The Constable's Tale: A Novel of Colonial America

by Donald Smith

  After the heaviest part of the shower passed, they went back to digging in the clay, which was now turning to sludge. The rain looked like it was settling in for a good soak.

  CHAPTER 4

  15: Keep your Nails clean and Short, also your Hands and Teeth Clean yet without Shewing any great Concern for them.

  —RULES OF CIVILITY

  A CANDLE IN THE WINDOW LET HARRY KNOW TOBY WAS STILL UP. She brought out cloths for Harry and Noah to dry off with and put some leftover biscuits and gravy on the table. While they were eating she told them Bledsoe had come over to check on her but she had sent him home, feeling wholly safe with Martin and the others about. Harry told her about their night. He handed her the Masonic medal for a look. Martin, who had come over from his cabin, gave it a close going-over and pronounced it a fine piece of jewelry.

  “Martin will stay close by the house tomorrow,” Harry said. “Field work for the others like usual. I think whoever did this has left the county, but I want you to stay inside.”

  They talked about what the schoolmaster would do now that his job was at an end. Toby said it would be fine if Noah wanted stay in the barn until he got resituated. Noah said he already had been told by three different people that if he ever tired of educating young Campbell, a job everyone knew was a trial due to the fact that the boy had a quarrelsome nature, he should come and see them.

  “But the truth is, I’d already decided what to do when my time with Andrew was finished. I intend to set up a school that eventually will be free for anyone who wishes their child to attend. We’ll start with the orphans.”

  *

  Later, as they lay in bed, Harry looked for words to smooth over his conduct at Cogdell’s. Going off drinking with friends when he should have been thinking about how Toby might be feeling. It was something he may not have given a second thought in his previous life, before Judge McLeod exposed him to the manners practiced by the better sorts of people. Now he could see that he still had not fully caught on to what the judge had tried to get across.

  She interrupted his first words by touching his lips with a finger. They had left off their nightclothes due to the day’s buildup of warmth. Toby began lightly rubbing ovals on the top of one of Harry’s thighs. “I have already forgotten about that,” she said. “Anyway, I made my journal a promise about tonight.”

  Harry wondered if he would ever get over feeling that every time they made love was the first. New, exciting, and slightly disreputable. It had first happened barely two weeks after Toby first arrived in New Bern. On that day Harry had gone to the dock to collect what he thought would be a man to assist Martin in cooking and other household chores, in accordance with the contract he had signed. He was surprised to find it was a woman with a man’s name. Piecing it together later, he recalled Talitha had handled the entire matter: the search, the negotiation, all but the actual signing. It was she who had convinced him in the first place that Martin needed a helper. Talitha claimed innocence. However, Harry recollected that in recent months his mother had been hinting that it was time for him to pick out a wife. For years, Harry had been satisfied—happy in fact—with random moments of bliss in bed with some townsman’s daughter. Even knowing that sooner or later such a coupling was likely to have consequences. Talitha acted like she was unaware of any such larking about, but lately she had taken to mentioning how few women there were in Craven County who were both unwed and suitable as potential life partners for her son: not too far above the family’s station as to be out of the question and certainly not anywhere below it. She easily could have caught word of a well-educated young woman in Wales who was looking for a position in the colonies. She might have read such an advertisement in the North Carolina Gazette. The misleading name could have been a bonus, serving to not get Harry’s suspicions up that Talitha had on her mind something more than just hiring another servant.

  When Toby got off the ship, she was brought to du Plessis’s house to await Harry and the signing of the receipt. Du Plessis often made his place available for such transactions. She was wearing a sunflower-colored cotton gown that intensified the effect of her dark hair. Harry at first thought this banquet for the eyes was an out-of-town visitor or maybe a hitherto unknown niece or ward of du Plessis’s. As the truth revealed itself, he felt a rush of embarrassment, sure that everyone in the room was thinking about the same possibilities he was.

