Savage Liberty

by Eliot Pattison

  Duncan had heard of the famous Reverend Wheelock. “But he already has a school for natives, in Lebanon town, in Connecticut.”

  “That was but the start, a trial, as it were,” Occom proudly explained. “We will build a vastly bigger institution that will shine like a light in the wilderness. It will change the destiny of thousands of our tribesmen.”

  Duncan pieced together what he remembered of the tales about Wheelock. “He is a man who inspires zealous loyalty, I hear—”

  “The Apostles,” Munro interjected. “That’s what they call the stern tribesmen who escort him.”

  “A man who earns zealous admiration,” Occom said, as if correcting them.

  Munro cocked his head. “And perhaps ye were one of those Apostles yer own self once?”

  “I was honored to serve at his side for many years,” Occom said, a bit too defensively.

  “Then your reunion in Agawam will no doubt be joyful,” Duncan said, and motioned Munro away on the pretense of getting the horses ready.

  “Something happened that night of the St. Francis raid,” Duncan said to the Scot as they hitched a team to one of the wagons.

  “A lot of people died, that’s what happened. Loved ones were taken. The Abenaki have blood feuds that last for generations. That assassin isn’t killing randomly, he’s killing rangers who were there.”

  “His masters left Halifax in pursuit of that ledger. But they found something in that unexpected code, and they took the package from the warehouse, a parcel that went to a ranger with a gold coin in it. Daniel Oliver got a gold coin from the north and gave it to Will and his uncle. Josiah Chisholm had a parcel from the north he had hidden in the cemetery. All three from the ranks at St. Francis with Major Rogers. That parcel from Hancock’s warehouse put the killers on a new scent, a scent that led them to Will Sterret. I thought they wanted him because he was a witness. But now I think it was because they wanted to learn all they could about old rangers and French gold. What do you know about St. Francis? Is it connected to the Sons of Liberty?”

  “Not possible, Duncan,” the old Scot replied. “No one had even heard of the Sons of Liberty back in ’59. Took the stamp tax to bring the Sons out, and that was just three years ago.”

  Duncan stared at Munro in confusion. The Scot was right. The ledger may be about the Sons, but the parcels from the north were not. If the pieces of his puzzle were not fitting together, perhaps it was because there were two puzzles.

  Sergeant Mallory appeared, sharing the last of the morning tea with them. “Left sucking the bottom leaves, as we used to say at Fort Ti.”

  Duncan looked up at the soldier in surprise. “Were you stationed at Ticonderoga, Sergeant?”

  Mallory jerked his thumb toward the north. “All over the Champlain Valley. Crown Point, Ticonderoga. Sometimes on those sloops of war that patrol the lake. The Ticonderoga navy, we called it, though it was mostly an army affair.”

  A thought occurred to Duncan. “Do they keep records at Ticonderoga? Archives from the war?”

  “You’re speaking of His Majesty’s army, sir. Of course they have records. Rivers of records, oceans of records, all locked up in the clerk’s office. The scriptorium.”

  “Sorry?”

  “That’s what the colonel in charge calls it. Colonel Hazlitt’s a bit of a scholar. An office soldier, if you catch my meaning.” The sergeant paused, weighing Duncan’s question. “I worked in the scriptorium some days, ’cause I have such a neat and legible hand, they said. Sometimes visitors would go in to spend a day or two, hunched over old journals and such like old monks.”

  “Visitors from where?”

  “Not for a lowly sergeant to be asking. Some high-ranking officers, even officers wearing civilian clothes sent from headquarters. I recall one from London a few months back, an arrogant, excitable cove who expected us to salute him even though he was a civilian. Bark, bark, bark, people called after him, though never in earshot. On account of him giving angry orders all the time and it sounding like his name.”

  “Beck? Was his name Beck?”

  Mallory rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Don’t recall for sure, sir, but yes, I think maybe so.”

  Duncan and Munro exchanged a worried glance. Horatio Beck had visited the record vault at the great bastion of the north, Fort Ticonderoga, before returning to Halifax to join the chase for Jonathan Pine.

