Crow Hollow

by Michael Wallace

  “Are you sure someone was poisoning the Indian?” Cooper asked. “And under the reverend’s roof too? That’s a devil of an accusation.”

  “Peter Church recovered as soon as he stopped eating their food. Then the highwaymen murdered him on the road anyway. Peter was unarmed and no kind of physical threat.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Any speculation about motives?” James asked.

  “My first thought was revenge. Quakers are banished from Massachusetts, and this one provoked a violent outburst. But that’s no motive for murder. No, I suspect they’re hiding something from you in Winton, something that only the natives know. And this Church fellow spoke Nipmuk, right?”

  “Very good,” James said, impressed. “It took me two days to puzzle that out.”

  Cooper gave a shrug, as if it were nothing, but didn’t quite scrub the satisfaction from his face. “Easy enough to do here in front of the fire with a good pipe in my hand. I wasn’t facing murderers on the highway.”

  “That touches on the central mystery of this matter,” James said. “Why did the Indians attack Winton, when they had pledged eternal amity?”

  “The devil put it to them, I should say.”

  “I do not believe that, and neither do you.” James considered further. “Who might have administered the poison to Peter Church?”

  “I can’t see any of them doing it. Reverend Stone is a good fellow—at least by reputation—and Widow Cotton’s sister . . .” He shook his head. “You and I both know a woman can be as ruthless as a man, but her own sister?”

  “Prudence says no. She’s adamant.” James shrugged. “What about the attackers on the road? The deputy governor, perchance? He has the means—he could raise the men.”

  “I don’t know much about William Fitz-Simmons, but I can’t see a motive.”

  “New England sovereignty. I’m a threat.”

  “How is murdering government agents going to help him with that?” Cooper asked. “No, I would expect him to cooperate, to confuse and lie if there’s something to be hidden about Sir Benjamin’s death. But he’s a political sort, and this is a political matter. Murder is too blunt an instrument.”

  “I’m not convinced,” James said. “Anyway, what about Captain Knapp?”

  “Knapp, yes. He’s a brutal sort—proved it in the war. If he were implicated in Sir Benjamin’s death, he might kill for that. That might explain the attack on the highway, but what about the poison?”

  James shook his head. “Knapp had no access to the Stone kitchen that I can see. No way to poison Peter Church. What’s more, how did he catch us so quickly on the highway? Someone must have told him. Someone living with the Stones.”

  “So we’re back to the reverend and his wife,” Cooper said. “Only that’s impossible.”

  Two girls came down the stairs holding their primers and slate boards, which they carried to the table on the opposite side of the room. The girls were older than the two whittling boys, maybe eight and ten years old. And yet Cooper had only been in the country six years.

  When he turned, Cooper was studying him. “Prudence Cotton wasn’t the only war widow,” he said. “My own Sarah was among them.”

  The girls stared at James with naked curiosity before their father urged them to take up their books instead of gawking. One of the girls, James was surprised to see, had dark, shiny hair, thick and straight. Skin the color of hickory. A sharp nose and prominent cheekbones. The only other person James had seen who looked like that was Peter Church. This girl looked similar enough to have been his daughter.

  Cooper lowered his voice. “There were plenty of orphans too, and not all of them our own.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The man’s tone turned defensive, even as he lowered his voice further, to a near whisper. “She is a Christian soul. I won’t have you speaking ill.”

  “I mean no ill,” James said quickly. “But her people . . . what of them? Was there no relative to take her in?”

  “Ah. So far as we can tell, she had none. Living, that is. We’re Abigail’s people now.”

  “Abigail? That’s her name?”

  “Her name was Quipamian . . . something or other. We couldn’t very well call her that. What is that expression on your face? What are you thinking?”

  “There is no expression,” James said, not entirely truthfully.

  “Abigail even speaks English—she picked it up quickly. Not even an accent. You know how children learn. She’ll be one of us, and I’ll love her like any of my other children.”

  “Of course you will.”

  A week ago James might have accepted all of this without a second thought. But almost at once he thought of little Mary Cotton. If Prudence was right, and her daughter was still alive, Mary would be speaking Nipmuk fluently by now, being raised to think of herself as one of them. Maybe they’d even given her a Nipmuk name. The thought was confusing, unsettling in a way that was hard to define.

  The two men took their chairs closer to the fire, where they could converse without the children overhearing.

  “I need to fetch Prudence from the barn and bring her somewhere warm,” James said. “Can your wife be trusted?”

  “No,” Cooper said. “I mean, yes, she’s very trustworthy. But she’s also devout and loyal to the colony. If she finds out that you’re the instigator of this trouble, and that you’re traveling with an unmarried woman . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Understood.”

  “If you’re right about Samuel Knapp, Springfield isn’t safe. Two of Knapp’s brothers live here. One is a selectman, and the other postmaster. Plus at least forty men who served with him in the militia.”

  “Postmaster, you say?” James asked. That gave him an idea. “Have you ink and paper? I have a letter I’d like to post to the colonial government of Virginia.”

  Cooper raised an eyebrow but fetched the paper. When James had written and sealed the letter, he handed it over. “It’s time to get back on the road, but first I want you to get this letter to the postmaster.”

