She looked at him. ‘We?’
He twisted his head towards her. ‘We.’
She smiled. In the torchlight she could see his deep green eyes, and there was something comforting in that. She may be paying him as her manservant, but they still shared common bonds, common outlooks. The realisation surprised her, and cheered her at the same time.
‘Do you miss her?’ she asked. ‘Your daughter? ’Tis hard enough leaving Daniel with Winthrop, but I can visit him whenever I want.’
He pulled himself up straight. ‘I never knew she was even alive until that day her mother came to my door, handed her over and left. But as soon as I saw her, I could do nothing but love her.’ He kicked at the bench with his heels. ‘It was a hard decision to agree that my sister should raise her, but it was for the best, and I would visit at least once a week. So not seeing her for months – ’tis difficult. But the money you gave me has made it worth it, and not just that. The voyage itself, getting to know you, working to regain your trust.’ He glanced away. ‘It sounds absurd, but it has made me a better man.’
‘It has had an effect on me too. But Nicholas, you were a kind man to begin with.’
‘Hmm.’ He grunted. ‘I don’t know if I want to be called kind. Not very … manly.’
She laughed. ‘Then what?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Adventurous. Virile.’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘No doubt there are women in London who would recognise that description.’
He scoffed. ‘I wish.’
‘Come, you are—’ She stopped, unwilling to say any more.
He looked up, fixing her with a smile that agreed better left unsaid. He cleared his throat. ‘So – what is happening with you and Nathan?’
‘That is none of your business.’
‘That’s what he told me aboard the Redemption. And I’ll tell you again what I told you then, whether I’m your manservant or not. Don’t let chances slip away when they come along.’
A hollowness burnt in her stomach. ‘Bad things seem to happen to people I become close to. I do not think I could face it again.’
A pause. ‘Forgive me, but – do you love him?’
It was an impertinent question, but one that needed to be asked, and she was grateful that he had. ‘In truth, and do not tell him I told you, I do not know.’
‘Why not?’
She shrugged. ‘Sometimes I think I do, and others I do not think anything at all.’
‘But you never think you don’t?’
‘No. But I had told myself I would not marry again.’
‘Has he asked you?’
‘No.’
‘And if he does?’
The first image that flashed into her mind was that of her son, warm by a fire in Hartford, and then the picture changed to one she had of him, very early in his young life, sleeping in his father’s arms before a similar fire in Halescott, before Will rode off to war and never came back. The memory pierced her forcefully, more so than usual of late.
She looked up at the stars; they were so bright here, so beautiful. ‘As I said, he has not asked. And if he does, that will be between me and him.’
Nicholas nodded, shivering slightly as he rubbed at his breeches; it was a cold night, she realised, and he was only wearing a thin shirt. Typical of her to bring him outdoors without noticing.
‘Do you want to go back?’ she asked.
‘In a minute.’ He removed his hands from his legs. ‘Have you thought any more about those codes? Amery and I were talking about them last night.’
‘You two are getting along?’
‘I wouldn’t say that, as such. But when you have to share quarters, you’ve got to find a way to make it work.’ He scratched his cheek. ‘Though I found it easier when I served on the ships. He is a bit – clever.’
She smiled. ‘What do you think then?’
‘About what?’
‘Your question. What do you think about these killings? These codes.’
He widened his eyes. ‘You want my opinion?’
‘Of course.’
He sat back, clearly pleased. ‘Well, I think there is a madman in the town.’
‘Or a calculating one. I wish we could determine his motive.’
He nestled his right leg under his left. ‘Why does any man kill another? Anger. Hatred. Because he wants to win a fight, steal a coin.’
‘I think ’tis more than simple emotion. I think there is a plan at work. Why else would he leave those messages every time? If we solve that, I believe we will be close to solving it all.’
‘Maybe. But wouldn’t it be better to think about the man, not about what he writes to tease us? The codes might be mere distractions. For example, do you realise they are all thirteen letters long, before the space?’
