Savage Liberty

by Eliot Pattison

  Conawago looked down into his hands, one of which was desperately squeezing the other, and silently nodded. “There is still another day,” he repeated in a whisper.

  Duncan fingered Hazlitt’s little volume. “Then I can finish my reading,” he replied.

  IN THE NIGHT, ONE OF the lake’s frequent summer storms raged over Ticonderoga, casting angry thunderbolts down upon the surrounding mountains. Despite getting soaked, Duncan stayed at the high window of his dungeon, watching as the flashes illuminated whitecaps on the lake and the wind tore away a small tent pitched near the pier. The anchored ships strained at their cables. Someone appeared on the dock, and in the next flash Duncan made out the long, braided hair and green waistcoat and realized it was Conawago. In another flash the old Nipmuc stood at the end of the dock, his face uplifted into the pelting rain and his fists raised overhead, raging against the heavens.

  The blackness that followed the tempest was so complete, Duncan could barely see his hand before his face. There were no stars, no moon, no hope, no sense to be made of his death. A general in Albany would sign his life away at Beck’s request, probably already had done so, just a quick scrawl between sips of tea. Duncan’s joyful childhood embrace of his clan, his education in Holland and Edinburgh, his years helping tribesmen and settlers on the frontier mattered not at all. He had nothing left but the small, bright gem of his love for Sarah, and soon he would leave her weeping and shaking in Edentown.

  He surrendered to his fatigue, then woke abruptly, gasping, from a dream in which his father pointed at him from the gibbet again, but this time he was laughing at his son. Duncan quickly grasped the message from the other side. He was going to die as they had, useless deaths at the hands of a tyrant. He understood the blackness now. It was the blackness of his heart spreading into his world. That world would never know light again.

  Sometime before dawn a monkey dropped a coin by his head.

  14

  DUNCAN HAD LIT THE LANTERN in the middle of the night and tried to begin a letter to Sarah, but he finally succumbed to sleep, his head on the table. He woke with a shudder, this time to the gaze of two inquisitive eyes set on his, inches from his face. Fogged as he was with sleep, he did not immediately recognize his visitor. Then a familiar whistle came from below, and she shot away, leaving a large metal disk spinning on the table beside him.

  Suddenly he was alert, leaping up to catch a glimpse of Sadie and Hayes as they ran toward the forest. A gray fog hung over the fort, and the candle had gone out, but enough light filtered in for him to recognize the disk. It was a ranger token, a forest coin some called it, inscribed with a large tree on one side and on the other a long rifle crossed with a war ax. Patrick Woolford, deputy superintendent of Indian affairs, had issued this particular coin to his small elite band, and the handful of stealthy scouts who served him still carried them.

  Duncan watched, trying to will the fog to disappear, until finally he could make out the trees at the end of the cleared field to the southeast of the fort. A figure stood on a limb halfway up the trunk of the largest tree. Even at that distance Duncan could recognize his friend. Ishmael had succeeded in his mission. The deputy superintendent had arrived.

  Duncan pressed his face against the bars in the hope of being seen. As he watched, the former ranger officer cocked his head, raised his arm to shoulder height, and opened his palm in a Mohawk greeting. Then he spun his fingers in an upward spiral and brought his hand down fast. It was one of the silent signals used by rangers going to battle. Remain in position and await orders.

  A bank of mist blew in from the lake and obscured the tree. When it cleared, Woolford was gone.

  The flood of hope that had risen at the sight of his old friend began to fade as the morning progressed. If caught aiding a traitor’s escape, his companions too would face the hangman’s noose. Duncan could not bear the thought of bringing a death warrant to any of them. He would be surrendering to the worst kind of weakness if he allowed it. To his forebears such dishonor would mean eternal damnation. To the Iroquois, whose warriors’ code he lived by, it would mean an eternity spent wandering in a fogbound forest. It would mean dishonor, and Duncan had nothing left but his honor. He was heartened by the efforts of his friends, but despite their best intentions, they could not magically convey him thirty feet down the wall. If they tried a ladder, they would be shot by the wall sentries. If they tried to rush the cell, they would have to fight the entire garrison. He would not wait for them and their inevitable, bloody failure. At dusk, he would break the bars and drop to the ground. It was the slimmest of hopes, but the only one that preserved his honor. Then he heard shouts from the ramparts and looked out the window, and even that thin reed was shattered. A small company of soldiers was galloping up the Albany road, Horatio Beck at their head.

