The Judge Hunter

by Christopher Buckley

  Cobb said, “I melted lead into the barrel. It’s useless.”

  “D’you have another?” Huncks asked.

  “Only the muskets.”

  Cobb left.

  “You might have thanked him,” Balty said. “That’s twice he’s saved us.”

  “I’ll express my gratitude to Mr. Cobb in the fullness of time.”

  He asked again for writing material. Balty got some from Mrs. Cobb. Huncks sat up and scribbled.

  “What are you writing?” Balty asked.

  “Message to Pell. In Fairfield, not Fairhaven. Try to remember, as you’ll be the one delivering this if I don’t get my damned legs back.”

  “Is it about Colonel Nickel and his fleet?”

  Huncks finished. He unscrewed his signet ring from his finger.

  “Get me some sealing wax.”

  “Another letter I’m not to read?”

  “It’s for your own protection. You’re safer not knowing the contents.”

  “So it’s back to Huncks the Sphinx.”

  Huncks signed. “Very well. You’ve earned the right. Our mission’s to gather information.”

  “What’s so secretive about that? These are his majesty’s colonies. Surely his agents are entitled to gather information.”

  “Gathering information is another term for spying, Balty. Spies get hanged.”

  “Who’s going to hang us? The Indians?”

  “Dutch.”

  “We’re in New England. There are no Dutch here.”

  “We might be going to New Amsterdam.”

  “In connection with the regicides?”

  “Yes. And no.”

  “Huncks.”

  “The judge hunt is a cover.”

  “Well, bloody good of you to share it. What’s the actual mission?”

  “Bit of scouting. In advance of Colonel Nicholls’s visit.”

  Balty stared. “He’s visiting? With a squadron of warships?”

  “Nothing belligerent. Conducting an administrative review. Of the New England colonies.”

  “Then why’s he going to the Dutch colony?”

  “Courtesy. The West India Company in Amsterdam have been informed about it by Downing. Matter of protocol.”

  “Then why all this effort to keep me in ignorance? And why should Hollanders hang us for helping to arrange an official visit?”

  “Perhaps you’re right. I’m being overcautious.”

  “Well,” Balty sniffed, “sometimes a fresh perspective helps.”

  “Agreed. I see the thing in a new light.”

  “Good. There it is.”

  “There it is,” Huncks said. “Now go ask our good hosts for some sealing wax.”

  “Is that necessary, now you’ve vouchsafed me your great secret?”

  “Pell would take it suspicious if it didn’t bear my seal. It’s only by way of establishing your bona fides.”

  “Protocol?”

  “Quite.”

  * * *

  Presently, the boy Micah arrived from Milford with the surgeon, a rotund, wheezing, bewhiskered, and bespectacled Dutchman named DeVrootje. Like all Dutch in New England, he felt vastly superior to the English by virtue of having gotten here first. By the time he opened his medicine case and laid out his instruments, he’d established that his great-grandfather, one Linus DeVrootje of Rotterdam, dealer in beaver pelts, had arrived with Block in 1614 aboard Onrust. He explained (without having been asked) that his Dutch accent was due to Dutch having remained the lingua franca of the DeVrootje household in the New World. Before turning to his patient, he desired confirmation of Micah’s promise of a half sovereign for his services. Twice his usual fee, in consideration of the great distance he’d had to travel here and back, twenty-four miles. Was this still the understanding? Yes? Good.

  He asked the particulars of Huncks’s injury. A fall, from a horse.

  He pursed his lips dubiously and instructed that Huncks be turned over onto his stomach. Surgeon DeVrootje walked his fingers up and down his spine like a militant spider. He paused at various vertebrae, prodding, frowning, making little humming sounds and grunts.

  Now, he said, he must do something the patient would not find pleasant, but it was necessary. With that, he inserted one hand between Huncks’s legs, and with the other grasped Huncks’s virile member. Huncks’s eyes went wide. In the next instant he had DeVrootje by the neck and was throttling him. DeVrootje squeaked, face reddening, as he continued with his ministration. Bartholomew and Balty pried Huncks’s hands from the surgeon’s throat.

  “Do that again,” Huncks snarled, “and you’ll be the one needing a damn surgeon!”

  DeVrootje took it all in calm, professional stride and explained that the finger he’d embedded inside Huncks was in hope of feeling a contraction caused by squeezing Huncks’s membrum virile. The good news was there had been a contraction. If there hadn’t . . . but never mind. He now produced a needle and made pinpricks up and down Huncks’s lower torso, legs, and feet. He seemed encouraged that the soles of Huncks’s feet and one or two of his toes reacted to the pricks.

