Blood of the Oak: A Mystery

by Eliot Pattison

  “Men who numbered among the runners have been killed or gone missing.” There was defiance in Duncan’s voice. “I aim to strike a balance.”

  A bitter smile broke Smith’s stern expression. “A balance of justice? You presume much. Even if there were a magistrate who would hear your case you would need to know the true nature of the crime, I suspect, to find recompense for it.”

  “An Oneida friend shot in the back, with his arm severed and his hand inserted into his belly. A Philadelphia scholar with his face peeled away. A young Moravian brutally murdered with his Delaware bride. I think I know enough, Mr. Smith. Not to mention the Ross daughter who died a few feet from me, in the arms of my friend Conawago.”

  Smith hesitated, studying Duncan more intensely, then quieted. “Jess was a brave and joyful lass, bringing a smile to every face she met. Her loss grieves her father terribly, though Murdo will never show it.” Smith gazed forlornly at Jessica’s mother, whose face was drained and empty as she filled buckets at the well. “These mysteries don’t just cross colonies, they cross the wide ocean. You’ll ne’er get to the bottom of it. There are losses on every battlefield.”

  Duncan swallowed the questions that leapt to his tongue. He was more confused than ever about the battle the runners fought.

  “Except he’s the Death Speaker,” came a small, urgent voice over Smith’s shoulder.

  The rebel leader turned with a weary smile, apparently thinking Analie was gibing him.

  She shook her head as if in rebuke. “In the Iroquois lands that is his name. When people are killed, Mr. McCallum can still follow their trails and restore the balance on their path to the other side. Magistrates’ justice ain’t worth a groat in the wilds. What matters is that the families of the dead know, and the dead know.”

  Smith sobered, his hard stare fixed first on the girl then on Duncan. “The Death Speaker. It has an air of the supernatural. I would be disappointed if you . . .” he chose his words carefully, “created false expectations among the tribes. Or the other families of the runners.”

  “I know little of the supernatural,” Duncan replied, “though I do have contempt for one who hides behind it to kill innocent people. I owe the dead I left in the north. I track the truth. To wherever it is hidden.”

  Smith sensed the challenge in his eyes. “You want our truth?” he snapped. “Why do you think we braved the Atlantic? Why do we fight so hard to keep our homes here? T’is simple. Liberty is our truth.”

  “A fine word to decorate your walls,” Duncan shot back. “You can exercise minds with it. Mr. Wilkes can write essays about it in his comfortable study in England. Scots have been led down the path of promised freedom again and again for centuries and have but graves and heartbreak to show for it. I would be disappointed if you created false expectations with it,” he echoed sharply to Smith, then flushed, knowing the man did not deserve his anger. He was weary at grasping at phantoms. “I am more interested in what you exercise your hands with. What messages do the runners carry so urgently south? Patrick Woolford sent me to save nineteen men. It’s not enough that I don’t know where they are, I don’t even know why they are to die.”

  Smith turned and settled his gaze on Analie.

  Duncan’s emotion flared. Then he paused. You seem to do committee work, Smith had said. Analie was backing away. The little cord that bound her precious pouch was looped around her wrist. His hand darted forward. Before she could resist he had the pouch and had upended it into the ground. A scrap of bread fell out, then one of Rush’s scalpels, followed by a linen-wrapped roll.

  “McCallum! No!” Smith protested, but suddenly Tanaqua’s hand was clamped around his arm, pulling Smith back as Duncan untied the ribbon that bound the linen and pulled away the cloth, revealing a roll of papers bound by a red ribbon. As he untied it a dozen sheets of paper fell to the ground.

  The topmost was a sheet of uncut tax stamps, printed in rows of eight. Underneath were documents. He picked one up and with a chill recognized the royal seal. They were printed, copperplate forms signed and sealed by the Minister of the Exchequer in London. By Royal Appointment, began each of the certificates. He lifted another, and another. They were all the same, except for the name of each appointee entered in an elegant hand and for each the name of a different colonial town or county. Each was an official appointment as a commissioner, charged with collecting the new stamp tax.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Treason!” Duncan gasped. “That’s what they’ll call it! I am risking life and limb so you can steal from the king? You’ll have me help thieves in some conspiracy against the crown?”