  Cooper nodded. “Before you leave, let me fetch you provisions. It’s the least I can do.”

  “You’ll do a lot more than that,” James said. “You’re coming with me to Winton.”

  Cooper blinked. “I can’t do that. I’ve got a shop to run, a family.”

  “And an oath to serve King Charles. Your business and family are what you do while awaiting the king’s pleasure. I am calling on you now to fulfill your duties.”

  “Lower your voice. My children—”

  “Will you do your duty? Or have your sympathies shifted, as you put it?”

  “Bailey, please. I’m old now, soft. What would it help you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” James said with a touch of sarcasm. “An extra hand to wield a musket or a sword. A witness if they try to kill me. Complications if they try to kill you too. Who could possibly see any aid in that?”

  “If they kill me I’ll leave a widow twice over, and four orphans.”

  James was growing irritated. “We’re not sending you twenty pounds a year to make barrels and sire a bushel of squalling whelps.”

  “Damn you, Bailey. That was low.”

  “Do your duty, man.”

  Cooper looked like he would keep arguing, but gradually a look of resignation passed over his face. “Very well,” he said. “Where is this barn where you’ve got the woman and the horses?”

  James told him.

  Cooper nodded. “Go back and wait while I post the letter. Then I’ll pack a few things for our journey. Tell my wife a quick lie, heaven forgive me, and meet you on the road.”

  “I’m not leaving yet. Not until I’m sure.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “In all good faith? No, I do not.”

  Cooper stared at him, his jaw clenching. “Very well. Come with me.”

  They passed the girls as they left the house to enter the shop. Cooper bent and kissed
them each on their foreheads. The girls squirmed and grimaced, but they clearly loved the attention.

  “Papa will be taking a short trip to Boston. Be of good cheer and lend a hand to your mother in the shop while I’m away. And make sure your brothers don’t get into mischief.”

  When the men entered, there were no customers in the shop and Sarah Cooper was sweeping the floor with a birch broom, its ends slivered and lashed down. She hummed to herself as she worked, bending to brush shavings into a pan and then feed them to the fire. The fire blazed and crackled.

  When she spotted her husband, she brightened and gave him a playful smile. “Bless me, but this is a fire risk. One stray spark, dear husband. One stray spark.”

  “Pray, pardon me, Goody Cooper,” her husband said. “If I cleaned up, you would have no reason to bend over and collect the sweepings. And then I should have no excuse to admire your bottom.”

  Sarah blushed furiously but looked delighted as Cooper took her in his arms. He nibbled at her neck, and she giggled and playfully pushed him away.

  “What will your guest say? Bless me!”

  “Why do you think I’m doing it? Goodman Bailey needs to see the benefits of marriage so he will do his duty and help settle this country.”

  It was the sort of playful banter that James normally enjoyed, but there was something about the tableau that made him twinge. The girls in the next room with their slates and primers, the wife with a healthy color and good cheer. They held obvious affection for their father and husband. James was about to snatch the man away and put his life in danger.

  Cooper made up a story about needing to secure a shipment of iron goods waiting on the docks at Boston Harbor. He didn’t have the ready money, but the shipment was worth a sizable sum and the Dutch merchant would only take silver and not credit. Cooper needed to collect some debts, and that meant traveling to Boston himself.

  James’s sorrow grew as Cooper told his tale with convincing detail, and his wife accepted his coming absence without complaint. At first James thought his melancholy was because of the great risk he was putting the family in. Who was to say that Cooper wouldn’t end up like Peter Church, only leaving a widow and orphans behind?

  But it was more than that. It was a wistfulness for the love this good, simple woman had for her husband. And he for her. James could see it; this was no trifle for Richard Cooper. He kissed her gently on the cheek and held her a moment too long with his eyes closed.

  At that moment James felt as though he had never truly loved anyone the way these two loved each other, had never been loved.

  You chose your life, he told himself. It wasn’t pressed upon you.

  Outside in the street, Cooper shut the door behind them. “Go on, then. I’ll need time to gather some things for the road. Keep two of the horses saddled. I’ll bring my own and dispose of the rest.”

  It took effort for James to harden his heart. The temptation was too great, and the stakes too dear, for him to be soft on the man and let him return to his family and trade. And he needed Cooper to know the deadly seriousness of his intentions.

  “I’ll wait, but so help me, if you don’t show up, my last act on these shores will be to tell every gossip in New England that you’re a no-good spy.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  James expected Richard Cooper to be a grudging companion if he showed up at all, but the man had regained some of his earlier cheer by the time he arrived at the barn outside of town. He climbed down from his horse, handed James a coin purse, and bowed extravagantly.

  “Your treasure, m’lord,” he said with an ironic flourish.

  “What’s this?”

  “I sold Woory’s horses to a shifty fellow I know. At a steep discount, since the beasts were sight unseen, but he didn’t ask questions.”

  “That’s the point of shifty fellows,” James said and tucked the money into a pocket in his cape. He felt guilty that he’d mistrusted his old friend. “Every man should have one at hand.”

