“Shut up. I’m listening.”
Carteret’s retort was sharp, and peremptory.
Both men held their breath, wondering if Carteret would come down to the riverbank. If he did, they were sure to be discovered. Then, just as they heard Carteret stepping down off his creaky porch, one of the men inside called out something in a heavily accented tongue that made the others laugh. Adams didn’t understand it, but knew it was a Frenchman who had spoken. He had laboured in Shadwell docks in the Old Country, and encountered sailors of many nationalities, including Frenchies. The tongue was distinctive. So, Carteret was entertaining some of England’s oldest rivals on this new continent. Though the French travelled down the St Lawrence River far to the north, trading in furs, and their contact with the English settlers was rare, still the Old World enmity persisted.
All this made the gathering most interesting to Bunce. Especially as the Frenchies’ inclinations were to be Catholic and Royalist, like their host, Sir Thomas Carteret. The two countries were still maritime rivals, but King Charles had supported Roman Catholic France in its struggle with the Dutch Protestant Republic. Neither man’s knowledge of the French language was good enough to know what comment had been made to the Englishman. They did understand Carteret’s reply, though.
“Very well. Have your joke, if you must. But I’d like to see which of you would dare face even one Englishman in the dark, if he rose up from the dead.”
The words disturbed Bunce. Was Carteret referring to the dead men in Philadelphia? Did he know more than he was saying? Maybe he and the men inside his house, with good reason to hate Dissenters and Englishmen, were implicated. He risked a peep over the edge of the riverbank, only to witness Carteret cast a final devilish look into the dark before closing his door again. Adams felt sure they had been seen, but dared not move for fear of being discovered. It seemed like an age, with the muddy waters of the river chilling both men’s legs, before three men emerged from the front door, and stood shaking Carteret’s hand. They loped down to the river bank just upstream from where Bunce and Adams lay trembling in the cold and damp, but missing them completely. They climbed on board the flat barge, and poled it out into the stream and the darkness. When the plash of their departure had faded, Carteret’s voice broke the ensuring silence.
“You, down on the riverbank, show yourself. If I have to come and get you myself, I will undoubtedly kill you.”
There was nothing for it, but for Bunce and Adams to rise up from their watery hiding place, and reveal themselves. Bunce went first, then as Adams clambered up the bank behind him, Carteret hissed in anger.
“It’s that damned black slave from the docks.”
Adams thought wryly that James Bunce was wrong, after all. Carteret did know of his existence, if not of his true ancestry. He forbore from setting the nobleman right as to the nature of his status. It might be difficult asserting he was a free man who had been wrongly accused and convicted of theft, and ultimately an equal of the nobleman. He reckoned Carteret would not be interested in his life story anyway. Besides, it was Sir Thomas’s own story that they were here to delve into. Bunce hurried to take control, before Adams was riled again, pulling off his hat deferentially.
“Forgive me, Sir Thomas, for disturbing your . . . er . . . gathering.”
Carteret did not speak, merely waving Bunce up on to the porch, but leaving Adams in his place. On the lower level and not to be invited inside. His superior attitude reminded Adams of his former life in the Old Country, and he was a little lost for words. As apparently was James Bunce, and it took Carteret to rouse him.
“Come on, man. Speak up. What is it you want?”
Bunce’s shoes squelched as he approached Carteret.
“Sir Thomas, John Adams, here, saw you close to the river in Philadelphia this morning. I do not wish to pry into your . . . private business.” The French connection could wait, he thought. But not for too long. “I am only concerned to discover if you know anything of the death nearby of Peter Rokesby.”
Carteret frowned, and peered inquisitively at him.
“Who sent you? What do they know?” Before Bunce could answer, Carteret waved his hands in the air, dismissing any explanation. “Don’t bother to come out with any lies. Damned Puritans. What care I if they are being slaughtered in their droves. A good thing, I say. They cost me my inheritance. As a Cavalier in the Civil War, my father was fined so heavily he had to sell his estates. He was of a noble line, yet was branded a malignant for supporting his King and Country. Now I am reduced to this.”
