Duncan began searching the desks. The seal stamp used on the commissions was in the top drawer, along with several blank tax commissions ready to be completed. He set them on the desk, the seal on top of them, and opened more drawers. There was a ledger book with entries for Virginia and Maryland, evidencing tax collections that totaled several hundred pounds. The bottom drawer yielded several pots of ink and a locked wooden box. He extracted his knife and pried it open to find two packs of letters tied with red ribbons.
The red ribbons were used for filing in government offices but these letters were all to Lord Ramsey and Lieutenant Kincaid. On quick review the first stack were all receipts and lists of expenses for Ramsey’s secret tax network. The second contained letters from New York, Philadelphia, Williamsburg, and Charleston. The first of these, an unsigned missive from Johnson Hall, read like a military report on the movement of certain Mohawks and Oneidas known to be closely allied with Sir William Johnson. With a chill Duncan recognized some of the names, all of them members of the ranger corps. A second letter described the movements of Woolford, Red Jacob, and other named runners. Still another letter, in a rough scrawl, reported schedules of trade convoys up and down the Susquehanna. It was signed simply “Bricklin.”
There was a letter to Ramsey from the governor of Massachusetts raging over the disrespect shown by Samuel Adams, who, he haughtily pointed out, preferred the company of low farmers and sailors to that of proper gentlemen, and was rumored to be active in Boston’s insidious committee of correspondence that was trying to foment dissent across colonial borders.
Tanaqua spun about, knife in his hand, facing the shadows at the rear of the building. Duncan too heard the noise now, a strange sawing sound from the darkness. He lifted the candle and inched forward, discovering more shelves and a ladder leaning in a corner. They paused, confused, until they heard the sound again, coming from under their feet. Tanaqua pointed to a large cast-iron ring in the floor, then to a bar with a handle and a hook that, when tried, fit into the ring. The Mohawk snagged the ring and heaved up, pulling away a square section of the floor. A fetid odor of unwashed human, fish, candle smoke, ink, and rum rose up from the darkness.
They slid the ladder into the hole and descended into a storeroom. On a narrow rope bed, beside an upturned crate holding an extinguished candle, a book, and a jar of rum, lay a snoring man. Long black hair was slicked over his bald crown. His hands were stained with ink. They had found the missing printer.
Duncan lifted Prindle into a sitting position, but when he released him he dropped back onto his pillow, senseless. The smell of rum was heavy on his breath.
“Prindle!” Duncan said, as loudly as he dared, then gestured for Tanaqua to help lift him to his feet. “Prindle, we are getting you out of here.”
The drunken man’s eyes fluttered open. “Ohhhh, aye. Well met,” he slurred in a high-pitched voice, then his head sank toward his shoulder.
“Prindle!” Duncan pressed, then lifted the printer’s chin. “Do you know a man named Bowen, Jeremiah Bowen?”
“Bowen, Bowen. Got to be a’going,” Prindle chuckled.
“Where is he, man? Where is Bowen?”
“Buried like a mole,” Prindle replied with a big smile. “But no more prisoners, prithee ’cause I’m fresh out of cellars.”
They located the outside cellar door at the side of the house, shielded by rhododendron bushes, but to Duncan’s dismay it was secured with a heavy padlock. “The door inside the kitchen!” he urged Tanaqua, well aware that they could be discovered by the soldiers at any moment. They had left the inebriated printer in his underground cell but did not know if their light in the print shop had been seen. “There was a stairway down to the—” He froze as he realized the tribesman beside him was not Tanaqua or any of their Iroquois companions.
There was anger in the man’s eyes, but also curiosity. He ignored Duncan’s greeting in the Haudensaunee tongue, and just stared over Duncan’s shoulder. Tanaqua appeared beside him. “Seneca,” Tanaqua declared with a tentative tone. Although part of the Iroquois League, many of the Senecas, the westernmost of the confederated tribes, had fought against the Mohawks in the war with the French and had often been the most bloodthirsty of those raiding settlers in the recent native uprising.
