The Constable's Tale: A Novel of Colonial America

by Donald Smith

  He took a moment to consider the position of power he suddenly felt possessed of. He could walk back from the moment, say he only wanted them to be together alone once more to wish her, from his heart, a good future. Then escort her back, give her up to a man whose full measure of cruelty he felt sure she had never seen. Or he could say what he had seen at Rosewood. The careless brutality that, once they were married, Harry was afraid would not be limited to the Africans Ayerdale owned.

  Harry had tried to imagine her life under the yoke of such a person. The fix she would be in if it became unbearable. Her dowry from her grandfather, which Harry assumed would be handsome, gone. She could be ruined both socially and financially. Could he change her mind? It would be a risky gamble considering the single piece of evidence he had, other than his instincts: an accidental encounter in a Virginia field. But at stake was the future of a person he once had loved. And maybe, being honest, still did.

  He began his story. How he and Noah had surprised Ayerdale and his overseer on his plantation. The young girl on the ground taking punishment. The ugliness of Ayerdale seeming to enjoy her efforts to dodge the worst.

  Before he could finish, Maddie slapped the table with the palm of her hand so hard that drops of coffee spilled from their cups, distracting several others nearby from their own business, including two men who had been noisily quarreling over the proper way of raising hogs, whether to pen them up or let them range free.

  “You aren’t telling me anything I haven’t already suspected.”

  “Then why are you marrying him?

  She brought her voice back down to where only he could hear. “There is something you should know. I tell you this only because I can see you really care about what happens to me. And that is sweet. But you must keep what I say a secret. Swear to tell no one.”

  Harry so swore.

  “The judge is bankrupt.”

  Harry heard the words but mistrusted his ears.

  “He is very close to owing more than he has income to even make payments on. He has gotten back from his own lendings as much as he can in order to make a passable dowry for Mister Ayerdale. But after we are wed, Olaf will have to rely on Richard’s generosity for the rest of his life. As will I.”

  Harry struggled to make sense of this.

  “How could the judge possibly have gone bankrupt? He is one of the wealthiest men in North Carolina.”

  “That’s what everyone thinks. That’s what I thought. The truth is, he has been living on his borrowings for years. He doesn’t even know I am aware of his condition.”

  Maddie looked at her coffee, which was still hot enough to be sending up thin windings of steam, and took a deep breath before continuing.

  “I may as well tell you everything. I discovered the truth last August when I was collecting on one of the letters of credit he sent periodically during my travels in Europe. I’d gone to Glasgow to pick up my next installment, this time through a tobacco dealer by the name of Cullen. As it happened, I had only recently met Richard at the king’s birthnight ball in the same city. Richard and I had spent several entertaining days together. Opera one night, theater the next. One memorable outing to the racetrack. It seems Richard loves horses, though they don’t love him. He lost a great sum of money. By the end of the week, he proposed marriage. I laughed it off. Not to his face. of course. But the idea of marrying someone, anyone, amused me no end, when I was having such a good time unattached.” She looked up at Harry and said with an expression he could not decipher as to its sincerity, “If I couldn’t have you, my love, I didn’t want anyone.”

  She laughed without humor.

  “Well, when I went to collect my letter of credit, this tobacco man Cullen turned out to be a rather attractive older gentleman, and, to put it politely, we struck up a friendship. We attended glittering dinners, went on horseback jaunts in the park. All the things that couples do. Late one night in his rooms before falling asleep, he let it slip about my grandfather’s financial status. As it turned out, he didn’t realize I didn’t know. My grandfather is a proud man. He wanted people, including his own family, to think well of him. Cullen explained how this led to his downfall. When tobacco prices began dropping in ‘48, Olaf continued borrowing and spending so that people would not know anything was the matter. Each year he dropped deeper into the ditch. The Glasgow merchants kept the money flowing on the strength of his land holdings, not his income.”

