Savage Liberty

by Eliot Pattison

  “I don’t understand,” Sarah confessed.

  “I said it was a secret, but they were my friends and each of them told me a secret, like how Philip had shot off his own toe once, and I wasn’t sure about it so he showed me. So then I told them about Jonathan, explaining that he didn’t take off his shirt because he had important papers strapped to his chest, that very important people waited for his secrets in America. I was prideful because I knew such a secret and wanted to let them know I could be trusted. And then they killed everyone, took away everything my friends ever had with a spark on a fuse.” Will wiped at his tears. “Don’t you see? I am a sinner who sold my friends’ lives for a handful of candy.” He buried his head in his hands as a long sob racked his body.

  Sarah pressed the boy to her shoulder. “Will,” she said, “those men were going to have those secrets no matter what. They left you in that boat to die with the others. But you showed them you had a different fate. Better for the world that Will Sterret lives. Your mother came to tell you that, and that she and your uncle and all the Sterrets who ever lived count on you now.”

  The boy lifted his head. “Count on me for what?”

  It was Duncan who replied. “Count on you to help us find justice for all those new angels, so they can find peace. Tell me, Will, did those men want to know something about Mr. Oliver? What was the Indian asking for today?”

  “My uncle said no one was to know.”

  “Your uncle is one of those angels, Will. You have a piece of the key that will unlock the puzzle of his death so he can find rest on the other side.”

  The boy reached toward his britches, but the effort caused his face to screw up in pain. “It’s there, in the pouch inside my waist. My uncle said to keep it for us. Mr. Oliver gave it to us for our new life in the Maine country, saying that it would mean a lot of ewes for our flock. Mr. Oliver said the major would understand, and maybe we’d go thank him in his new mountain home one day.”

  “The major?” Duncan asked.

  “That’s all I know. It came in a parcel to Mr. Oliver last time he was in port. I had a whale tooth. I thought I would take that to the major to show our thanks. I told Philippe and Henry one night, ’cause we shared our secrets. I boasted that I had a golden king and showed them.”

  “Golden king?” Sarah asked.

  Will nodded. “It was funny. They got very excited and went off and spoke to each other, and when they came back, they asked where it came from, and I just said the north. They asked if my uncle was a ranger too, like they knew Mr. Oliver was a ranger already. Then today, that Indian, he kept asking who sent it, and did I get it from a ranger, and where in the north did it come from, but I would not tell the bully.” He swallowed and fixed Duncan with a sober gaze. “I will tell you, though, because we are going to find justice. Mr. Oliver told us. It came from the place of the heroes of Quebec, from St. Francis.”

  Trying hard not to provoke the boy’s pain, Duncan pried the pouch out and handed it to Will, who upended it onto Duncan’s palm. “Ain’t it grand?” the boy asked. “And the seawater didn’t stain it at all.”

  Duncan stared in mute amazement. It was a gold coin bearing the image of the King Louis of France.

  THEY BROKE CAMP IN MIDMORNING, Sarah on one of the two horses left by the convoy, holding Will and leading the second by a lead rope. She insisted that Duncan stay out of sight, and he followed slowly, often walking beside Goliath, who registered his sentiment about the turtle’s pace with impatient shakes of his head, as if to suggest that Duncan had confused him with a plow horse.

  Duncan finally relented and cantered ahead half a mile. As he reined Goliath in, the horse spun about, his ears bent sharply toward the eastern road. Two riders emerged, riding fast out of a cloud of dust. With an explosion of instinct, Goliath stamped the earth with a front hoof and burst into a gallop despite Duncan’s strenuous effort to hold him back. He had recognized two military horses and was charging to battle.

  Sarah threw up a frantic hand as Duncan approached. He slid off his saddle, rifle in hand, and disappeared into a clump of brush before the dust around Goliath cleared.

  The two horses were indeed from dragoon stables, but to his relief, Duncan saw Ishmael mounted on the first, though he could not understand why Sarah, clutching Will tight to her, hesitated when she saw the young Nipmuc. Then Ishmael inched forward, and Duncan saw the musket aimed at his back. It was held by Sam, the dead wheelwright’s nephew.

