The Constable's Tale: A Novel of Colonial America

by Donald Smith

  The bulk of the soldiers passed them by. And then, bringing up the British rear practically all by himself, there was Ayerdale.

  He trudged toward them at a steady pace, pistol in one hand and hanger in the other, glancing warily from one side to the other. When he saw Harry and Maddie, he stopped and gaped. Harry drew his stolen pistol from his belt, aimed, and walked forward.

  They were too far apart to have much chance of either hitting the other. But Harry felt a rush of confidence. He was certain that somehow at this critical moment the supreme judge of just and virtuous retribution would seize control and give him victory. Not a well-considered feeling, he realized, but it emboldened him. At the same time he realized this was the closest he had ever come to taking part in a proper duel. Not a rowdy punching contest in a tavern or a street among drunken hooligans, the kind he was used to, but a true contest of honor between men of breeding. As convincing a proof as any that the Woodyards and the Ayerdales at last had come onto equal footing.

  The last thing he expected was that Ayerdale would turn around and run.

  Harry gave chase, wondering how this was possible. Then realizing that even assuming the best outcome for Ayerdale, Harry dead, Ayerdale’s pistol would have been spent, and he still would have had Maddie to deal with. He might be hard-pressed to explain to any remnants of the army that might still be around to witness it why he was trying to kill either one. Or maybe he was just unnerved by the sight of Harry and the murderous look Harry supposed was showing in his eye. Better for Ayerdale, Harry guessed, if he just disappeared. Sorted things out later. Possibly with the help of his protector, Colonel deSavoy. A coward to the end.

  But first he would have to get away from Harry.

  They were heading toward the pine forest on the north side of the field just cleared of Indian and militia sharpshooters by a redcoat platoon. Ayerdale was thirty paces or so ahead but with every step losing ground to the younger, more physically capable man.

  They crossed a carriage road. Off to the left, a riderless horse stood chomping on a roadside stand of grass, its muzzle moving methodically from side to side, ignoring its former owner, who lay lifeless a few feet away. The animal was too far off to offer Ayerdale a means of escape, though a momentary interruption in his stride indicated he briefly considered it.

  When he reached the edge of the trees he stopped abruptly, turned, and discharged his pistol. Harry felt the ball chitter past his left ear. He returned the shot. Screaming, Ayerdale dropped both pistol and sword and clutched his right hand.

  “You son of a rat whore, you’ve shot off my finger.” He held up the bloody hand like an accusation. Harry tried to remember if Ayerdale was right- or left-handed, thinking it might have a bearing on what would follow.

  He recovered his hanger and jumped into the forest, Harry not twenty paces behind.

  The darkness was sudden and complete. His eyes protested the abrupt switch to thickly canopied forest by withholding vision. But nothing interfered with his ears, which picked up the dry sound of a body colliding with a tree off to his left. An outcry followed, by its sound equal parts annoyance and hurt. Harry turned in that direction, thrusting his arms in front of himself in the posture of a boxer to detect obstacles before he ran into them, as Ayerdale apparently had.

  Harry’s eyes began to adjust. These northern trees were more closely spaced, and the thicket of top boughs denser and more light-repelling, than the long-leaf variety Harry was used to. Below the canopy, bare and partly broken-off limbs, relics of years of previous growth, girdled each tree like spikes, almost all the way to the ground, making rapid movement hazardous. Harry wondered if Ayerdale had managed to impale himself on one of these. But the sounds of vigorous footfalls indicated he was still alive and in good health, aside from the condition of his right hand.

  Not so the Indian whose body Harry tripped over. Harry looked around the ground for a fallen firearm, hoping for one of the newer models with rifling worthy of a sharpshooter. But if the warrior had owned one, it must now have been in the hands of a British soldier.

  Partly on instinct, and partly in response to the sound of a crackling twig, Harry ducked. Just in time to avoid Ayerdale’s sword, which parted the air overhead and embedded itself in a tree. But he couldn’t avoid the toe of Ayerdale’s boot. It struck him in the jaw and sent him sprawling. By the time he regained his footing, Ayerdale had wrenched his blade free and was lunging forward, aiming for his chest. Harry leapt aside and swung his Abenaki tomahawk.

