Duncan was not inclined to argue about the power of Iroquois gods. The snake may indeed have been sent by the twisted-face Trickster. But it had not been the snake who had taken the little quill-work medallion Hobart had stolen from Rachel Rohrbach.
When he finally followed Alice and Lila into the corridor, he saw the red back of a marine rushing outside. The door with the painted cross was now ajar. Inside, a candle had been lit below the red mask. In the wall beside the mask was a single round bullet hole. Underneath it, beside the rattle with four claws, was a freshly laid pile of British military hardtack and a cup of tea.
THAT NIGHT, AFTER CHECKING ON THE STILL-COMATOSE JAHO, Duncan gestured for Webb and Murdo, and brought out the papers he had taken from Hobart’s room.
The first was simply a folded sheet bearing the simple word “evidence” and Hobart’s signature on the outside, and as he lifted it, a single tax stamp fell out, one of those, Duncan suspected, that he had distributed to the company earlier in the summer. The next was a list of peculiar supplies, also in what appeared to be Hobart’s hand. Burnt bone dust, gum water, badger hair, prussian green, linen, lampblack, carmine. They studied the strange list, futilely trying to connect its contents to some purpose of the Krakens, then moved to the third paper, which was in a different hand. Larkin, oldster with black and grey beard, it said at the top. Then, Burns, red hair and scar above left eye, Frazier, powder scar on his cheek, Hughes, brown hair and bent nose, Townsend, youngster with blond hair tied at nape. It was a list of the men whose feet had been maimed. Duncan handed the paper to Webb.
The major read it and went still, closing his eyes. When he recovered he pulled out a writing lead, took the first list, turning it over to its blank side, and rose. “Sergeant Morris,” he called out, gesturing the sergeant forward. “I need a list of the men whose feet were pierced, ranked according to their ability to still walk.”
Morris frowned, but took the paper and paced along the company before sitting on the platform and writing names. As he reported back to Webb he took no notice of Murdo and Tanaqua as they followed him. Webb studied the paper Morris handed him, then with a grave expression offered it to Duncan, who quickly scanned it before looking up at the sergeant.
“A well-trained spy would have concealed the handwriting,” Duncan observed to Morris in a casual tone. “But then you never would have expected that I would be invited into Hobart’s quarters to examine his body.”
As Duncan extended the list of men from Hobart’s chamber, Sergeant Morris took a step backward, only to have Murdo and Tanaqua each seize an arm. His face drained of color. Duncan read the names and descriptions he had taken from Hobart’s room. “What was your price?” Duncan asked. “Six hundred forty acres? No,” he decided. “More. You didn’t just spy. Maybe two whole sections of Ohio bottomland? Was that your price for killing Devon and reporting on all that happens here? And no doubt setting the traps that snared all the Virginian rangers.”
“You’re going to hang, the lot of ye!” Morris spat. “Betraying the king!”
Duncan ignored him. “You didn’t want to give up that cheroot made from the tax commission. You were going to take it as evidence. All you could do was give them a single stamp, the one I gave you.” Duncan lifted the stamp. “You were most interested when Devon mentioned that Major Webb knew all the runner marks, but you cut him off when he wanted to speak about the water route.” He dropped the stamp. Morris watched it flutter to the floor. When he looked up Hughes was holding his knife inches from Morris’s neck. “Then you pounded a planting stick down his throat.”
“I was lashed that day with the rest of you!”
“Of course. How else to keep your secret safe? And two days later Major Webb is brought in as a prisoner.”
The sergeant frantically pushed back against Murdo and Tanaqua. Duncan put his hand on Hughes’s arm.
“He must die!” Hughes growled.
“What is it about the water route we’re not supposed to know?” Duncan pressed, still restraining Hughes’s hand. “Where do the ships go when they leave here?” He let the blade inch closer to Morris.
“I don’t know!” Morris groaned. “They call it the counting house, that’s all I know. They take the boats to the counting house!” The blade touched his throat. “They would never trust me. I am just another commoner, one of their servants!”
Duncan knew he was right, and knew also that if they inflicted the punishment Morris so richly deserved, Gabriel’s reaction would interfere with their escape.