  “Is it only you then, Duncan?” Ishmael called as Duncan edged out of his cover, his gun aimed at Ishmael’s captor. The click of a second hammerlock came from across the road. “Not just, nephew,” came Conawago’s voice from the shadows. “And you’ll not be able to take down both of us,” he warned Sam.

  To their surprise, Ishmael laughed, then leapt off his horse and ran toward the sound of his uncle’s voice. Before dismounting, Sam grinned, opened the pan of his musket, and turned it over, showing that it was not primed. He quickly explained how the young Nipmuc, having led his pursuers on a hot chase up the northern road, had circled back around them the next night to return to Worcester, hoping to secretly return two of the stolen horses after having given the third to an ecstatic northbound farmer on the condition he ride it hard into New Hampshire, then keep it out of sight once back on his farm. Ishmael had hoped to find more evidence of the killer at the wheel shop but instead had found Sam.

  “He knows, Duncan,” Ishmael explained. “Sam didn’t just make wheels with his uncle.”

  “If he’s with the Sons, then why treat you so?” Sarah asked Ishmael, still uncertain of the newcomer.

  “In case someone encountered us and recognized me. Sam would say he had captured me.”

  “Captured you, then headed in the opposite direction of the magistrates?” Duncan asked.

  “It was the best we could think of. We had to come. Sam has news and something to give you.”

  The apprentice explained that he had gone back into town the night of the murder after his mother and siblings had retired for the night. As usual when going to see his uncle on Sons’ business, he had kept to the shadows. “But I wasn’t the only one. As I was passing the first inn, two men came out, both wearing cloaks, one with a thin beard that he kept trimmed close.”

  “A soldier from Boston?” Duncan asked.

  Sam shook his head. “If I understand what happened, this was before the soldiers arrived.”

  “Tell him,” Ishmael urged the youth.

  “Tell me what?” Duncan asked when Sam remained silent.

  “They were speaking fast and urgent-like, sixteen to the dozen, and in French. I know just enough to recognize the tongue. My uncle Josiah knew it, from the north, and sometimes sang French songs. And for a moment I smelled lavender, if that means anything.”

  Duncan gazed into the shadows as he considered the news. Mog’s French masters had been in Worcester with him the night Chisholm died. “What did they do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said, pain now in his voice. “My uncle had a rule, one he said I must never break, just like the ranger rules he would talk about. If anything ever seemed amiss in town, I was to run back to protect my ma and the family. I didn’t linger.”

  “Did you understand anything they said?”

  “No, only their names. Henry, he was the one with the beard.”

  “And the other was Philip! It’s them!” Will cried out, then held his head from the pain of the effort. “Hughes and Montgomery, or so they called themselves! The devils who sank the ship!”

  Sam gazed at the boy and nodded. “Philippe. That’s what the bearded man called the other. Philippe pointed down across the river to where your wagons were, and Henry said no and pointed to the mill . . . or maybe”—Sam paused, collecting himself—“maybe I guess the wheel shop.”

  Duncan saw the agony in Sam’s eyes and put a hand on his shoulder. “You did nothing wrong.” He shared the boy’s pain. The French had been right there. If
he had known, or if he had warned Chisholm, the wheelwright might still be alive.

  “There’s more,” Ishmael said with a worried look back up the road. “Tell them, Sam.”

  “Next morning the lieutenant posted a bounty before he left. But not for my uncle’s killer, as everyone expected.”

  Sarah and Duncan exchanged worried glances. “We know of that bounty, Samuel,” Sarah said. “Believe none of it.”

  The apprentice looked away from Sarah, as if in embarrassment. “You don’t understand, ma’am,” he said in a near whisper. “A new one. Ten pounds sterling. For ten pounds a man wouldn’t have to work for a year or more, or could buy a fair piece of land.” He looked back at Sarah with wide eyes. “For you, ma’am. It’s for Sarah Ramsey, on charges of harboring an infamous traitor. Aiding and abetting the notorious Duncan McCallum, the broadside says.”