  BECK SAID NOTHING AS HE entered the cell, just cast a lightless smile at Duncan and stepped aside for Sergeant Mallory and a misshapen Indian in a scarlet waistcoat. The tribesman’s head was unnaturally long and ovoid, as if it had been compressed when he was a child. His horselike appearance was accentuated by a severe hunchback. His arms and hands were disproportionately large, with bulging muscles. Three fingers were fused together, giving the appendage the appearance of a claw. The man’s eyes were dull but expectant, like a subdued predator waiting for a blood-soaked meal.

  Mallory paced a circle around Duncan, then, without warning, slammed a fist into Duncan’s belly. As Duncan gasped, the Indian shoved him into the chair and slapped him with a backhanded blow that rendered him senseless for several seconds. When he recovered, the Indian had tied his ankles to the chair.

  Beck dragged the table so that it was two feet in front of Duncan, then sat on the stool a few feet away, watching in silent amusement. Mallory gestured to the grotesque-looking Indian, who began extracting objects from his person and arranging them in front of Duncan. A crumpled piece of thick leather with two holes in it that had been hanging from his cartridge box. From inside the box, a wrinkled brown object that looked like a thin, desiccated sausage. From inside his waistcoat a strand holding several thick leather loops. Finally, unbuttoning the top of his coat, he removed a necklace of shriveled leather scraps, each roughly the same oval shape. He set everything in a neat row and smiled hungrily.

  Beck stood, lifted the writing quill, and with its tip separated some of the objects so Duncan might see them better, starting by moving the ovals on the necklace. Some had small silver rings attached to them. With a lurch of his gut, Duncan recognized them and then, to his horror, recognized each of the other objects. Paralyzed by the discovery, he did not react as the sergeant tied his hands behind the chair. He was looking at a necklace of human ears, a human nose, a finger, and a strand of carefully excised human lips. Most, but not all, the parts seemed to be from Europeans.

  Beck broke the silence. “Sergeant Mallory and I met during the war,” he declared in a conversational tone. “Two of a kind, though not in techniques. Mine are subtle in the extreme, his much more direct, made more so with the help of his friend Wolf here, another wartime acquaintance. An Ottawa, we understand, though no tribe has allowed him to stay long in their lodges, for they would call him a witch, a monster, a demon. But he found his place with us. Now he is a professional allowed to pursue his art to perfection. With Wolf’s capable assistance, our interrogations have always been most efficient. As you can see, Wolf likes to wear his trophies. I prefer ones that are more ethereal.”

  Mallory gestured to the sack Wolf had dropped on the floor. “There’s more specimens, McCallum,” the sergeant pointed out in a casual tone. “Do we need to show you? You wouldn’t credit the collection of female parts he has.”

  “I saved your life, Mallory,” Duncan spat.

  Mallory sighed. “I never thought Hancock would let that fool with the pitchfork get close enough.”

  “I trusted you! Sarah trusted you!” Duncan was seized with a black thought. “Where is she? What did you do to her?”
>
  “I got the lovely creature safely across the Hudson and bid farewell, though what a tempting blossom to pluck, eh? Mr. Beck was waiting in Albany, and we had to get here before you, to make sure you did exactly what I suggested in the archives. You made it so easy, McCallum. And I shall return to Miss Ramsey. There is a warrant that will allow me to seize her. And seize her, and seize her,” the sergeant said with a gloating laugh.

  Duncan fought to keep his voice level. “You’re not really a lieutenant. Why bother with the uniform?” he asked Beck.

  “Actually I am paid at the rate of naval captain,” Reck replied in a bored, airy voice. “I have been given papers as a major, a commander, even a naval surgeon, though I learned I am not nearly as adept with surgical instruments as Mallory and Wolf. But on this mission the rank of army lieutenant serves me well. More inconspicuous. Enough authority to order up resources, but not so much as to attract undue attention. I wore a major’s gorget in Halifax, but everyone wanted to pamper me so.”