“Not another step,” the Seneca stated, his voice raw with warning. “Go now and we will not draw blood.” A war ax was in his hand.
Tanaqua inched closer but kept his open hands held out. “Brother, this is not your fight.”
“Some in our village starved to death last winter,” the Seneca said. “This is how we feed our families when the next snows come.” The man was as big as Tanaqua. His grip on his ax tightened. “We do not care whose blood we take if it saves our families.”
“And who,” Tanaqua asked him, “will protect your families when the Great Council hears what you have done?”
“The Council is a circle of aging bears who have lost their teeth. Bricklin promised us flour and salted beef.”
Duncan sensed the tension in Tanaqua. The Mohawk was struggling not to react to the insult. “It is not only the Great Council you need to fear,” Tanaqua said. “There are others, in this world and the next, who will learn how you helped kill the Blooddancer.”
The fight seemed to drain from the Seneca’s face. His hand went to the totem pouch on his neck. “Do not say such things! The Blooddancer is safe in Onondaga.”
“No,” Duncan said. “He was stolen by the men you protect. Stolen to break the Mohawks who stand with us.”
“You do not know of such things!” the Seneca spat. “You are not of the Haudensaunee!”
“We have tracked the captured god,” Tanaqua stated. “He was in Virginia, just days ago. These men stole him. They would torture him and cut the chain that binds our people.”
The Seneca glanced up at the window of the small third story of the house, then fingered his ax. “Not possible. I would know.”
Tanaqua was done arguing. He abruptly raised his forearm, letting the moonlight catch its tattoo, evidence of his sacred trust. “I am the keeper of the secrets of Dekanawidah!” he recited in a furious whisper. He seemed to grow taller, more formidable, as he spoke, edging closer to the Seneca. “I am the shadowkeeper! I am the blade of the ancient spirits! Defy the spirits and the gate to the next world will be forever closed to you!”
The Seneca’s jaw dropped open as he recognized the words of an Iroquois spirit warrior. His face clouded, his eyes widened. He backed away, all sign of resistance gone, then spun about and disappeared into the shadows.
In the corner of the kitchen Duncan opened the narrow door and climbed down. As they descended they saw light flickering on the stone flags and heard a quick metallic rattle. Tanaqua and Duncan exchanged a knowing glance. It was a sound they had heard often at Galilee.
A stooped, lugubrious-looking man sat on a stool in a corner of the cellar set apart from the barrels and crocks used for food storage by sheets suspended on ropes. From an iron ring in the stone wall a chain ran to the manacle around the man’s ankle. A well-appointed bed, a nightstand stacked with books, and a commode with a pitcher, basin, and pot suggested he was not being altogether deprived.
Along one side of his linen-walled chamber was a long table bearing two bright whale oil lamps, with papers, paint pots, and brushes scattered across it. An easel had a muslin cloth tossed over it. The artist glanced nervously up at them, then back down at the floor.
“Mr. Bowen? Jeremiah Bowen?” Duncan winced at his fearful expression when he looked up again. “The miller of Galilee?”
“Miller no more,” the man replied in a forlorn tone.
“Yes, well,” Duncan said awkwardly. “I must confess we had to burn your mill.”
Bowen cocked his head at them for a moment then shrugged. “Navy’s loss, not mine. They requisitioned it. That was the word they used. Requisitioned in the name of the king. One lieutenant gave me a note saying they owed me seventy pounds
sterling for it. The other gave me a note saying I owed them seventy pounds for not killing me. They had a great laugh over it, then fed both papers to the candle flame.”
“Your work is most authentic,” Duncan observed as he looked over the papers on the table. “I saw your replica of the Virginia charter.”
“I describe it as the school of authentic painting,” Bowen answered.
