Rain began sheeting across the river as the sloop edged away. Duncan watched the bedroom window until the driving rain obscured it, his heart a cold lump in his chest. He had failed Sarah, and now he had failed Alice.
Trent, at the wheel, let the sloop drift on the tidal current around the long point. As Trent and the mate directed the raising of the sails, Hughes called out and pointed to a dugout pulling alongside. Conawago straddled the rail and reached down, pulling up Kuwali, who surveyed the big sloop with round, frightened eyes. “Ursa said his son’s freedom is his own freedom as well,” Titus called out as the dugout drifted away.
“Edentown! He’ll be in Edentown! We will send letters!” Conawago shouted to the old Ashanti as the dugout faded into the darkness.
The boy accepted Duncan’s hand with a melancholy smile then darted to the stern, staring toward Galilee until it was obscured by the river bend. He had lost the misery of slavery but he had lost his family too.
Soon afterwards, Webb, Winters, and two of the Virginia rangers dropped over the side into one of the trailing skiffs. Webb and Winters hesitated at the rail. “You have hard riding to do,” Duncan said.
“I know the roads,” Winters replied, “and where to find horses.” His face was lit with a new energy. “Duncan, you made me . . .” the young Virginian searched for words. “You made me understand,” he said. “You showed me how to become the man Jaho always wanted me to be.”
“You will make him proud, I am certain of it,” Duncan said, as the young Virginian shook his hand. “And you are certain you can find that house on the Potomac?” he asked as Winters descended into the boat.
Webb put a reassuring hand on Duncan’s shoulder. “He says we will make Mount Vernon by noon.” The major put a leg over the rail before turning again to Duncan. “Praise God, McCallum. All would have been lost but—” Webb said, swallowing down his emotion.
“But an old Susquehannock showed us the way,” Duncan finished.
Webb nodded. “Wilkes and liberty.”
“Wilkes and Jahoska,” Duncan replied.
The major nodded and slipped over the rail.
The Penelope’s surviving crew gave Trent a stiff reception at first but the overseer’s churlish disposition seemed to have been left on land. He obviously knew what he was about, and though he was quick to chide the company men for their awkwardness in handling lines and stays, he was also quick to show them how the task was done.
It was three hours past midnight when they set the sullen marine guards on an island in the middle of the river. Duncan insisted on Woolford staying out of sight but let Murdo accompany them in a dinghy.
“I’ll be busted for this,” growled the corporal as they set foot on the little patch of brush and rock.
“Be grateful to be alive,” Duncan reminded him. “My friends are short on compassion these days.”
“Back to private, damn your eyes,” the corporal groused.
“You’re English I take it?” Murdo asked in a light tone.
“Of course I’m English, you Scottish hound. And when I—”
The corporal never finished his sentence. Murdo landed a fist on his jaw so heavily he stumbled backward and fell in the mud.
“Now ye can show the bruise to prove ye resisted us,” Murdo hissed, then grinned at Duncan as he rubbed his fist. “That felt jolly good.”
Back on board, Trent was wistfully aiming a musket toward the shadowy shapes on the island. “You’re a soft-hearted fool, McCallum. They’ll tell the brig our course for certain.”
“They’ll tell the brig what they heard,” Duncan agreed. “But we said nothing about our true destination.”
Trent lowered the musket. “You said the open sea, while means running past the patrols and through Hampton Roads.”
“That will send the Ardent south if they reach the bay. We are jamming on every inch of sail she carries when we hit the open water and heading north. I have a craving for Chestertown oysters. Then we go up to the Susquehanna.”
DUNCAN WATCHED THE SUN RISE FROM THE MAINTOP, WHERE THE mainmast joined the short topmast, one arm wrapped around the mast. He had told his companions he was climbing to the tallest point of the ship to keep watch, but Conawago had seen through him.
“There’s nothing for it,” the old man grinned, for he had seen the longing in Duncan’s eyes. “You’ll be good for nothing until you take a lark aloft.”
For a few minutes after climbing the shrouds he felt as if he had shed years, the joyful memories of scampering in the rigging of Hebrides boats so overwhelming him that it was long minutes at the top before he remembered to look for a naval ship.
