Crow Hollow

by Michael Wallace

  “Pray, don’t trouble yourself,” James said. “We’ll take the barn. Do you have fresh hay and extra blankets?”

  “Of course, but I could never ask guests to sleep with the animals.”

  “We have to rub down the horses anyway. We may as well sleep out there too. No, no, I insist. Here, take the money.”

  It went back and forth a couple of times before the couple relented, obviously torn between the money and the desire not to cheat their overly generous guests. A few minutes later James and Prudence were leading the horses back to the barn, laden with blankets and a clay pot holding succotash—corn and beans cooked in lard—together with a bit of salted pork and corn bread wrapped in a cloth.

  “Whatever else you can say about New Englanders,” James said, “they are dignified people. And even the poor have plenty of food.”

  “So long as you like Indian corn,” she said.

  Prudence wanted to ask him why he’d given them so much money. It was more than he’d paid Reverend Stone, only in this case for a cold night in a barn and little meat with supper.

  She was initially pleased that the barn smelled more of straw than manure, but she soon discovered this was because the wind driving through the chinks in the wood planks kept it well ventilated. The family’s sheep huddled in one corner, which they shared with a milk cow, leaving plenty of room for the horses. It was so cold that Prudence and James soon moved their own hay beds back by the animals. They slept in all their clothes.

  Sometime in the night, she woke to find herself snuggled next to James. Worse, as she came to, she realized that she had her arms around him, and not the other way around. He was nice and warm. If not for her feet, which felt like blocks of ice, she’d have been quite comfortable in spite of the wind groaning against the barn planks. Still, she pulled gently away until there was distance between their two bodies.

  It was only proper.

  Prudence woke in the morning to men’s voices outside. She sat up in the straw. Light streamed through a gap in the roof, and the animals were stirring, growing restless for their breakfast.

  James stood near the barn door, his boots on, pistols in hand, and sword tucked into his belt. The way he carried himself, tense and coiled, reminded her of that moment in the coach before he’d knocked open the door and sprung out shooting. He spotted her rising and lifted a warning finger to his lips.

  One of the voices rose outside, calling to someone else. A horse snorted, and she heard shuffling that sounded like more horses. A group of riders, then.

  The voices trailed away. James didn’t take his eyes off the door, but he lowered the pistols.

  She made her way quietly over. “What is it?” she whispered.

  “I couldn’t pick out much. They’re looking for someone. No doubt us.”

  “The highwaymen again?”

  He didn’t answer. For a long minute they stood in silence. Then footsteps sounded outside. James tensed again and pushed her behind him.

  But when the door creaked open, it was only Goodman Meyer. The snow lay all trampled outside and up to the house, but there was no sign of riders.

  James hastily put away the guns, but not before Meyer noted them with a frown. His eyes flickered to Prudence, and there was deep suspicion there.

  “This is your lawful wife, Goodman Smith?” he asked. “You haven’t run off with some man’s daughter, have you?”

  “Of course she is my wife. What do you take me for?”

  Meyer lowered his eyes. “Pray forgive me, good sir.”

  “No need to apologize, I understand. A man’s hospitality doesn’t extend to protecting criminals and adulterers. But we are neither of those things.”

  Meyer glanced at Prudence and blushed hard. “I beg your pardon.”

  She nodded demurely, as if accepting his apology for the slight. Inside, her heart was pounding.

  “I was certain you were innocent,” Meyer continued. “They claimed you robbed a coach and stole the horses. That seemed impossible.”

  “Then you didn’t tell them we were here?” James asked.

  “There were four men, demanding and rude. And there was something . . . untrustworthy about them.” Meyer shook his head. “Nay, I said nothing. You were fortunate the wind swept away your prints, and they thought you were most likely further east, anyway.”

  “Thank you for that,” Prudence said.

  The man hesitated and looked them over again. “I was sure they were up to no good. But then I saw your pistols, Goodman Smith, and I wondered . . .”