  Harry remembered well the recession of 1748. Most in Craven County reacted by reining in their spending on imports of English finery. Harry’s family, under Talitha’s canny guidance, began shifting away from tobacco and returning to the forest goods that had sustained North Carolinians long before the rage for fire-cured leaf first migrated southward from Virginia. They still borrowed from middlemen in England and Scotland to get from one year to the next, but with Britain fighting what seemed an endless war with France and her allies on the Continent, the jack-tars’ hunger for pine sap, and all the different forms it could be made into, continued without pause, keeping prices steady.

  “Cullen’s revelations caused me to reconsider Richard’s proposal of marriage. Luckily, he was still of the same mind when I next broached it. He had gotten wind of my flirtation with Cullen, but that seemed only to whet his appetite.”

  “It would have angered me,” Harry said, without thinking on the relevance of this information.

  “Richard is at an age when even the most adventurous of your sex think of marriage and having children. I believe he sees an advantage to marrying into a prominent Carolina household. And wedding the granddaughter of one of King George’s favorite Scotchmen could not hurt his position in the kingdom, either.”

  “Does he know of the judge’s financial situation?”

  “He does not. And if you care anything at all for my future and that of my grandfather, you will leave it that way. When the time comes for me to speak of it, I doubt he will chastise me for not telling him Olaf is broke. Richard is fabulously wealthy and obviously isn’t marrying me for financial reasons. He will overlook this matter.”

  She broke off for a moment, then said, “He may even love me.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “That’s the second time you’ve asked me that. I am very fond of Richard. Despite his shortcomings. I will try to get him to quit beating his slaves.”

  “But you don’t love him.”

  Maddie’s face took on an angry shine. Harry reckoned his questioning had become too ruthless. But then she looked down, seeming to relent.

  “I hope he loves me. But whatever the case, with my family’s future secure, I shall be satisfied.”

  She pushed her chair away to get up. As Harry made to do the same, she reached out and covered his hand with hers.

  “I will find my own way back. It will be easier on me if we say good-bye now. Harry, I won’t say I don’t envy you. You have made a good marriage, by all reports. It certainly doesn’t bother me that you chose to wed one of your servants. But now you have your world, and I have mine. If you still have any feelings for me, you will let me go to do as I must. Now, I beg you to forget all of this. I am sure you have your own matters to keep you occupied.”

  Another twenty minutes and a second cup of coffee passed amid the clamor of the stock-share gamblers. Harry mulling over how things had turned out in Maddie’s life and his.

  Then he remembered he did indeed have matters to attend to. He had to get his horse.

  CHAPTER 18

  36: Artificers & Persons of low Degree ought not to use many ceremonies to Lords, or Others of high Degree but Respect and highly Honour them, and those of high Degree ought to treat them with affibility & Courtesie, without Arrogancy.

  —RULES OF CIVILITY

  THE HOUSE OF JOHNSTON REALLY WAS A HOUSE, A FLAT-FRONT BRICK structure in a row of similar ones with carriage lamps and expensive-looking curtains swooping down behind tall windows. A small plaque beside the door was the only signal it was
a place of business. By its stillness it seemed deserted. No one answered repeated knocks. He asked several passersby where Johnston lived, if not here. Either they had no idea or thought it odd and possibly sinister that anyone would ask. The morning breeze felt unsettling on his cheek as he resolved to wait. Knowing this same stirring of air would be carrying Maddie away to Canada and to a future of reliance on a man with a taste for cruelty.

  Finally, at half past ten, a servant came and unlocked the door. Harry explained his business as briefly as he could, and after a further short wait, the proprietor came out.

  Johnston lived up to his billing as a blooded aristocrat, albeit a product of his father’s adventuresome habits and thus deprived of title and money. He looked to be in his fifties, with a nobly featured face and the genteel manner of one accustomed to moving in high circles. Harry had rarely seen a suit of ordinary daywear as finely turned out as the buff-colored suit he wore. Speaking in a clipped manner similar to that of Captain Biggerstaff but with softer edges, Johnston asked Harry to restate his business. Harry held up the brooch. “I’ve been told it’s possible you might be able to identify this object. It was found at the site of a murder in North Carolina.”

