His business completed, Kincaid mounted. “All done, Robert. Let us go find refreshment.”
As Hobart turned, Jaho spoke in a low voice, in his native tongue. A gasp escaped Winters, and the overseer took a hesitant step toward the old man.
Hobart halted in front of the Susquehannock. “What the hell did you say, you ancient bag of bones?”
Jaho spoke the words again, this time in precise English. “If you steal a god, the god will steal you back.”
As Hobart slapped him, Chuga erupted from the reeds, snarling, spooking Kincaid’s horse. The lieutenant reined in his mount and rode off laughing.
Jaho stared at Hobart without blinking. As Hobart hit him again the dog lunged at the lieutenant, baring its fangs. Hobart dodged the animal and drew his pistol.
“No!” Duncan cried as the lieutenant aimed at the dog, and was about to leap between Hobart and Chuga when Murdo’s hand clamped his arm like a vise.
As Winters hastened toward them, Jaho shouted at the dog, who quieted and stepped backward toward the water, but Hobart still cocked the gun. Jaho leapt just as Hobart pulled the trigger, hitting the lieutenant’s arm. The dog disappeared into the reeds and Jaho collapsed onto the bank, blood oozing from his skull.
“Good riddance!” Hobart spat. “Meddling old fool.” He viciously kicked Jahoska’s limp body, once in the ribs and once on the shoulder, before taking his horse’s reins from a soldier and trotting toward the manor, the marines following in close order.
Instantly Duncan and Tanaqua were at Jaho’s side, protected by Winters, who hovered over them, warning away the pharaohs, who laughed and rode away.
The bullet had gouged the flesh along the old man’s left temple but had not entered his skull. Duncan pulled open his shirt, torn by Hobart’s boot, touching his ribs, then asking Tanaqua to help remove the shirt so he could examine the shoulder.
A surprised gasp escaped Tanaqua’s throat.
“He is just unconscious,” Duncan assured the Mohawk. He paused, confused. Tanaqua was suddenly tracing the tattoos on the old man’s body. Tanaqua excitedly pushed aside the tattered shirt and cried out for the other Iroquois, who dropped on their knees around the old man, wonder in their eyes.
Duncan stared at Tanaqua. Never had he seen such emotion on a tribesman’s face. Never had he seen such an expression of both joy and anguish on any man’s face. Finally he looked down and saw the tattoos clearly for the first time. An oak tree covered the old man’s chest. Each shoulder was enveloped in an intricate tattoo of a bear skull.
There was moisture in Tanaqua’s eyes as he looked up at Duncan. He had found the legendary warrior, his missing half king.
THE FIVE INJURED MEN WERE HELPED BACK INTO THE STABLE, their feet dripping blood behind them. Duncan called for a sleeping pallet, and they used it as a litter to carry the unconscious Jahoska inside. Trent led the remaining men back into the field, leaving Duncan, Tanaqua, and Webb behind with Winters and the crippled men.
“It wasn’t just a fit of spleen,” Webb said as he helped clean the ruin of Burns’s foot, glancing at Winters, who sat in the doorway with his head in his hands. “They intended it all along. Kincaid selected five of the fittest. Hobble the fast horse so it can’t wander far.”
“They knew,” Burns said, wincing as Duncan poured water on the wound. “They knew we were fixing to run.”
“We can’t have the bastard spy with us when we go,” Frazier said. He sat a few feet away, watching the blood drip from his own foot. “He’ll be the end of us. He’ll have the pharaohs waiting with guns and dogs.”
Webb and Duncan exchanged a worried glance. They had discussed the spy among them, more than once. They knew it was not any of the Pennsylvania men, who were all known and trusted by Ross. It was not any of the tribesmen, for the Kraken Club would never trust an Indian. It was one of the Virginians or one of the northern rangers, and it seemed unlikely it would be one of the frail or one of those just crippled by Kincaid, for the Krakens would keep their man healthy, probably giving him food when they pulled him into the smokehouse under pretense of interrogation. That narrowed the list to perhaps half a dozen men.