  Ayerdale cried out again, an anguished yelp as if badly wounded. But he was still on his feet, now clutching his sword arm with his injured hand. Harry had not had the time or the fetch to make the strike fatal or even very disabling. But he had inflicted pain.

  Now they stood looking at each other, both catching their breath. Ayerdale seeming to recover his composure. Keeping a wary eye on Harry, he examined his finger, which had not been completely blown off. It was a pulpy lump hanging by a piece of skin. With some deliberation, as if having reached a disagreeable but necessary conclusion, he got the loose part between his teeth and tore it away, spat it onto the ground.

  “Now see what you’ve done, you cockroach?” he said. Heat in his voice, in contrast to the ghostly cast of his skin. The scar along the side of his face from British steel now a sickly shade of purple.

  They tangled some more, dodging around trees, trying to avoid the spiky branches. The advantage of reach that Ayerdale had by virtue of his sword, compared to Harry’s tomahawk and knife, was cancelled to a degree by the obstacles that prevented a full degree of motion and the fact that Ayerdale was wielding the blade with his weaker hand. He kept the injured one lifted to minimize blood loss, giving him the aspect of a gentleman fencer. Droplets flung from the wound with every twisting motion.

  All Harry could do was dodge and retreat, waiting for him to tire, make a mistake, offer an opening. But the opportunity did not come soon enough. Jumping back to avoid a slicing, Harry found himself wedged between a splay of bare branches. He quickly found they were too thick to break. He could move in only one direction: forward. Right into the tip of the hanger, which was now almost touching his belly. The blade slightly quivering, as if in anticipation.

  Ayerdale paused as if to savor the moment. Both of them breathing hard. The golden man seemed to be composing some farewell remark. Rather than allowing the satisfaction written on his face to be the last thing he saw, Harry considered looking up into the treetops. Accepting divine judgment, however mistaken it might have been, and going to heaven with visions of pine needles. Instead, he blew a glob of phlegm into Ayerdale’s open, about-to-speak, mouth.

  Suddenly Ayerdale was no longer there. In his place was Maddie holding a dead branch like a club with both hands. A look of wild animal in her eyes.

  Ayerdale was a few feet away, still on his feet, still holding his sword but turned partly from them and groaning. He made a jerking motion, which was accompanied by the dry sound of cracking wood. He lowered his head and looked. A broken-off piece of limb protruded about six inches from his side. It must have gone into flank meat only, missing vital organs.

  “Bollocks,” he said. More of a grunt than a full-throated curse.

  Harry stepped out of his woody trap, knife and tomahawk at the ready. But before he could strike, Ayerdale swung his sword, not at him but at Maddie, who was closer. She made a sound like someone having her breath sucked away. Her hands flew to her neck and at the same time her knees gave way, and she spilled onto the ground.

  Ayerdale remained standing but looked all done in. Instead of pressing his attack, he took a few staggering steps backward, then turned and started off. Clutching his injured side with his ruined hand and with the other hand using his sword as a cane. Heading back out of the forest.

  Harry rushed to Maddie’s side. She lay on her back, clasping her neck, a mix of shock and fear on her face. Harry gently pried her hands from the wound. It had an angry look but did not appear
too deep. From the moderate flow of blood, he guessed the blade had missed the big vein.

  “I’m not going to die,” she said in a shaky voice. More a question or a declaration of hope than a statement of fact.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Not from this.”

  “Then go and kill the bastard.”

  He stripped off his shirt and tore a sleeve away. This he knotted and padded around her neck as best he could, taking care not to choke her. He advised her to keep her hand pressed against it. Then he set off after Ayerdale.

  By the time he got clear of the trees, Ayerdale had managed to reach the horse they had seen and had begun riding away. Glancing back, he caught sight of Harry. He shouted in a voice surprisingly strong, considering his various injuries, “I’ll see you hung as a spy, Mister Woodyard. Or assassinated. You and your whore of a lady friend as well, if she’s still alive. Who do you think they’ll believe about all this?”

  Harry judged the range. At least thirty feet, as he made it, and the distance rapidly increasing. Already at about the limit of anything he had ever hit before. A moving target to boot. Impossible, really.