Several letters sat in a row as if awaiting inspection, each appearing to be in a very different hand. One was signed by Benjamin Franklin, one by Samuel Adams, one by William Johnson. Pinned to the sheet above the table were lists, notes, even ledger pages in different hands, but each with identifying names written in block letters at the bottom. They were the samples being collected by Kincaid’s bounty hunters, the actual writings that provided the basis for the forgeries. Benjamin Franklin, said the first. As he pulled it down he saw the bloodstain along the top. There is treachery in Virginia, it said. Hold all messages in Pennsylvania. Webb sent word. Let no one venture south. It was signed simply Franklin.
A chill ran down Duncan’s spine. It could only be the message taken from Ralston when he had been tortured and killed on the Susquehanna.
He examined more of the papers on the wall. Patrick Henry, he read, then James Otis, Samuel Adams, John Dickinson, Peyton Randolph, and half a dozen more. They were samples of actual handwriting. He paused as he studied the last letter in the row, then pulled it from the wall and stuffed it in his waistcoat before picking up the letter on the table bearing William Johnson’s signature. It was an invitation to a French general to send troops up the Ohio Valley, and a description of the weaknesses of the British outposts, with an authentic-looking signature by Johnson. He remembered the list he had retrieved from the mill. Johnson would die for trunnel nails and teapots.
Beside the forged letter from the baronet were three more, each signed by one of the governors whose handwriting appeared on the wall. They were instructions to the chief officers of their legislatures, ordering that no members of the colonial legislature were permitted to travel outside the colony without their governor’s permission. The Krakens were getting desperate in their efforts to block the feared congress.
When he finally looked back, Bowen gave him a bitter smile. “As you see, they keep me alive for my art. Using the stolen handwriting samples I have mastered fourteen different hands at last count. I could hang for even one. I have fourteen nooses waiting. After the first it didn’t seem to matter.”
“Not if you have been compelled against your will, sir.”
Bowen hesitated, his brow creased with inquiry. “Why would you burn my mill?”
“To escape. We have a ship waiting. You no longer work for the Commodore.”
Bowen’s reaction was one of alarm, not relief. He shrank back as Tanaqua approached, but did not resist as the Mohawk bent over his manacle, taking out one of the pins they used to pop open such restraints. “No! No! He vowed to crush my hands if I tried to escape!”
“Do what we say, Mr. Bowen, and your hands will remain intact.”
As Tanaqua worked, Duncan studied the room. The lamps had been positioned to illuminate the easel near Bowen’s stool. A drop of chestnut-colored paint fell into a pool of a similar color at the foot of the easel. Bowen had not been working on another forgery when they disturbed him. As Tanaqua tapped at the pin with the hilt of his knife, Duncan pulled away the muslin cover.
His heart leapt into his throat. Although the portrait was not yet complete, the fiercely determined eyes, the high cheeks, the auburn hair, and soft yet firm chin were unmistakable.
“Where is she?” he demanded of Bowen. “Where is Sarah Ramsey? Where did you see her?”
“They didn’t tell me her name. I—I didn’t ask permission, sir, beg pardon. But she was so striking. Sometimes—” he gestured toward the table. “After all this sometimes I just want to paint a thing of beauty. I only saw her but a few minutes when she arrived, while I was in the kitchen, then again at noon today. I was showing the lieutenant some letters upstairs. She was asleep on a chaise by the window, with the sunlight playing on her hair. I didn’t mean to . . .” his words faded into a stammer. He looked down nervously as Tanaqua pried open the manacle. “Please, sir. You misunderstand. I can’t go up without his permission. Without my hands my life is for naught.”
“Kincaid?”
“Not the lieutenant. The Irish giant. A gentleman named Teague.”
A hungry, angry sound rose from Tanaqua’s throat.
They had to practically drag Bowen up the stairs but he did not protest as they led him out the door to the print shop. They assured him he would be safe as they lowered him down with Prindle, who was snoring again.
From the house they finally heard movement. Shapes dropped from the lower windows into the boxwood and rhododendron around the house. The Seneca guards were positioning for battle.