  Duncan heard Sarah’s sharp intake of breath. Will put his arms around her and patted her back. “It’s a lie, Miss Sarah. We all know it is a lie.”

  She pushed the boy away and took several steps toward the forest. Duncan followed her, stricken at the thought that he had brought such trouble to her. When she turned to face him, her countenance was calm again. “It’s just a way of distracting you, Duncan,” she declared as she returned his worried gaze. “You must run faster than ever. Go.”

  “With you, yes.”

  “Impossible. Will needs me. We’ll catch up with the wagons by nightfall.”

  “I followed a trail of blood to a camp where Will’s abductor went to meet with two other men,” Conawago reported as he approached. “He was still bleeding from the ax blow. If he is their guide, they’ll not make quick progress. We may catch them yet.”

  “Go,” Sarah said again. “The world is against us, Duncan, don’t you see? If they take me back to Boston, I’ll have my Mr. Adams, John Adams. But you must recover that damned ledger to be free again.”

  •

  AN HOUR LATER, CONAWAGO AND Duncan were scouring the campsite the old Nipmuc had discovered. Three men riding three horses had indeed used the camp along the high game trail, one wearing moccasins, the other two in expensive shoes with stitched leather soles. The three had departed in a hurry, alarmed no doubt that the mission of their guide had failed.

  Duncan extracted a broken pipe bowl from the ashes, then two pieces of its clay stem. It was as if someone had thrown the pipe down in anger. On the bowl was stamped a small fleur-de-lis. Conawago pointed to chestnut-red spots on a frond of ground cedar. It was drying blood. “Sarah slowed Mog down. I think an artery was nicked. He’ll need a doctor or risk losing the leg—or worse.”

  “And if their guide’s truly disabled, they’ll be wary of staying in the forest,” Duncan said as he pointed to more drops of blood on the trunk of a maple.

  “Meaning they’ll take to the road, or follow close to the road, to the next settlement, to Agawam on the Connecticut River. That’s where we can intercept the killers.”

  THE SUN WAS SETTING AS Duncan and Conawago, leading their weary mounts, gazed down on a tidy little farm joined to the western road by a narrow, winding lane with a cow pasture on one side and maize field on the other. With rising alarm, they had searched in vain for any sign of Sarah and Will. Ishmael and Sam had, as agreed, lingered behind to slow down any pursuers, but Sarah had not, as agreed, gone to meet the wagons.

  In the last of the light they warily approached the farm, studying the horses by the small stone-walled barn. The dapple mare Sarah had been riding was tied with five other horses in what appeared to be a military-style picket line. The pursuers had caught up with her.

  Duncan and Conawago quickly conferred, then dismounted and advanced on foot, circling through the pasture to the stone wall nearest the barn. Exchanging a sober glance, they checked the priming charges in their rifles. If they could surprise her captors, the two of them had a reasonable chance of rescuing her, though that was only if all the captors were in one place. They paused at the barn, looking for evidence of whether she was held in the barn or the white clapboard house.

  Through the solitary window on the east side of the house they could glimpse figures inside, though the only person who was plainly visible was an unfamiliar woman in a linen cap who was bent at the hearth. Conawago pointed to the smoking chimney and made a downward motion with his palm before nodding toward the big oak beside the house. Duncan nodded and pointed to a blanket airing on a clothesline. If he blocked the chimney, they could disable the captors one by one as they fled the smoke.

  Duncan had begun inching toward the blanket when a long moan rose from inside the barn. He instantly shifted direction, slipping into the shadows of the forebay, then easing through the open double doors of the entry.

  Sarah was sprawled, unconscious, on a pile of hay in the center aisle. A man in a black hat was grabbing the wrist of an equally comatose Will Sterret.

  All the anger and frustration that had been boiling inside Duncan erupted in a white-hot fury. He raised his rifle and rushed forward, slamming the rifle butt down hard on the back of the man’s head, then standing over Will with his rifle aimed in case the man rose to resist.