  He grasped the ax toward the bottom of its handle with both hands, as if holding a sledge hammer. Lifted it as far back over his head as he could, bringing it almost level with the nape of his neck. And threw. Uncoiling himself like a spring, putting his whole body into the effort. Timing the release to give the instrument a high arc. Aiming for it to intersect with a point a good bit ahead of where Ayerdale was at the moment. He followed through as Comet Elijah had taught him, the energy of the throw bringing him forward until he was hunched over, bowing like a Catholic. But head up. Watching as the tomahawk took its twirling, arcing path through the air. Magically tracking the movement of Ayerdale’s borrowed horse. The horse moving at a moderately brisk trot. Heedless of anything unusual taking place, right up until the moment its rider slipped from the saddle.

  The animal slowed, came to a dignified stop, and looked back. It looked ahead again, then back once more at the new body lying on the ground. Hesitating, as if awaiting further instructions. Finally, it ambled back onto the grass beside the road. Resumed its interrupted meal.

  CHAPTER 32

  110: Labour to keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Celestial fire Called Conscience.

  —RULES OF CIVILITY

  IN NOVEMBER THEY MADE APPLE BUTTER AND APPLE CIDER AND sorghum molasses to put on their biscuits. The peach tree bore a generous crop, so they set aside some of the fruit to run through the knob mill, bruise it up just right before pressing. When it was all done Natty judged the cider “peachy,” a play on words he never seemed to tire of from one year to the next. Talitha taught Toby to make soft soap and candles using grease and fat left over from the season’s main activity, butchering enough meat to get them through the winter. The tobacco-curing barn still smelled wondrous of giant leaves turning golden as they had hung from floor-to-ceiling rows of sticks.

  Toby had been on a shopping trip in New Bern when Harry arrived back from Canada. It was the first Friday of October. Her diary was lying open on the kitchen table, the date as yet blank. She had coped very well during his absence, he gathered as he paged back to the time he had ridden off for Williamsburg. He skimmed through days of risings, weather reports, chores done, meals cooked, visits from neighbors, and bedtimes. On July 18 she briefly noted a visit from Constable John Blinn to check on her welfare. Harry found three more such visits over the following two weeks. Finally on August 2, Toby stated that she asked him to stop coming over. No elaboration. Harry’s first thought was to ride over to Blinn’s house and see what he would have to say about this. But he realized that Toby would likely find out he had been looking through her diary and would be upset. Since she seemed to have taken care of the matter, whatever it was, he decided to leave it alone. But he was not happy. Especially when he found out Toby was pregnant. The first chance he had, he added up the days, based on their best guess as to when she would deliver, and figured she must have caught the seed two or three weeks before Harry had left for Williamsburg. It was not until the matter was settled in his mind that Harry felt like celebrating his soon-to-be fatherhood.

  He was not shy in saying he wished for a boy. New Bern’s militia captain, a bookkeeper by the name of Tatum, joined him in that wish, though he noted that the unit would have to wait sixteen years before welcoming in its new recruit. Harry wondered if they would still be fighting the French by then.

  The other big surprise was that Olaf McLeod had died. His summer cold had advanced to pneumonia, and he had crossed over without much fuss. It happened around the time Harry and Maddie had been locked in their cell in Quebec. He wondered how Maddie would react to the news or even when it would reach her. When he last saw her, she was at Point Lévis recovering from her wound under the supervision of the Scottish soldier who had paused to admire her on the battlefield. This individual turned out to be the colonel of his regiment, a titled highlander, recently widowed, with a great pink harled castle in the Grampian Mountains. Which, Harry could see, might fit in well with a dream Maddie had shared with him the night before he left Canada: to return to Scotland and write a play based on her experiences. She had tentatively titled it A Highland Girl’s Wild Adventures in America.

  DeSavoy had disappeared by the time Harry got back to Point Lévis. Ayerdale’s death was ascribed to combat after his body was found with multiple wounds. With him dead and deSavoy missing, Harry pondered what to do with the information that the man was a spy and a murderer. He had promised to keep these things secret. Maybe death had freed him from this obligation. But to expose Ayerdale would have required Harry to admit that he killed a person the world still believed to be a prominent American patriot. He had Maddie to vouch for Ayerdale’s guilt but otherwise not a jot of real evidence. He finally decided the effort, and the complications it might bring, were not worth whatever gratification he might gain from posthumously destroying Ayerdale’s reputation. Harry had better things to do with his time.