Duncan saw the angry way Webb studied Winters. “He doesn’t know. They don’t trust him.”
Winters said nothing when Duncan produced his stolen medicines to treat the injured, nor when, after the overseer finally urged the fit men back to work, Webb obliged but Tanaqua and Duncan sat defiantly beside the still-comatose Susquehannock, lying on the platform near his makeshift tent.
They stayed with Jaho into the afternoon, at first just grimly staring at him. Duncan pieced together the tales he had told of his life, trying to calculate his age based on his tales of traveling with the Spanish and long-ago battles. The half king had lived at least eight decades, and his body offered testimony to a life lived hard, and wild, and joyfully. There were scars on every limb, including a deep, wide one on his abdomen that looked to have been made with a saber. He was missing two toes, and on his calf was a hollow in his muscle where flesh had been bitten off. On the inside of his thigh was a row of little tattooed flowers, done by an intimate hand, and above his knee was a tattoo of a man flanked by two children, holding their hands. In a better world, Duncan would have sat with the man for days, and recorded the remarkable journey of his life in a journal to preserve for all time.
Tanaqua was silent at first, despair often on his face as he wiped the old man’s body with water, then after an hour he began speaking in his native tongue. “I am the shadowkeeper, the watcher of the sacred lodge,” the Mohawk intoned in a near whisper. “The father of the father of the father depends on me. The grandmother of all rides on my strong back.” He glanced uneasily at Duncan, and Duncan realized he was hearing a recitation of the secret society, one of the vows and verses of the guardians whose work could not be spoken of. Duncan gave an awkward nod and retreated outside. The men with the pierced feet had been allowed to stay in the yard and lay now under the big oak. Winters sat on one of the logs, staring at the manor, and did not react when Duncan stepped out of the yard and crossed the road.
He was gathering boughs of white cedar at the edge of the swamp when he heard a rustling in the reeds. He began his own low chant, the Gaelic words used by his father to comfort nervous animals on the croft, then slowly turned and lowered himself to the ground as the big dog with the curly russet hair emerged.
Duncan stood still as a statue, letting Chuga sniff him before stroking the broad back. “We are losing him,” he confessed to the dog in a choked voice.
After a few minutes he collected the boughs he had dropped. The dog warily followed, staying at his side as he entered the stable. When Chuga spied Jaho he effortlessly leapt onto the platform, sniffed at his wound, then laid against the old man, licking his shoulder.
Tanaqua nodded his approval and went back to his own ministrations. Duncan arranged the boughs around Jaho then set a short candle in a bowl, stacked cedar twigs around it, and set it near the Susquehannock’s head.
As the fragrant smoke rose, the half king’s eyes opened. He silently studied Tanaqua, Duncan, and the dog. “When I was a boy,” the old man said in a cracked, dry voice, “my mother used to say if you sat by the river long enough everything you need would eventually float by.” He tried to smile but the effort turned into a grimace.
“The half king and the lost god have been reunited with their people,” Tanaqua observed.
Jaho sighed. “I did not know about the killings the theft of the god caused. I am sorry. The path was too dangerous, these demons too greedy.”
Tanaqua’s face clouded. “But that was the British. You had nothing to do with it.”
“Your friend Red Jacob,” Jaho said. “The Scottish girl. The Philadelphia man. The Delaware and her husband. The Iroquois boy in Onondaga. My old friend Atticus, who deserved so much better.”
“You had nothing to do with their deaths,” Tanaqua insisted.
Jaho turned to Duncan,
who was checking his weakening pulse. “He did,” Duncan declared to the Mohawk. “Because he planted the idea of stealing Blooddancer with Kincaid and Hobart. It is why we are here.”
Tanaqua shook his head in confusion.