  “Thieves, is it?” Smith shot back. “Ye may as well call a murderer the victim. Laying a tax on a people without giving them a voice in it, that’s the thieving of it. Stopping free men from talking with one another, that’s the murder of freedom, McCallum.”

  Duncan’s mind reeled. Surely it was not possible that Woolford, a ranger captain with a king’s commission, or Jessica Ross, the innocent Edentown servant, could be involved in the theft of the king’s documents. He reminded himself that there were others in the strange circle of secrecy. “You would have me believe that Dr. Franklin and Sir William would conspire against the king?”

  “Not the king, McCallum, but against Grenville and the other bullies in Parliament, those who twisted his arm into signing a law to punish the colonies without even a by-your-leave to those who live here. They say they must raise revenue to pay for the armies that protect us. We have no enemies but the western tribes, and it is our militias that protect against them. Where was the vaunted army when arms were passing through our own valley to help those enemies? A pox on them! It is only lace-collared prigs across the ocean who benefit from these taxes. They would steal bread from our mouths to pay for their wigs and fancy London coaches. They be the traitors, lad. We be the ones to nudge them back to right thinking. The king will agree when he sees the truth of it. Meanwhile we shall do all in our power to see the tax fails.”

  Analie, sitting now by Tanaqua, cast Duncan an apologetic glance. She had been the one trusted with the most secret of messages. The killers had known, and had tried to kill the girl.

  “But why the committees?” Duncan asked.

  As if in answer Smith nodded to the barnyard, where men were raising a pole to which Jess’s flag of the segmented serpent was affixed. “It’s London’s nightmare. Boston looks to London for its livelihood, as do Philadelphia, Williamsburg, and Charleston. The face of each colony is turned solely to England. When Massachusetts has a problem it crosses the ocean and begs on its knees by the River Thames. Virginia sends its tobacco to Britain, Georgia its indigo. When a petition is raised in America it is always sent to London by a single colony. And alone each colony inexorably bends to London’s will. The fearmongers say there be ten thousand troops here to break us. I tell them they shame the schoolmasters who taught them their numbers. Ten thousand troops perhaps. But put the colonies together and there’s nigh two million of us!”

  “The dice,” Duncan said, finally understanding. “The tax is levied not just on documents but dice as well.”

  “And those who are joined with us have broken their dice,” Smith explained. He nodded toward the flag, so simple in its defiance, “Dr. Franklin designed that flag years ago, saying we could never vanquish the French unless the colonies united. As with much else he was ahead of his time. But now Parliament has made it possible. Franklin calls the committees his lightning rods, with the sparks rising from the hearts of colonists up and down the coast. The cursed tax can be beaten but only if we stand together. We are choking it. Collectors in Boston and Providence have already resigned their commissions after protests in the streets. We will join across the borders of the colonies, act together for the first time. We will make it happen with the messages the runners carry.”

  “Until you are all murdered.”

  Smith hesitated, cocking his head as if trying to decide whether to take threa
t or invitation in Duncan’s words.

  McQueen called out and gestured down the road. “Scout from the valley, reporting in!” Smith took a step away before turning to Duncan. “McCallum. There were McCallums at Culloden I recollect. Your clan felt the hand of the oppressor there. Not twenty years ago and ye’ve forgotten already?” The captain left Duncan staring at the ground. It was not the hand of oppressors he felt; it was the hand of strangers pushing him into a fight that was not his own.

  WHEN DUNCAN FINALLY STIRRED, HE CONFIRMED THAT TANAQUA still slept, then wandered behind the house and sat on a chopping block by the woodshed. He could not recall ever feeling so unsure of himself. He had made a promise to Woolford, and given a vow to a dead Oneida, but he had not known the two were entangled in the games of kings and lords. He, and Sarah with him, had worked so hard to stay out of the reach of government. His Highland clan had chosen to play in such a game and had been nearly exterminated for it.

