Savage Liberty

by Eliot Pattison

  “Tell me, Will, have you been inside the Apostle’s barn?”

  The boy’s eyes went round. “Oh, never, sir! It’s for the Apostles!”

  “You make it sound like it’s a nest of vipers.”

  “Just very holy men. Mr. Ishmael says maybe they was possessed by the souls of those Puritan beggars what hanged those witches at Salem in the last century. But Mr. Conawago cuffed him on the back of the head and said we owe them our sympathy, for Mr. Wheelock just wears them as gemstones of his pride, though I couldn’t cipher what he meant.”

  Duncan tried to stifle his grin. “Think you can watch them for me?”

  The boy’s face clouded for a moment, then his eyes lit with a sudden memory. “Later I can, but Mr. Ishmael said if I found ye, to bring ye to the hidden sergeant.”

  Sergeant Mallory was on his feet in the tavern woodshed, where he had been hiding since arriving in Agawam. Duncan paused and watched as he threw a small tomahawk at a slab of wood, successfully lodging the hand ax in the center of the slab with each throw. He nodded at Duncan, then threw once more, leaving the blade buried in the wood.

  You seem much recovered, Sergeant,” Duncan observed.

  “Thanks to the kindness of the lady and yerself, sir.” He gestured for Duncan to sit on one of the two broad log cross sections that were used as chopping blocks, then sat on the second himself. “You know I got no coin to speak of, but I wanted to repay ye. I don’t have much, but I do have my honor, mind.” He reached into his waistcoat and extracted a folded sheet of paper, which he straightened and handed to Duncan. “T’ain’t like I’m a scholar, but my mother taught me a solid hand, as she liked to say.

  “Sometimes at the fort’s record library, the clerk would have me list out contracts, transcribe accounts, organize files, and such. It got me relieved from digging trenches or hauling firewood, and out of the wind and rain, so I never refused an offer of library duty. I made a list for you of files I remembered, in case it might help.”

  Mallory’s list confirmed that Ticonderoga was the administrative headquarters for all Champlain operations. Quartermaster accounts, 1759 onward, Duncan read, then:

  Duty rosters

  Barrack construction

  Burial records

  Battery construction

  Requisitions

  Campaigns: Quebec, Fort Richelieu, Cumberland Bay, St. Francis

  Book of garrison orders

  Artifacts

  “These are all in the vault at Ticonderoga?” Duncan asked.

  “Those and twice as much again, I reckon. Some are bound books, others are stacks of papers bound up with pins and those red ribbons the government likes to use.”

  Duncan’s eyes went back to the entry that mentioned St. Francis. “Campaigns?” he asked.

  “Oh, those be the ones most entertaining to read. The commanders made the officers in charge of expeditions write down their reports and recollections, and lists of soldiers injured or killed. Always need good records of the dead, the lieutenant in charge would say, it’s a debt we owe them.”

  “You’re saying the report of Major Rogers about St. Francis would be there?”

  “Oh, aye, and as I recall, some from his officers too. They all split up on the return and had a rough go of it, I recollect. There was an investigation into it, into why one man died in the raid but thirty or forty perished in the retreat.”

  Duncan pointed to the last item on the list. “Artifacts?”

  Mallory shrugged. “Mostly oddities brought back from the campaigns, such that no one claimed them or was scared to speak of. In two or three small boxes. I recall a lot of French military badges. Some decorated powder horns belonging to dead soldiers.”

  “What things that people were frightened of?”

  “Old crosses from the Romanish churches up north. After bringing ’em back, some said melt ’em down but others said they be cursed. And Indian things. A turtle shell with some kind of water monster painted on it. A necklace of dried tongues. There was one box of shriveled things that an old ranger said was men’s pricks collected by a ’Naki warrior. No one would touch it.”

  Duncan had visited Ticonderoga and was trying to visualize the fort on the shores of Lake Champlain. “Where is this vault?”

  “Up on the northeast corner of the old barracks building, the big stone structure inside the gate.”