They were in the deep of the long bay now, and the wind and height gave him a sense of soaring above, as disconnected and free as the great osprey that flew close in the morning twilight. To the east lay the forested flatness of what was marked the Eastern Shore on their maps. To the west were the rolling hills of Virginia, cloaked in shadow. Between lay wind and sky, and a freedom he had not felt for months.
Freedom.
He glanced down at his companions, then with a more businesslike air studied the watery horizons. Several small fishing dories dotted the mouth of a river to the east. A sleek schooner, smaller than the Penelope, raced north ahead of them, probably headed for Annapolis or even Baltimore. His gut tightened as on the southern horizon he spied the square-rigged masts of what was in all likelihood a naval ship of the line, but then he realized that, bare-masted, she must be anchored.
He fixed his gaze on the now-distant point of land to the south that marked the mouth of the Rappahannock. If he had failed in his desperate attempt to disable the Ardent, if he saw her sails rising over the trees of the point, they would be doomed, for she would be close enough to spot the Penelope and her guns would soon reach them.
His gaze drifted back to the larger ship far down the bay. The murderous, lecherous Kincaid had taken Sarah. Her father had tried before to ship her back to England, to break her. She had even thrown herself into the Atlantic to escape Lord Ramsey, and she would do it again if given the chance. But this time Duncan would not be there to save her.
He watched the water until the mouth of the Rappahannock was long out of sight, no longer feeling the joy of the sailing but haunted by visions of Sarah as the prisoner of the man who had brutally murdered so many on the runners’ trail.
The call of a thrush, incongruous on the bay, stirred him from his waking nightmares. Duncan looked down to see Woolford holding onto the shrouds a few feet below him. He motioned the ranger captain to join him.
“We’re clear,” Duncan reported. “The Ardent will not find us now.”
Woolford nodded, and gazed out over the windswept bay. They did not speak for several minutes.
Duncan realized he had not had time to speak privately with his friend since Edentown, but he had seen the deep sadness behind Woolford’s eyes. “I regretted not being able to stay for Jessica’s funeral,” he offered.
Woolford took so long to reply that Duncan thought he had not heard. “She took hold of my heart like no woman ever before.” The ranger looked away, into the wind. “I carried my mother’s wedding ring all these years. I was going to give it to Jess that very day, to wear on a chain until the Virginia business was over. Then I was going to take her back to Pennsylvania and ask the blessing of her parents so I could put the ring on her proper. Instead I buried her with it. My heart has been like a cold stone ever since.”
There were no words Duncan could say. Woolford had lost Jess. He had lost Sarah.
“Lively!” came a sudden call from the deck. Trent was calling them down.
On a locker by the wheel, the mate had sketched a map of the Chester River on the back of a large chart. “Crabtown,” he explained, indicating an odd square drawn in the center of the river mouth. “Fish weirs and floating pens to hold crabs and oysters for market, connected with walkways in a square, with shanties floating alongside for the watermen.” He loo
ked up at Duncan and his friends. “Take the Penelope any closer than Crabtown and the harbormaster will be out asking our business.”
Trent, now at the wheel, took over. “So we lay in at the Choptank in another hour to call on the fishing dories.”
“We have no time,” Duncan protested.
“We must make the time. We cannot be suspected when we reach this Crabtown.”
“He’s right,” Woolford agreed. “Any warning into the town and all we seek will be hidden away.”
“So we need to foul the Penelope’s beauty,” Trent said. “We are going to cover our deck with bushels of fish and crabs.”
“We need to make her stink,” the mate agreed, seeming to warm to Trent’s plan. “We need to make her ugly.”
“We’ll never pass for a fishing boat,” Duncan objected.
“Not a fisherman, a market lugger. One of them that runs in to the villages along the bay to buy fish cheap then over to Annapolis to sell them dear.”
There were always ways to rough up a well-run boat, but Duncan saw the chagrin on the crew’s faces as they began slouching ropes and canvas over the rails and hauling up buckets of mud, dragged from the bottom, to drip over the hull. He watched for several minutes then turned over the chart the mate had drawn on, to find a map of the northern bay.