  Go home! a voice inside screamed at him. This was not the fight he had bargained for. Foreboding for Sarah and Conawago gripped his heart like a fist. Surely they could not have understood the dangers they attracted by making Edentown a station for the runners. How could Woolford have done this to them? They needed to be warned. He looked back at Tanaqua, weighing the possibility of reviving his Mohawk friend and slipping away into the forest. He had no appetite for mixing his life into the politics of strangers.

  An eerie wail rose from the forest, the low, drawn out sound of a dying animal. When it rose again a minute later, he stood and tentatively followed the trail toward the sound. As he climbed a low rise onto a flat, a different sound arose, like the muffled blow of an ax.

  When he spied Murdo at the trunk of a tree, he assumed the big Scot had decided for some strange reason to go cut wood.

  He halted ten paces away. Ross was not cutting firewood, he was pounding a dead trunk with his fists, splintering the dry wood with blows of terrible force. His fists were bloody. His face was so soaked that little shards of the splintering wood were clinging to his cheeks. He had lost his beloved daughter but would not wear his grief in the open.

  Duncan watched the stricken man for several long breaths before approaching. “Shattering your hands won’t bring Jessica back,” he said.

  Ross turned his desolate face to Duncan, not bothering to wipe away his tears. “She was the strongest of us all.” His voice cracked with emotion. “She had the wit of a poet and the grace of a swan. My little angel.” He looked absently at his battered knuckles, oozing blood. “When she was a wee bairn she would have me tell her the tale of Flora McDonald night after night.” The story of how Flora McDonald had risked her life to save the fugitive Prince Charlie after the disaster at Culloden had become a favorite of Highlanders. “She said she was going to be just like Flora when she grew up.”

  “And she did it, Murdo. Even more, for Flora did not give her life for her cause,” Duncan consoled. “Now let me tend to your hands.”

  But Ross seemed not to hear. “She convinced her mother to let her go by saying Edentown would be safer from attack by the western savages because it was in Iroquois country, and we could always count on the Iroquois. Edentown station,” he muttered with a shake of his head. “She was so proud when Captain Woolford accepted her into his network. It was only about the runners at first, but she grew sweet on him. Last time he was here he asked if I would object to him writing her. I said she would need to know the codes and he laughed and said he meant as a man might write a woman.”

  Duncan recalled how Jessica had so carefully tended to Woolford, remembered the light in both their eyes when they had met on the porch moments before her death. He groped for words. His friend Patrick led a lonely life, away from friends for weeks at a time and cut off from his family in England. He had never known him to express affection for a woman. “Your daughter did not suffer.”

  Ross gave a small, grateful nod, and scrubbed at his eyes. “There’s a ledge overlooking the valley just past the house. Jess’s ledge, we called it. Many were the eves she and I would go there to watch the sunset, even in winter. Sometimes she would sing. Every night since she left, even in rain and snow, I’ve gone there to say a prayer toward the north. She promised me she would be safe . . .” His voice died away, choked with emotion.

  The big Scot did not object as Duncan pushed him onto a stump and picked splinters of wood from his bloody knuckles. “She must have known some of the runners,” Duncan observed.

  “Good men, every one, be they white, red, or black.”

  “Black?”

  “Oh aye, Africans out of Virginia. Fastest of all on their feet. And perhaps the bravest.” Ross saw the question in Duncan’s eyes. “Because once they reach here they know they are safe. A freed black can make a life in the north, raise a family on his own land. In Virginia they can still be taken and thrown back into chains. Papers evidencing their freedom can be burnt. More than once I’ve heard tales of slave hunters catching up with a freed man and tossing his papers in the fire so they can put chains on him again and sell him in the southern markets. No one listens to their protests. I’ve even heard of men taken back in chains and their tongues cut out so they can’t tell their story.”

  “Jess was playing with Analie that last day. I think she missed her sisters. Where do they go, Murdo? Where in Virginia?”

  “We’re meant not to know. If ye don’t know a secret ye cannot compromise it. Down the Warrior’s Path, Red Jacob said once, the trail used by the Iroquois in their raids against the southern tribes. But it’s just the wagon road today. Into the Shenandoah on the road then over the Blue Ridge to Williamsburg. Letters come up from Williamsburg through a route only the Virginian runners know. The next station, that’s all I know. A settlement on the eastern slope called Townsend’s Store, where the stationmaster lost an arm in the western wars.”

