Savage Liberty

by Eliot Pattison

  Duncan tried in vain to read the inscriptions on the ledgers in the dim light between the stacks, then reluctantly returned to the desk, pulled out his tinderbox, and quickly lit one of the candle lanterns. Look on the back wall, past the files on reconstruction of Crown Point, Mallory had carefully explained. Moments later Duncan stood in the bright light of the window with the file he sought. The broad parchment case was marked simply ST. FRANCIS OCTOBER 1759. He glanced out the window, where an officer was trying to hastily assemble the members of a company band near the entrance to the garrison offices.

  There were two dozen documents in the case, each imprinted with a stamp in red ink stating Garrison Clerk, Fort Ticonderoga. Nearly all were written in the same neat clerical hand, no doubt transcriptions from other documents. Topmost was Report of Major Robert Rogers, followed by Statement of Captain Joseph Wait, Statement of Captain Ogden, Statement of Lieutenant Dunbar, Statement of Captain M. Williams, and similar accounts from half a dozen other members of the expeditionary force, then a list of dead from the expedition. Duncan quickly scanned Rogers’s report. The major described a precisely coordinated attack on the Abenaki stronghold that began at 5:00 a.m. Rogers repeatedly praised the bravery of his men, stating that while the enemy had suffered two hundred casualties, he had lost only one man in the raid itself. He continued with a long explanation of the woodcraft and rangering skills that had brought most of his men back to safety.

  The motley band began playing outside. Duncan knew he had to return to their party before the greeting ceremony was concluded, before they were led away to a campsite or quarters. He finished his quick perusal of the other reports from the expedition members, pausing only over two passages, the first in the report of Captain Williams, who recounted that he had gone into St. Francis the night before with Rogers. I saw over six hundred scalps on poles, he stated, then I saw a score of enemy canoes on the river landing. The second referred to Major Rogers disappearing in the heat of the battle by the large Jesuit mission church, then reappearing a quarter hour later on the far side of town, just before the church burst into flame. The final two reports were single-sheet accounts from others, one from the commander of the garrison that had occupied St. Francis for two years after the war, which offered little more than the comment that the biggest tension in the town was with the Jesuits, not the Abenaki, who were much subdued after the Rogers raid. The second sheet was from a report dated 1764 from a sheriff in New York town. Major Rogers had become an inveterate drunkard and gambler and in June of that year had been arrested for debt, only to be broken out by old ranger friends, who provided the fast horse on which he fled to Connecticut.

  In the bottom of the parchment envelope were two sealed tubes, of the kind Duncan had seen used during the war for urgent dispatches. Each was about six inches long, its wooden cap fixed tight by a ring of the red wax used for official seals. The music outside seemed to be coming to a close. Duncan muttered a curse, then twisted open the first tube, breaking the seal. Inside was another statement, but not from a soldier. It was in a different hand, not the clerk’s, and signed by Father Jean-Baptiste de LaBrosse, vicar of St. Francis. Duncan’s heart leapt as he saw that it was inscribed in purple ink. He folded the statement and began to put it into his coin pouch, then reconsidered and folded it lengthwise and stuffed it under his belt. The second container held only a scrap of stained paper. It had a Christian cross at the top and a hastily sketched plan for a large building with several doors, windows, and altars. He stuffed the paper into his pouch, then as he returned the envelope to the shelf he noticed a large wooden candle box labeled ARTIFACTS and hastily slid open the lid. Inside were half a dozen powder horns, all etched with the usual scenes of battle or forest. Each was inscribed with a name. Samuel Gibson, he read, then Thomas Pickering and, to his surprise, Daniel Oliver. The drawing on Oliver’s horn was of a simple church near a river, with a canoe beached in front of it. Duncan quickly surveyed the others, looking for names of rangers. There was Ogden, Jersey Blues, referring to the famed unit of the New Jersey militia, Ruggles of Massachusetts, Fitch of Connecticut, and finally, Williams, Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard. None were rangers, though Duncan had not heard of Williams’s bizarrely named unit. In the bottom of the box someone had jammed a copy of the popular poem written about the raid, “The Ballad of Rogers Retreat.” Duncan paused over one verse:

  When ten days were spent in vain

  The Indians overtook them again

  Near thirty men as some do cry

  Now by the Indians they did dy.

