Crow Hollow

by Michael Wallace

  When James lay down, he tried to stay awake until he was sure Tictok was asleep first. Prudence and Mary were already breathing heavily, both snoring softly, but the Indian was still shifting about. To distract himself, James counted the days since he’d arrived in Boston. It had been nine days now. He was startled to realize that today was Christmas. It hadn’t occurred to him earlier, and now it was too late to even offer good cheer to Prudence.

  Back home in England, his family would be fast asleep, their bellies full of fruitcake and fat Christmas goose. In a few short hours they would wake on Boxing Day and load the carriage or the sleigh and go visit uncles and aunts, friends and cousins. More feasting and merrymaking.

  From the time they were young men, James and his brother Thomas had set out on Boxing Day with sprigs of mistletoe. They used it not to seduce girls, but to tease and delight old women. Once, when they were handsome young men of nineteen and seventeen, the brothers leaped from their sleigh to run up behind a crofter’s widow from the village. She’d been trudging wearily under a bundle of sticks with her back turned, and she let out a terrified shriek at the unexpected assault. But she giggled like a girl when they held up the mistletoe and kissed her cheeks. As James and Thomas leaped back into the sleigh, she called playfully after them that she was widowed and free to remarry either or the both of them. Thomas turned and blew her kisses, while James threw imaginary flowers in their wake. Every time they saw her after that, the brothers would give her winks while she blushed furiously.

  James smiled at the memory. He wondered if the old woman was still alive. If so, he hoped Thomas would pay her a visit tomorrow.

  The night was warmer and his belly full. Soon, he could no longer fight sleep. When he woke in the morning, he was momentarily alarmed, but grateful that no harm had come to them at the hands of their reluctant guide.

  By the morning of the third full day after leaving the Abenaki village, Mary’s first tentative English words had become two words, then three together. She still spoke more Nipmuk and Abenaki than her native tongue, but it was clear that her English was thawing from some deep memory. And she was thawing, too, toward her mother. When they stopped, she wanted to stay in Prudence’s arms, and finally called her mother “Mama.”

  Tears of joy streamed down Prudence’s cheeks. It warmed James’s heart.

  Tictok soon had them traveling in silence, and about an hour after setting out there was a tense standoff with two young Indians, armed with muskets, who met them on the trail and argued for several minutes with Tictok before letting them past. Later, they heard a musket fire in the distance, and Tictok kept them hidden in the woods for almost an hour before they continued on.

  A few hours after that, now late afternoon, they came out of the woods and onto a wider trail. It was not much bigger than the one they’d been traveling on for the past three days, but wide enough that James at first supposed that it was a road between two Indian villages. They were still deep in what felt like wilderness.

  Here Tictok would go no further. He pointed at the road. “Postoni.”

  “What does that mean?” James asked.

  “Boston people,” Prudence said. “It’s one of their words for the English. This must be an English road.”

  James turned to Tictok, but the man was already disappearing into the woods, his snowshoes crunching on the snow. An instant later and he was gone.

  It was then that James looked back to the larger trail and saw that it was marked with hoofprints, pressed into the snow and mud and then frozen.

  The road was nothing but a sleepy country lane, too narrow even for a full-sized wagon, and they had no idea what lay on the other end. A farmstead? A town?

  James and Prudence passed through another wooded stretch that led them up over a gentle hillock. When they came down the other side, the landscape opened into meadows and cleared fields overlaid with a blanket of glistening white. Below the fields sat a tidy English village. Not a large town like Springfield, but larger than Winton. Perhaps the size of Natick, which surely meant there would be an inn.

  They stopped to toss aside their snowshoes and Mary’s sling but couldn’t decide what to do about the child’s leather breeches and tunic. They were clearly of Indian manufacture and would raise suspicions. Being strangers on the road, they needed to avoid unwanted attention. Prudence suggested wrapping Mary in her cloak as if she were simply cold. This would serve until they gained lodging, but what then?