  During the early going they kept talking to a minimum, just what was needed to get along. He turned her over to Martin for learning what was expected of her. The original plan had been for the new servant to move into Martin’s cabin. But Harry decided to build her a bed in the storage loft of his house. They took their baths separately in the metal tub in the kitchen, where Harry cobbled up a privacy curtain.

  After the first week he began feeling more comfortable with the arrangement and now and then would try to make light conversation. Toby seemed to have her own sense of what was proper, which resulted in short banters. Under gentle but persistent questioning, she told him of her parents’ intention to make the best of her desire for a new life, their hope that she would find a husband. But her own aim was to stay independent. At the end of the five years she would take the generous freedom dues she had negotiated: fifty acres of plantable land, some farming tools, a cow and a mule and a few chickens, a new set of clothes, and thirty pounds of proclamation money. She intended to put these resources to work to make a life all on her own.

  At first Harry was satisfied with her seeming lack of interest in him. But he grew increasingly curious. No amount of polite talk could entirely ease the tension he felt when she was near. And she was often near. Twilight suppers alone together, usually consisting of leftovers from dinner, were especially hard to get through. But he looked forward to them nevertheless.

  One day Harry came into the house unexpectedly just as Toby had stepped out of the tub. She had pulled the curtain back. They both froze, Harry thinking he had never seen anything so terrifyingly beautiful. His first thought was to leave. But he found he could not turn his eyes away. Toby remained where she was. She could have stepped back, drawn the curtain, waited for him to excuse himself. Instead, she padded soundlessly over, eyes locked on his. He ran his hands over her shoulders lightly, seized with the ridiculous thought that if he used any pressure at all, she might fracture. She did not resist. A moment later they were wrestling standing up.

  A week later Harry told Talitha he had decided to get married. Annoyingly, she did not seem surprised.

  *

  Afterward, as he lay next to Toby in a pleasing haze, he turned toward her silhouette against the open window. Her eyes were open, head tilted slightly toward Harry so each set of eyelashes was visible against the night sky. She seemed to be looking at something in the space between herself and the ceiling.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She blinked, seeming to return to the room. “I was just thinking about how I really like it here. My life with you. In North Carolina.”

  “Then why the unhappy look?”

  “It’s nothing. Just the Welsh temperament.”

  “Tell me.”

  “There is an old belief that for every moment of happiness there must be a settling-up. For every summer there is a winter. For every birth, someone dies. For every pleasure, a pain.”

  “That sounds like a sad accounting,” Harry said.

  “We can be a sad people.”

  Toby said a word that sounded like heer-eth, as nearly as Harry could make it out.

  “It’s from our language. It means a longing to return home, go back from wherever you are to Wales. People who’ve traveled to far places for long periods come back speaking of it.”

  “We would say you were homesick.”

  “It’s something larger than that. It’s a sense of who you are, how your bloodlines have run through the Welsh countryside from generations without number. You don’t know what it is until you leave. One of my brothers felt it wh
en he moved to London. He called it a sense of longing, like there was a string attaching him to Swansea. Now I know what he meant.”

  “You’re not thinking of going back, are you?” Harry said in a quiet voice, fearing the answer. “I mean, other than for a visit?” As the words came out, he realized how unsettling the thought was.

  She rolled onto her stomach and with a burrowing motion made a place for herself inside Harry’s arm.

  “No. I told you, I’m happy here.”

  CHAPTER 5

  91: Make no Shew of taking great Delight in your Victuals, Feed not with Greediness; cut your Bread with a Knife, lean not on the Table neither find fault with what you Eat.

  —RULES OF CIVILITY

  WAITING IN MCLEOD’S ENTRANCE HALL TO BE ANNOUNCED, HARRY dreaded the prospect of seeing Maddie again. What had been a vaguely agreeable state of anticipation had given way to feelings of guilt. As if just putting eyes on her again would be an act of disloyalty to Toby. But Maddie was not at the breakfast table. McLeod said she was still getting over the previous day’s turmoil. As uneasy as Harry had been about the prospect of their reunion, he now found himself disappointed in equal measure.

