Blood of the Oak: A Mystery

by Eliot Pattison

  Slipping inside the side door of the tavern he found himself in a narrow corridor that connected the kitchen and the public room, where a dozen men sat at rough-hewn tables. In the corner nearest him, a stout, square-shouldered man with a black beard worked inside the half-walled cage where refreshments were kept. He leaned out and caught Duncan’s eye. “Any empty table, friend,” he said, then paused and gestured him closer. “We run a tidy place here. Glad to have your custom but keep your rough business outside.”

  “Business?”

  “I know a bountyman when I see one, this being the route the runaways prefer when they bolt. If ye got a warrant of capture to be sworn, the magistrate comes in two days.”

  “Bolt to where?”

  The innkeeper seemed confused, and examined Duncan more closely. “The tribes sometimes,” he said tentatively. “Sometimes to the French along the Mississippi, who offer freedom and land to any escaped slave who settles there. There’s plenty of settlers on the frontier who will take in an extra field hand without asking questions. But if a boy shows up here there’ll be a fight to claim him.” It had the sound of a warning. He nodded toward the other patrons. “Work is scarce and the bounties be rich.”

  With an ale in hand, Duncan sat and studied the ragged assortment of men at the other tables. The talk of slaves and bounties made him uneasy. He thought again of Tanaqua, hiding on the hill above. His Mohawk friend had been on the Warrior’s Path as a youth, though his foray had been only a scouting party looking in the Shenandoah Valley for signs of Catawbas, ancient enemy of the Iroquois. Tanaqua had hesitated when they had first glimpsed the Shenandoah on their journey south. “This was all forest when I came before,” the Mohawk had explained in a hollow voice. “The treaties that were signed at Lancaster said the Europeans would be allowed to use our Warrior’s Path but then they turned our forest path into a road and now—” he had gestured toward the landscape that rolled over the miles. In the mountains the route had been a rutted track capable of carrying small wagons and carts, still flanked by woodlands. Before them the Warrior Path had been transformed into a broad, hard-packed road winding across the countryside, sometimes extending for long spans without a tree near it. “Our trail is no longer the way a warrior can travel,” he said. “The last war parties we sent never returned. It is said they were captured and put in irons to work for the Europeans.”

  Duncan now felt the same disorientation. This was the land where the runners had disappeared, unfamiliar terrain in every sense. Everything—the land, the murders, the mysterious half king and runaway god—was all still puzzles. He had come for justice, and to save nineteen men, but had glimpsed more mysteries than truths since leaving Edentown. He spied a dog-eared journal, the Virginia Gazette, on the adjacent table and retrieved it. On the front page was printed an excerpt from a speech to the Parliament in support of the new stamp tax by one of the Prime Minister’s deputies. “Will now these Americans, Children planted by our Care, nourished by our indulgence . . . and protected by our Armies, will they grudge to contribute a mite?” the deputy had asked Parliament.

  Below it the printer had marked The Noble Reply of Colonel Isaac Barre, MP, page 4. Duncan turned to the page and read, then reread, the explosive answer of Barre, hero of the last war, on the floor of the Commons:

  “Planted by our Care! No! Your oppressions planted ’em in America. They fled from your Tyranny to their uncultivated and unhospitable Country—where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which Human Nature is liable . . . and Yet, actuated by Principles of true English Lyberty they met all these hardships with pleasure, compared with those they suffered in their own Country, from the hands of those who should have been their Friends.

  “Nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of ’em as soon as you began to care about ’em. That Care was exercised in sending persons to rule over ’em in one Department and another, who were perhaps Deputies of Deputies to some member of this house—sent to spy at their Lyberty, men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the Blood of those Sons of Lyberty to recoil within them.”

  IT WAS AN EXTRAORDINARY SPEECH. BARRE’S WORDS NOT ONLY resonated deeply with him, he also vaguely sensed in them a binding, a context for much of what he had learned in his quest. The Blood of the Sons of Lyberty. Is that what was being spilled on the Warrior’s Path? He looked back at the name, then realized he had seen it before. He extracted the slip of paper where he had recorded all the names he had seen or heard while trying to piece together the mystery before him. Colonel Barre from London had offered encouraging words, Rush had reported to Peter Rohrbach.

