Savage Liberty

by Eliot Pattison

  Allen muttered under his breath, casting a frustrated glance at Duncan. Rufus’s eyes grew wide. He abruptly straightened and whistled at a gangly teenage boy who was talking to a girl with freckles and long blond hair. “Save yer French lesson for tomorrow, lad.” The boy winced but gave a noble bow to the girl and darted toward one of the shallops tied to the dock.

  As the boat was readied, most of their company reclined on the grassy sunlit bank. Will began tossing sticks into the water, each being retrieved by Molly to the cheerful hoots of onlookers. Duncan studied the little village, then left his rifle and pack with Munro and slipped between two buildings, reaching a large vegetable garden where the freckled girl was now attacking weeds with a hoe.

  “Bonjour,” he offered, and plucked a weed himself.

  She glanced behind him, returned the greeting with a shy smile, and wiped her hands on her apron.

  “Your garden looks fertile,” he said, continuing in French as he motioned to the verdant rows of maize, beans, squash, and cabbage.

  “The season is short, but the soil is rich.”

  “I hadn’t realized any had stayed on from the old Chevelure,” Duncan ventured.

  “Not stay, came back. A handful after the war, half a dozen more families this past spring.”

  Duncan had marked a surprising number of oxen, new plows, and wagons. “Such a prosperous community.”

  “I lived here when I was very young. Now it is better. Now we will have our high windmill!” she said, and inclined her head toward the tallest hill behind the settlement, where a surprisingly tall, sturdy stone tower was being built. On the ground beside it men were assembling the frames for wind vanes.

  Duncan indicated the rows of plants. “You are excellent farmers.”

  The girl smiled. “We worked just as hard in Quebec, but things are better here. We were able to get good seed, good teams, good tools. My papa says we owe our prosperous benefactors in the north. We pray for them at our evening meals.”

  “Thanks to the saint in the north, you mean,” Duncan said. “Merci a Saint François.”

  The girl gave a cryptic smile. “Grace au saint de Saint François, grace au saint de Montréal,” she replied, and turned back to her cabbages.

  UNABLE TO PUT WORDS TO the question that was nagging him, Duncan gazed at the little farming community as they sailed away. There was something about it that seemed off, but he could not name it. Why had Josiah Chisholm, the murdered ranger, received a powder horn marked with the town’s location? Brandt’s horn had shown chimney rock, which had been his mission. Had Chisholm been given a mission at Chevelure? Glancing about to assure that no one watched, he opened the stained pouch he had taken from the Mohawk woman’s grave. He had already confirmed that it contained only a necklace of red and white beads with a quillwork pendant depicting a man and woman holding hands, and half of a dozen slips of paper. Not for the first time since leaving the burial platform he found himself saying a Mohawk prayer for Hahnowa, asking for forgiveness, then he extracted one of the papers.

  All the other pages had been lists, all in the same elegant hand—lists of names, of supplies, of river mouths along the eastern shore of Lake Champlain—and, like the letters to the rangers, all in the same odd purple ink, even though the pages from Rogers’s hidden pouch would have been written years earlier, in the months just after the St. Francis raid. This page held a drawing, a sketch he had recognized when approaching the boat landing that afternoon. The nine-year-old sketch was of Chevelure, with only a few differences from the village he was now looking at, including the huge windmill.

  He hesitated, wondering for a moment if Brandt had played a ruse on him. Now we will have our high windmill, the comely French maiden had boasted. He examined the paper more closely. The drawing hidden by Rogers and now sought by the imprisoned major had a windmill. But no windmill existed nine years earlier. He folded the paper back into Rogers’s pouch and watched Chevelure until it was out of sight. It wasn’t a drawing of the town that Rogers had hidden, it was a drawing of a plan, and underneath was a large, stylized S. It wasn’t a signature, it was a symbol. The paper was part of the dream of Saguenay that Rogers shared with others. But it was no longer just a dream. Saguenay was being implemented, and its conspirators were in at least two towns in the north. When he suggested that the girl must give thanks to Saint Francis, she had corrected him, saying that they gave thanks to the saint of St. Francis, and to the saint of Montreal. They were giving thanks to specific men.