  Taking breakfast with the judge were several others from the night before: Ayerdale, Reverends Reed and Fletcher, Carruthers, and du Plessis. To Harry’s surprise, Constable Blinn also had been invited. He was sitting between the sheriff and McLeod toward the head of the table. Harry felt a prick of jealousy that Blinn had been placed in a seat of such honor.

  “Won’t you join us?” McLeod said. His cold seemed to have gotten better. He waved off a servant so he could serve his new guests himself. The soul of hospitality.

  “We were just discussing the events of last night,” he said, ladling porridge and bacon onto Harry’s plate. “Randall here says word is spreading quickly. People are fearful that a killer is on the loose.”

  “Understandably,” the sheriff confirmed. “The commissioners have called for a meeting at the church tonight. Everyone wants to hear what we’re doing about this.”

  “What they want is for us to catch the killer,” said Blinn, who was sipping on a small beer.

  McLeod said, “I’ve sent a rider to Wilmington to advise the governor of the situation. I know he will want to stay informed.”

  Reed announced he had arranged for a memorial service the next day. “With God’s guidance, I will find healing words.”

  “The more I think on it,” Carruthers said, “the more I believe it was Indians. No white man would have posed them bodies like that.”

  “There is the matter of the baby being left alive,” said McLeod.

  “Times change, Olaf,” said Carruthers. “Maybe they wasn’t looking to add an infant to their tribe just now. Or maybe they was helping themselves to the Campbells’ liquor supply and got too drunk to care. I think that little child just had luck on its side.”

  “I suppose prospects of catching the guilty party are poor?” This from Reverend Fletcher.

  Carruthers said, “You just say the word, Judge, and I’m only too happy to be on the trail with my deputies. I’m sure the militia would be good for some men to come along with us.”

  Knowing glances crossed the table. Everyone was aware of Carruthers’s hatred for Indians. His grandfather as a young man had been captured by a raiding party of Tuscarora. A survivor was forced to watch the gruesome execution, a process that had involved fire and had taken place in stages over several days. All knew, too, that Carruthers was up for reappointment to his post in January and recently had been going out of his way to demonstrate devotion to his duties.

  “Believe me,” said McLeod, “I’d be all for you setting out if I thought there was any chance of catching up with ’em. But they could be all the way into the mountains by now. Or who knows where, blended in with the other savages. To have any chance of success, we’d need an army.”

  “It might not have been Indians,” said Harry. Heads swung in his direction. “I found something interesting at the house last night after you gentlemen left.”

  He passed around the chart of Pamlico Sound and watched closely when it came to du Plessis. The merchant barely looked at it, saying only that such a document obviously would be of interest to someone in the maritime business.

  Blinn put in, “Could it be Edward was looking for a channel big enough for a ship hired by his own self? Small as my farm is, if I could find a way to get my tobacco straight to London, why . . .” He paused, seeming to search for a witty way to sum it up. He settled on “I could be as rich as a Virginian” and aimed a grin at Ayerdale.

  McLeod shook his head. “I knew Edward Campbell pretty well, and as fine a man as he was, such a grand scheme would never enter his head. Edward was a farmer, not a businessman.”

  “I agree,” said Harry. Turning to du Plessis he said, “Can you think of any reason this chart would have been in the Campbells’ home?”

  “And why would I know such a thing?” the storekeeper answered with a polite smile.

  “I understand the Campbells have made considerable purchases from you. Much of it on credit.”

  At this, the naturally ruddy color of McLeod’s face noticeably deepened. “How dare you, young man?” he said. “What the devil are you implying?”

  Lost in his quest for information, Harry suddenly realized how unfriendly the question sounded. “Nothing at all against Mister du Plessis,” he said, thinking fast. “I just thought he might know something of the Campbells’ affairs that could shed some light on the matter.”