THEY HEARD THE SOUND OF THE BAR BEING LIFTED IN THE EARLY dawn, then the gasp of surprise and the thud of the bar on the ground. Murdo kicked open the door but no one stepped outside. Trent began blowing his horn.
Framed in the open doorway they could see Morris, gagged and bound, suspended from the big oak by a rope looped under his arms. His body was badly bruised from the beating he had taken, and from the pebbles Sinclair had shot at him with his sling as he was suspended. Blood dripped down his face. His Virginia men had sewn the tax stamp into the skin of his forehead.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Duncan did not understand the grin on Gabriel’s face when he arrived to watch Morris be cut down. The pharaohs too had seemed amused as they laid the unconscious sergeant over a horse and led him away to the overseers’ barn. An hour later, when the sun was burning their skin in the fields, they heard the groan of heavy axles and saw a crew of Africans hauling the cut timbers on oxcarts toward the knoll at the bottom of the fields. The Africans had been told they were cutting timbers for a new shed but Duncan knew better.
Workers in the manor compound stood on the lawn and watched as the slaves fitted the joints together, hammering in pins and positioning the joined pieces under the direction of some of the overseers. As the lunch cart began its slow journey into the fields, the ox teams began pulling, raising the frames as the men levered them into holes. The lunch had been served out by the time the company began to recognize the structure. Many stopped eating and just stared. By the end of the day the gallows would be ready, and beside it the gibbet for displaying their bodies.
“There is no time left. We must leave this place,” Duncan said to Webb, who seemed unable to take his eyes off the knoll. “When Ramsey arrives with his tame magistrate he will be impatient to begin putting it to work.”
The major spoke without turning. “Not with our best men crippled, and another eight or nine who couldn’t run a quarter mile without collapsing. Barely half a dozen strong enough to resist if we are followed. Not to mention no one to guide us through the swamp. My God,” he moaned, as the Africans levered up the first posts of the gibbet and dropped it into its holes. The major’s hand went to his neck. “This is the end.”
Duncan shook Webb’s shoulder, pulling him around to face him. “Tomorrow night,” Duncan pressed. “If Jahoska has not regained enough strength, I will carry him on my back so he can guide us. It has to be tomorrow night. Those who haven’t enough strength will have to be helped by those who do.”
They both looked back at their quarters. They had left Jahoska still unconscious, his pulse but a faint tremor. Trent had ordered all of them out, leaving no one to tend to the Susquehannock, whose aged body had no strength to recover from his injuries. Even Chuga was gone, for in that second night of his coma Jaho had awakened and, his arm draped over the mournful dog, had whispered for long minutes near his ear, then asked Duncan to take him back to the swamp before slipping back into unconsciousness. The big retriever had stayed dutifully on the bank, staring at the slave barracks.
Duncan had not seen Webb so despondent in all the long weeks of their imprisonment. The major cast a glance toward the young overseer. “Young Winters has a Christian heart. Maybe he will bring paper and ink if I ask. The men will want to write their families.”
When Murdo straightened an hour later Duncan thought he had seen the water cart coming. “Sweet Mother Mary!” the big Scot gasped.
Duncan follow
ed his eyes toward the far end of the field, where a horse stood, bareback, a stone’s throw from the forest. “It’s my Joanie, Duncan! It’s little Joan of Arc!”
Duncan cupped his hand above his eyes to look at the chestnut horse. “Surely not, Murdo. It’s too far away for us to know. She could never have—”
“But I know her!” Murdo insisted. “My Jess’s favorite. Fearsgar math!” he shouted.
The horse’s head snapped up at the Gaelic greeting and she trotted fifty feet closer. The Pennsylvania men were all watching now, confused grins lifting their despairing faces. Then something behind her caught the mare’s attention. She snorted and wheeled about, kicking up her feet as she disappeared up the forested slope.
“Murdo!”
The call was from Sinclair, who was pointing to the end of their quarters. Sometime in the night the outlines of two buildings had been sketched there in charcoal. A school and a barn. They were the runner signs for the Conococheague and Edentown stations. The drawings were no more than five feet off the ground. He looked back in alarm to the slope where the horse had disappeared. It would be the height that Analie could reach.
Trent’s split cane whip slashed the air over Murdo’s head. “Sotweed!” the overseer barked.