  Johnston gave the badge a look-over, paying special attention to the emblem on its face.

  “Interesting,” he said, handing it back.

  “Do you recognize it? I understand it was likely made by a jeweler in London by the name of Wykes.”

  “Before I answer, might I know more about how you came to have it?”

  Once again he told his story. He had nearly committed the short version to memory word for word, so often had he repeated it now.

  “A unfortunate tale,” Johnston said when he was finished. “Harry—Do you mind if I call you that? Would you care for some tea?”

  He could stand it no longer. “Can you tell me about this brooch?”

  “It is a counterfeit. A very good one, I must say, but clearly a forgery of an authentic Wykes production. Look closely at the workmanship.”

  “I was told by two different dealers in jewelry that the work is first class.” Harry was looking at it again and could see no imperfections.

  “Which ones, if I may ask?”

  “A man by the name of Bannerman in Williamsburg and the person he directed me to in Philadelphia, Jacob Merkly.”

  “I doubt there are two finer men in America. But I’m afraid they are not as familiar as I am with the House of Wykes, and they are mistaken. Are you sure you wouldn’t care for some tea? A shipment just arrived here yesterday from Macau, and I am eager to try it out.”

  Harry relented, and within a few minutes the servant was pouring a potent-looking brew from a silver pot. Harry wondered if any of it would ever find its way into the McLeod household. One that could no longer afford such luxuries but kept buying them.

  “This design was introduced into the market fairly recently.” Johnston picked up the medal again. “I would say the piece could not be over five years old. But observe the coloring of the blue insets. They show subtle signs of glazing, indicating use of enamel made to look like lapis lazuli, not the real stones. And look here.” He pointed to the tiny builder’s square that formed part of the Masonic emblem. “Edward Wykes has perfected a method of inscribing these squares with extraordinarily fine foot-and-inch marks. They are all but invisible to the unaided eye. One of his prized trademarks. Only a few of his most trusted craftsmen know how he does it. Obviously the one who made this piece was not among them.”

  “Someone went to a lot of trouble to try to duplicate what Wykes sells,” said Harry.

  “A few years ago a renegade former employee—a goldsmith—showed up in New England selling objects such as this at greatly reduced prices. His handiwork found favor among those looking for a good bargain and not overly concerned with authenticity. It distresses me to say that many Americans resent the prices George charges for his creations. I have no doubt the scoundrel made a good deal of money before he was called out as a thief of Edward Wykes’s designs and good name. He was arrested on some charge or another and sent back to London for trial. No one knows just how much of his work made their way into America. Or, I’m sorry to say, exactly who bought it.”

  Several moments passed before Johnston asked Harry if he was all right. The truth was he felt sick. Each time to have traveled so far, only to see his efforts come to naught. All he had gambled, including his reputation, lost.

  “There might be one way I could help you,” said Johnston. “Do you have any idea what the inscription on the back means?”

  “I’ve been told it is a Masonic code. Something to do with a secret word and a pattern. But no Freemason true to his vows will reveal what the pattern is. Which would do me no good anyway unless I knew the word, which changes from one code to another. At least, that is as best as I understand it.”

  “Correct on all counts. But I could at least show you the pattern the system is based on. Then it would remain only to discover the word. At least knowing the pattern would be a step in the right direction.”

  “But wouldn’t you be telling me a secret you are sworn to keep?”

  “I am not a Freemason. I’ve fallen into selling these baubles because it pays well and helps finance my rambles in America. Along the way, I’ve learned much about the brotherhood. I don’t make a habit of disclosing things I probably shouldn’t, but if by doing so I might help you discover the identity of a killer, I am willing. Just promise you won’t reveal the source of your information.”