  The storekeeper waved off McLeod with a placating gesture. “I take no offense. But allow me to speak frankly, and go ahead to the place where this line of reasoning could conceivably lead. It is true the Campbells were in debt to my trading house. But so is a good portion of Craven County.” He paused to look around the table. With the exception of Ayerdale and the minister Fletcher, no one met his eyes. The judge himself found it convenient to fiddle with his napkin. Harry felt suddenly awkward, as he was on du Plessis’s list of debtors as well. “If I were to go around killing off everyone who owed me money,” he concluded, “I should have but very few customers left.”

  Laughter broke the tension.

  Harry produced the Masonic badge and passed it around. Holding the object daintily between a thumb tip and index finger, McLeod said, “I invoke the du Plessis precedent. If we are to hold suspect every Freemason in the province, we would quickly run out of jail space.”

  More laughter from the guests. The exception was Carruthers, who, as everyone knew was not easily given to mirth. He said, “As one privileged to have taken the vows myself, I can tell you that no Freemason would have been capable of such a horror.”

  “I can think of an explanation for the badge,” said du Plessis. “In my dealings with Edward, he expressed many times his admiration for our lodge. I think he wanted me to nominate him for membership when the time was right. So, might he not have bought such a lovely ornament from a traveling peddler in hopeful anticipation?”

  “The most likely explanation is Indians,” the sheriff said on a chuffing breath.

  “I can tell you this,” said Ayerdale, who had been following the discussion with a look of detached interest. “The Cherokee and Sioux filtering back from Canada are unhappy people. Before I left Williamsburg, I heard numerous reports of thievery and arson in the Virginia foothills. So I would not rule out the possibility that some young hotheads with murderous intent might have strayed into Craven County.”

  “Why are they so angry?” asked Reverend Reed. “I thought they went voluntarily to help fight the French and their savages.”

  Carruthers said, “Who knows what will set off these brutes?”

  “My information is sketchy,” said Ayerdale, “but I gather they found life difficult under British military discipline. General Amherst has little use for men who will not obey his every command on the instant it is given. Unquestioning obedience is something simply not to be f
ound in the Indian character.”

  “So they just pulled down their lodgings and stole away?” McLeod shook his head in disgust.

  “Yes. And I’ve heard they took along all the long rifles, ammunition, blankets, and trade axes the army had given them.”

  “But how should any of that engender hostility against the likes of us in North Carolina?” Reverend Reed wondered.

  “If I may,” said Reverend Fletcher, “I imagine finding British settlers moving onto one’s properties and building houses on them would upset anyone.” He said something else, but it was in a foreign tongue. Some smart Latin saying, Harry guessed.

  “With all respect, Reverend,” said Ayerdale, “such is the tide of history. Once we rid our continent of the French horde, the savages will be the only thing standing in the way of our flag’s march westward. The Indians were slitting one another’s throats over territory long before we arrived, so this won’t be anything new to their experience.”

  “I am not necessarily defending them,” said Fletcher, his tone more one of irritation than apology. “Merely offering a possible explanation for their behavior.”

  To Harry’s dismay, the conversation began to shift away from what had happened to the Campbell family. As if finished with the subject of murder, they spoke of things Harry knew of only vaguely: the early string of British defeats, some incomprehensible, including the massacre of redcoats and Virginia militia at the Monongahela four years earlier. They talked admiringly of Pitt’s subsequent rise at Whitehall, and, at his behest, the flooding of America with soldiers, along with hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling for their feeding and housing on American soil, and to pay for recruitment of additional native militia. As Harry picked at his now-cold oatmeal, the group traded opinions about the three-pronged assault then under way against Canada, with General Amherst coming up Lake Champlain, General Prideaux by way of Fort Niagara, and General Wolfe moving his army onto the Saint Lawrence River to directly attack Quebec.