Carteret swept his hand around the spacious stone house that stood behind him, as though disdaining its proportions. To Adams, it seemed like a palace, and the man’s existence idyllic.
“A malignant.” Carteret spat out the word with disgust. “A son should walk in the footsteps of his father. But I have nothing. And now I must stand here with . . . common men and black convicts . . . and bear their badgering. The world has gone mad. Well, I don’t owe you an explanation. If anyone thinks I am guilty of murder, have them come and challenge me themselves, not send their lackey and his slave.”
With that, he turned on his elegant heels, entered the house he averred to despise, and slammed the door behind him. Leaving Bunce to wonder again about the taint of the past in another country re-emerging in the colonies like a disease carried on infected ships. Adams, on the other hand, was preoccupied with what Carteret had said about fathers and sons.
6
Back at the Hendricksen shack, Adams lit a candle thoughtfully provided by Bunce from one of his commodious pockets. Then he fussed around distractedly, eventually finding a jug of small beer, and pouring out two tankards. Bunce could only ruminate on the clues he had gleaned so far, all of which seemed precious few.
“The killer could be de Ruiter, or Carteret, but as yet I cannot discern a true pattern to the murders. And in truth, it could be any number of others. We have Cavaliers, Papists, Dutchmen, and Frenchies on the list of suspects.” He sighed. “I might have compiled such a list over the dinner table, without stumbling around in the dark all night.”
Though his thoughts were elsewhere, Adams racked his brain for other ideas, finally recalling the other recurring feature of his night’s excursion. The lingering shadow that dogged the corners of his vision.
“There is also . . .”
“Yes. The redskin savage, Teinane. I thought of him too.”
Adams frowned at Bunce’s intervention. He had not meant to mention Teinane by name, but the savage certainly fitted the image he had created in his mind. But there was something else gnawing at the corners of his memory, something that had been stirred by things said by both de Ruiter and Carteret. But before he could drag it out into the light, Bunce interrupted.
“I feel we have been approaching the business from the wrong end, hunting down men who you saw that morning. If the killer is as clever as we suspect, then he would ensure no one sees him at all. No, I think we should look instead at the lives of those the Slaughterman has killed to see if there is a common thread. Perhaps one going back to the Old Country.”
Adams smiled grimly.
“I see you are as fearful as I was that some stain from the past we had hoped to have left behind haunts us still in the Colonies.”
“Yes. For example, what of our Cavalier, Sir Thomas Carteret? He as much said to us that he was glad to see Puritans murdered. His father lost his estates after the Civil War, so he has good reason to kill those he might blame. And he is in league with French trappers.”
“I don’t see it.” Adams shook his head. “With the deaths of Perkin Bird and Peter Rokesby, maybe. They were good Puritans, and stood by Cromwell in the war. But you told me yourself Burewald was of Cavalier stock, and Silas Peters’s father was a Catholic. As for the Dutchman, de Ruiter, he has even less reason to kill Dissenters, for it was they who ensured that King Charles failed to have England side with France in wiping Holland from the map. Rivals we may be,
but enemies never.”
Bunce had to agree.
“I happen to know why he was hanging around the docks, by the way.”
“Why?”
“Because he and that skinny reprobate we saw him with are dealing in contraband. Only I can’t prove it, yet. No, John, I too have racked my brain, and cannot see a common thread in the victims’ past lives that would account for their being selected. Yet the alternative is inconceivable. It would be madness, pure and simple, if these deaths were random acts.”
Bunce’s words once more stirred the beast lurking in the shadows of Adam’s brain. And he was prompted to speak what was on his mind. But then, as Bunce rose from the table, Adams saw revealed for the first time his little collection of chap-books, some stained by spilled beer.
“Damnation. Bowater will not be pleased that I have allowed his books to be so damaged.”
Bunce’s eyes narrowed.
“These are Friend Bowater’s books, not yours?”
Adams looked somewhat uneasy, but acknowledged they were. He finally admitted that he had not learned to read and write. Bowater had taught him along with his own son, using the chap-books as guides. In fact Teinane had been there too, but sat mainly on the sidelines smiling secretively to himself. Adams still used them to improve his reading. Bunce fumbled in the pocket of his breeches, pulling out some grubby pieces of pieces of paper with ragged edges.