‘I had noticed that.’ She inclined her head. ‘Well observed. But it might be coincidence.’
‘And yet another distraction.’
‘Then how else do we solve this?’
‘Listen to people. Try to understand how this town works and lives. Think as they do, not as we do back home.’
She looked at him. ‘You are a wise man yourself, Nicholas.’
‘Just common sense.’ He leapt from the bench. ‘Now, I’d best get you back, or Nathan will worry some more.’
She laughed, letting him lead her through the gate. Yet she remained perturbed that such conversation was not so straightforward with Nathan, aware of the barrier she had struck up, but having little will to break it down.
As they passed into the town, she thought she heard a rustle in the undergrowth behind, but lost in her thoughts she paid it no heed: there were enough small animals and birds about. Nicholas replaced the torch in its sconce, and she bade him goodnight at the meeting house, refusing his offer to walk her to the cottage. There was no one in the streets, and it was close enough; still, she watched him until he faded out of sight, more worried for his safety than for herself.
She strolled through the dark, enjoying deep gulps of air as she gazed once more at the pristine sky. She remembered some of the constellations from her journey with Winthrop – Pegasus, the mythical horse’s body lit by the four points of a great square; Cassiopeia, its five stars marking out a giant letter W twinkling in the sky.
And then she stopped. What if the codes, like Cassiopeia, were hiding a motif in plain sight? A design that could only be seen by combining all its parts?
But then the multitude of stars suddenly blinked out. A rough material was forced over her head, and she was dragged backwards, too dazed to call out.
Chapter Twenty-One
Her assailant did not drag her far, but she was infused with fear, terrified the murderer had chosen his next corpse. She could not see for the – cloak? – could not breathe it was so tight, and all the time a strong grasp was pulling her backwards, making her stumble over the dirt, until she was wrenched off the ground and thrown across her attacker’s shoulders. She lashed out a hand, thinking to strike at the man’s face, but it connected instead with his chest. She was startled to feel bare flesh, and she flung her hand again at his body, this time connecting with the muscles of his arm, and again, the skin was bare. But there was little time to wonder, little inclination no less; soon she was lowered to the ground, not ungently, the cloak stripped from her head.
‘Be quiet,’ hissed a woman’s voice. ‘You are not in danger, but you could be.’
Mercia ceased her struggling, startled to hear a familiar voice. The dark night conspired with her confusion to mask the speaker’s identity, but as her eyes adjusted to the gloom the woman came into view, kneeling beside her.
‘Sooleawa!’ she said, still fearful of the silhouette at the Indian woman’s side. ‘Why have you done this?’
The hidden man uttered something in the Indians’ language. Mercia may not have understood the words, but she could tell the tone, and he sounded agitated.
‘I am sorry for this … action,’ said Sooleawa. ‘
But the sachem wishes to speak with you. I am here to translate if that is needed.’
‘The sachem?’ Mercia swivelled her head, squinting through the darkness to take a look at Sooleawa’s companion, but she could make nothing out: there was no torch, no firelight, and the night was as moonless as before. Yet in the faint silhouette she discerned a tall man adorned with feathers, much as the sachem had appeared in his grand tent. The sachem, also, who had thrown the axe with such precision on the road near New Haven. She decided it would be best to play along – if she tried to run, she did not know whether they would let her escape.
‘The sachem,’ confirmed Sooleawa. ‘I suggest you show him the respect he is due.’ Standing, she turned to her chief, speaking in their own tongue. As she waited, Mercia sat on the earth, rubbing her aching neck, trying to convince herself there was no call to be afraid. But the night had become much colder.
Sooleawa crouched once more. ‘The sachem has asked me to explain how things are in our village.’ She leant forward on her slippered heels, speaking low. A wolf or some such animal howled in the near distance, and the wind whipped up in the trees, but Mercia’s attention was caught. ‘The young men of our tribe are demanding retribution. Our pnieses – our most feared warriors – are ready to lead them.’