  Suddenly he realized that the music had stopped and only a solitary drumbeat could be heard. He quickly held each tube to the candle flame, resealing the wax. Moments later he was back in the hallway, returning the key to its hiding place. As he walked down the stairs, touching the note in his belt, Occom’s delegation, fortified by soldiers, burst into a loud hymn.

  “BY GOD, SIR, I DO so envy you!” the portly, ruddy-faced commander of Fort Ticonderoga exclaimed when Duncan explained that he had recently seen a fisher cat. “The great wolf cat of forest legend!” Colonel Hazlitt said. “Imagine when a trained natural philosopher gets his hands on one! Why, it may require a whole new branch of taxonomy!” The colonel was a genteel, learned man who had insisted on hosting his visitors at supper in his apartments. Conawago, Duncan, Occom, Munro, Noah, and Hayes sat at a long, lavishly set table with Hazlitt and three other officers, stewards hovering behind them. The colonel explained that he had twisted arms in Whitehall to obtain a posting in the New World so he might study its flora and fauna. He had earned the honors of Fort Ticonderoga by fighting the French in the fever isles, and had passed his long weeks on troop transports by reading the amazing zoological tracts of Harvey, Leeuwenhoek, and Linnaeus.

  “I was skeptical about finding one-legged warriors who hopped into battle,” Hazlitt confessed as he called for more claret, referring to some of the earliest accounts of the New World, “but that left the beaver as long as a house and the horse with the trunk of an elephant for me to find.”

  Conawago exchanged an amused glance with Duncan and added, “Not to mention the bird that bursts into flames and rises from its ashes.”

  The colonel’s good nature was not offended by the gibe. “I am always open to suggestion, sir,” he replied, his large eyes growing even more protuberant as he described encountering a bull moose by the lake shore. He turned to Duncan. “But the cat that flies, sir, what a thrill it must be to see one!”

  “My friend Conawago calls it ursus caelo, the sky bear,” Duncan offered with another uneasy glance at the stewards, all of whom were soldiers who had left their arms by the door. He had fervently hoped to avoid attending the dinner, but Conawago had convinced him that he would rouse suspicion in declining the honor. Their compromise was that Duncan would use a false name.

  Hazlitt’s face lit with excitement again. “Wonderful!” He searched his pockets and produced a writing lead, then, to his personal steward’s obvious displeasure, recorded the name on the linen tablecloth. “So the bear that flies through the tops of trees is no myth!”

  “More like a giant pine marten, but they do indeed exist,” Conawago assured the officer. “They eat the dreaded porcupine,” he added, prompting a long discussion of how this might be physically possible.

  As Hazlett finally crossed his fork and knife on his plate, declaring their consumption of prodigious quantities of trout, venison, and potato-and-leek pie to be concluded, he leaned forward with a conspiratorial air. “Gentlemen,” he proudly confided, “while my man fetches the port and cheese, I am going to show you something that will take your breath away!”

  The colonel rose, straightened his lace-trimmed waistcoat, and disappeared into an adjoining room. One of the remaining infantry officers looked after him with a fond expression, but another, a scar-faced, sour-looking man was cocking his head toward the door through which they had entered. Heavy bootsteps and the clink of metal could be heard in the co
rridor.

  “What a gentleman!” the colonel declared as he returned waving a tattered, much-read letter. “He may be a frog, but a more noble and intelligent chap you could never hope to encounter. Ironically, he was stationed in this very establishment during the unpleasantries here in 1758.”

  “When so many Highlanders were massacred,” Duncan observed.

  “Monsieur Bougainville went on to great success in his king’s army,” Hazlitt rejoined. “But he was a mere captain on that terrible day.”

  “Louis Antoine de Bougainville?” Duncan asked in surprise. “Who commanded part of the French army at Quebec?”

  “By then he was a colonel, yes. And after the fall of New France, he went back to Paris to negotiate the treaty that yielded to King George all the lands east of the Mississippi. But that’s not his real célébrité,” Hazlitt said, using the French word. “He has become a renowned natural philosopher. King Louis has given him a charter, and two ships, to be the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe! And he sent me a letter from the coast of Brazil!”