  “And I suppose now I’m yours.” Cooper raised his eyebrows. “That’s a reversal from France, isn’t it? I truly have gone soft.”

  Prudence had looked worried since the mention of selling Woory’s horses, so James assured her that when they returned to Boston he’d dispose of the money properly. But their new companion was right, there was no sense in abandoning the horses—not to mention the suspicion that would have aroused when someone discovered them in the barn.

  Cooper told them of a road leading out by the ice pond that would get them around Springfield and onto the road to Winton, so they set off in that direction.

  Prudence and Cooper had apparently never met before, and she seemed disconcerted by his friendly familiarity as he asked her about Boston, about the Nipmuk, even about Crow Hollow.

  After the fifth or so probing remark, James said, “Let be with the interrogation. You sound like the Papist inquisition.”

  He blinked. “Pray, pardon me, Widow Cotton.”

  “It’s no bother, Master Cooper,” Prudence said. “It’s my narrative, I understand.” She turned to James. “When I meet people, they seem to feel as if they know me already. They know me from my narrative, you see.”

  James understood well enough. There was an intimacy in her account, and he’d felt the same way when he first met her. “Be that as it may, it must be a bother.”

  “Aye, that it is. And also a sound lesson in the pitfalls of vanity, and a reminder to be humble before God and man.”

  They passed the pond, where men were at work on the ice. They sawed out great blocks, hooked them with enormous tongs to lift them clear, then loaded them onto sleds to be carted back into town. The ice would be covered in sawdust and stored in ice houses to be used through the warmer months of the year.

  The three riders swung back around to the highway shortly thereafter, having bypassed Springfield. The road traveled next to the Connecticut River, which cut a wild, vigorous passage through the forests and hills. Later, rocks forced the road away from its banks.

  Here the fields thinned before disappearing entirely. James had thought the landscape west of Boston savage enough, but this forest was deeper, more intimidating still. No ax had ever touched these woods. The trunks of the largest oak and maple were so great that two men could not have encircled them with their arms outstretched. The road narrowed at places until a heavily laden cart would have struggled to pass.

  And James spotted animals too: several deer, a fox, some sort of weaselly creature that blended into the snow except for its black nose, and a pair of curious furry animals who looked like they were wearing masks and walked with a distinctive waddle. Prudence called them raccoons.

  Later, they entered hills where stands of towering pines reached into the leaden sky. Each tree would have made a fine mainmast for the flagship in His Majesty’s fleet. Cooper warned James not to leave the road. The snow wells that had formed around the bases of the pines were six feet deep and could swallow a horse to its withers.

  “My husband bought land near here,” Prudence said when they came down into a valley again. “Two hundred acres. He wanted to settle with some other families. See that stream going down to the river? That’s where he intended to build a mill. That cascade was going to become the millrace.”

  “Seems like a fine bit of land,” Cooper said.

  “Then the war broke out.”

  “Do you still own the land?” James asked.

  “I couldn’t say,” she replied with a frown. “My brother-in-law settled Benjamin’s estate. He holds the proceeds for me in trust.”

  Given more time, James would have liked to see those documents of trust and find out exactly what the reverend was doing with Prudence’s money.

  Stone was quite prosperous, and Puritans paid their ministers well. Still, even a man of God could be tempted by the unguarded wealth of a young widow. Perhaps he was helping himself to funds, justifying it as the price for Prudence’s upkeep.

  Perhaps. B
ut proving it would be hard, and in any event, was that sufficient motive for murder? And if Stone were a murderer, why not kill Prudence herself and let the money fall into his wife’s hands as Prudence’s sister and heir?

  The shadows were growing long when Cooper told them to wait while he rode ahead with some of James’s money to secure lodging.

  James jumped down to stretch his legs. He tried to help Prudence down, but she declined.

  “My feet ache. I’d rather not.”

  “How so? We’ve been riding all day.”

  “From the cold, James, not walking.”

  He didn’t like this, and he remembered how he’d left her in the cold barn while he’d toasted his feet by Cooper’s fire.

  “Let me take a look,” he said and pulled at one of her boots.

  “I can feel them, they’re not frostbit. They hurt is all.”

  Still, he persisted. She winced when he got the boot off and then gasped as he peeled back the sock to look. Her toes were a rosy red, with an almost blistered appearance. His hands were hardly warm, but her feet still felt chill when he took hold of them.

  “You’ve got chilblains. We need to get you inside and soaking these feet.”

  She peered down with a worried look, but he was already putting her sock back on. It didn’t help that her socks were damp, either. He couldn’t decide if rubbing her feet would help, or simply cause her more pain, so he laced up her boot without doing anything.

  James looked down the road. “Where is that devil, anyway?”

  “Why didn’t we all go together? Doesn’t Goodman Cooper trust this man already?”

  “He’s undoubtedly another of Cooper’s shifty fellows. And no, you never trust a shifty fellow.”

  “I don’t know many shifty fellows,” she said. “Only you, James.” Her voice was perfectly innocent.

  “Hah. Well, I’m sure it will be fine. These men have their loyalties, if you know what I mean.”