  He stared at the list of names and the Gazette. He had started out suspecting he was caught up in some feud between warring tribal clans, then it had become a game played by inept intellectuals from Philadelphia, then intrigue among smugglers. Again and again he had been wrong. It was a struggle about politics, but one that went far beyond the wainscoted chambers of those in public office. The conspiracies not only spanned the Atlantic, they also spanned all levels of society, from the grand Dr. Franklin to old matrons in Iroquois lodges. He paged through the paper, discovering that many of the stories dealt with the stamp tax. There had been public displays in half a dozen Virginia counties against the new tax. In the corner of the last page of the paper where the stamp should have been affixed a small rectangle had been cut out. In the opposite corner a different rectangle of red-inked paper had been fastened with a dobbet of wax, the size of the government’s tax stamp but bearing a skull and crossbones framed by the words Witness to the False Tax.

  “We don’t get many bounty men with such an interest in news from afar.” The innkeeper was leaning over the counter, studying Duncan.

  For an instant Duncan felt a pang of alarm for Tanaqua, hiding above the village, then he recalled he was in Virginia. Bounties were paid on a different race of men here. “I am no bounty man.”

  “Yet from the way you nosed around my stable I’d say you were stalking something.” The bartender picked up a mug from a short tub of washwater and began drying it with a towel. “Curiosity be a dangerous disease in this province.”

  “I am a stranger to these parts—” Duncan began. The bearded man had wedged the mug between the counter and his belly to dry it. He had only one arm.

  The innkeeper saw Duncan’s startled reaction and paused, then watched as Duncan dropped his burnt stamp on the table. He shot out of his bar cage, covering the stamp with his towel. “Be not so reckless!” he whispered, then pushed the stamp back onto Duncan’s lap as he made a show of wiping the table, before retrieving a tankard for himself.

  “Now stack some coins on the table,” the innkeeper whispered as he sat beside him. When Duncan stared at him in confusion, he leaned closer. “Slave catchers buy information on runaways. You want to be seen as a slave catcher. My village is a chokepoint on the route north, leading to the main pass over the mountains. It’s why a stranger would speak with me.”

  “Can I trust you, Mr. Townsend?” Duncan asked.

  “Trust no one!” the innkeeper warned. “Life is cheap on the slave routes. Mind y’er words and mind y’er back. Do y’er business and turn back north.”

  Duncan stared at the man, not certain how to take his blunt reply. “A former slave mounted on a bay mare was murdered on the wagon road in Pennsylvania, near Mercersburg. He was tortured, then tied to the saddle as a warning. The skin on his chest was peeled away to form the words Your tax. It was done while he was still alive.”

  Townsend’s hand gripped the towel so tightly his knuckles whitened. Duncan did not miss the glance he cast toward the men eating at a table by the hearth on the far side of the room. “Atticus!” The name came out as a low groan. “As good and brave a man as ever there was. He could have gone into the hills, back to the north and freedom. I warned him that he might be choosing death, and he just said everybody dies and he would live the way of a truly free man before he died.”


  “Where do they go from here? Where is the next station? Is it a place called Galilee? Between two rivers.”

  The one-armed innkeeper winced. “A place better imagined as the Good Book intended.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Townsend seemed not to hear. “My boy and Atticus were friends, used to cut wood together up on the slopes after he won his freedom. When he showed up again I gave him provisions and got him back on that Pennsylvania horse, telling him to ride north and don’t come back this time. But damned if the fool didn’t turn that horse’s head and ride south.”

  Duncan shuddered. The dead man had haunted him ever since leaving the Conococheague. “You were sending him to Ross’s station you mean.”

  Townsend offered no reply.

  “With what message?”

  “A letter, though he knew not what it said.”

  “From you? In the Shakespeare code?”

  “From Williamsburg. A plain text letter. From Mr. Patrick Henry.”

  “There was no letter on him.”

  “I told you. He rode the wrong way, into the teeth of the monster. Last I saw of him.”

  “But he carried something else, something for the Iroquois.”

