Savage Liberty

by Eliot Pattison

  Livingston bent and ran his fingers over the yellow letters, then finally found his voice. “Accept my apology, sir. But guide to where? Surely not to Boston when the city is in plain sight.”

  Duncan watched a pair of gulls sweep low and land in the high grass two hundred feet away. “No way of knowing,” he replied. “Will thinks a Mr. Oliver was rowing this boat. Did you know him?”

  Livingston stepped to the youth and put a hand on his shoulder. “Brave lad,” he said. “I am so sorry.” He reached into his waistcoat and handed the boy a coin. “Daniel Oliver, the ranger?” he asked Will. When the boy, his eyes fixed on the shilling, nodded, Livingston sighed. “A solid, reliable man. Signed on to one of my molasses ships a couple years ago, then asked for a transfer to a North Atlantic ship after half the crew died of yellowjack. Made boatswain’s mate on the last voyage.”

  Another gull landed on the riverbank near where the other two had alighted and disappeared into the reeds. A fish crow wheeled overhead. “Go up to the campsite,” Duncan told the two merchants. “Conawago can explain what he found there.”

  Livingston frowned. “John,” he asked Hancock, “do you always take orders from your man like this?”

  Hancock winced. “I think we have established that Duncan is nobody’s man, Robert,” he replied as Duncan turned to walk along the riverbank toward the gulls. “He takes orders only from an auburn-haired beauty named Sarah. Now, up to the campsite.”

  Halfway to the gap in the reeds where the gull had disappeared, Duncan halted to study the line of trees. The senses he had shaped during years of running the woods with Conawago and the Iroquois were sounding an alarm, but he was not sure he could trust them here. This may be a place of tragedy, but surely there could be no imminent danger. He studied the woods and then, satisfied that his friends were safe, continued along the muddy river. He marked the spot where, startled by his appearance, the gulls flew up; then he stepped into the bed of reeds.

  The body had begun to ripen enough to attract scavengers. The man still had his eyes, and only small gobbets had been pecked out of his cheeks and hands. He had been a sturdy, muscular man of about forty years. Duncan looked back to the campsite, where Conawago, speaking with the merchants, kept an eye on him; then he made several quick hand signals and bent to straighten the crumpled body. He lifted the man’s shoulders, freeing his head from the reeds that partially covered it, and with a groan dropped the head and stumbled backward. The dead man had been scalped.

  He spun about and studied the tree line with new alarm, then leaned back to study the corpse. The man had the callused hands of a sailor, but the scars on his forearms were from the slashes of combat, the marks of a soldier. He wore two amulets on a braided leather strand, one of them a polished tooth of a shark onto which had been etched, scrimscraw style, the word Never. It was a sailor’s ward against death by shark. The other was a small leather pouch, sewn closed, that had dried and tightened over a round object. Duncan did not have to open it to know what was secreted inside. The rangers and the Iroquois allies they served with were a superstitious lot. The primary threat of death, they would say, came from round red lead, meaning a blood-covered musket ball. If they carried such a ball, they would be immune from a fatal shot, so some would coat a ball with red ochre and wear it around their necks.

  “Your charms worked,” Duncan whispered to the dead man. He had not died from shark or ball. He had died from the hand ax, probably a tomahawk, that had smashed in the back of his skull and the knife that had sliced into his heart. The ax blow had likely come first, an unsuspecting blow from the rear, accompanied by a war cry. At the end, a cloth had been jammed into his mouth, shortening his dying breaths.

  The reeds rustled, and Duncan looked up to see Conawago and Will staring at the body. The boy’s face drained of color.

  “I take it this is your Mr. Oliver?” Duncan asked the ship’s boy.

  The boy opened and shut his mouth several times. When he finally found his tongue, his voice was hoarse. “When I knew him,” Will stated, “he had more hair.”

  Conawago leaned closer, chastising Duncan in the Mohawk tongue for signaling him to bring the boy.

  “I had no choice,” Duncan replied in the same language. “We owe the dead a name.” He pointed to the knife in the dead ranger’s chest, then with a chill saw the gaping wound. The killer had cut out part of the man’s heart.