  “That is only natural,” James said. “Any other man would have wondered the same.”

  Yet he seemed at a loss to explain why he’d been standing at the door with a sword at his belt and two pistols in his hands if he weren’t up to something suspicious, and the suspicion hadn’t entirely faded from Goodman Meyer’s face.

  Prudence took James’s hand and gave him a sympathetic look. “You had better show him the king’s commission. We can trust this good man.”

  The hesitation vanished from James’s eyes. “Of course we can.”

  He pulled out the king’s commission from his cloak and showed the seal to Meyer, but not, she noted, the actual contents.

  Meyer stared, mouth agape. “An agent of the king? Are you moving against our rights and privileges?”

  “Of course not. His Majesty respects the colony’s charter. I’m only here to settle some matters stirred up in the war. I brought my wife, as we are considering settling in this Godly country. I didn’t expect to be attacked on the road.”

  “Nay, I would think not. Not here. The devil must truly be abroad in the land.”

  “Indeed, he must.”

  Prudence pretended not to notice James’s significant look.

  James seemed glum when they were back on the road, leading the horses west toward Springfield. The wind was finally easing.

  “To tell the truth, I feel like the devil myself,” he said. “Introducing the forbidden fruit into the garden.”

  “How do you mean?” Prudence asked.

  “Goodman Meyer won’t be so quick to take in strangers in the future when he finds out that you were not, in fact, my wife. Perhaps that shouldn’t bother me, but it does.”

  She had her own worries on that score. “Once this gets out, the scandal will sink me.”

  “All you have to do is convince your brother-in-law of your virtue. The reverend will shield you.”

  “Nothing shields a woman from malicious gossip. The likes of Goody Brockett will be whispering about me to their deathbeds.” She shook her head. “I’ll have to move to Providence.”

  “How will that help?”

  “There’s a reason they call it Rogue’s Island. Rhode Island is the chamber pot of New England. They even tolerate Quakers and Baptists.”

  “Even that? No, never.” He smiled.

  “Don’t mock. This is serious.”

  “I can tell. But why settle for Providence? Come back to England. There’s a place for the likes of you in the service of the king. You’ve got a quick mind and steady nerves.”

  “I could never do that,” she said, firmly. “My people are here. I belong in New England.”

  He shrugged and they rode on for a stretch. The other riders had continued east, back toward Boston, and their tracks seemed to be the only ones across the fresh snow from Springfield to the west. They came to the junction with the main highway again. Two men led a team of mules in drawing a flat plow to clear snow from the road, and they followed the plow toward town.

  “How about you?” she asked James. “When you see all this empty land waiting to be manured, doesn’t it make you want to settle?”

  “You mean what I told Goodman Meyer? No, that was another lie. My allegiance is to the king.”

  “And he has no need of men like you in the colonies? You’re not alone in the New World—you already admitted as much.”

  “Of course there are others. It’s the only way to
counter the French and the Dutch. But, well . . .”

  “What?” she pressed.

  “There’s the position of chancellor of royal agents to consider.”

  “Perchance you could take the position and stay in New England.”

  “No, I could not.”

  “I see.” She felt disappointed in a way that was hard to identify.

  He cleared his throat, turned away from her gaze. “If they’re plowing the road, we must be near Springfield,” he said. “Keep an eye out for a place to get the horses off the road. I’ll be going into town alone.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  James entered Springfield on foot, dressed like a Puritan. He wore a felted hat and long stockings gartered to his breeches—all items taken from the burned-out house where they’d left Woory’s carriage and the bodies. He strolled down the middle of the main street as if he had lived there all his life. He kept his head low, his face bundled behind a scarf, touching his hat and greeting people when they looked at him.

  Springfield wasn’t a large, bustling city like Boston, but it wasn’t a provincial village, either. A respectable cloud of wood smoke capped the town. Several streets crisscrossed a flat stretch of land on the bluffs overlooking the Connecticut River, packed with houses and shops all shoulder-to-shoulder. There had to be a thousand inhabitants, and that gave James some small measure of anonymity as he scouted the town.