  “Not likely, lad. What would an African from Virginia know about the Iroquois?”

  Duncan saw the glance Townsend threw again toward the men at the hearth. “Why,” he asked, “would Atticus not touch here when he rode back north? He was attacked only hours from the Conococheague station.”

  Townsend shook his head with a mournful expression. “My boy Joshua knows him,” he reminded Duncan. Strangely, he gazed with expectation at Duncan. “He will want the news.”

  Duncan cocked his head. “Am I to meet your boy?”

  Townsend said nothing, just took a long draught from his tankard as he watched half a dozen more men walk in. He wiped his beard with his towel and stood. “We’re serving out fresh turkey stew. In an hour most of my patrons will be done and gone. Borrow the Gazette if you wish. Take a stroll in our gardens. Come back then and we will talk.”

  Duncan read the Gazette on a bench at the side of the building, then stuffed it inside his shirt and wandered into the kitchen garden, enclosed with a low picket fence along the south side of the tavern. Its well-tended beds spoke of a gardener of not just devotion but great knowledge, for it held not only the onions, lettuce, cabbage, peas, and beans he would have expected for the kitchen but also a rich selection of herbs and savories. He bent to examine the spring growth of thyme, borage, basil, fennel, and rosemary, sometimes crushing a leaf to catch its scent. Sarah was doing spring planting at Edentown and, with Conawago’s help, had been nurturing her own medicinal herb garden. He paused at the small shed along whose roof beams drying herbs hung, and admired, on an interior shelf, the glass jars and decanters where someone was making infusions. Beyond the shed he found more beds of only medicinal herbs, some of which he had seen not since leaving Europe. Lovage, santolina, yarrow, lemon balm, nightshade, and hyssop.

  “There’s my pretty lass.” The throaty words came from the other side of the high forsythia hedge at the end of the gardens. “Did ye miss me then?”

  Duncan burst through the bushes and onto the path that led to the pastures. Not thirty feet away, Murdo and Analie were feeding handfuls of spring grass to two chestnut mares, as Tanaqua, sitting under a nearby chestnut tree, watched in amusement.

  “What don’t you understand about keeping out of sight?” Duncan demanded. “This is not a safe place to—”

  “And did we not stay hidden?” Murdo interrupted. “Until my horse throws up his head and whinnies. And wasn’t he just answered quick as a bee. I know this girl’s voice. Would have been rude not to come down, seeing how they’re mine, Duncan, used by the runners. She was foaled in the Conococheague.” The big Scot lifted the mare’s muzzle and kissed her. “My Jess’s favorite. I’ve half a mind to give her head and let her run home.”

  Analie giggled as the compact mare she was feeding buried her muzzle against her neck. Murdo stroked her mane. “If ye ever need a mount, lass,” he said to the French girl, “she’s the one for ye. Fast as the wind and the best nose for direction I’ve ever did see. Joan of Arc, my Jess named her.” He pointed to the small irregular white patch on her nose and Duncan saw that it bore a vague resemblance to a fleur-de-lis. Murdo checked himself, and Duncan saw how memory of his lost daughter momentarily twisted his features. “A sweet French lady for you, Analie,” he said in a voice thick with emotion. “Dear little Joanie.”

  “Things inside are—” Duncan searched for a word, “unsettled. We found the station true enough. But the stationmaster is nervous. You need to stay out of sight until I come back out.”

  As Duncan returned to the tavern, Townsend motioned to the same table by the bar cage. Sitting there now was a man of stern countenance, a few years older than Duncan, whose thin face and spectacles gave him the air of a scholar. Townsend brought three tankards of spiced ale and pulled up a third chair. He surveyed the tavern, cleared out now but for two men sitting by the low fire in the hearth.

  As Duncan took a long draught, the stranger pulled out a broken die and very deliberately laid it before him, raising an expectant eyebrow. From a waistcoat pocket, Duncan produced the burnt stamp given him by Smith. “Excellent,” the man declared in a refined voice, the product, Duncan suspected, of one of the English colleges. “Your bona fides are established. Long life to Mr. Wilkes.”

  “Runners have gone missing,” Duncan declared. “We think they are somewhere south of here.”