  12

  DUNCAN LONGED TO TAKE THE tiller of the little shallop as they sailed down the lake, though he had to admit the unshaven, malodorous Rufus was an accomplished sailor. The vessel was wide of beam for cargo but well built, with clean lines that responded to the steady lake wind. White, billowy clouds streamed across a cobalt sky, echoing the late spring snowcaps of peaks in the distant Adirondacks. He recognized on Molly’s face the same anticipation he felt, and he knew that she too wanted to leap over the side and frolic in the clear waters. But as the high earthen walls of Crown Point disappeared from view, he pushed down the temptation, knowing that he was moving into enemy territory. There were answers to be found in Fort Ticonderoga, but there were also men who would clamp him in irons if they knew who he was.

  As Duncan watched the wooded shoreline, his hand on a stay, Munro stood up from where he had been checking their weapons and approached. The Scot had been unusually withdrawn and now seemed to have difficulty finding words. “All this talk about turning our backs on the king unsettles my heart, Duncan,” he finally said in a low, troubled voice. “I’m not here because I turned my back on the king, I ken this well, but if we are to pierce the cloud of these deaths, I feel that’s where ye have to take us. Mother Munro raised no traitor.”

  Duncan followed the Scot’s gaze back toward the hills, where a broadside had been pinned to the tortured young scout, and he realized that its words had triggered Munro’s reflections. He wanted to argue with Munro, but his heart was not in it, for he felt much the same way. “We’re not on some Boston liberty pole march that’s going to end with a frolic at a tavern,” he admitted. “We’re here because of the debt we owe the dead.”

  “Yer here because Hancock and Adams and the governor of Massachusetts forced you,” Munro replied.

  “No. They don’t own me, nor you,” Duncan replied. “I confess the warrant has me looking over my shoulder sometimes, but we are not running, we are hunting. From the moment I saw all those dead on the beach, I knew I had to help them. In the Highlands and among the tribes a murdered man wanders aimlessly on the other side, never finding eternal peace until his death is put right.”

  A line formed between Munro’s brows. “That’s what the Deathspeaker does, then?”

  Duncan looked back, studying the old soldier. Munro had never used that word with him.

  “Git troubled souls into heaven?” the weathered Scot continued. “Like the ones called sin-eaters my grandfather spoke of when I was a bairn. They would free the dead or those consumed by sin by sitting all night at their side, absorbing their sins.”

  The words pressed down on Duncan’s heart. “Something like that,” he acknowledged in a whisper.

  Munro nodded. “A thankless, lonely task, lad. Sineaters always became dark, burdened souls. My grandma had different words for them. The hounds of God. Is that what we are?” he asked. “Is that what a liberty man is?”

  Duncan had no answer, and Munro stepped away.

  AN HOUR LATER A COLD knot grew in Duncan’s gut as the stone walls of the great northern fort came into view. Once again he was rushing headlong toward the enemy without having scouted its territory. His luck would not hold forever.

  He realized that his companions were looking not at the fort, but at figures standing on a small overgrown landing on the eastern shore, used when Ticonderoga had been under siege in the French war.

  “We bargained to go straight to the fort,” Allen reminded Rufus as he nudge
d the tiller to investigate.

  “And who be the captain of this ship, Ethan?” the waterman demanded in a surly tone. “I don’t tell ye how to navigate the mountains, now do I?”

  A deep voice hailed the boat from the landing. Duncan could see four or five men standing there, two of them waving energetically until a broad-shouldered figure stepped between them and raised a hand over his head as if giving a blessing. “What do ye make of them?” Rufus asked his young mate, who had climbed onto the rail, holding a stay.

  “Not certain, sir, but the big man looks like—can it be?”

  “By Christ, I know who the rogue is!” Rufus exclaimed, then whooped for joy as another figure raised a demijohn jug. “It be divine intervention, Ethan!” he declared, and swung the boat toward shore.