  Duncan listened carefully to Mallory’s description of where the office was, and where a key was hidden in the hallway should it be locked. “You said there was a visitor from London. Do you recall what he was looking for?”

  “I’ve been thinking on that. I do believe it was the St. Francis papers—and then some about the Montreal campaign.”

  Duncan studied Mallory’s list, his mind racing. He was more convinced than ever that the Quebec town of St. Francis held answers to the mystery that had caused so many deaths.

  “Now, don’t even think of that, sir,” the deserter said. Duncan realized that the sergeant was staring at him. “I see that look of yours. You don’t think that warrant will make its way to the Champlain Valley? What do you think the army does to traitors? They don’t wait for niceties of lawyers and writs. You might find some answers there, sure enough, but go to Fort Ti and you’ll be dead bones within the week.”

  “BUT, DUNCAN, I HAVE THE stomach of a goat,” Ishmael protested as Duncan explained his instructions. “Why would I tell the Apostles my bowels are suffering?”

  “Because one of them is a healer. Because you are of the tribes, and they will want to help you. That Abenaki suffered a terrible wound. I’m convinced he came here, to Agawam, but the doctors here say they never saw him.”

  Ishmael gazed uncertainly toward the log structure beside the church. “You mean the killer might be in that barn?”

  “I doubt he would think it safe to linger. But he may have sought treatment.”

  Ishmael weighed his words; then a mischievous grin split his face. He darted to a maple tree, pulled off some leaves, and stuffed them into his mouth. After a moment he returned to Duncan, green drool dripping from the corner of his lips.

  Duncan rolled his eyes. “Don’t overplay it. We want them to think you need some herbs, not last rites.”

  He settled on a shadowed bench in the cemetery and watched the door on the side of the barn as Ishmael spoke to an Apostle who was sitting on a keg reading a Bible. The man listened, then rose and stepped inside. Moments later he returned with one of the older Apostles, a particularly somber figure who wore his long, gray-tinged hair in a braid down his back and had a pattern of intricate tattoos in a line down one cheek. Duncan had noticed him before because of the distance he kept from the other Apostles. Ishmael clutched his stomach and spoke in a labored voice. The old tribesman studied him silently, then stepped inside and emerged not with a medicine bag, but with a wide-brimmed hat. Ishmael seemed confused, but he followed the healer as he strode to the cemetery gate. The tall elder stood as straight as a musket barrel. His solemn, weathered face had a quiet dignity to it.

  Duncan made room as the healer reached his bench, and the old man sat down. “I saw this boy eat an entire venison pie last night,” the healer declared. “I could believe it might cause discomfort, but not green spittle.”

  “I’m sorry, Grandfather,” Duncan said. “We meant no disrespect. We have a problem of a different sort you might help with.”

  The man seemed to be giving them only half an ear. He was watching three figures walking down the street—Reverend Occom and two of the other Apostles. Something was different about the two. They were still somber, but they had removed their white starched collars, and each wore a necklace of white and purple wampum beads over his waistcoat. Worry grew on the face of the elder as he watched Occom and his companions. There seemed to be a schism in the group.

  “You came with him,” the Apostle said.

  “The reverend? We traveled together from Boston.”

  The tribesman fixed Duncan with
a chastising stare. “You did so knowing there was a bounty on your head. You might have thought about—”

  “Grandfather,” Ishmael interrupted. “You don’t understand what—”

  Duncan held up his hand to silence the youth. “Yes. They say I killed thirty-seven men and have acted against the king.”

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  The healer studied Duncan in silence. “No, I don’t suppose you did,” he said with a shrug. “But you drag scandal behind you like a shadow.”

  “I am shadowed by lies and deception, and men who want to kill me.”

  With a remarkably quick motion the healer reached out and grasped Duncan’s totem pouch. Strangely, he clutched it in silence for several breaths, his eyes closed. When he opened them, he stared anew at Duncan, his face full of surprise. “Much power,” he whispered. “Much pain.”

  Suddenly Duncan felt very small and not a little afraid. The man might have been a Christian now, but he had not always been so. In the tribes there were two kinds of healers, those who practiced earth medicine, using herbs and tonics, and those who practiced spirit medicine, shamans who might use herbs but also invoked the names of ancient gods and demons.