  The man leaned forward. “Distressing news. You have come to the right place. Tell me all.”

  Duncan felt a weight lifting off his shoulders as he confided the details of the murders and apparent abductions. The man produced a writing lead, making hurried notes, listening with a worried expression. Here at last was a man of Virginia, who would know what lay to the south. Townsend brought a second round of drinks, pushing a tankard toward Duncan, then shuddered as Duncan described the last of the murders, that of the freed African, Atticus.

  “We must find this place Galilee,” he said. “Between two rivers.”

  The stranger nodded with a thoughtful expression. “I can help with that,” he offered. “But above all we must maintain the flow of correspondence. We cannot let our enemies disrupt our noble efforts. Do you have a letter for me then? There are gentleman in Williamsburg eagerly awaiting news.”

  Duncan hesitated. Why would the man speak so openly of matters entrusted only to code by the committees? “Are you a committeeman then?” he asked.

  “Consider me the committee for northern Virginia, sir. I will have your letter.” The man searched his pockets, setting a snuffbox and a folded letter on the table, then produced a scrap of paper and writing lead, which he pushed toward Duncan. “First your mark, prithee.”

  A cloud seemed to be forming in Duncan’s head. His fatigue was overpowering him. “You have to show me . . .” he began.

  The stranger grinned as Duncan reached out and opened the letter. Inside, drawn in a crude hand was a large square, with what may have been trees on two sides, wavy lines of water on another, and trees combined with water on the fourth. At the bottom was a row of what looked like little buildings. In one corner was a stain that could have been blood. Inside the square were runner marks. A stick deer. An eye, a rising sun, a crescent moon, a square with a cross in the center. A tomahawk. A fish. A little windmill. A flying bird.

  His head began to spin, and he shook it to clear it. Townsend, his face clouded, was looking into his clasped hands, as if praying. The stranger watched Duncan in amusement. “I’ll have the committeeman names, sir,” he instructed.

  Duncan felt as if he were speaking through a haze. “Wilkes and liberty,” he replied.

  The scholar sighed. “Oh dear. And I thought we were going to be such good friends.” He turned to the innkeeper, whose face seemed to be losing its color. “Where do you keep the
brandy, Townsend? Not the cow piss you sell to tinkers and traders.” As he spoke a man leaned inside the entrance. “Two in the stable, sir,” he reported. The bespectacled man beside Duncan made a peremptory gesture and the men at the hearth sprang up and followed the third man outside. When Townsend did not move, the smug scholar rose and stepped into the bar cage and reached for an onion-shaped bottle on a top shelf.

  Duncan grabbed the letter and began moving toward the hearth. His feet were strangely heavy. His eyes seemed unable to focus. He swayed and caught himself on a table, then staggered toward the fire. An angry shout rose behind him and as the scholar ran toward him, Duncan fell to his knees and threw the paper into the flames. As he collapsed onto the hearthstone a shrill voice called out from upstairs. “Hobart! Tell that damned one-armed fool I want my tea!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Duncan floated in his hammock on his grandfather’s ketch, rocking with the waves, listening in the night to the groan of stays and lines, smelling the sour stench of bilge water. He gazed up at a solitary star, then decided he was too tired to rise so rolled over to sleep some more. And found his hand on a man’s head.

  He jerked upright, suddenly alert, his heart thumping. He was not in a boat, but in a box. The star was a nail hole in a top corner that dimly illuminated four black walls. The sounds he heard were of horse harnesses, the fetor that of unwashed men and urine. He recalled the black wagon he had seen behind the tavern. It had reminded him of a hearse and now to his horror he realized it had indeed been designed for human cargo. Townsend’s Store was where escaped slaves were collected and sent back to their torment in the fields.

  He made out the dim shapes of at least two others in the box, lying as if lifeless. A thunderclap of pain burst in his head with each effort at movement, and his shoulders and legs began throbbing. He had been beaten while unconscious. He pressed his hands against his head until the pain subsided, then reached out again, quickly identifying his companions in the slave wagon. Murdo Ross and Tanaqua acted as if they were in comas but seemed to be breathing steadily.