  But what to do about Comet Elijah? How to save him from hanging if Ayerdale were not exposed?

  As he discovered from a second letter from Toby that caught up with him before he left Canada, he need not have worried. The old Indian had made good his second attempt at escaping. People were still talking about it when Harry arrived back home, how Comet Elijah must have grown wings and flown away or crawled up twelve feet of warehouse wall like a fly, over the open top, then finally melted through one of the sealed bullet-glass windows to the outside. Tuscarora magic. But no one seemed much interested in trying to recapture him. All assumed he had fled the district and by now was beyond their reach.

  Harry recalled that his original purpose in setting out to catch a killer was to save Comet Elijah’s life. As it turned out, he might as well not have bothered. Comet Elijah wound up rescuing himself. At least Harry had saved Maddie McLeod from a disastrous marriage. Who knows how that might have played out had Harry not gone to Canada. And maybe by not exposing Ayerdale, Harry had played a small role in helping the British cause against France.

  He took comfort in these thoughts, though he would never get over his sorrow that his actions had led, though unintentionally, to the death of a gentle spirit.

  Conversations on the streets and among the town commissioners had shifted to other matters, like who would take over as their new chief justice in Olaf McLeod’s stead. Governor Dobbs had approved the council’s nomination of an interim, a good Anglican property owner by the name of Hastings, and the town was now awaiting Dobbs’s pleasure as to a permanent replacement. The matter was somewhat complicated by the fact that Dobbs had finally made good on his threat to relocate to Wilmington. Though even farther south, it was closer to the ocean and its cooling breezes. New Bernians were beginning to despair that their town would ever again be the seat of government. The hopeful consensus was that eventually the old man would either retire or go keel over, maybe while plea
suring himself with his now fourteen-year-old wife, and the next governor could be persuaded to come back. There was even talk of offering to build a palace, something to match or even exceed the grand edifice at Williamsburg.

  No one seemed to care much about Harry’s recent willful behavior, running off to chase the “true” killer of the Campbells when it seemed perfectly clear who that person was. As near as Harry could figure, he had not been replaced as constable of Craven County, even though he had not arrived back home in time for peacekeeping duties at the September Court of Quarterly Sessions. He received a notice from Hastings that Harry’s services would be needed for the upcoming meeting of the Superior Court.

  *

  One of Harry’s first stops after he got back to New Bern had been the parsonage of Christ Church, where he gave Reverend Reed a leather pouch. As the cleric was opening it, Harry explained that during a stopover in Philadelphia he had visited the parents of Noah Burke. At their parting, the senior Burke had given Harry all the money Harry had returned from what Noah had given him, plus a liberal contribution from Peter and Martha. To be invested and used, Peter requested, under the supervision of Reed and the vestry, to operate a free school for parentless children.

  *

  The week before Christmas, Harry received a letter from the prime minister of England.

  He knew something was afoot as soon as he entered town that morning on his way to du Plessis’s store to buy spices for a new syllabub recipe Talitha wanted to try out. People he saw on the streets stared and pointed at him as he rode past. The clerk at the store, which also served as the town’s post office, said there was something there for him, but he needed to get du Plessis to come over from his house and deliver it in person. Which he did with great formality, refusing to just hand the letter over but instead placing it on a silver tray for Harry to pick up with his own fingers.

  The language was flowery and inked in an ornate style of script. It would take Harry several readings to fully understand everything. Even du Plessis, who read it out for all to hear, confessed that he had never seen a more impressive document. The signature was that of Thomas Pelham-Holles, First Duke of Newcastle, First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of Lords. It extolled Harry’s virtues as a loyal subject of the Crown and a British patriot in the finest ancient traditions of the realm. It thanked him for his “Courageous & incalculably valuable Services to ye British Army in Canada during ye late War with France.” The letter did not go into specifics on this point. Despite the persistence of du Plessis and other citizens of New Bern who now crowded into the store, the best Harry would deliver up was that he had been on a secret undertaking for the government at Whitehall, one whose nature he still was not at liberty to discuss. An admiring murmur went around when they heard that. But no amount of pressing could persuade him to go further.