  DUNCAN RODE BACK ALONG THE trail above the road until, at midmorning, he finally saw the stragglers. Ishmael and Conawago rode ahead of Sarah, riding double with young Will, beside the slumped figure of Solomon Hayes. Duncan eased Goliath as close as he dared without disturbing them. Hayes wore his slouch hat pulled low, his face pale and twisted in pain, but the tinker was at least handling his horse, staying mostly upright in his saddle.

  After a few minutes, Conawago, with his usual uncanny awareness of Duncan’s presence, leaned to exchange words with his nephew, then left the road, urging his horse up the slope. Duncan waited for him behind a ledge rock that opened to a view of the empty road to the west.

  “Hayes does not blame you, Duncan,” Conawago said even before he dismounted. “He was confused when he awoke in the night, asking who had spared him from the assassin, as if that Abenaki had attacked him. After Ishmael explained what had transpired, the first words from his tongue were ‘Tell Duncan not to feel at fault.’ ”

  Duncan did not acknowledge the words. “Did you look into his eyes? Were the pupils still dilated? Was he seeing double at all? Was his pulse strong?”

  “His vision seemed fine,” the old Nipmuc replied. “He was understandably weak when he awoke. He asked for his hat, then some tea, and after sharing a slice of bread with his Sadie and downing a cup of that fine buttermilk, he announced that he was ready, if someone would just help him into the saddle, saying we must not tarry, for Sarah’s sake. The farmer went out with us, with an ax. He said he needed wood and would cut a tree down by the road and make a convenient mistake, letting it fall across the road. It wouldn’t be much of an obstacle, but it would encumber pursuers, and when they asked, he would say he saw us yesterday, splitting off the road to flee into the Berkshire heights.”

  “She must leave the tinker,” Duncan stated. “Does she not know the danger she is in?”

  “She’ll not leave him. Asking will just stoke her anger.”

  “He’s just a tinker.” Duncan regretted the words the instant they left his lips. He could not explain the bile he felt toward the man.

  Conawago shot him a disappointed glance. “Jealousy does not become you, Clan McCallum,” the old Nipmuc said, addressing Duncan as the head of his nearly extinct clan.

  Duncan muttered in Gaelic.

  His old friend frowned, not understanding the words, but hearing the sarcasm. “Lesser men are always tempted to hate the ones they wrong.”

  The words tore at Duncan’s heart. “I’m bone-weary,” he said after a long and painful silence. “I’m soul-weary. Since that day walking among all those bodies on the beach, I have been adrift, without a compass. I don’t know whom I can depend on except for you. The warrant that would have me hanged is based on lies, but I don’t know why.”

  “You know a good man was murdered in Quinsigamond. You know you attacked Hayes only because of the killers. You know liberty is worth fighting for.”

  “No, I don’t. Liberty this, liberty that. So many invoke it for so many reasons that I don’t know what it means anymore. In Boston it seems just the name of some game being played by politicians. If more men minded their honor and less about some mob’s notion of liberty, this world would be the better for it.”

  “Fine. Your honor is worth fighting for. And Sarah’s. And Ishmael’s and mine. I don’t know about the Sons of Liberty. But I do know about our small tribe, and its liberty is its honor.”

  They nudged their horses up the narrow game trail to keep parallel with the little party below. “I recall,” Conawago observed, “that the river is just a dozen miles fr
om here. Occom says he will prepare his friends to offer comfort when we reach the Agawam settlement. Hayes and the boy can take to bed. Let Will recover, and we can talk with him further when his mind is clear.”

  Duncan was surprised at the suggestion. “You mean to turn him over to the missionaries.”

  “I’ve nothing against a proper measure of Christian charity.”

  “Some say those Apostles are more like riders out of the Apocalypse.”

  “I believe they take their role as Christian soldiers most seriously,” Conawago said. “Shepherding eternal souls is a somber business.” A question seemed to linger in his tone.

  THEY WAITED, WATCHING THE LONG stretch of road that led to the final rise before the river, until the weary riders appeared. Even from a distance Hayes, Ishmael, and Sarah, holding Will now, looked fatigued from their arduous ride, but once they crested the final ridge, they would have less than a mile to Agawam, the community nestled on the western bank on the Connecticut. Conawago, after scouting ahead while Duncan rested with Goliath, reported that it appeared to be a surprisingly large, prosperous settlement. The old Nipmuc had ventured far enough to confirm that the Edentown convoy had already been ferried across and was setting up camp along the riverbank by one of the three white steepled churches. Duncan relished the idea of a good night’s sleep and a chance to mend things with Sarah. Wary of the reception she would give him, he resisted the temptation to ride down the road to meet them, but he reconsidered as they passed his observation point, and he eased Goliath down toward the road, keeping pace behind them.

