was gone. Rising from a daybed, rubbing sleep from her eyes, was a woman in a simple green dress. A few years older than Duncan, with high cheekbones and hazel eyes, she had a quiet elegance about her despite her obvious fatigue.
“Came back with it from a Jamaica posting, he says.” She pushed back her curly brunette hair to see Duncan better. “Jamie . . . I mean Mr. Winters mentioned he had a Scottish doctor among his charges. Can it be true?”
“Edinburgh, aye,” Duncan replied uncertainly, and bent over the man. He had a raging fever.
“Peruvian bark,” Duncan said instantly. “He needs the bark.”
“We used it all, Dr.—”
“McCallum.”
“The brig. The surgeon on the brig would have some, Mrs.—”
“Alice Dawson. And Mr. Lloyd is the surgeon of the Ardent.”
Duncan looked up in surprise then contemplated his patient. “He must have a medicine chest. Where is it?”
“On board.”
“Some diaphoretin then. Antimony perhaps, or at least James’s Powder.”
“You speak beyond me, sir. We bled him yesterday. This is as bad as I have ever seen him. He passed the night shivering uncontrollably. He is unable to keep food down. Titus says we could find leeches in the swamp.”
Duncan paused a moment, considering the dangers, and opportunities, before him. “He is a frequent visitor then?”
“Starting last autumn the Ardent started calling every few weeks, a stopping point in the bay patrol.”
Duncan kept examining Lloyd as he spoke. “She’s been here several days,” he observed, keeping his tone casual. Their chances of escape would be far greater if the brig and her men were gone.
“Three or four months ago she started flying a pennant of Virginia and tends toward more extended stays now.” Mrs. Dawson hesitated, studying Duncan a moment. “The navy is using the old mill that lies around the point in the river as something of a headquarters for provincial business. We have a wharf that accommodates ocean ships.”
“And a smokehouse where fresh meat is hung,” he stated. She turned her head down, and began fidgeting with a corner of the doctor’s comforter.
“Do you have strong spirits?”
“Some brandy.”
“We must rub it into his limbs. It will draw out the heat.”
She stepped to the door, spoke a few words to someone waiting in the hallway, and moments later the housemaid who had cleaned Duncan’s waistcoat appeared with a decanter.
“Nancy and I can do this, Mr. McCallum,” Mrs. Dawson said as she lowered herself into the chair beside Lloyd’s bed. “Polly will take you to the brig to retrieve such medicines as you find there.” She nodded toward the doorway, where the plump woman from the kitchen, her apron removed now, waited with a basket in her hand. He glanced back at his hostess. Polly must have been instructed to make ready for the ship even before Mrs. Dawson had met Duncan.
Feeling as if he were caught up in some strange theater performance, Duncan followed the cook slowly, studying the house. The hallway on the opposite side of the stairway was blocked off by a row of chairs, and seemed to have a stale, unlived-in atmosphere. Portraits lined the stairway, of elegant women in silk dresses, a stern but prosperous-looking man holding a tobacco leaf in one hand and a long-stemmed clay pipe in the other, and a young boy with his arm resting on the back of a large russet-haired retriever with a brace of ducks at its paws.
In a frame at the bottom of the stairway, in a place of prominence, was a peculiar document, which caused him to pause. It was a land charter. To his astonishment he saw it was the charter for the Virginia colony, which seemed so unlikely he leaned in for a closer examination.
“If they ever lost the real one, old Mr. Dawson would say, the governor could come and just cut this out of the frame.”
He turned to see Polly grinning at him, then he studied the framing. It was not an actual parchment under glass, but rather a very clever reproduction on a canvas, a seemingly perfect reproduction, right down to the royal seal. “The artist must have worked in the king’s court,” he suggested. Polly just laughed, and gestured him out the front door.
The Ardent was moored at the deepwater plantation wharf, with a guard at the top of the gangway. Polly explained their business, then produced a fresh pie from her basket, which quickly warmed the face of the stern young officer on the deck. He removed his bicorn hat to them and gestured him down a hatch, ordering a mate to guide them to the sick bay. Duncan asked the mate about the light blue band he and the rest of the men wore on their sleeves.
“In the service of the colony. Seconded to the Virginia navy, which I never knew existed until they brought out these armbands.”
“Eighteen guns,” Duncan observed—he had quickly surveyed the single fighting deck before descending into the shadows—“but you don’t have nearly the men to work them.”
“Aye,” came the mate’s weary response. “Over half the crew is seconded to the cutter and the yacht and most of the marines have been split between here and’’—he paused and eyed Duncan more deliberately—“elsewhere.”
“Yacht?”
“It’s what the Commodore calls the ketch when he is aboard. Like the king’s royal yacht.”
“Now leave the good doctor be,” Polly scolded the man as they reached the physician’s station, and when the mate retreated she took up a p
osition in front of the cramped chamber as if to assure Duncan’s privacy. Opening the wooden chest that served as the brig’s dispensary, he stared in amazement. It was filled with drugs, bandages, bleeding cups, lancets, even a bone saw neatly inserted into tiny brackets under the lid. He dropped a vial of laudanum, the tincture of opium, into each of his waistcoat pockets then began filling two sacks. Into the first he dropped another vial of laudanum and little jars of the diaphoretic James’s Powder, and set it aside. Into the second he dropped more laudanum, wrapping each vial in a linen bandage to protect it, a small tub of unguent, and two sharp scalpels, also carefully wrapped. He stepped behind the curtain that provided privacy for the little alcove where surgery was performed, quickly removed his waistcoat and shirt, then fitted the drawstring of the second sack over his shoulder and dressed again.
As they reached the gangway to the dock, the mate put a knuckle to his forehead and dipped his head. “Give Mr. Lloyd our best, sir. Tell him we look forward to his showing us a step or two at the great ball.”
Duncan paused. “The great ball?”
“When the Commodore arrives. That’s what they call him, thought he ain’t got no commission, just a right pretty uniform, and letters from London he takes out whenever anyone questions him. Special orders from the Lord High Admiral and the governor, they say.”
Blood of the Oak: A Mystery Page 26