  Before entering Springfield, he’d studied and deciphered the coded instructions for how to find his associate, Richard Cooper, but the man’s shop and home were not where his information claimed they would be. Prudence had warned him that Indians had sacked Springfield, but he was unprepared for the din of hammers and saws. Every other lot was a building site, with men raising roofs, masons rebuilding brick chimneys, carts unloading boards. When James got to Cooper’s house, he found it replaced by a lumberyard.

  But there were only so many places the man could have relocated, and after about a half hour, he found what must surely be the man’s home. It was two stories, with a high, pitched roof and dormers in the attic. The lower level was a shop, with a flat wooden sign carved in the shape of a barrel and encircled with iron bands, simulating hoops. Two boys came out of the shop rolling oversize barrels, which they then helped their father load into the back of a cart.

  As attested by his name, Cooper had come from a long family of artisans before joining the king’s service, and he had settled back into the family trade while he awaited the king’s pleasure. That would come today, whether or not Cooper was ready for it. James entered the shop.

  The inside was warm, with a roaring fire in one corner, and smelled of hickory and ash. Piles of staves lay in every corner. Shavings and wood chips covered the floor a quarter inch deep, except near the fire, where they’d been carefully swept clear. Workbenches held barrels, buckets, and piggins in every stage of construction. Metal must be scarce, James noticed, because the hoops were all wood as well. Apparently the only iron hoops to be found were the ones on the sign outside.

  A man without a cap, forearms bare, his hands huge and rough, was taking payment from a woman in return for a butter churn. James had worked with the man in France several years earlier, but he might not have recognized his old friend on first glance if he hadn’t been expecting the man. Cooper was older, sturdier, his hair thinner and his nose and ears lumpier. He wore a settled look.

  James untied his scarf and removed his hat as the woman passed him with a nod and a look that turned to curiosity as she perhaps realized that he was a stranger.

  “What cheer,” Cooper said.

  “What cheer indeed,” James said.

  Cooper’s eyes held a question about business, a hint of impatience. “Well?”

  “Do you have a barrel sturdy enough to ship a man back to London?”

  Cooper’s eyebrows lifted. “You! Why, you devil. I had no idea it would be you.”

  “You didn’t get the letter? Who were you expecting?”

  “What letter? No, I wasn’t expecting anyone. But I heard.” He whistled. “Oh, have I ever.” Cooper turned. “Sarah!”

  A pretty woman appeared, about Prudence’s age, perhaps in her midtwenties. A good ten years younger than Cooper, but it was clear from the first glance between the two that she was his wife.

  “It’s the man from Boston about the iron,” Cooper said. “Mind the shop, will you? Lang will be in for those pails. Make sure he doesn’t try to short you or take them on credit. That scoundrel still owes me ten shillings.”

  Once she was behind the counter and Cooper had led James into the front room of his house, the man turned. “What a heap load of trouble you’ve got yourself in already. I’m surprised you’re even alive.”

  “No more trouble than that time you stole that French priest’s sheep and dressed it in a woman’s bodice.”

  Cooper grinned, revealing a mouth still full of straight, white teeth. Then he turned suddenly sober and glanced back over his shoulder toward the shop where he’d left his wife. “Different times, my friend. Different times.”

  Two young boys, no older than three or four, sat in front of the fire, whittling on the end of broken barrel staves. Cooper scooted them out of the way, insisting that James take off his boots and prop his feet in front of the fire. He fetched a flask of beer and pressed a pipe into James’s hand. With the fire warming his feet, the beer his belly, and the pipe his lungs, James started to thaw for the first time in days.

  “So you’re in trouble,” Cooper said, this time more insistently.

  “Some trouble,” James admitted. “What have you heard?”

  “Riders came through yesterday looking for you. They claim you ran off with some woman in Boston. That her family tried to get her back and you killed a couple of men. Someone said you’d taken up with an Indian and turned highwayman, but I had doubts about that much.”