  “I am not your enemy, Beck.”

  “But you must be! I have a warrant for your arrest. And even a warrant to hang you, signed just hours ago! The king only hangs his enemies.”

  “I had no trial. You have no authority.”

  “There is authority from the king to hang those who constitute a clear and present danger to the empire. I have letters from London making me the king’s agent. You have been found guilty of treason in absentia, by a hearing in Albany. Your life is mine. I can hang you tomorrow.”

  Duncan heard the shift in his tone. “Is that an invitation?”

  “There are only two possibilities you need to concern yourself with now, McCallum,” Beck continued in his oily voice. “Tell me what I need to know now. Or tell me after Wolf and Sergeant Mallory take some trophies from you. Did you know those lips actually came off living humans? When he was young, Wolf’s people practiced cannibalism. An acquired taste, I take it, but one that apparently stays with you.”

  Beck bowed his head to Wolf, who acknowledged him with a low, impatient growl before reaching into the sack he had dropped by the table. Mallory began rolling up Duncan’s sleeve.

  Duncan closed his eyes. He saw his father on the gibbet again, but this time he was staring at Duncan with curiosity, not accusation. Duncan fixed Beck with a baleful stare. “Did you kill the captain of Hancock’s sloop the Liberty in Boston harbor?”

  Beck gave an exaggerated grimace. “So ironic, a ship called the Liberty.” He shrugged. “I had to search the boat, didn’t I? It had just arrived. I had to be sure Hancock hadn’t tricked me and placed it on her instead of on the Arcturus. The fool captain kept protesting, saying I didn’t have the proper papers. I hit him on the back with a timber to shut him up. Later the army doctor said the blow had burst a kidney. How was I to know?”

  “He was innocent,” Duncan said.

  “He was nobody.”

  “I think I am not the traitor in this room, Beck.”

  Beck sighed and made a gesture to the sergeant, who nodded to Wolf.

  Before Duncan could react, the Ottawa clamped his hand around Duncan’s left arm. Duncan gasped as his flesh exploded in pain. When Wolf pulled his hand away, a dozen small porcupine quills were impaled in his arm.

  “So inventive, no? The true genius always seems to find new uses for old things.” Duncan saw that Wolf’s hand held a pincushion fixed by a strap, made for a seamstress’s wrist. But he was inserting into it several more short quills from a porcupine’s tail, the barbed ends sticking out for another blow.

  “Surely a frontiersman like yourself knows about the amazing spiny pig,” Mallory said. “Its quills are barbed so you can’t easily pull them out, and left on their own, they will work themselves deeper and deeper until they just disappear into your body. We experimented in the war. Wolf drove quills into a captive’s spine. After two weeks he was completely paralyzed.”

  Duncan spoke through his agony. “I am just doing a favor for friends in Boston. You know their names. They gave you my name out in the harbor. Hancock and Livingston.”

  Beck slowly clapped his hands. “See. Cooperation is not so arduous. You admit you work for the insidious Sons of Liberty, then.”

  “Every man I know is a son,” Duncan said, ending his words with a groan. His arm felt as if a dozen red-hot needles had been thrust into it. Blood began dripping from his arm onto the floor.

  Beck sighed. “I fail to comprehend this obsession with liberty. A man has no liberty except that granted by his king. You think you can seize liberty from our blessed George? You will find only enough liberty to hang yourself.”

  Sergeant Mallory grinned at Duncan, then produced a small metal hammer with a ball on one end that looked like a tool from a gunsmith’s shop. In one quick motion, he flattened Duncan’s hand on the table and slammed the ball down on it.

  “I keep wondering where that journal is,” Beck said in his casual voice as Duncan painfully moved his fingers. Nothing was broken yet. “Did you ever actually have it?”

  “You should have done a better job in Halifax, Lieutenant,” Duncan said, gasping between words. “The French were always going to leave the ship that night, but you made them so desperate they had to destroy the Arcturus to throw you off the trail.”