  Over more tea and some biscuits, the titleless aristocrat engaged Harry in polite conversation. They talked about the Masons, Johnston saying how, though their membership included some of the most distinguished members of British society, their much talked-about habits of secrecy exposed them to accusations of all sorts of dark doings, including sorcery. Johnston observed that such suspicions tended to occupy the minds of people with little education or hope of ever becoming members themselves.

  “Frankly, I find the whole business about ancient builders and their talk about forgotten knowledge rather boring. The Freemasons I know are all upstanding, well-intentioned men who simply enjoy a little hocus-pocus in their lives.”

  After some hesitation, Harry admitted his ambition to someday join the New Bern lodge. Johnston inquired into Harry’s own background. Harry related a few pertinences. The Woodyards’ North Carolina origins in the swampy Albemarle after his great-grandfather had run away from an abusive landowner in Virginia. The family’s relocation, at Talitha’s urgings, to the Pamlico, made possible by his grandfather’s suddenly coming into some money. Skipping over the dubious nature of Natty’s good fortune.

  When he was finished, Johnston took out a sheet of drawing paper and a pencil. He sketched out a hatch pattern, as if to begin a game of tick-tack. Beside this he drew a cross of Saint Andrew of similar size.

  “The letters of the key word are inserted in pairs in the first series of spaces created by the hatch-work,” he said. He demonstrated by writing Harry’s last name, beginning in the top row and continuing in the next, by twos:

  WO OD YA

  RD

  “The rest of the spaces of both the hatch work and the cross are next filled with the other letters of the alphabet, also two by two, skipping the letters already used.”

  He wrote out the rest of the alphabet as he had said.

  “So now you have a device that will allow you to both encode and decode messages. When writing in code, instead of writing each letter of the message, one would copy the shape of the enclosure in which the desired letter appears. Whenever the second letter in an enclosure is used, the code writer signifies so by inserting a dot in the shape of the enclosure he transcribes.”

  To demonstrate, he drew a square and placed a dot in the middle.

  “In your code, that represents the letter C.”

  He laid down the pencil and sat back, seeming to savor the look of enlightenment that Harry guessed
had come over his face.

  “Of all the codes that have ever been devised, I believe this is one of the most elegantly simple, and damnably hard, to break unless one knows not only the pattern but also the key word.”

  To make sure he understood, Harry had Johnston write a word in the code so he could translate it. The one Johnston chose had nine letters and thus nine symbols. Harry had only to translate the first three before guessing the remaining six. The word was FREEMASON.

  He was tempted to try on the spot to write out a new code using Ayerdale as the key word to see if he could translate the inscription on the badge. But he decided it better not to reveal to anyone just yet his suspicion that such a prominent citizen of British America might be involved in murder. Ayerdale might be a person Johnston knew of. Instead, Harry thanked his host profusely for his help and got up to leave.

  They were standing in the hallway saying final good-byes when Johnston said, “Harry, in the brief time we’ve been together, and having heard your story, I have taken a great liking to you.”

  “You do me honor,” Harry said. Wondering if a small bow would be in order.

  “You are a splendid example of what some of my more enlightened countrymen have taken to calling ‘natural aristocracy.’ I recognize in you a sharp mind and instincts every bit as noble as the loftiest lords of the realm. Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

  It sounded like something from a book, but Harry had no idea which one.

  “I would like you to be my guest at a ball tonight.”

  “You flatter me, sir, but I wouldn’t want to impose.”

  “It is no imposition at all. I really must insist that you meet some of my friends while you are in our city. Think of it as a simple act of New England hospitality.”

  “I’m afraid I brought along no proper clothes for a ball.” In fact, Harry owned no such clothes.

  “That is of no consequence. Despite our differences in age, we are of similar size and build. I have no doubt you would look splendid in any of my suits. I’ll have my man assist you in choosing something from my wardrobe before you leave.”