‘Because of the farmhand,’ said Mercia.
‘The boy.’ Sooleawa spat out the word, her voice betraying her anger. ‘He did not kill Hopewell. It is not possible that any of our people killed him. He was a great friend to us.’
Mercia bowed her head. ‘I know.’
‘And yet your people seized one of ours in revenge and killed him without question. He had a mother. A sister.’
She looked up. ‘I abhor what they did to your kinsman, Sooleawa. As I know many others do.’
‘Ab – hor?’
‘Condemn. Weep for.’
‘Ah.’ Sooleawa nodded. ‘And yet it happened all the same.’ She paused, the air laden with the bitterness of her thoughts. ‘There is an agreement between our peoples that none shall kill the other without consequence. Yet our scouts have been watching, and they say nothing has been done.’
Feeling a guilt that was not hers, Mercia swallowed. ‘Those who repent of what has happened would that something were done.’
‘Because they are good people, or through fear of their God?’
‘For both reasons.’
‘And still they do nothing. As powwow Winthrop did nothing when our own powwow was murdered.’
‘I know nothing of that. But I know Governor Winthrop is an honourable man.’
Sooleawa scoffed. ‘We have found the Englishman’s claims to have honour are often forgotten when it suits him best.’
‘That can be true.’ She forced herself to stand, the prick of sharp gravel cutting into her palm. ‘And not just here, in the wilds. But most English folk are good people, Winthrop foremost among them.’
‘Hmm.’ Sooleawa stared up at her, unconvinced. ‘That has not been my – not been our – experience.’ Hastily, she stood. ‘The sachem wants something done, woman from beyond the seas. He is angry at the deaths of our people and our friends. He knows that you gained Clemency’s trust, and that you are arguing to avenge her death. So he will speak with you.’
Mercia rubbed at her throbbing neck. ‘Then why did he not simply ask?’
‘It is his way.’ Sooleawa’s voice came proudly through the darkness. ‘And he was concerned you would have been afraid to come.’
‘Because I am a woman?’
‘No.’ She stepped to one side. ‘Because you are English.’
The sachem came forward to fill the space she had left; at close range, the grease on his skin glistened even in the night.
‘I am pleased again to meet you,’ he said.
The sachem was fearsome to look at, especially so in the menace of darkness. She could make out the muscles of his torso, the necklaces of wampum – or bone, she thought – the erect feathers on his head. The man was as utterly strange to her as any she could imagine, yet he still exuded the same need for display she knew well in the English nobility.
‘And I you,’ she replied. ‘Although I wish it had been a more comfortable encounter.’
The sachem frowned; at first she panicked she had insulted him, but when Sooleawa translated he merely grunted.
‘This is a serious affair, woman of the English. My warriors desire battle. And I think to give it them.’
A nauseous terror filled her soul. She had known war and loss – by God she had known that – but the prospect of an Indian assault on the town, here in the middle of the wilderness, was terrifying. Her irrational mind filled her head with nervous thoughts. What did they do to prisoners? To women? She thought of Daniel, and was glad he was safe with Winthrop in Hartford.
‘But my warriors are young,’ continued the sachem, ‘and I am less so. I remember the wars we have had with your people. The deaths. The burnt villages and crops. I will avoid more if I can.’ He leant close enough for her to smell the grease on his skin. ‘Will you help me?’
She blinked. ‘Me?’
‘I can hold back my pnieses only so long. They wait if they think I act, as I am in speaking with you. But this does not much satisfy, and they soon want more. If we do not get our vengeance I will let them attack.’ He threw back his head. ‘You try to discover who killed Hopewell and Clemency?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Then I want you to discover who killed my powwow also. And tell me who killed the boy. We will have our vengeance on them, not the whole town.’
She turned cold. As much as she hated what Godsgift Brown had done, she could not merely hand him over.