“Then, do you recognize these at all?”
Adams took them and look at them one at a time. They were all crude wood block illustrations of the sort common to cheap chap-books. But somehow these were different, showing scenes that were strange and unnatural. Having perused them, it slowly dawned on Adams what they related to.
“Let me guess. You found these at each of the murders. Look, here is a huntsman chasing fish in the air. It’s called ‘The Mad Squire and his Fatal Hunting.’ That’s Joshua Burewald. This one . . .” he indicated the picture of an ox whipping a man who was pulling a plough “. . . is entitled ‘The Ox Turned Farmer.’ That’s Silas Peters. And here is ‘The Reward of Roguery, or the Roasted Cook’. Perkin Bird. And the last one . . .” he turned over the picture of a man hanging upside-down by his legs about to be cut up by an ox. “. . . ‘The Ox Turned Butcher.’ Peter Rokesby.”
James Bunce nodded.
“You are exactly right. I found one of them under the body of each victim. So it must have been placed there deliberately. What do you think they mean, John?”
The room suddenly felt hot, almost stifling, to John Adams. Everything he had heard that night from de Ruiter and Carteret, and even from Bunce’s lips, now fell into place. What if reason had flown out the window, and madness taken its place just as the men had bemoaned? Then all their logical pursuit of motive and cause was in vain. The torn-out pages from a chap-book had given Adams the final piece of the puzzle.
“Why have you not shown me these before, James Bunce? They are the very key to the mystery.”
Bunce frowned, not understanding what John Adams meant.
“How so?”
“Because the chap-book they come from was important to Simon Bowater. I remember how downcast he was over the whole matter of the Civil War turning the world topsy-turvy. He saw the book as some sort of warning text . . .” Adams paused as a shocking thought crossed his mind. “Did you tell me earlier that Oliver had come back?”
“Bowater’s son? Yes.”
“And do you recall how before he left, he argued with Teinane?”
“Of course. Simon said his son had struggled to convert the savage, then left to continue his mission in the wilderness.”
Adams felt cold shivers run down his spine, as he saw what this whole horrible sequence of events was all about. He grabbed Bunce’s arm, and squeezed it hard.
“We must find Teinane. You go to his usual haunts, and I will go to Bowater’s house. There is grave danger here.”
7
The night had been long, and dawn was breaking as John Adams left his broken-down shack on the edge of Philadelphia docks. He marched determinedly across Dock Creek and down Market Street. Hardly anyone was stirring as the vapours that clung around the riverbank dispersed to reveal the substantial brick houses that lined the long straight road running down towards where Simon Bowater lived. His house stood at the intersection of two straight avenues that defined part of the grid that was Penn’s Philadelphia. Never would anyone die in a great fire here such as had consumed London twenty years earlier. The houses stood in serried ranks, clean and orderly. But Adams now knew that behind the façades lurked an evil far worse than cleansing fire. An evil unique to this new continent, and Adams knew in his heart what he was to confront.
He paused a moment before Simon Bowater’s house, looking up at the building. The windows stared blankly back, as though denying knowledge of his unspoken accusation. Then fleetingly, he thought he saw a pale shape at one of the upper windows. Resolutely, he climbed the short flight of steps, and hammered on the front door. His knocks reverberated inside the house, but noone came to open up. He turned the handle, and pushed. The door was unbarred, and he stepped inside, closing it carefully behind him. He didn’t want the taint that was inside to escape. He called out the name of his employer.
“Simon. Simon Bowater. Friend Bowater.”
There was no reply, except for the pale echo of his own voice. The house seemed dead, unoccupied. But twining around its tired dampness, he could detect another, ranker smell. He sniffed the air, sure he knew the smell, but he could not place the odour at first. He walked towards the back of the house, then heard a rustling from the room to the right of the hallway, and he stepped that way instead. For a second he hesitated before the door that faced him, afraid of what he was unleashing. As he pushed the door cautiously open, the stench hit him. What was only a lingering scent before, was overpowering in its ripeness. He gasped, and held his hand over his nose and mouth. The smell was of death, but there were two layers to it. The stink of human death, horrible in itself, was overlaid with the stench of rotting fish. It was a moment before Adams could figure out what lay before his eyes.