  The sullen officer, who had obviously heard the contents of the letter before, excused himself with thinly disguised impatience and disappeared into the corridor. Duncan and his friends listened respectfully as Hazlitt explained how he had sent a letter to Bougainville to congratulate him and to suggest that he pay special attention to the orchids on the remote isles he would visit. The colonel then energetically recounted the French officer’s description of huge flocks of terns, pods of giant whales, and the amazing aviary of mangrove swamps along the mouth of the Amazon.

  The door behind Colonel Hazlitt opened. The scar-faced officer, wearing an expression of smug amusement now, stepped through the doorway, which revealed a comfortable sitting room with a carpeted floor and a blazing hearth. A man sat in one of the armchairs in front of the fire, bent over a violin. He was feverishly playing a piece that sounded like Mozart.

  Hazlitt lowered his glass of port and turned, his face reddening. “Lieutenant? What is the meaning of this?”

  The dour lieutenant maintained a businesslike air, but his eyes were full of gloating, as if scoring a point in a personal match between himself and the commander. “Unexpected business, sir. Urgent business from Albany.”

  “In my personal study? You presume too much, sir!”

  “The general’s business, sir,” the officer pointedly replied, as if it forgave all.

  “And is that my violin—” the colonel sputtered as he struggled to his feet. “By God, sir, the insolence!”

  The officer ignored his commander, and gestured them all toward the colonel’s study. As Duncan and Conawago passed through the door, the entrance to the corridor opened behind them and two soldiers appeared, bayonets fixed on their muskets.

  The violinist, ignoring them, played to a crescendo before turning to them with a victorious smile. An icy fist closed around Duncan’s heart. It was Horatio Beck.

  Beck rose and offered an exaggerated bow to the colonel, then extended the violin. “Imagine my surprise to find such a fine instrument here in the wilderness,” he haughtily observed as Hazlitt grabbed it out of his hands. “Though I did have to tune it.”

  “What is the meaning of this, Lieutenant, you impertinent—”

  “This impertinent officer works for the Ministry of War,” the Englishman declared, acid dripping with every word. “Horatio Beck is my name. And allow me to correct that so we can avoid unnecessary delays. I work for the minister of war.”

  Duncan eyed the door Beck must have used to gain entry from the corridor and began to inch toward it.

  “I so enjoyed your discussion of natural philosophy,” Beck offered in a mocking tone. “There seems to be no end to the monsters inhabiting these wilds. Treacherous flying bears. Catamounts that swallow deer whole. Blackhearted Jacobites ravenous for the flesh of our precious sovereign.”

  Hazlitt’s fury was quickly turning to confusion. “Sir?”

  Beck extracted one of the bounty bills from a pocket, unfolded it, and extended it to the colonel. “The infamous traitor and murderer of over thirty men stands in this very room.”

  Hazlitt’s face drained of color as he read the paper. Duncan took a quick step toward the door and grabbed the latch, only to find it locked.

  “You are the infamous McCallum!” Hazlitt gasped. “How dare you sit at my table!”

  Duncan darted toward the door to the dining chamber only to have the two soldiers level their bayonets at him.

  “Seize him!” Beck snarled.

  The two soldiers grabbed Duncan, each clamping a hand around one of his arms. Hazlitt fixed Duncan with a gaze that was as much disappointment as anger. “Do you have nothing to say, McCallum?”

  “Don’t trust everything you read, sir. Lieutenant Beck knows that the allegations of the broadside are false. He will use you as he is using me.”

  “Search him!” Beck ordered.

  As one of the guards held him from behind, the other began piling Duncan’s possessions on the little reading table between the chairs. His knife. His compass. His large belt pouch, which was emptied out to reveal coins, flints, buttons, and the folded drawing from the clerk’s office.

  Beck’s eyes lit with pleasure as he straightened out the paper. “Stolen from your garrison archives,” he stated to the colonel.

  “What proof do you offer of that, sir?” Hazlitt inquired in a brittle voice.