  “I can sew,” Prudence said. “If you venture out to buy fabric, needle, and thread, I can make her some clothes in our room.”

  James chewed at his lip. “That will take time.”

  “I’ll work every waking minute.”

  “I’m sure you will. That’s not my worry. Let me give it some more thought.”

  Their paces quickened in anticipation, until soon Mary was flagging. James picked her up and she wrapped her little arms around his neck.

  Prudence studied him with a curious expression.

  “Thank you, James.”

  “You’re tired. I can carry her the rest of the way.”

  “For keeping your word. I shouldn’t have doubted you. You are a good man, and true.”

  He shrugged, unused to such compliments and embarrassed as a result. “There’s a reason you doubted me.”

  “If anyone should doubt, it would be you. You promised to help me find my daughter, and I betrayed you when I left the letter for Cooper’s confederate. It might have sabotaged our entire journey.”

  This much was true. It might still sabotage them, depending on where that letter had landed.

  They continued into town, drawing a few curious stares at their bedraggled appearance, but no comments. When they reached the inn, a small place named The Goose and Turkey, James went in first to secure lodging, being wary of who might be waiting inside. They were so far east from Winton and Springfield that they were unlikely to meet enemies, but he’d committed several errors in judgment already and wasn’t keen to commit another.

  The proprietor was a red-faced fellow, as stout as a Dutch burgher, with shiny brass buttons on his jerkin. His hair had receded to a fringe around his uncovered head, but he didn’t look older than forty, and the sound of children, ever present in New England, came from a back room.

  James paid for lodging and supper for two people and a child, making up a story as to why they didn’t need stabling for animals (he had lost his team and wagon and intended to hire transport in the morning), and then hesitated when the innkeeper asked if he needed any special considerations.

  James had emptied the contents of his purse in Kepnomotok’s hand, but he now retrieved several silver pennies and a half crown tucked into hidden pockets in his cloak, worth thirty shillings in total. He still had more than enough to get them back to Boston, if he were frugal. But there was one indulgence that he was craving.

  “Can your mistress draw up a hot bath?”

  “Of course. Piping hot water.” The innkeeper made a note in his ledger. “That’ll be an extra nine pence.”

  “Wait, make that two baths. One for me, and one for the missus. We’ve been too long on the road. And some hard soap—do you have it?”

  The innkeeper looked up from his abacus where he’d been tallying the expenses. He raised his eyebrows. One bath was a luxury, two an extravagance. The act of emptying the tub and refilling it with clean hot water would cost. And hard soap, too, not the soft tallow soap that could be made in any home.

  “Yes, of course.” His expression sharpened. “What did you say your name was, good sir?”

  “Pray pardon me, I didn’t give it. My name is John Clyde.” Clyde was the name of his maternal grandfather.

  “And how is it that you travel in such bedraggled circumstances?” He glanced over James’s shoulder at the door. “And where are the missus and the child?”

  “We are emigrating from Hartford to Gloucester, but we lost the wagon crossing the river when it broke through thin i
ce. And two good mules, besides. One drowned and the other broke his leg on the ice. Very nearly lost our own lives. Had a rough scramble of it these last two days. The good wife is ashamed of her appearance. We haven’t much in the way of possessions, or even clothing for the little one.”

  “Yes, well. For a man who has lost so much, you have resources and to spare. Two baths.” The innkeeper rang the bell for one of the servants. “You must love your wife dearly.”

  “Aye, that I do.”

  James unfolded a map of the Bay Colony and spread it on the bed while Prudence settled Mary in the little cot and covered her with wool blankets. To Prudence’s relief, her daughter fell asleep almost at once. The room was warm from a crackling fire, and their bellies gloriously full from the meal. And they were clean. The bath had been almost scalding, with fine Castilian soap made of olive oil. The water had been dirty when she finished, but by the time Mary was through, it looked like someone had poured in a bucket of mud. James had bathed in a separate tub of water.