“I was working with Titus in the great house when those British soldiers first settled here,” Jaho explained in a near whisper, “when the prisoners started arriving. Those officers complained about the Iroquois being the impediment to their success, that the Iroquois messengers were too hard to stop. I had not heard men speak of the Iroquois as enemies for many years. I was not able to travel to Onondago to warn them so one night I suggested to them a way to distract the Iroquois, to scare them.”
“Steal a god from Onondaga,” Duncan suggested.
The half king gave a small nod.
“Because,” Duncan continued, “you knew men would come from the north to find it.”
“Because the right men would come.”
Tanaqua and Duncan exchanged a forlorn glance.
“The right men?” Tanaqua asked.
Jaho motioned for another drink before he spoke. “When I was young I heard a sound from the forest like I had never known before, like a bellowing scream. It scared me but it also filled me with excitement. My uncle took me out in the night to a place deep in the woods where it seemed much louder. He told me it was the sound of the last wood buffalo in our river country, an old bull that could no longer find females. I said that was sad, and he said no, listen better. He said it was one of the real things I heard, one of the ways the world gave voice at important times, that the old buffalo was speaking to us, that it was a song of the spirits telling us that essential things could never be defeated. He said the ones who carried the song would change but never the song itself. I said how could he know that and he said because I had heard it.”
It was Tanaqua who broke the silence. “Why would the half king need worry about taxes of the British king?” the Mohawk asked.
“I could never find a way by myself.”
“A way for what?” Frustration built in Tanaqua’s voice.
“To save the freedom men. They have to be saved. They must be saved. A new world is possible, but pathfinders must always lead the way. Freedom is what keeps our souls alive. Not everyone understands that, but the pathfinders do.” The old man shuddered, and clenched his teeth against the pain. His eyes shut and he drifted off. It was several minutes before he stirred.
“Why grandfather?” Tanaqua asked him. “Why let yourself become a slave?”
The Susquehannock made a motion with his shoulders, an attempt at a shrug. “I am no slave, Tanaqua my son. It’s just the way to be with these men here, and to be close to the earth. Young Winters always allowed me my walks out at night.”
“Why the Blooddancer?”
“Because he always had the strongest magic. Once I had talked with the old Trickster, in his lodge in the north. It was the night I left for the last big war with the Carolina tribes. I visited with him often after that, in my dreams. I always knew he and I had unfinished business,” he added. “One more battle.” His attempt at a grin was interrupted by another seizure. Duncan mixed a sedative and propped him up for a long drink.
“We’ll be missed,” Duncan said as Jaho began sleeping. “If they come for us they may try to drag him out as well.”
Tanaqua nodded and reluctantly followed Duncan back to the fields.
THE NEXT DAY TRENT, ESCORTED BY TWO SULLEN MARINES, OPENED the door before the morning bell to retrieve Duncan. Horses were waiting, including a mount for Duncan, who hesitated at the door, looking back at Jahoska. The old Susquehannock had not recovered consciousness all night, or at least not awareness. He had awakened in the small hours only to rave in his old tongue, not responding when they spoke to him. Duncan had seen the same symptoms in the Edinburgh wards of the aged. The brain might work but the tongue could not, or the brain would dwell only in places of the distant past. When Tanaqua had forlornly embraced Jaho, pleading with him to come back, the old man had patted him on the back and continued speaking in his lost tongue, as if comforting a frightened son.
Trent led the way at a trot, down the track that bisected the fields, past the African sheds toward the manor, and then up the slanting road that crossed the ridge to the mill. The other marines stood in a single rank near the dock, weary and frightened, their sergeant nervously watching the mill, where Kincaid stood on the porch with Alice Dawson and an African woman Duncan took to be Lila, the maid assigned to the mill. Only Alice moved, rushing to Duncan’s side as he dismounted. “He was still warm,” she said. “I thought there might be a chance . . .” Her words faded and she shrugged, then led him into the building.
Hobart’s bedroom was at the end of the corridor, past a door with a crudely painted cross. Several crates had been pushed to the walls and were covered with the officer’s clothing and belongings. A sword and pistol hung on a peg above the rope bed where the officer was sprawled.