Suddenly it was quiet. The boisterous men in the cobbled street had disappeared. An owl hooted from the stable across from the house. A whippoorwill answered from somewhere near the church, and urgent whispers rose from the Seneca hiding among the plantings. They recognized the Iroquois calls. An eerie drumming began from the loft of the stable. Hughes had found a drum in the church.
The owl called again, and the baffles of two lanterns fell away, one in the church steeple and one in the open door of the stable loft. Frightened gasps came from the shadows around the house.
A ghostly figure appeared in the light of the steeple. Bones dangled from the huge, angular, white body beneath a hideous, twisted face. It was an Iroquois spirit, or the closest effigy the rangers could manage in the short time they had to prepare. In the stable, the skull of a horse, found hanging on a peg at the back of the stable, had been adorned with horns of braided straw. Hung from a rope, it appeared to eerily hover over the lantern.
“Is this the night you pay the gods?” the figure by the steeple called out in the Iroquois tongue.
More whispers, some frantic, could be heard from the shadows, then quieted as Tanaqua spoke from behind a tree, only thirty feet from the house. “Brothers, come with us to the north. We will give you venison and warm robes for the winter. There is no honor in dying for these men.”
The tall Seneca who had confronted them at the cellar door appeared in the moonlight. Five others joined him, including one with a musket who had been hiding only ten feet from Tanaqua.
Muskets roared from second-floor windows, aimed at the spirit figures. One ball hit the bell, raising a clear, solitary peal that lingered over the silent town. Angry voices rose from inside the house. A familiar figure leaned out as he saw the Senecas fleeing down the street.
“Damned cowards!” Teague boomed from the window. “I’ll harvest every one of y’er scalps, damned ye to hell!” He fired a musket and one of the Senecas cried out in pain, holding his shoulder. His companions grabbed him and quickly pulled him into an alley.
The men in the house were prepared for a battle, but the rangers and Iroquois did not fight battles, they fought skirmishes with short, stealthy attacks. More second-story windows opened, and more muskets appeared, accompanied by angry curses as marines discovered their flints were missing. A rifle cracked from the stable, another from a tree, each wounding a man in the windows, who were angrily pushed aside as more of Teague’s men returned the fire. Duncan was not worried, for his companions were trained to always move after firing a shot.
One of Teague’s men darted out of the front door and was instantly rendered unconscious by Ononyot, who materialized out of the shadows by the door. Another man made the mistake of leaning out a first-floor window and was instantly pulled out, headfirst, by Hyanka.
Duncan, Murdo, and three rangers entered through the kitchen and warily approached the central hallway, where two of Teague’s ruffians stood with muskets aimed at the front door. A shadow darted past Duncan, and Kuwali slammed a broom onto the back of the nearest man then disappeared into the darkened dining room.<
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“Goddamned little piece of manure!” the man spat and leapt after the boy. The broom handle shot out, tripping him, and Duncan heard the ring of an iron skillet on his skull. Analie appeared, victoriously waving her weapon from the kitchen. Kuwali and the girl had refused to stay on the sloop. The man remaining by the stairway backed into the pistol held by Trent. “Nice and gently now,” the former overseer said in a whimsical voice as he reached for the musket. “The party’s almost over and it’d be a pity to leave blood on the floor for folks to slip on.”
The man yielded, and was led away to be bound with the other captives. Duncan and Tanaqua cautiously ascended the stairs. The chamber at the top, apparently used as a small ballroom, echoed with the retort of another musket aimed out the window.
Duncan spoke to the man who had just fired. “Sergeant, there are a dozen men out there who would rejoice at the chance of balancing their score with you. Surrender now and you will survive.”
The sergeant spun about and reached into his cartridge box but his hand came out empty. “Fix bayonets!” he screeched.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Duncan’s heart sank as the treacherous blades were dutifully clicked into place, then a hand was on his shoulder. Woolford, in his captain’s uniform, pushed past. He casually set his cap on a chair. “Ensign?” he addressed the young officer who stepped past the sergeant. “It is ensign I believe?”
The officer gave a nervous nod.
Blood of the Oak: A Mystery Page 37