“Do London ships call on Chestertown or Annapolis?” he asked the mate.
The man scratched at the whiskers of his throat. “Not often, to be sure.”
“Where then? If I were desperate to make passage, where would I go?”
“There’s them that anchors in the Hampton Roads or even upriver toward Jamestown, though mostly when the tobacco harvest comes in. If you needed to be certain it would have to be Philadelphia. Three or four a week sail from there, I daresay.”
Duncan pointed to the road on the map that ran northeast out of Chestertown. “And to get there from where we are going?”
“A fast horse east to the Delaware coast, I reckon, then catch one of the packets that run up the river.”
“If I rode straight through to Philadelphia, without stopping?”
“Gawd, lad, you’d kill the horse and maybe yourself.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-five, thirty hours.”
“I can send messages, Duncan,” Woolford said over his shoulder.
“To sit on some clerk’s desk for days while half a dozen ships embark?” Duncan shot back. “And what do you say in a message? Stop a naval officer of good family who, no doubt, has a perfectly plausible letter from Lord Ramsey authorizing him to deliver his impaired daughter to England? No! The second we finish our business I will find two horses and run north, switching mounts as I go. I will swim out to every ship in the river to find her if I have to.”
“I see. The runaway Scottish bondservant accosts the refined naval gentleman,” Woolford snapped back, “who happens to be under the protection of a member of the House of Lords. I’ll be sure to think of something witty from Shakespeare for your tombstone.” He wheeled about and left Duncan staring forlornly at the map. Sarah was gone. He had destroyed that which he most wanted to save.
THE PENELOPE COASTED INTO CRABTOWN AT NOON THE NEXT DAY, reeking like a fish trader but with many of the company still grinning from the prior night’s banquet of crabs, oysters, and rockfish procured on the Choptank. At the end of a maze of weirs spread across the river mouth, the odd collection of floating sheds and holding pens was connected by floating logs, planked over to make crude, uneven walkways. The ragged, boisterous watermen who were working the pens eyed them uncertainly but soon warmed when Trent brought up a cask of ale from the sloop’s hold.
Duncan at first had such difficulty understanding some of the older men that he thought they must be speaking a foreign tongue, but then he caught the cadence and strange accents and realized they were using a very old English, the kind he might hear in a play of Marlow or Shakespeare. Their families, he realized, must have come over early in the prior century to this isolated region of the New World, and had never been diluted with immigrants from elsewhere.
The watermen seemed suspicious when he asked for a printer but soon, with the ale flowing, they explained there was but one print shop in Chestertown, though some of the watermen had the impression that the printer, Mr. Prindle, had been summoned elsewhere, for he had not been seen in town for weeks.
“A little golliwog of a man,” a gruff figure with huge calloused hands explained. “But a good heart. I fear he’s come to a woeful end. His big house’s been rented out to the government.”
“The government?” Duncan asked.
“Them water soldiers,” the man muttered as he expertly lifted a crab in his fingers, examining it so closely it appeared he was trying to stare down the creature’s stalky eyes. He glanced up. “Marines, they call ’em.” He gestured with his free hand to a little cove tucked inside a curving point of land, where a familiar boat lay anchored. It was the cutter, one of the two boats that had sailed the day before from Galilee.
“Exactly the parties we want to see,” Woolford ventured.
The waterman, lifting a second crab out of the basket, looked up suspiciously. “Thought ye wanted the printer.”
The mate of the Penelope broke the awkward silence. “Only for a broadside to advertise our sailing schedule. Got to let those all in the little coves know when to expect us, eh?”
“Then wherefore see them marines?”
“Provisions for His Majesty’s navy,” Conawago put in. “They’ve got supply officers roaming all over the bay these days.” He extended a mug of ale to the man. “Now exactly where we would find printer Prindle’s manse?”
The waterman made a rough sketch on a scrap of wood then hesitated as he looked up to hand it to Woolford, noticing Tanaqua. “Folks don’t go near the place these days. Fierce warriors be there, excuse me saying, sir,” he added with an uncertain nod to Tanaqua. “Caused much ado in the town when they arrived in the spring.”