‘Sachem, I do not know who killed the boy,’ she lied, glad of the dark, for it hid her deceit. ‘I did not see.’
He grunted. ‘Someone made the final blow. That man must give us retribution.’
‘With his life?’
The feathers on his head quivered in the wind. ‘It is your way also, although you use a …’ He looked at Sooleawa.
‘A noose,’ she said.
Mercia shivered. ‘And the powwow? That did not happen in Meltwater. Why do you seek my help in that?’
The sachem held out his hand. Sooleawa reached to the ground and passed across what looked like a thick sheet of parchment.
‘Because of this,’ he said, shaking the object in instruction that Mercia take it.
Her fingertips closed around a soft, firm texture, the parchment in fact a leathery scrap of animal hide.
‘What is this?’
Sooleawa came forward. ‘You have found strange messages on Clemency and Hopewell, have you not?’
‘Yes, but how could you—?’
‘It does not matter. What matters is that this skin was in the powwow’s hand while he was lying dead in the wood for us to find him.’ She folded her arms. ‘It has markings on it. English ones, like those found on Clemency and Hopewell.’
‘What?’ Stunned, Mercia brought the hide near her face. She could just make out the scratches on its surface, filled with some sort of ink: sure enough, a series of letters, the individual symbol at the end.
‘My God.’ Her right leg gave way, but she caught herself from falling. She looked at Sooleawa, then again at the hide. There was no mistake. It was the same kind of pattern as the other three.
‘My God,’ she repeated, not knowing what else to say.
Not what to say, not what to do: Mercia was in a quandary. It seemed the killer had struck four times now. She sat at the table in the cottage, all four codes copied out on one piece of paper in front of her. Percy, now out of town, had most of the originals, but she did not need them: she knew the codes by heart. With Nathan and Nicholas, she stared at the jumble of letters with aching eyes. The latest – the powwow’s – was at the bottom.
RNLENRDFRXSHI O
BNFOWVPSGGJNB .
HDWRVDWMPAQCY
SXWLLRJLQMLSJ U
‘The
end symbol is the key,’ she said, a headache pounding in her temples. ‘But I think they need to be read together, somehow. I thought so last night when there were three codes, and I am all the more certain of it now.’
‘But are you certain you are well?’ said Nathan. ‘If I could get my hands on that sachem …’
‘It does not matter now, Nat. He has done us a favour – I think.’
‘Hardly. You said yourself he is using you to bring him answers. People say Clemency and Hopewell were their fiercest supporters.’
‘Perhaps. But this is not helping with these.’ She blew out her cheeks. ‘The last symbol in the latest code is a U. Another letter, like the O from Mason’s code.’ She tapped her finger on the first inscription. ‘Whereas on the other two, the last symbol is a dot, and a cross, not a letter at all.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Nicholas leant over her shoulder, his unshaved cheek almost grazing her own. ‘I can’t make much sense of these, but if they form some kind of set, what about – put them in the right order?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Order of death. The powwow’s first, then the minister’s. Then Clemency’s and Hopewell’s.’
‘We have already put them in all possible orders, Nicholas. Nathan and I. Percy and Amery too.’
‘Not including that fourth one you haven’t.’
‘True.’ She tore the paper into separate strips, one code on each, setting them in chronological order:
SXWLLRJLQMLSJ U
RNLENRDFRXSHI O
BNFOWVPSGGJNB .
HDWRVDWMPAQCY
‘Better?’
He continued to stare. ‘That last symbol, you reckon.’ He pulled back his head, rubbing at his chin. Then he gasped.
‘What is it?’ she said, simultaneously with Nathan.
‘Letters are a mess to me at the best of times, but I can see the lines they are made of well enough.’ He looked at her, a great excitement in his eyes. ‘Where is that book Winthrop gave you? The one on alchemy you had the other day?’
‘In my trunk. I have not much bothered to take it out. Do you want it?’
He nodded vigorously and she rushed to get it. Bounding down the stairs she handed over the musty tome.
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