  “There must be a password, or some mark to identify one runner to the next.”

  “Each runner has a special mark, aye. It goes on the envelope, like a postmark. A letter without the marks, without the right sequence of marks, isn’t trusted. Sir William and Captain Woolford came up with using symbols and not words for the sake of the Iroquois runners.”

  “Carrying letters between colonies? Stealing tax commissions? Why would the Iroquois even help?”

  Murdo shrugged. “Because those who fought the French together trust each other with their lives. Because they are warriors always in search of a noble cause. If they can’t fight in a big war they will fight in a little war.” He struggled to rise. His grief had spent all his strength. Duncan pulled him to his feet. “There’s a bucket in the woodshed,” the Scot explained. “I need to wash off the blood before my wife sees.”

  He stood in the open door of the shed and let Duncan stream water over the deep cuts and pick out more shards of wood, then clean his face with a rag from a shelf above the woodpile.

  As Duncan turned to set down the rag he stopped, his hand hanging in the air. He had not noticed what the rag had covered.

  The old pipes were tattered but had seen loving care. A pang rose inside, of a hunger long unsated.

  “I love the creaky old things,” Murdo said with a melancholy smile. “They would echo through the glen when I was a lad. But I nae got the touch my father had. She won’t let me play them in the house. I keep trying. It’s an itch I cannot scratch.”

  When Duncan spoke there was a tremor in his voice. “May I?”

  “Of course, lad.”

  The bag had been much patched, its seams ragged, the varnish on the chanter and drones worn to raw wood in places but the pipes seemed serviceable.

  A satisfied grunt rose from Ross. “I’ve seen that look. My father wore it whenever he wrapped his hands around that chanter. He would say the souls of eight generations of our clan were speaking when they played, that in them our blood stayed alive. Go ahead, give me a pibroch.”

  Duncan ran his hand along the chanter, checked the drones,
and stared at the pipes for several long breaths. Playing the pipes was a deeply intimate affair for him. His grandfather had said no man could master the pipes without turning his soul inside out. He reluctantly shook his head and carefully returned them to their shelf. “Do you have axle grease?”

  “In the byre, aye.”

  “Cover your knuckles with it. It will keep them clean. Just tell Mrs. Ross you were working on the wagon.”

  Murdo squeezed his arm. “You’re a good lad, McCallum,” he offered, and set off for the stable.

  Duncan wandered to the edge of the forest and discovered a flat formation of shale that overlooked the valley, realizing it must be Jess’s ledge. He sat against a boulder, staring into the sky. He could not remember ever feeling so confused. Every secret had another layer of secret beneath it. Despite the temptation to flee, he knew he couldn’t retreat, couldn’t walk away from nineteen souls. There had been bands of Highland fugitives after Culloden, desperate men cornered by the victorious British soldiers, who had been ordered not to waste their bullets. The Scottish rebels had been skewered by blades and left for wolves. If Duncan had been there he would have helped such survivors, some of whom might have endured but for a warm meal or a safe night’s sleep. If the runners were not following the rules of the government, then neither were those who pursued them.

  The rocks captured the late afternoon sun, and he drifted into a warm lethargy, feeling again the exhaustion of the past days, thinking of the spring planting underway at Edentown. Sarah would be watching the lambs and fawns. Snippets of Gaelic floated on the breeze from the barnyard. A horse nickered. A cow lowed, anxious to be milked.

  THE OLD SHAGGY COW WAS AS WIDE AS A TABLE BUT YOUNG DUNCAN STILL had to grab a hank of long ginger hair to stay on her back as she angled down the heathered slope. The late summer days when they roamed the high Cuillins to gather their stock were the most joyful of the year for the clan, filled with the laughter and relief of men glimpsing the reward of their long summer’s labor. He eagerly anticipated reaching the camp, and could already smell the sweet bannocks cooking and hear the high-pitched sputter of old men cleaning their pipes. The revelry would last far into the night.