“Warriors?” Conawago asked.
“Fighting savages brought from the north. Getting so womanfolk ’scared of going to church for fear of seeing them.”
DUNCAN AND TANAQUA WATCHED THE BACK OF THE COMPOUND from the night-black river, only their heads above water. No one seemed to have taken notice of the dozen men who had appeared in the dusk, singly and in pairs, to wander the cobbled street. Murdo and two of his men sat on a bench in front of a tavern, Trent and two sailors on the stone step of the steepled church that shared the brick wall of the printer’s compound. The guard at the gate onto the street appeared to be dozing. Duncan gestured Tanaqua forward and moments later they rose up out of the brackish water, using a stack of dories as cover.
Could it be possible the compound was so empty? They had not had the time to reconnoiter as Woolford had wanted. “Not the ranger way, to attack without knowing the enemy’s strength,” the captain had complained as they had studied the buildings through the telescope from one of the skiffs. But he had seen the cold determination in his companion’s eyes. “Fine,” he said to Duncan, and began checking the priming in his pistols. “We’ll just do it the Scottish way. Charge forward without a care in the world.”
“Not entirely,” Duncan had chided. “If it was a true Highland charge we would be screaming like banshees. We will aim for a silent advance, in deference to the rangers.”
The limb from the spreading chestnut of the church grounds hung over the wall, and as Duncan and Tanaqua advanced toward the back of the large house, a shadow dropped from the tree. The guard at the gate showed no reaction as Ononyot stole forward, knocked him unconscious, and dragged him into the shadows. Duncan and Tanaqua sprinted to the nearest window, which was cracked open, and climbed into the kitchen.
They inched through the darkened chamber, then into a dining room with a makeshift table made of planks on trestles. Duncan examined the room. The table could easily seat fifteen. Tanaqua hesitated over several white, curling objects on the sid
eboard, lifting one to show Duncan. They were collar stocks worn by British marines, slick with pipe clay.
“That cutter is anchored by Crabtown,” Duncan whispered. “Maybe they went back on board.”
But they had not gone back. In the front hall was a row of pegs on which hung eight uniform tunics and eight cartridge bags. Leaning along the opposite wall were muskets. The door on the opposite side of the corridor was closed but light leaked out along the bottom, and now they could hear quiet voices punctuated by exaggerated groans and exclamations. “Spades and diamonds!” someone called out. The marines were playing cards.
Duncan reached into a pouch and extracted Red Jacob’s ranger disc, tossing it to Tanaqua, who nodded and set to work with the guns, using the disc to unscrew the flint from each musket. Duncan lifted away a bag and began stuffing it with the cartridges from the other bags.
Back in the kitchen, he carefully opened the latches of the two doors to reveal a pantry and a cellar stairway. “There is no printing press in this building. Too heavy for the second floor.” He gestured to the squat brick building on the back corner of the compound that he had taken to be a boathouse.
The shutters were closed and the door of the building locked but its transom was open, and before Duncan could react, Tanaqua was in a tree, then on the roof and swinging through the narrow opening to release the latch. The air inside was laden with the scent of ink and wax. Tanaqua quickly lit a lantern and held it out to illuminate a printing press, a desk, and a large working table, below narrow shelves crammed with trays of type. Laid out on the table were three printed sheets with fresh seals affixed to them. The wax on the seals was still soft. “Tax commissions,” Duncan declared, in a low, angry voice. “Made today.”
Tanaqua picked up one of the papers. “I don’t understand. How could a tax commission be issued in Chestertown?”
Duncan held the candle closer, reading the names, written in a hand that was remarkably close to the original commissions. Jonathan Bork, Josiah Randolph, Zebediah Sturgis. They were the names revealed the day Jaho had been killed. You are directed to to deliver all proceeds to Lord Peter Ramsey, agent of the crown, the last line said. The most predictable thing about Ramsey was his insatiable greed. If commissions were stolen the government would not expect revenue collected by the commissioners, and the commissioners would never expect a commission with an official seal to be fraudulent. In the backwater and remote towns of Maryland and Virginia, Ramsey was building his own phantom kingdom.
Blood of the Oak: A Mystery Page 36