Lieutenant Hobart was beyond Duncan’s help. His face and hands were contorted, his eyes wide and terrified. He had died in excruciating pain.
“They say he played whist with the men until late in the evening, then no one saw him again.”
On a chair near the bed, Hobart’s spectacles lay on three folded papers. Duncan made no effort to conceal his motions as he collected the papers and pushed them inside his waistcoat. “The lieutenant came to his room alone last night?” he asked.
Alice pulled Lila from the shadows by the doorway. “Alone?”
The maid nodded but kept her eyes on the floor. “I thought he was going to call for me like he often does but he had had too much ale. I was on my pallet at the other end of the corridor and watched as he stopped at the spirit dungeon. He pulled his dagger out and stared at that door.”
“Spirit dungeon?” Alice asked as Duncan began examining the body.
“You know, where they keep that Indian god. The lieutenant woke up from a nightmare last week, pushing me out of his bed onto the floor. He said they had to chain it and beat it, that it would learn not to mock him in his dreams.”
“Speak sense, child,” Alice chided. “Beat whom?”
Duncan answered for the frightened slave. “Blooddancer.”
Lila gave a vigorous nod. “The god in that mask.”
Alice put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Surely you’re not frightened of some old wooden curiosity.”
“No ma’m. It’s just that he wouldn’t be concerned about you, now would he?” Lila declared with a shuddering breath. “He isn’t your god and he has no feud with you. He’s their god, our god, and the soldiers have been hurting them.”
Alice took Lila’s hand in her own to calm her. “I woke up when Lieutenant Hobart came out after one of his nightmares last night,” the slave continued. “He stormed to the spirit dungeon, threw open the door, and fired his pistol at it, cursing the thing inside. Then he came back in here and didn’t come out. No one came into the building, I swear it. No one flesh and blood.”
Hobart had apparently passed out in his clothes. His gorget was still around his neck. Duncan lifted it and paused, seeing no sign of the stolen Delaware medallion, then fingered the lieutenant’s right sleeve near the elbow, where two little circles stained the fabric red.
“What do you mean our god?” Alice asked the African girl.
“The Indians were born out of the land here, just like my people were born out of the land in Africa. It’s why their skin is stained from the soil, like ours. The most powerful gods are the ones that bind a people to the earth.” Lila’s eyes widened as Duncan ripped open the sleeve. She pointed at the ruin of Hobart’s exposed arm. “Like the god that sent the serpent that done kil’t him.”
Alice took a step backward and quickly surveyed the floor around them.
The snake must have been huge. The distance between the two fang marks was nearly as long as his thumb. The dead man’s arm was grotesquely swollen and the skin
around the punctures had turned a greenish blue.
“His door was ajar when they found him,” Alice said.
“Snake come in, snake go out,” Lila concluded. “Just like that red god done told it so.”
Duncan quickly examined the rest of Hobart’s body. “It could be an act of—” he caught himself.
“An act of God,” Alice finished, with a hollow whisper, then seemed to collect herself. “We have huge vipers, water moccasins we call them, that live in watery places. A mill would always be home to mice, making it a good hunting place for them.”
Duncan completed his examination, then looked back at the upended crate that had served as the officer’s bedstand. “Hobart was drunk. It was dark. He had taken off his spectacles and may not have seen what it was. He may have swatted at the snake and angered it.” He searched the pillows, and under the officer’s blankets, finding nothing.
“It’s gone,” Alice said. He did not tell her he was not looking for the snake.
“Two nights ago,” Lila confessed, “he dragged me into that room and told me to spit on the god. When I refused he slapped me, then he opened his britches and made water in front of the god, taunting it, saying ‘how do you like my offering, you ugly old thing?’ That’s why he died. I went to the old grandmother in Ursa’s shed for a charm—” Duncan now saw the bundle of feathers stuffed up her sleeve “or it might have kil’t me too.”
Blood of the Oak: A Mystery Page 30