  “It would have been so much simpler if I could have arrested them in Halifax,” Beck agreed, “but they didn’t have the ledger yet. And it would have been far less of a nuisance if they had just let me overtake them in the harbor. I could have been back enjoying long dinners at my club in London.” He returned Duncan’s furious stare.

  “A nuisance?” Duncan spat. “Thirty-seven men died.”

  “What a spectacle! But the explosion only confirmed that I was on the right track—not who had the ledger.”

  “You knew they were responsible for the Arcturus,” Duncan hissed. “But you issued a warrant for my arrest for killing those innocent men.”

  “Treason is such a slippery word for the people of Boston. Out in the countryside it works wonders. In Boston they might hail as a hero someone we branded a traitor, but they would always loathe the man who sank a ship.” Beck shrugged. “I couldn’t very well charge Hancock and Livingston, not yet. But you have admitted you are their agent. They will be stopped before they do real damage to the king, if I have to hang a score of their surrogates.”

  “It gets you no closer to the French spies.” Blood continued oozing out of the punctures in Duncan’s arm. “No closer to the ledger.”

  “You are a strategist, McCallum, I grant you that. Someone who understands feigns and hidden thrusts. It is still possible that you have the ledger in your control. We will know that in an hour or two, I assure you.”

  “If you were truly after the enemies of the king, you would be on the trail of the French spies, not setting a trap for me in Ticonderoga. You know they sank a British ship. But maybe the odor of gold has clouded your judgment, Beck.”

  Beck raised a hand to forestall Wolf, who had lifted a long corkscrew out of his bag. “Not the ear, Wolf, not yet. So very messy.” The king’s agent considered Duncan in silence for several heartbeats, then followed Mallory’s gaze toward the writing on the wall. His eyes brightened, and he paced along the arc with great interest. “You are good, McCallum. Your talents are wasted. You perceived how the two paths converged.” He halted at the corner, staring at the column of powder horn names, then pointed at the Celtic cross. “My God! Remarkable! You did pick up the scent!” He stepped to Duncan’s side and picked up the corkscrew himself. “Where?” Beck demanded. “Where is that graveyard?”

  Duncan tried not to look at the long, twisting piece of steel. “I won’t be able to tell you if you scramble my brains.”

  Beck pushed the corkscrew under Duncan’s nose, as if considering a new use. “The trail of dead rangers leads ever northward. Who would have thought it would be paved with gold? I gave up on that treasure years ago, thinking it was sitting in a French chateau by now. But now I k
now it never left American shores. Sergeant Mallory and I would very much like to find that particular chest. Tell us where that lonely grave is, and I don’t have to hang you.”

  “Ask Comtois and his friend Philippe.”

  This time Beck struck Duncan himself, a painful backhanded slap that left Duncan blinking. Beck motioned to Mallory, who was extracting an assortment of medical instruments and Indian tools from the sack. Long, scissorslike forceps. A small, treacherous tomahawk. A tourniquet with a metal tightening clamp. A bone saw and a small bloodstained cutting board.

  “The French fools didn’t know about its sudden appearance themselves until they arrived in Boston,” Beck explained. “It was just distant history for all of us, until Rogers spoke of it one night while he drank too much brandy at our gaming table in New York. He was down for the moment, with no backing, and he asked for credit, said he could always bring a sack of gold louis from the north if he had to. Then his cursed luck changed and he seemed to forget it. But I didn’t. I got him arrested, but the cunning bastard escaped before Wolf could work on him.”

  “And so all those years ago you came up here,” Duncan said, “to investigate Rogers.”

  A thin, icy grin rose on Beck’s face. “I think Rogers was going to meet with Comtois to offer the gold as his dowry for marrying himself to the French cause. For fulfilling the legacy of King Louis.”

  Duncan looked past Beck to his arc on the wall and saw all the pieces again, once more having been disassembled and thrown into the air. Beck did not know about the secret movement of French colonists, about Chevelure, about Saguenay. He thought Rogers had the gold, or soon would, for his own greedy purpose.

  Beck angrily threw a coin onto the table. It was a gold louis. “There’s thousands more. Where is that grave?” he shouted at Duncan.