  Ishmael sensed it too, for his eyes went round and he took a step backward. “I am called Ishmael,” he said, and for a moment Duncan thought the young Nipmuc was going to kneel to the old man. “My mother named me Ojiwa,” he whispered, “of the Nipmuc.”

  The healer nodded. “Reverend Wheelock decided to baptize me and declared that I should be Noah.” He spoke his Christian name as if speaking of someone else, and Duncan had a sense that perhaps it had not been the first baptism for the tribesman. Surely it was not his only name. Some shamans, the most powerful, were given secret names by the tribes. They often terrified outsiders, tribesmen and Europeans alike, and some were killed out of fear. The few who survived sometimes hid behind new lives.

  “I am seeking an Abenaki,” Duncan declared. “He killed men in Boston and Quinsigamond. My fiancée . . .” He hesitated, not certain what he was to Sarah anymore. “The woman who leads our wagon convoy sliced open his leg with an ax when he tried to steal a boy. I think he sought help here. Did you treat him?”

  Noah ran a hand through his thick hair. “Every man must find his own way to die,” he observed.

  Duncan exchanged an uneasy glance with Ishmael. It was a saying used by tribal warriors before battle. This old man with the stern bronze face and hawk-like eyes was not simply one more church elder. What was he doing with Wheelock’s flock? “I did not hear a denial in your words,” Duncan replied.

  Noah surveyed the street, resting his eyes in the direction Samson Occom had gone. “Reverend Wheelock is fond of the parable of the Great Flood. Reverend Occom was his first disciple,” he added, as if to explain himself. “I was his second. They are both men of great virtue. There are times for learning of the workings of this world, and there are times for learning of the workings of the spirit.”

  Duncan hesitated, not sure if he understood the man’s intention. “You weren’t always Noah,” he asserted. He flushed as he saw that his words brought pain to the man’s eyes.

  “I thought we were talking about healing,” Noah said.

  “I was talking about an Abenaki murderer.”

  The old man’s lips twisted into a sad smile. “Two kings sign a piece of paper telling the world they are ending a war. If you kill before the paper is signed, you are a hero. If you kill afterward, you are a murderer. It’s one of the things I learned in European books. But I was taught to worship wise souls, not kings.” He gestured toward Duncan’s totem pouch. “Who do you worship, Duncan McCallum?”

  Once again the old man was making Duncan feel very small. “I would understand if you helped that Abenaki warrior. He was in danger of losing his leg. A healer should not judge his patient.”

  “After the last war I was surprised at how many had lost legs and lived,” Noah declared, looking out over the gravestones. “Because of the skills of British army doctors, I was told. They usually wound up in big towns like New York or Albany, begging for their sustenance. There was a score or more of them, Indians and English, who would sit along the outside walls of churches in New York and beg. Once, there was a terrible blizzard, and afterward I found frozen bodies of two one-legged Iroquois. The churches had let the English inside, but not the Iroquois. One of them had stripped to a loincloth. He had an old, battered war ax in one hand and his totem pouch in the other. He had known he would not survive the night.”

  “Jiyathontek,” Duncan whispered. The word used for summoning of Iroquois spirits.

  Noah grimaced. “Do not use that word lightly, McCallum.” He looked up at the sky, then at the cemetery again, resting his gaze on a stone with a weatherworn angel carved at the top. “ ‘I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.’ ”

  Duncan cocked his head. It was a Psalm, though a most unusual one.

  Noah looked back at Duncan. “You say he is a murderer. Others may say he is a hero.”

  Duncan weighed the old man’s statement and was reminded of Munro’s similar words on that first day in Boston harbor. “You mean for some, the war has not ended.”

  “It never ends,” Noah declared, then shrugged. “I treated a man with a mangled leg, sewed it up, and made a poultice for him. The fool had been walking on it for two days, as if he were indestructible, making it much worse. He was of the north, one of the Algonquin tribes.”

  “Abenaki,” Duncan stated.