  Sarah stirred, rubbing her eyes, then gazed in confusion at Duncan and the fallen stranger. “What have you done?” she gasped, and darted to the unconscious man, pulling away the hat that had fallen onto his face. An angry chatter rose from above, and Sadie swung down onto Duncan and pounded his back with her tiny fists before slipping onto her prostrate master. Duncan had attacked Solomon Hayes.

  The capuchin and the proprietress of Edentown both offered comforting strokes on the tinker’s shoulders, then looked up with accusing stares.

  “I—I didn’t know,” Duncan muttered to Sarah. “I thought you were . . . What is he doing here?”

  “What is he doing?” Sarah shot back. “Helping us, unlike you! My God, Duncan, you may have killed him! Look what all those fools and their talk of liberty is doing to you!”

  Duncan was rescued from the sharp edge of her temper by Molly, who gave a quick yelp of greeting and bounded over to him. Ishmael appeared in the doorway with a pot of steaming water, his uncle close behind.

  The young Nipmuc explained that they had caught up with the wagons by midafternoon, but Will had shown no sign of improvement. Hayes was acquainted with the owner of the farm, who readily agreed to let them spend the night, in the hope that a few quiet hours in a bed might restore the boy. Sarah had ordered the wagons on, hurrying them toward the safety of the Hudson Valley and the New York colony.

  Duncan knelt by the still-unconscious Hayes. In his fury, thinking that the man was threatening the boy, he had hit him a desperate blow with the brass butt plate of his rifle. At the back of his head his black hair was matted with blood over a disturbingly large lump.

  Duncan’s face was flush with guilt as he turned to Sarah. “I didn’t . . .” he began before she cut him off.

  “He had been so kind to us today, carrying Will on his back to get him here because he said the horse was too rough a ride. We were trying to wash the grime off the boy before getting him to a bed.” Her eyes brimmed with tears again. She shook her head despairingly at Duncan, gathered up her skirt, and marched out of the barn.

  There was movement in the hay. Will Sterret was staring at Duncan with narrow, disapproving eyes. “How do you feel, lad?” Duncan asked.

  “Mr. Hayes needs that bed more than me now.”

  Duncan met Conawago’s worried gaze. “Help me carry him to the house.”

  “Ishmael and I will take him,” his friend insisted. “You must go. You should have been a hundred miles away by now. Every minute you linger brings the noose closer.”

  Duncan looked back at the comatose tinker, whose face was ghastly pale. “If I let him die, the noose will be the least of my problems.”

  He exchanged no words with Sarah, who pointedly ignored him as they carried Hayes inside and laid him on a cot that had been brought to the back of the kitchen. The
y installed Will on a folded quilt on a long deacon’s bench, with Molly lying beside him.

  “Poor Mr. Hayes,” the farmer’s wife declared as she brought a pillow for the boy. “He collects tragedy like a fresh pie collects flies. How awful if he were to perish like this after all his travails.”

  Duncan looked up. “Travails?”

  The farmer put a hand on his wife’s arm. “Don’t know that he would want us to speak of them, Judith.”

  The woman pushed away her husband’s hand. “You know he’s lived with one foot in the grave all these years. He takes so many risks.”

  Duncan looked from the farmers to Sarah and back to their hosts. “He’s a tinker.”

  “Yes, yes,” Judith agreed. “He can be a good tinker. Or a juggler. Or an actor. Or a teamster even. But he had much nobler beginnings. A prosperous merchant, son of one of the most successful merchants and shipowners in the Rhode Island colony. But seven years ago he had a notion to expand his business into the New Hampshire colony, at the edge of that wild country they call the Hampshire Grants, up between New Hampshire and New York. Decided to take his young wife and son up the Connecticut River after his new store was built. The war wasn’t quite over, but they took no notice, acted as if they were still in Rhode Island. The raiders came at dawn, as is their way. Hayes’s two hired men were killed. The Indians took his wife and six-year-old son. He managed to raise a party out of Charlestown, and they took off in pursuit a day later. The savages left a warning on the trail fifty miles to the north—his young son’s head on a pole. Solomon called off the pursuit, fearing they would kill his woman.”