  Relief washed over him as the stragglers began climbing the last long slope that would lead to the promised help in Agawam. Duncan paused, letting Goliath nibble at the grass of a small clearing less than half a mile from the crest of the hill. He was about to urge the horse on, to catch up with Sarah, now only fifty yards away, when a strangled cry rose from the woods. Conawago was recklessly galloping down the mountain toward the road.

  Ishmael had wheeled his horse about and was gazing defiantly at a dust cloud in the east. Sarah pushed her horse into a trot and shouted for Hayes to hurry, but the tinker seemed not to hear her.

  Conawago burst out of the woods and reined in beside his nephew, lifting the club he had tied to his saddle. Sarah grabbed the reins from Hayes’s limp hands, leading his horse as she hastened up the hill. Duncan dug his heels into Goliath’s flanks, and the big horse, as if sensing a battle, snorted and stomped the ground before lunging into a gallop.

  By the time Duncan reached his friends, the roiling dust on the road was only a quarter mile away and half a dozen riders could be seen. The bounty riders from Worcester had not given up.

  As Duncan, Conawago, and Ishmael blocked the road, the riders slowed. Another four men came into view as the dust settled.

  “She’s there! The red-haired bitch!” one of the men at the back shouted, pointing toward Sarah, who was now a few hundred yards from the crest, struggling to keep Will balanced while still leading Hayes’s horse. “And that’s probably the damned traitor with her! We’re rich, boys!”

  Unexpectedly, Ishmael dismounted as the riders trotted eagerly forward. He bent into his horse’s neck, whispering into its ear, then slapped its flank.

  “T’is one of them stolen army mounts!” a man yelled as the horse ran past them, up the mountain trail. “Five pounds reward!” Four riders broke away, racing to claim the army’s bounty.

  “Don’t let them get to the river!” shouted one of the remaining men.

  Duncan jerked Goliath back and forth across the road to impede the riders. As a bountyman kicked his horse into a burst of speed, Conawago raised his oaken club, and in a blur of motion the old tribesman intercepted the man, leaning low to thrust the long club between the horse’s legs. Rider and horse tumbled to the ground, the man groaning in pain as his shoulder slammed against a rock. As a second rider tried to run past Duncan, Goliath instinctively lunged and clamped his jaw around the man’s arm. Conawago gave a triumphant cry as the big horse tossed the man from his saddle. “A horse bred for war!” Ishmael called out. The stunned rider gazed up in terror, gripping his arm, all the fight gone from him. The remaining mounted men, however, charged past with a cry of “Ten pounds for the wench!”

  Conawago was spinning his horse, about to give chase, when one of the men who had ridden into the woods reappeared, holding up a loop of rope as he charged Ishmael. As the old Nipmuc changed course to protect his nephew, Duncan and Goliath charged up the hill.

  Sarah and Hayes were only a stone’s throw from the crest when Hayes sagged and slowly slid to the ground. Sarah instantly leapt off her horse and ran toward the tinker, grabbing his arm in a vain attempt to drag him uphill.

  Duncan burst through the group of riders, reins in his mouth, flailing out with a fist to bloody a man’s nose; then he leapt off Goliath and planted himself between Sarah and her pursuers. To his surprise, they halted, looking up in confusion. Will threw a stone that hit a rider on his shoulder, but the man seemed not to notice. As Duncan raised his fists, fear began rising on the riders’ faces. He grinned, thinking they may have tasted the fury of a Highlander before. He shouted his grandfather’s battle cry and was rewarded to see two of the riders turn back.

  “Duncan,” Sarah said behind him.

  He took a step forward, hoping to push more bountymen back, but then realized they seemed not to see him.