  Beck turned his triumphant smile toward the shadowed window, where Duncan now saw a man leaning against the frame.

  “I am the proof, sir,” the figure said as he stepped into the light, “because I am the one who put it there.” It was Sergeant Mallory.

  13

  LONELY BIRDCALLS, THE PASSAGE OF a patch of sunlight on his wall, the rat-ta-tat of drumrolls from the parade ground. Duncan’s world had become an incomplete mosaic of sound and light. Blessedly, the cells for the most desperate of prisoners had been built into the top floor of the tallest building, owing, an escorting guard had explained, to an embarrassing escape by a tunneling prisoner years earlier. This meant that through the small window seven feet above the floor a misshapen rectangle of sunlight traveled across the cell wall during the morning hours. That was when Duncan sat below the window, listening to the birdsong coming from the nearby orchard and woods. The drums rolled for morning and evening muster, and he learned to expect food after each, a bowl of glutinous porridge in the morning, when his piss pot was removed, and a plate of stale bread and hardened cheese at the end of the day.

  As the sun finally rose after the first long night, he had extracted the Statement of Father Jean-Baptiste de LaBrosse from inside his belt. It was dated not 1759, but December 1764, years after the war in North America had ended and a year after the treaty of peace had finally been signed in Paris. Was it because only then—with his war officially lost and British authority established over Quebec—that the Jesuit LeBrosse was willing to speak? Or was it because someone had later begun to suspect Rogers and had interrogated the Jesuits, who had become reluctant subjects of King George? It was the same year Rogers had been arrested in New York for debt, and had escaped—as if something in the incident had triggered the Ministry of War’s interest in Rogers. It hadn’t been the minister of war exactly, Duncan reminded himself, but Horatio Beck, another inveterate gambler who was also deeply in debt.

  The statement was disappointingly brief. It seemed almost an apology for Rogers, stating that the major had allowed the most cherished items of the church to be carried away before destruction of the town—and how, contrary to popular reports, Rogers had shown Christian charity to at least some of the women and children of the town, who owed their lives to him. The likely reason the statement was still in the file and hadn’t been taken for evidence in Rogers’s trial, he realized, was because it had nothing incriminating to say. Perhaps the most important clue lay on the surface of the paper, its purple ink. The ink itself had become like a signature. Had LaBrosse been
Rogers’s surrogate, had he been writing the letters to the rangers? It seemed unlikely that all the letters would have found their way from Rogers in the distant northwest, and certainly not directly from him in his prison cell.

  Duncan repeatedly read the second paragraph of LaBrosse’s statement.

  There was no hidden treasure at St. Francis, now or in 1759, LaBrosse attested. There were no French nationals, only humble monks who had in fact been repudiated by the French king. LaBrosse could not attest to the whereabouts of the militant Jesuits, who were known, he admitted, to accompany Abenakis on their raids during the prior hostilities, and he suggested that such inquiries be referred to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Sir William Johnson. The first paragraph read like a general narrative, but the second one was written in response to specific questions. Five years after the raid, someone had asked about the lost treasure of King Louis, and now gold coins from St. Francis had been surfacing in New England. Duncan looked back at the date. December 1764. Rogers had been arrested for debt in June of that year. Surely it was no coincidence that the questions started being asked after his encounter with gambling and debt in New York.

  Duncan’s cell had originally been built to house soldiers, probably during the French war, when ranks had swollen for the northern campaigns, so it held a small hearth. Duncan had taken heart to see that the bars on the window were only wooden, but when he grabbed them to hoist himself up, he understood why. The window was just wide enough for a man to squeeze through but it was nearly thirty feet above the ground. No one could survive such a fall without broken bones, or worse.

  In the back of the hearth he found a few charred sticks and used one to mark the arc of the moving sunlight; then, for a makeshift clock, he divided it into what he estimated were hours. At first he assumed he would be transported quickly to Boston, where he might at least reach out to friends. By the end of the second day, however, with no word and no contact with anyone but the solitary guards posted in four-hour shifts outside his cell, he began to despair. Surely Beck would not have waited to interrogate him. Surely his companions would have wanted to see him. Had Beck locked him up simply to get him out of the way?