  Molly soon recognized the newcomers, barking excitedly as two somber tribesmen wearing black waistcoats over their bare chests stepped into the water to guide the boat to the decrepit pier. Behind them stood Samson Occom and Conawago, still holding the demijohn, with Noah lingering at the rear. The old Nipmuc wore his hair in a trim blocked braid at the back of his head and wore his good green waistcoat over doe-colored britches.

  “Heard ye took the fight to the devils in England, Reverend,” Rufus called in greeting.

  “I was in England, Rufus, you scoundrel, but as you can see, the prodigal has returned to more familiar devils,” Occom answered cheerfully. “Still the unrepentant sinner?” The pastor was more relaxed than Duncan had ever seen him.

  “As often I can, sir,” the waterman cracked.

  “My mission requires passage to the king’s bastion on the far shore.”

  “Mission?”

  Allen opened his mouth for what was no doubt a glib observation, but Occom caught his eye, cutting him off with a gesture that took in his own party and those in the boat. “Our mission,” he repeated, “is to pound God’s truth into men of the sword.”

  “Can we trust this sailor?” Conawago asked Occom with a bemused grin.

  Occom climbed into the boat and approached its helmsman, giving an exaggerated wince at his odor. “Rufus fornicates with native women,” the reverend loudly declared. “He comes to me and confesses each time because he grew up in the Romanish faith; then he believes he is free to repeat the act again. How many times has it been, Rufus? Ten? Fifteen?”

  Rufus took off his tattered cap, scratched his head, and spoke in a humble voice. “Well, yer holiness, ye being in England and all, we got some catching up to do onc’t ye can find a few hours. Still, I am most moderate in my affairs, the dusky ladies would all confirm. Never one to over-egg the pudding.”

  The men burst into loud guffaws. Even Occom managed a smile.

  Conawago quieted the company as they cast off. “It is a short passage, and we must be ready to work together when we arrive. Reverend Occom is known to the colonel, who supports his efforts to build native churches. We are all his disciples, about to go into the wilderness to build a new chapel. There are a number of tribesmen living in the vicinity of the fort, army scouts and their families. We will be there to hold services with them and solicit their devotion.”

  “Where exactly are we building this blessed chapel?” one of Allen’s men asked. “Did you bring good axes to cut the timber?”

  “T’ain’t no real church, ye fool,” Rufus chided. “It’s what we educated folks call a figment of the imagination.”

  The man’s face clouded. “But he said there was to be a church.”

  Allen groaned. “Zeke, just stitch yer lip. Pray when the good reverend prays and sing when the good reverend sings.”

  “We have a quarter hour to practice,” Noah declared with a grin. “We shall disembark with a hymn. A hymn shall be our passport inside the walls.”

  They spent much of their remaining time trying to identify any songs that might be known by all. After a few bawdy suggestions, they decided on two, “Old Hundred” and “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” The reverend pushed for one more.

  “ ‘O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing’ ” one of Allen’s men called out.

  Occom stared at the man in mock horror. “Heavenly Father, protect us,” he groaned, looking upward. “A Methodist is among us!” As he asked the man to teach the others the first verse, Duncan watched Conawago. The old Nipmuc could speak with silent expression better than any man he had ever known. He now offered Duncan a fleeting smile that said whatever damage may have existed in their relationship was now repaired. With a pointed set of his eyes and a nod toward Occom, he told Duncan to accept the charade. He had fled angrily into the night at the lake after pleading with Hayes, but he must have rushed back to Fort Number Four in a bid to help Duncan. It would have taken a headlong race to return to the settlement on the Connecticut and reach the landing in time to intercept him.

  They sang “Old Hundred” as they docked at the long Ticonderoga pier, having threaded their way past a brig and several of the long rowing bateaux used for troop transport on the lake. When a sentry asked their business, they simply sang even louder: “ ‘May God who made the earth and sky bestow his blessings from on high.’ ” Noah, more ebullient than Duncan had ever seen him, had brought two stripped willow limbs on board and during their short passage had managed to notch and lash them together to form a four-foot cross, which he now held like a battle standard as they approached the imposing stone walls.

  “Goddamned mission Indians,” a soldier groused as they passed him. There was contempt but also resignation in his voice. The authorities in London officially embraced the conversion of the tribes, having decided that the inconvenience it sometimes caused at its garrisons was far preferable to fighting the natives.