The water cart, tended by Kuwali and his mother, was finally approaching when a cloud of dust appeared behind it. Several mounted figures were hurrying out of the compound, followed by a column of marines marching at double time. Duncan, and all the Iroquois, took several steps toward the stable as they saw Lieutenant Kincaid, Gabriel, and several overseers dismount by their quarters. Two of them ran inside and dragged out a limp figure.
“Jaho!” Tanaqua cried.
Duncan dropped his hoe and stepped deliberately toward the stable, ignoring the cane on his shoulder. He heard Trent curse and turned to see that half the company had done likewise. Winters had lowered his own staff to join the procession. Kincaid, spotting them, quickly dispatched marines, who ran to form a line, bayonets fixed, between the slaves and the stable yard. The Welsh sergeant in command of the squad cocked his musket and extended it from his waist. Duncan held out his arms and the men behind him stopped, twenty paces from the marines.
Kincaid ordered the overseers to release the old Susquehannock, who barely had the strength to stand. He raised a riding crop and slashed repeatedly at Jahoska’s face, pummeling the old man so severely Gabriel stepped forward as if to intervene, only to have Kincaid turn on him, slapping the superintendent himself with the crop. In that instant of distraction Jahoska darted with unexpected energy past the marines who were facing down the Judas slaves, closing half the gap toward Duncan and his companions before collapsing. Winters dashed past Duncan to help, but Jahoska shook off his proffered hand then stared pointedly at Duncan as if to be certain he had his attention before dropping to his knees. To Duncan’s bewilderment, he clasped his hands and lifted his head toward the sky in a Christian prayer. Then he staggered to his feet, walked a few more steps, ignoring the running boots behind him, and lifted his hands again, with a finger of each hand extended over his head, one pointing upright and the other at an angle along the side of his head.
As Kincaid and Gabriel reached the old man Winters stepped between them and Jahoska, earning a shrill epithet from Gabriel and a slash of Kincaid’s crop on his cheek before a marine pulled Winters away. Gabriel pounded Jaho on the back with his fist, knocking him to the ground, but the old man managed to roll away. Duncan inched closer as the lieutenant approached Jaho, then halted, once more in confusion. Kincaid had stopped as well, staring at the Susquehannock. Jaho was back on his knees now, holding an uprooted tobacco plant out to the officer.
“Dottering old imbecile!” the marine officer spat, then leapt forward to knock away the tobacco and shove Jahoska to the ground. He angrily seized Gabriel’s baton and had lifted it for a blow when a shape hurtled past Duncan, toppling two marines. Tanaqua was on Kincaid before the stunned officer could react. Tanaqua landed two vicious blows to Kincaid’s jaw before the lieutenant began fighting back. The two rolled in a cloud of dust and fists, then marines swarmed over the Mohawk. One instantly reeled backward with blood gushing from a broken nose, another staggered back, crying out in pain, with two fingers hanging at a disjointed angle. Finally the Welsh sergeant’s musket butt slammed down into the tangle of bodies and the soldiers pulled the stunned Mohawk away.
An overseer began blowing on his tin horn. His heart hammering, Duncan watched as Jahoska and Tanaqua were dragged to the stable yard and tied to the whipping posts. Gabriel’s pharaoh riders galloped up and, with the marines, quickly herded the Judas slaves into a line around the logs that bordered the yard. They were to witness the punishment.
Kincaid retrieved Gabriel’s baton and as he waited for the prisoners to be assembled he starting slamming its iron ball into one of the logs with furious, repetitive blows. His eyes were wild, his blows landing with such fury they were shredding the wood. Finally, the prisoners made ready, he twirled the club over Jahoska’s head and swung down, stopping the treacherous ball inches above the old man’s skull. “I will have satisfaction!” he shouted to the assembled slaves. “Give me the names of commissioners or these men die!”
Tanaqua, tied to the post beside Jahoska, looked up, exchanging a confused glance with Duncan. Kincaid’s desperation was not about Hobart’s death; it was about the name of the tax collectors whose commissions had been intercepted. Duncan looked back at the manor. Ramsey was coming, and Kincaid had not completed his mission. The lieutenant had to preserve the runners for hanging, but Jaho was not a runner.