In the centre of the room was a hip bath full of water. In it lay the indisputable body of Simon Bowater. Though he could not have died more than twenty-four hours ago, his bare feet and legs were thick and purplish in death, as they hung over the lip of the bath. One arm was flung out sideways as if grasping for the heavy ebony cane that lay on the floor at the side of the bath. The cane was Bowater’s constant companion, and his gnarled hand was instantly recognizable. He couldn’t have otherwise identified his erstwhile employer because the bath was full of rotting fish. Bowater’s face and body was under water, and covered with the silvery flanks of a heap of Delaware shad.
He looked around the room for the sign he knew would be there. Eventually he saw it – a torn piece of paper in the mouth of one of the dead fish. He extracted it, recognizing the picture immediately. It depicted a man drowning in water with a fishing line hooked into his mouth. On the bank of the river holding the rod was a large fish standing upright on its tail fin.
“‘The Water Wonder, or Fishes Lord of Creation’,” murmured Adams, recalling the scene from the chap-book. There was a high-pitched squeal of laughter from the hallway, and the door behind him slammed shut. It sounded like the laugh of a child, but it was not happy laughter. Adams ran to the door, but in his confusion could not open it. At first he thought someone was on the other side, holding the handle. But a child surely did not have such strength. And when finally he did wrench the door open, there was no one to be seen. He heard a sound from above, and looked up the stairs. What he saw made him gasp. It was the naked flank of a savage, his black hair long and greasy, flowing down his back. The figure disappeared, and Adams bounded up the steps two at a time. In any other circumstance, he might have imagined this was merely play. But, with a dead body lying downstairs, the mood was far from playful. The call to Hide-and-Seek masked a deadly intent. Ada
ms wondered if there was a mocking picture waiting to be tossed on his own body. At the top of the stairs he gasped for breath, staring along the empty passageway, wondering if he was chasing a phantom. The only sign of movement were the dust motes that swirled in the shaft of morning light angling through a half-closed door. The disturbed air marked the passage of a corporeal being. He called out into the silence.
“Are you there?”
In reply he heard the wavering sound of a childish chant.
“If revolutions strange appear
Within the compass of the sphere;
If men and things succession know,
And no dependence reigns below . . .”
There was a momentary silence, then the childish voice came again, teasing, tormenting.
“What follows next, John Adams? Come on; you know as well as I.”
Adams edged towards the half-opened door through which the sunlight poured. Of course he knew the lines. He had been taught them by Simon Bowater from the chap-book whose torn-out pictures now adorned a series of murders. He also knew now who he was chasing, and it was no child. Adams racked his brain, and began to recite the lines that followed, as he slowly stalked his quarry.
“Since ’tis allow’d the world we dwell in,
Is always round the sun a’sailing;
Experience to our knowledge brings
That times may change as well as things.
And art . . . And art . . .”
What followed next, damn it? Adams could not recall the words. But his tormentor could, and the little child’s voice came again.
“And art than nature wiser grown,
Turns every object upside down.”
Reminded, Adams joined in, finishing the doggerel off.
“No wonder then the world is found
By change of place Turn’d Upside Down.”
When Bunce had showed him the pictures found at the scene of each death, Adams had instantly recognized the wood-block prints as coming from a chap-book Simon Bowater had often read to him. The title was “The World Turned Upside Down”, and the dozen scenes depicted were largely humorous in their content: “The Old Soldier Turned Nurse”, “The Lovers Catched by the Bird”. But some were gruesome images: “The Ox Turned Butcher” and “The Roasted Cook”. These were the ones that had driven a troubled soul to bring the images to life in a series of senseless killings that had rocked the complacency of Penn’s settlement to the core. Adams recalled Bunce’s words to him only a short time earlier.
The Mammoth Book of Jacobean Whodunnits Page 52