  The old man studied the hilt for a moment, then looked up and cursed, this time in his own Nipmuc tongue. “It can’t be,” he said. “Someone deceives us.” He looked up to Will, who still stared at his dead shipmate. “Is this perhaps the knife of Jonathan Pine?” he asked the boy.

  Will’s eyes were still round with the horror of their discovery. He did not answer right away. “No,” he bravely said at last. “Jonathan’s had a handle made from the antler of a stag.”

  Conawago, who had been studying the boggy ground around the dead man, pushed aside a clump of reeds and picked up a leather sheath. The killer had deliberately left it, like the blade, with his victim. Duncan took the sheath from his friend and studied it, then tried to bend the tough leather. “Too thick for deerskin. Moosehide,” he concluded.

  Conawago gave a reluctant nod.

  Will noticed the cloth in the dead ranger’s mouth. “He was a happy man,” the boy said, “often laughing. But they stole away his laughter.”

  Duncan steeled himself, then pulled down the lifeless jaw and extracted the wad. The strip of brown cloth was adorned with intricate embroidery in the shapes of maple leaves and fish. He stretched it between his hands for Conawago to see. They had both prayed that such deaths would be finished at the end of the bloody war. Duncan suddenly was overcome with an irrational fear for Sarah’s safety.

  “Tattoo,” Conawago said in a low voice, and gestured to Oliver’s forearm, where an inked image edged out from under his sleeve. Duncan rolled back the sleeve, exposing the tattoo of a square-rigged sailing ship, and above that an image of a rifle crossed with a tomahawk. An arc over the weapons was inscribed Rogers 1759.

  “Great Jehovah, McCallum!” came a voice through the reeds. Duncan looked up to see Hancock emerge from the dense vegetation. “This damned bog is going to ruin my shoes—” The merchant’s words faded, and he clutched his belly as he saw the dead man. Livingston impatiently pushed past him, took one more step, and froze. The prince of the Hudson gasped, then doubled over and lost the contents of his stomach.

  “Mr. Oliver left the Arcturus in time to save himself from the explosion,” Duncan said, “but he was killed minutes later in this marsh by the man who had camped here.”

  “Your imagination—” Hancock began.

  Duncan held up an impatient hand. “The man who waited here was a man of the northern forest, a man who could easily construct a secret campsite and forage for his own food. He didn’t want to be seen by the local farmers and fishermen. Because he would have been conspicuous.”

  “I don’t understand,” Livingston, his hand on his belly, confessed.

  Duncan placed one hand on the dead ranger’s chest and with the other pulled out the knife. “He was rushed. His companions were no doubt eager to flee after destroying the Arcturus. Otherwise he would have taken time to cut out the entire heart instead of just eating a piece of it.” He gestured to Oliver’s bloody head, where portions of the skull shone through. “He lingered just long enough to take his trophy.”

  Livingston’s hand shot to his mouth, as if he were about to retch again.

  “This is from the strife with the French, a vengeance killing between warring enemies,” Duncan explained. He indicated the distinctive pattern carved on the much-used knife hilt.

  “Duncan, prithee,” Hancock said in a trembling voice. “You speak to us as if we too were creatures of your wretched wilderness.”

  It was Conawago who answered. The Nipmuc stretched the cloth to show its pattern, similar to that on the hilt. “The knife, the sheath, this cloth. They are fr
om the Abenaki, warriors of the northern Algonquins. In 1759 the rangers raided their town of St. Francis, in the Quebec lands, and massacred dozens. Abenaki warriors took blood oaths of vengeance. At campfires long after the war, men would say that an Abenaki would kill himself if he thought he had a chance of strangling the soul of a ranger on the other side.”

  When Livingston finally found his voice, he grabbed Hancock’s arm. “A French Indian, John! God protect us!”

  “Enough!” Hancock snapped. “This is Massachusetts. Don’t speak of such distractions, Duncan. Focus on the lost ship. We have not known murdering heathens here since the last century. This can’t possibly have anything to do with Pine’s murder or the explosion of the Arcturus.”

  “It has everything to do with it,” Duncan shot back.

  Livingston gave an impatient snort and turned to retrace his steps through the bog. Hancock cast a disapproving frown at Duncan, then followed his friend.