  “He was in a great hurry, said they had to push on to the Hudson.”

  “They?”

  “There were two well-dressed foreign gentlemen waiting for him, most impatiently. I told all three that if he kept using the leg before it healed, the poison would settle in and it would be the death of him. Then those two went off into the cemetery to talk, as if they had to debate whether it was acceptable for him to die.”

  Duncan found himself looking at the man’s chest, wondering if his waistcoat concealed a totem pouch hanging from his own neck under the cross that hung on the outside. “They need him to guide them somewhere in the north.”

  Noah nodded. “They said they could not stay here. I told them their companion needed to stay off the leg, two weeks at least. Merde, the younger of them kept saying. Merde. I hadn’t heard that since I was last in Canada. So I ventured that they could go upriver into the wilderness and over the mountains, where they would be digging a grave for their native friend. Or downriver. I said with fair weather they could be in New York town in four or five days, then catch one of the trade boats up the Hudson into the north country. How long then to Lake Champlain from New York town, the young one asked. Ten days perhaps, depending on your guide, your vessel, and your weather, I replied.”

  The old healer paused. Samson Occom and his two companions had come into view again beyond the row of houses. They were heading toward the river landing. Noah turned to Ishmael, who had been silently listening. “I have a cure for you, son. Abstain from eating maple leaves.” With a nod, he rose. “I heard a name,” he added in departing. “They did not know I had French. The older one, with the close-cut beard, was Henri, though the other one once called him Comtois, and he was arguing with the younger man over the importance of keeping their native companion with them. They decided to keep him alive, and they left by boat the next day.”

  Henri Comtois. At least Duncan knew the name of one of the French murderers. As Noah threaded his way back through the gravestones, he halted and half turned toward Duncan. “He was proud of his wound, that Abenaki. Said he had been attacked by an Iroquois witch and lived to speak of it.”

  Duncan lingered alone in the cemetery to read, for the third time, a letter Reverend Occom had handed to him the day before. It was from John Hancock, who had addressed it simply to DM, then put it inside an envelope for Occom, care of Reverend Wheelock in Agawam. Hancock begged Duncan’s forgiveness, claiming ignorance of th
e scheme dreamed up by Livingston and Samuel Adams to use Duncan so, and promised he would do all he could to help Duncan. Meanwhile, he had made discreet inquiries about Horatio Beck among officials in Boston who had encountered him in other settings, learning that he was the son of a bankrupt lord who had sold his title and estate to settle gambling debts and then died soon after in a duel. Beck had navigated his way through London society despite the disgrace and earned a post as private secretary for the minister of war. After a few months he had taken on a new assignment, pursuing private tasks for the minister, including the successful interrogation of high-ranking French prisoners during the war. There were rumors, Hancock cautioned, that his prisoners had been horribly mutilated, and that the man who killed his father in the duel had been found dead in the Thames. During stays in Philadelphia and New York he had developed a reputation as a rogue who preyed on the daughters of wealthy merchants and left hurriedly after incurring gambling debts amounting to more than a thousand pounds, including a substantial sum owed to Robert Rogers. He had fled back to London, still in the good graces of the minister, though there were recent reports that he had been seen in the Champlain Valley. You must at all costs stay out of the devil’s grasp, Hancock had closed in warning, over his elegant signature, then added a postscript. Branscomb’s widow says he served with Rogers at St. Francis.

  THE IROQUOIS WITCH MOG HAD spoken of was wearing a new calico dress and arranging a Sunday dinner when Duncan arrived at her inn. Sarah insisted that all the Edentown travelers attend, to fortify them for the hard push to the Hudson that would commence the next day. Munro had retrieved Hayes, whose color and energetic step showed that he was quickly recovering. Sadie too was invited, though the capuchin quickly retreated to one of the windows when Ishmael laid a plate of pumpkin seeds on its wide sill.

  “I deeply regret it, Miss Ramsey,” Occom said after heaping servings of chicken, potatoes, and beans in molasses had been distributed, “but as I mentioned at the outset of our journey, I part company here. It’s upriver I travel now.”