“I will have the names! I will have them now!” Kincaid pulled away the leather covering of Gabriel’s rivet-headed tails and cracked them against Jahoska’s back. As he aimed the whip a second time a voice called out.
“Jonathan Bork, Esquire, Caroline County.” It was Hughes.
Kincaid’s lips curled in an icy smile and he pointed to his Welsh sergeant, who pulled out a paper and lead and started writing. He lifted the lash again.
“Josiah Randolph, Spotsylvania County,” shouted another man, causing the lieutenant to pause again. The names were well known to those who had carried the messages. They had not given them up under torture but they would do so to save the gentle old Susquehannock.
Jahoska loudly interrupted, with a sharp speech in the tongue of his fathers that had the sound of rebuke. Suddenly he switched to English. “My name is Jahoska, born of the beaver clan of the Susquehannocks, masters of the mother river!” he shouted to the sky. “Men once quaked at the name of my tribe. I hunted wood buffalo when I had seen only nine winters, killed my first Catawba at fourteen, and the next year slayed the bear whose skull shielded my head in battle!” He spoke with an odd cadence, as if reciting a poem. “I saw the great Penn under the elm at Shackamixon and traveled the salt waters all the way to the great Spanish forts. In the year of the fire comet I rode on the back of a sturgeon as long as a canoe!”
Tanaqua stiffened. It was a death song. The soldiers, seeing how all the Iroquois had tensed as if to leap, leveled their muskets at them.
“Zebediah Sturgis of Accomac,” shouted another Virginia ranger, as if trying to drown out Jahoska.
But the aged warrior continued, calling out the names of battles and brothers who fell in them, twisting in his bindings as he did so. Suddenly an arm came free. Kincaid snarled and was about to strike down the old man’s hand when he froze. Jahoska was extending the quillwork medallion that had adorned Hobart’s neck.
The lieutenant trembled with rage. “By God! It was you who killed him!”
The lieutenant was deaf now to the names that were frantically shouted by the prisoners. He stepped back and viciously applied the whip. “You killed an officer of His Majesty’s marines!” he shrieked. “You worthless old fool!”
It was no tribal shout that rose now from Jahoska as the steel tips began to shred his back. “Sé mo laoch, mo ghile mear,” he called in a tigh
t, cracking voice. Murdo turned to Duncan. The old Indian was speaking Gaelic, singing the defiant anthem that he had heard so often in the stable, the battle hymn of the Highlanders who had befriended and protected him. This was his war and he had to be allowed to fight it, the old warrior was saying to the young warriors. One Scot, then another, took up the song as the old man’s skin was flayed. Jahoska sang ever louder as if to block out his pain, his words faltering as the lashes struck, then renewing, though always with fading strength. Tears filled Duncan’s eyes, and he saw that half the men wept as they sang.
The Iroquois rangers who had run the woods with the Highlanders joined in, and the song took on the cadence of a tribal chant. “Sé mo caesar mear!” Raw flesh was exposed and ripped away. “Suan na se an ni.” Tanaqua sang even louder, twisting in his bindings to see the old man. Duncan shuddered with each stroke of the leathers. Jaho’s voice died away. His eyes were locked on Tanaqua’s now, and he was smiling even as the light steadily faded from them. Winters leapt forward to grab the whip and paid for it with a vicious lash to his face. Duncan took a step forward and found a bayonet point pressed against his belly. His heart withered in his chest. The old man was looking more like one of the anatomical specimens of Duncan’s medical college than a living human.
Kincaid would not stop. Jahoska had known he would not stop when he had taunted the officer with the medallion. The Jacobite song faded away and in the terrible silence they could hear small animal-like moans coming from the old man each time the lash struck. Finally Jaho clenched his jaw and took up a war chant of his own people, the words rushing out between grunts of pain. Kincaid, tiring of his gruesome work, handed the whip back to Gabriel, who took up the task with renewed energy, working the lashes down the old man’s spine until the bright ivory of bone could be seen. One of the marines turned away, retching. Gabriel’s arm rose up and down as the blood pooled on the ground. The superintendent cooed like a satisfied bird.
Blood of the Oak: A Mystery Page 31