  “Duncan,” Sarah repeated. In the corner of his eye he saw Will step closer to her, as if frightened of a new threat. Conawago trotted up, Ishmael riding double with him, but as he passed the bountymen, he too halted, looking uphill with new worry on his weathered face.

  Duncan slowly turned. In a row along the crest of the hill were half a dozen very large bronze-skinned men, all on black horses and all wearing black coats, with raven feathers in their long, braided black hair. Mr. Wheelock’s wrathful Apostles had arrived.

  9

  THE VOICES OF ELEAZER WHEELOCK’S congregation drowned out the little pianoforte that played accompaniment to their hymns, rattling the glass globes over the wall sconces. Duncan had forgotten that the day was Sunday, and he’d only begrudgingly agreed to put on clean clothes and accompany Sarah, who insisted that young Will needed to go to the service because the singing would be good for him.

  Agawam was a thriving town, larger than Duncan had expected, a crossroads community that lay at the junction of the Albany road and the busy north–south thoroughfare of the Connecticut River. To his surprise, there were two doctors in the town, and Duncan had introduced himself to both by delivering Hayes to one and asking the other for help in replenishing his own store of medicines. Neither had treated a traveler with an ax wound to his leg, but Duncan and Conawago kept a close eye on them, knowing how many doctors refused to speak of patients to anyone other than family members, let alone total strangers. Hayes lay recuperating at the house of Dr. Simons, and the other now sat two pews in front of Duncan. He had asked both not only about a wounded man, but also about strangers, perhaps French. Dr. Simons, who was treating Hayes, had dismissively observed that Duncan was a stranger himself and reminded him that Agawam, at the juncture of the east–west road and the river, was a town through which dozens of strangers passed every week. The second doctor, eyeing him suspiciously, had asked why Duncan would presume to ask him for medicines and suggested that he consult the town constable about strangers, leaving the impression that if pressed further, he might ask the constable about Duncan himself.

  He had been left to roaming the town, watching its inns and public stables, altering his appearance by changing hats and waistcoats. In the afternoon of his first full day, after Ishmael reported that a band of bountymen had passed through, galloping westward, he had tied a band around his forehead and joined a crew unloading kegs from a flatboat. There he learned that vessels often sailed for Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut, where fast boats were always available for passage to New York town. No one recalled
seeing two Europeans and a wounded native taking passage on one, but Duncan showed a shilling and announced he would pay for the information if they did.

  The big church they sat in had been opened for use by the much-revered Eleazer Wheelock and his escort of stern Indian Apostles and had been sealed off during Occom’s reunion with Wheelock, which, Munro reported, had turned into an extended and surprisingly heated discussion. At its conclusion, the Apostles had filed out with expressions of regret and confusion. Reverend Occom had apparently been struck dumb by the encounter, not speaking to anyone afterward, then returning to the church to sit in prayer all night long, emerging at dawn looking troubled and exhausted.

  When Sarah, in a voice that brooked no opposition, declared that they would be taking Will to the service, Duncan found himself anticipating Occom’s sharing the pulpit with Wheelock. But the tribal pastor had been absent from the nave, not to be seen anywhere near the pulpit. When the congregation began its first hymn, Duncan recognized the deep bass voice behind him. He tried to turn, and Sarah pushed him back with a chiding glance. Defying her, he turned again to see the big man with long black locks on a back pew, alone. Occom sang with his usual energetic volume, but there was a new tightness in his voice, something that strangely hinted at suffering.

  Sarah, clearly peeved at his staring, turned to follow his gaze, squeezing his arm in reprimand; then she too paused and gaped as a newcomer arrived to stand beside Occom. Conawago and Occom did not acknowledge each other, but the old Nipmuc solemnly joined in the song.

  After the services, when Will pulled Sarah toward the river landing to see a team of majestic red Devon oxen that had arrived the day before, Duncan excused himself. He explained that he wanted to look in on Hayes, but he stood in the shadow of a nearby stable and he watched Occom and Conawago step out of the church, the last of the congregation to do so. Four of the tall Apostles, dressed as always in black, seemed to be waiting for them, and they walked around the church to the old barn that had been converted to rough sleeping quarters for Wheelock’s traveling flock. Duncan looked back down the street—where Wheelock had disappeared in the company of a wealthy merchant family—then stealthily approached the barn.