  Upon hearing of their supposed catastrophe on the frozen river, the innkeeper’s wife sprang into action. By the time the servant girl had drawn up the first bath, the goodwife had collected spare outfits from the village for the lot of them, and she gave Prudence a bundle of clothing in Mary’s size, tied in twine.

  The charity made Prudence sting with guilt. Soon enough, the scandal would reach every corner of New England, and the woman would realize that she had been hoodwinked. Her guilt increased when the goodwife personally served a delicious supper of beef stew, dark bread, and the ever-present corn pudding.

  Now upstairs, Prudence stroked Mary’s face for several minutes after the child was asleep. She was so sweet and innocent and clean, her cheeks rosy and fair. Again, Prudence was struck by how much she looked like her father. So much the child had lost. No life was ever spared tragedy, Prudence reminded herself, and at least the two of them were reunited. That was a blessing.

  “I didn’t realize how far east Gloucester is,” James said, still studying the map. “Well out on Cape Ann. We’d be better off traveling to Salem instead.”

  She came over to look at the map James had borrowed from the innkeeper. Crosses marked the English settlements, widely spaced here on the frontier, more numerous near the coast. Even there, many of those settlements had been destroyed during the war.

  “Why not go straight to Boston?” Prudence traced her finger down the east highway cutting through Concord and Woburn. “Here, where they’re not expecting us.”

  “You must think like our enemies. Knapp will hope that we’ve perished in the wilderness. Perhaps he’s still searching for us on the Winton and Springfield road. But maybe he captured Cooper. Under torture, Cooper would give up everything.”

  That was a horrifying thought. “You think it likely?”

  “Nay, I think Cooper escaped toward Hartford. With a bit of good fortune, he has reached New York by now and has made contact with the king’s agents.” James wiped the side of the candle to smooth out the hot wax that was threatening to drip onto the map. “By now Knapp and his devils know that I’m relentless. They must know I’ll return to Boston and press matters with the General Court, or perhaps regain the Vigilant and flee for England. From there to return in greater force.”

  “Either way, they must stop you,” she said.

  “Quite.”

  Prudence found this glimpse into the minds of their enemies a fascinating exercise. Those villains would be scheming to keep their crimes hidden. What would they do?

  “Knapp has had plenty of time to guard the main highways,” she said. “We’ll face certain ambush if we go back on either one. So you mean to travel to Gloucester and take the coastal road south?”

  James smiled. “We’re not taking the road. We’re going to hire fishermen to sail us into Boston Harbor from behind.”

  “Oh. Yes, I see.”

  “I told the innkeeper we were moving to Gloucester to live near your elderly father. So he has hired me a coach. Would it raise suspicions if we had him drop us in Salem instead? We’ll sail from Marblehead.”

  He tapped his finger on the map at the town of Salem, which was midway between Boston and Gloucester up the coast. Marblehead was only a few miles east on its own small peninsula. And it was, indeed, a fishing town. The rules were lax in such places, the men a mix of English, Scottish, and even Portuguese and Irish. Often single young men, quick to do shifty work for a bit of silver.

  There was only one problem.

  “Reverend Stone’s brother is the minister in Salem.”

  James frowned. “Oh?”

  “They are a stiff, dour-faced congregation. They will take note of strangers, and if I’m spotted, I’ll be recognized. I’m well known in Salem. And when the minister hears, he’ll send word to his brother in Boston.”

  James studied her face. “You’re no longer certain, are you?”

  “My brother-in-law is an honorable man. My sister is forever true. They would never betray me.”

  “Then explain your predicament. If you are correct, either reverend will be quick to offer us aid.”

  How certain was she? At the moment, not very. To imagine her own family, the husband of her flesh-and-blood sister, turning on her was sickening. And Stone was a man of God. Surely, he could not be implicated in this wickedness.

  “I am not certain,” she admitted at last.