  “Oh, it’s all nonsense. Well, mostly.”

  “How about the part about the woman? Not that it matters to me, but you know how these Puritans get.”

  “That part is true enough,” James admitted. “Did they say who the woman was?”

  “No. Some young widow.”

  “Prudence Cotton,” James said.

  Cooper’s eyes widened. “The one who lived with the Indians? Reverend Stone’s sister-in-law? That Prudence Cotton?”

  “Is there another one?”

  “You are in trouble, Bailey. Where is she now?”

  “Freezing in a barn outside of town,” James said with a twinge of guilty conscience as he compared her circumstances to his own comfort. “I needed to see you alone, first.”

  “Make sure I wouldn’t string you up for fornicating, eh?”

  “Word had it you’d taken up with the natives. Had to verify your loyalty.”

  “I’ve done some taking up, that I admit.” Cooper glanced at his boys with a shrug. “Met a good woman, married her, fathered a couple of children. But don’t worry, I can hold my tongue.”

  “And you’re still loyal to the king?”

  “Aye, that I am.” Cooper took the pitcher and refilled James’s mug. “But I’m about the only one in these parts who is. These New Englanders consider themselves to be under the laws of God, not king and Parliament. If not for the French up north and those conniving Dutch in New York, they’d be even more restless.”

  “That’s the worry of the Crown, and why I’m here.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It’s time to rein in certain privileges.”

  Cooper’s tone turned cautious. “What do you mean, rein them in? You’re not talking about the charters, are you?”

  James didn’t speak but raised his eyebrows slightly.

  “You don’t say. That’s bound to get ugly.” Cooper sat down and lit his own pipe. “Although it sounds like it’s ugly enough already. This thing with Prudence Cotton will see your neck in a noose if you’re not careful.”

  “Forget about Prudence—I haven’t l
aid a finger on her, and I won’t. She’s desperate for answers about her husband, and what happened at Crow Hollow at the end of the war.”

  He didn’t mention the part about her daughter, Mary, still being alive. That would sound outlandish.

  “Aye, Sir Benjamin. Another king’s man who took up with the local folk. It’s an easy trap to fall into.”

  “Are you suggesting that Sir Benjamin betrayed his loyalty to the Crown?” James asked.

  “Not at all. But his eye was on the Dutch and French, not good English folk. He operated openly as the king’s representative, but there was no talk of challenging New England’s privileges. They’d have turned on him if he had.”

  “And if the king had called on his services to do just that?”

  Cooper shrugged. “He would have answered the summons, I suppose. ’Twouldn’t have been easy. You live here a spell and you find your sympathies shifting. Especially if you fall into the company of a good woman.”

  “I can well imagine.”

  Cooper fixed James with a sharp look. “You’re sure there’s nothing going on with the widow? Sir Benjamin found her enticing enough.”

  “Certain,” he said firmly. “I’m going back to London as soon as this is settled.”

  Cooper raised an eyebrow and took a puff from his pipe. “So you say.”

  “There’s a position open as the king’s chancellor, and I mean to take it. That means no entanglements.”

  “Ah, yes. Ambition. Well, then. I will believe that.” Another puff. “Tell me how you find yourself in this predicament.”

  James explained most of what had befallen him since he’d arrived in Boston, from his rude reception by Samuel Knapp, to the way Peter had disrupted services and his trial, as it were, at the hands of Stone, Fitz-Simmons, and Knapp. Then, Peter’s ugly death on the highway, followed by James and Prudence’s flight across Massachusetts.

  He did leave out a few things. How he’d nearly bedded Lucy Branch. The name of the family who’d hidden James and Prudence in their barn, then lied to the riders. That Prudence thought her daughter was still alive. This last bit not so much because he didn’t trust his old companion, but because he didn’t want to raise more suspicions about his involvement. It was not, James told himself, personal.