  “If the killers who took Pine’s treasure needed this Abenaki, it was because they needed a guide into the north, into his homelands, the old French lands,” Duncan called to Hancock’s back. “The guide had his price. He wanted to eat the heart of a ranger.”

  Hancock did not acknowledge him. Conawago and Duncan watched in silence as the two stubborn merchants reached the campsite and continued down the trail through the trees.

  Carrying the body through the mud to the landing, Duncan at Oliver’s shoulders and Conawago at his feet, was a slow, stumbling effort. They were surprised to see Munro still there. The Scottish sailor was using a flat stone to carve out a long, shallow hole in the sandy soil. “Beg pardon,” he said. “But we can’t take a man who lost his scalp out to the salvagers very well, now can we?” Duncan found another stone and began helping. “We knew the war—the three of us and Oliver,” Munro continued. “Better his brothers put him in the ground than some starch-collared prigs from Boston.”

  Duncan paused at the words and looked up.

  “Ye can’t ignore the truth of it, Duncan,” the former soldier solemnly declared. “This man, and the others on the beach, died like so many others in the north years ago. The war isn’t over . . .”

  4

  IT WAS LATE EVENING WHEN Duncan woke in a chamber lit by a solitary candle. He looked around, trying to recall how he had gotten into the bed, then paused as he saw the woman perched in the window seat. Sarah Ramsey seemed to glow in the soft light. He pushed back the blanket and was about to speak; then, with a smile, he realized she was asleep herself, her head against the sash. Duncan rose up on an elbow, silently gazing at her. Sarah was not just the inspired leader of the Edentown settlement on the western slopes of the Catskills, she was also a vital ambassador between the woodland tribes and European settlers.

  Washed in the golden light of the candle on one side and the silver beams of the moon on the other, it seemed indeed that she was a creature of two worlds. As a strand of hair fell across her face, he saw the skittish, wild girl who’d been raised by the Iroquois. Seized by the loathsome British aristocrat who was her natural father, she had first been terrified of the European world, then furious at it for what it was doing to the tribes, and finally reconciled to a new life on the frontier. It was there, at the remote edge of the European world, that he and Sarah both thrived, and he knew she ached to return to it as much as he did.

  He slipped off the bed and advanced, as stealthy as a ranger, to place a kiss on the crown of her head. She was never conscious of her beauty, and she shunned with self-conscious laughs the rouges and powders that the women of Boston society pushed on her. Her eyes fluttered open, and she offered a groggy smile, then pulled him toward her, pressing her head against his chest.

  “Someone took me captive and confined me in her bed,” he whispered.

  Her low laugh was a salve to his battered spirit. “You were at the kitchen table waiting for some stew. But when I brought it, your head was on the table and you could not be revived.”

  “The past two days have been an ordeal.”

  “The three of us had a time getting you up the stairs.”

  “Three?”

  “Ishmael and your new friend Will Sterret, who sleeps down the hall now. Later I brought up food,” she explained, indicating a tray with a half a loaf, cheese, and a kitchen knife on the chest by the door, “but you would not be awakened.”

  “Ishmael’s back?” Conawago’s nephew had come with Sarah from Eden-town but then promptly debarked for Nantucket to see its famed whaling fleet.

  “He’s says his calendar shows that we leave for the Catskills in two days.” She gestured toward the candle. “He brought one box of the best spermaceti lights for the school, though I asked for half a dozen. He spent the rest of the money on a sea bear who apparently needed a home.”

  “Sea bear?”

  Sarah stretched and smiled again. “You will meet her soon enough,” she said, then looked up and fixed Duncan with a pointed gaze. “Two days, Duncan.”

  He kissed her on the crown again. “I promise, mo chridhe,” he said. My heart. “Two days.”

  She tightened her grip on his waist. “We’ll have more than a week on the road together,” she said in a hopeful, almost mischievous tone.

  “With Conawago, Ishmael, and apparently a creature called a sea bear who doesn’t mind leaving the sea behind, and all the horses needing tending. We’ll need at least two wagons for the supplies.”

  “Did I mention I bought a new clock for the school today, and several reams of good Dutch paper?”