  His expression was sympathetic, but neither did he seek to change her mind. “Then we’ll ride straight for Gloucester and leave aside Salem and Marblehead. ’Twill give Cooper an extra day to raise help, if it is coming.”

  “James,” she said. “Are all men false at heart?”

  “No,” he said. “Most men are honorable.”

  There was no room in Mary’s undersized cot, so Prudence slept in the bed with James, once more with her body against his. He put his arms around her but didn’t touch her intimately. She was glad he did not. She was confused already, and under his strong touch, his skin and clothing smelling of soap, his face freshly shaved, she would have given herself to him again. And that would only confuse her more.

  James soon fell asleep, but Prudence’s own thoughts wouldn’t stop churning. To get her mind off Laka and her awful wailing when Mary had been wrenched from her arms, Prudence imagined what Knapp would do, worked through his stratagems for ensnaring them before they reached Boston.

  But even supposing they reached Boston safely, what then?

  She’d spent so much time working through what their enemies might do that she’d given little thought to how James intended to bring justice to Knapp and Fitz-Simmons. And her brother-in-law, too, she thought gloomily. Anne would be destroyed.

  Why would the reverend do it? He was a Godly man, one of the most prominent and honored ministers in New England. Perhaps only Increase Mather was more respected. And Stone received a just income from the congregation. He had no need of money. Knapp and Fitz-Simmons, yes; they had emerged from the war with newfound wealth and power, and now she knew how they’d done it. But Reverend Stone?

  But what other explanation could she find for him poisoning Peter Church? There was nobody else in the house with the means or the motive. Neither Knapp nor Fitz-Simmons had access to the house or its food supplies. Not to mention that whoever did it must have poisoned a single meal at a time, not the entire food stock of the family, because nobody else had fallen ill.

  Suddenly, she knew.

  Prudence shook James. “Wake up. I know.”

  “Hmm? What?” He sounded groggy, not yet fully awake, but he sat up, yawning. “What do you know?”

  “I know how Peter was poisoned.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Every muscle in James’s body tensed as the ship eased into Boston Harbor. He half expected to see Samuel Knapp at the head of an armed militia, waiting to slap him in irons and carry him swiftly to the gallows. That was if the little beast didn’t simply gun James down as soon as he set foot on the
wharfs. But there was no suspicious gathering along the waterfront, only men about their work.

  The captain, a one-eyed man named Blunt, gave the orders to brail up the gaff mainsail to cut their speed as they maneuvered through the taller ships at anchor.

  Blunt’s was a stout little dogger with a square rig on the mainmast and a long bowsprit out front, displacing perhaps a dozen tons. It had a crew of six and had been readying to head out to Georges Bank for an extended fishing trip when James hired her to take a detour south to Boston. The ship was small enough to hide among the larger pinnaces and brigantines in the harbor, yet not so small so as to look out of place coming in off the open sea.

  It had been three nights and four days since Tictok had left them north of Haverhill and only two weeks since James had first eased into Boston harbor aboard the Vigilant with Peter Church. Yet so much had changed.

  “Do you have enough to pay Blunt the rest of your debt?” Prudence asked. She held Mary in her arms, the girl staring wide-eyed at the town rising above them.

  Before leaving Gloucester, Prudence had dyed her raven hair with henna, leaving it a reddish auburn. Such disguises were readily available among the smugglers of Cape Ann. With her hood up and most of her hair covered with a head rail, dressed in different clothing, and carrying a child, he doubted she’d be recognized if she kept her eyes averted. James was another story—he expected that there were men in Boston with his description in their heads and a few pieces of silver in their filthy palms.

  “Aye, and two shillings to spare,” he said.

  A few minutes later, when they’d paid Blunt and the dogger had been tied against the pier, James and Prudence came warily down the gangplank. Still nothing to arouse suspicion. James forced the tension from his body as he led Prudence and her child off the pier to solid ground.