  Another, less coarse voice came down from the ramparts. “It’s the Reverend Occom, the Indian scholar!” the officer called out. “Colonel Hazlitt will want to greet him. Corporal, report to the colonel! Double time!”

  A shudder ran down Duncan’s spine as the heavy doors of Ticonderoga’s gate opened and they marched through onto the parade ground. Not trusting Rogers’s secret pouch to his own possession with so many hostiles nearby, just before docking he had returned it to Brandt, telling him to keep it well hidden. Duncan was never entirely trustful of the regular military, but here his fear seemed almost palpable, like a demon walking at his side. Allen and the mountain militiamen who had accompanied them had slipped away before reaching the gate, following Rufus toward the tavern by the docks. The men who had nearly killed his young scout were likely in the fort, and Allen was savvy enough not to confront them on their own ground.

  Brandt, at Duncan’s side, straightened and threw a knuckle to his forehead as the gate sentinels saluted, then missed a step as they emerged onto the broad, open yard and he saw the squad drilling there. “The Ladies from Hell,” he gasped in surprise.

  Duncan found himself smiling, forgetting his fears for a moment. Munro froze, a wide grin on his face and a hand pressed against his heart. “M’ lads,” he proclaimed.

  The solidly built men marching in formation before them all wore black-and-green kilts, blue bonnets with black fur cockades, short red coats with no lapels, and red-and-white-diced stockings. They were from the famed 42nd Regiment of Foot, the British army’s shock troops, the Black Watch. Duncan had never been sure whether the appellation Ladies from Hell had been coined by friend or foe, but the fierce men in kilts, always at the vanguard of battle, had left enemies shaking on three continents.

  “Uncas!” The uneven singing died away as a tribesman in a scarlet uniform coat called down from the gun emplacement above them. He did not bother with the stairs, but with graceful ease lowered himself down the wall and dropped the last few feet.

  “Reverend Occom,” the minister sternly corrected, but his affectation was betrayed by a wide smile as the Indian trotted toward him. The man he greeted was a relic of another age. The open coat of the British infantry, sleeves cut off, which he wore over his tattooed chest was the only European influenc
e in his attire. His loincloth was finely worked doeskin decorated with tribal images, the leggings laced with sinew were of heavier buckskin, and his moccasins were still heavier moose skin, adorned only with quillwork stripes. At his side was a treacherous-looking, well-used war ax. His thick black hair hung in two braids into which small seashells had been woven. The left side of his angular face was tattooed with a pattern of tiny squares.

  “Mohegan,” Conawago explained in a surprised whisper.

  “Reverend Uncas,” the Indian declared more loudly, as if the company needed an introduction to the true Occom. “Son of the son of the great Chief Uncas of the Mohegan people!”

  The unshakable Occom actually seemed embarrassed. The Mohegan stranger seemed to enjoy ribbing the solemn missionary, but then the amusement left his face as he spotted Noah. He stepped to Occom’s disciple and abruptly dropped to one knee, as if to pay homage. Clearly embarrassed, Noah quickly pulled the man to his feet as more Indian scouts appeared with enthusiastic greetings for Occom and his companions.

  As the loud reunion continued, Duncan seized the confusion to slip away. Relying on his memory of the fort and Sergeant Mallory’s description, he fixed on a window at the corner of the second floor of the old bastion and bounded up the stairs at the end of the building. The corridor was quiet, lit only by the sunlight that filtered through a few open doors. He quickly found the door marked REGIMENTAL CLERK, then, following Mallory’s instructions, located the key behind the framed Roll of the Honored Dead that hung on the wall a few feet away.

  His gut tightened as he unlocked the door. The chamber was indeed unoccupied and was much as the deserter had described—a dusty, stuffy chamber with a large trestle table on one side, holding candle lanterns and mounds of paper, and stacks of shelves on the other. The smell of candle tallow was heavy in the air. In the small hearth were the shavings of feather shafts where someone had recently shaped writing quills. The shelves were packed with ledgers, large parchment envelopes, and stacks of paper bound with red ribbons.