  “So maybe three wagons and a teamster to share the work. Just you and me on an idyllic stroll, with assorted human and four-legged companions.”

  Sarah screwed her face in exaggerated displeasure. “We can plan the crops. Maybe we can pick up a new milk cow from those Dutch farmers on the other side of the Hudson.”

  “And planting stock. We can buy apple trees in the Berkshires.”

  Sarah gripped his arm with a faraway expression. “The orchards,” she said dreamily, and for a few heartbeats they were both lost in memories of walking hand in hand in groves thick with apple scent and the buzzing of bees. Sarah collected herself, then rose, fixing him now with a smile that had a surprising hint of melancholy. “We need you, Duncan,” she said, as if he had been arguing with her. “You’ve been away too long.”

  “I promise,” he assured her, “two days—and back on the road to Eden-town.” He playfully rubbed the top of her head. “Now I must retreat down the stairs before one of those Boston matrons discovers me in your bedchamber.” He felt her stiffen and instantly regretted his words.

  She released her grip on his arm and took a step backward. “You can’t be a warrior forever, Duncan McCallum.” They loved each other, but a piece of paper stood between them. Legally, Duncan was Sarah’s indentured servant, and he had made it clear years earlier that he would not smear her honor by taking to bed together. Either she would be accused of misusing a mere servant or he would be accused of using her affection to ease his bondage. The parchment imposing his seven-year bond lay fastened to the lintel of her bedroom door, angrily pinned there by Sarah years earlier with her Iroquois skinning blade. They had avoided speaking of it, or of the newer magistrate’s order that her father had imposed between them. Sarah had instead taken to reminding Duncan of the Iroquois warrior’s way, in which valued warriors were not expected to marry until they reached their thirtieth year, Duncan’s age. Duncan had stood alongside tribal warriors in struggles of many kinds, and when Sarah and he were alone on one of their private excursions into the mountains, she often called him her Celtic Mohawk. The ways of her beloved tribe signified much more to her than the vagaries of English magistrates.

  Duncan broke off a piece of the bread and nibbled at it. “Did you mention stew?” he asked, forcing lightness into his voice.

  She offered a half smile and motioned him toward the door. “I need to wash. I’ve been sitting here since—” She paused, as if not wanting
to admit that she had been keeping vigil over him. “I need to wash,” she repeated, then pulled at the top hook of her dress with one hand and pushed Duncan toward the hallway with the other. Duncan planted a playful kiss on her forehead and retreated downstairs.

  •

  IN THE KITCHEN, HE SAT at the end of a long table that was so battered, he suspected it may have arrived with the original Puritans. A nearly empty bowl had been left on the other end. He assumed that Ishmael had eaten and gone to sleep in the small stable, which the young Nipmuc preferred. Mrs. Pope, the widowed landlady who rented her house out to sustain her daughter and herself, served him a steaming bowl from the pot hanging over the hearth, then turned to shelving the dishes that had been left out to dry.

  “You were entertaining, I see,” Duncan observed between mouthfuls. He had seen a tea service waiting to be collected from the dining room table.

  The compact, very round woman replied without pausing in her task. “Mr. Adams paid a visit.”

  Duncan looked up in surprise. “Samuel was here while I slept?” He did not miss her hesitation before speaking.

  “Not Samuel,” the landlady said, speaking over her shoulder. “His younger cousin from Braintree. Not as well fed. Not as talkative. But genteel enough and quite intelligent. He and Miss Sarah had a most congenial discussion.”

  “And why would she—” His question was cut off by a terrified scream from upstairs, followed by what sounded like a body hitting the floor. Duncan bolted out of his chair and was up the stairs in seconds. The young Miss Pope lay in a faint on the hallway floor, folded linens scattered about her. Duncan slowed at Sarah’s door and reached for his knife, only to find it was not at his waist.

  His heart lurched as he inched into the doorway and discovered Sarah in her shift, bent, her legs apart in the stance of a warrior in close combat. The kitchen knife from the tray left in the room was in her hand. The swarthy man before her was bent in a similar posture, a deadly, much longer blade in his own hand, amusement on his face as he pushed back a long braid of black hair that had fallen from under his tricorn hat.