  Surgeon DeVrootje removed his spectacles which, in the excitement of Huncks trying to choke him, had fogged. He wiped them and said Huncks had suffered a “paraplegia consequenting from a dislocation or compression of the lumbar vertebra.” A mouthful. It was possible, he continued, there had been a fracture of something called the transverse process. Here DeVrootje paused, then said Huncks might walk again. Or might not. The next three to six days would tell. If there was no improvement, no return of feeling, mobility, control of bodily functions, these would be not good signs.

  Addressing himself to Thankful and Mrs. Cobb, he gave instructions. Huncks was to be fed great quantities of milk, clams, and fish. He must “eat and eat and eat.”

  They asked why. DeVrootje shrugged. He said it could not be explained, but over many years of practice, he had found that people who lived by the shore and ate a diet of clams and fish and milk tended to heal from such injuries more than people who lived inland. His explanation left everyone staring.

  He now turned his attention to his other patient. He cleaned Balty’s head wound and stitched it up. Had he also been thrown by a horse? he asked skeptically. Hmph. He shook his head and said they should learn to ride better, or not ride at all. Balty was to rest for at least a week. Turning again to Mrs. Cobb, DeVrootje instructed that he be fed as much red meat as was available, to stimulate a replenishment of the blood.

  His ministrations done, Surgeon DeVrootje accepted his half sovereign, made a little bow to Mrs. Cobb, and departed, tsk-tsking that it would be well past midnight until he reached Milford.

  Balty remained in the room with Huncks.

  “Well, old boy.”

  “Bloody Dutch,” Huncks grumbled.

  “Seemed to know his business.”

  “I can’t move my legs, and he tells me to eat chowder? Quack.”

  “He seemed encouraged when he gave your Master John Goodfellow a squeeze and you . . . contracted.”

  Huncks gave the letter to Balty. “Looks like you’ll be delivering this to Pell.”

  “How far is Fairhaven?”

  “Fairfield. Try not to make a muck of it.”

  “I can’t go. I’m to stay in bed and eat Bartholomew’s cows. While you gorge on clams. Are we pressed for time?”

  Huncks considered. “Nicholls was to sail by late May. Eight, nine weeks to Boston . . . Gravesend by late August. It’s midsummer now. We’ve time.”

  “Then we’ll heal up together, and both go to Fairhaven.”

  Huncks stared forlornly at his legs. “We’ll see.”

  – CHAPTER 20 –

  May 28th. To Chelsey to plead with my Lord Montagu and beg his intercession in the matter of Col. Nicholls’s “administrative review” of the New England colonies.

  Arrived much apprehensive, owing to the coolness he has shewn me since my remonstration with him for his lubricity with the trol
lop Becke.

  Found him in an agreeable mood and pinkish flush, doubtless from carnal exertion. The strumpet was “at market.” Was sore tempted to ask my lord if she was there to buy or sell but did not.

  Informed my lord about Nicholls, begging him to keep confidential the manner of my learning of it.

  My lord readily agreed that the Navy is not at present equipt to fight another war with the Hollanders. But he said, “What would you have me do? If ’tis the will of the King, and his brother, and Downing, and Lady Castlemaine, Africa House, the Admiralty, Navy Office, every d——d merchant in London, and the rest of the War Party?”

  I replied, “If Nicholls causes a war with Holland, our Navy will be sunk to the bottom of your Narrow Seas—and every other sea. Where will England be then? And where will you be? At the bottom, with the ships.”

  He admitted this not the most desirous of outcomes. But pacing the floor with no little agitation, said the thing was beyond his ability to influence or repair.

  I remonstrated anew that he must not so blithely abrogate responsibility, being the Admiral in whom the King himself once reposed more trust and confidence than any other.

  He retorted, “What do you mean, sir, by ‘once’?”

  I suggested, perhaps too candidly, that his ability to influence great matters might be ameliorated if he spent more time at Court than in Mrs. Becke.

  My lord, not pleased, called me a “flippant fellow” and said I had “the tongue of a moray.”

  Exprest my continued affection for him (etc.), averring that my concern sprang only from love for country and himself. But pointed out—pointedly—that war with Holland would propel him posthaste from his present bower of pudendal bliss to the quarterdeck of a warship, facing a fleet far more numerous and better equipt than his.

  This prospect did much sober my lord, as indeed the prospect of death tends to.

  He said he would approach his majesty but must mull how best to do this.

  Took my leave, begging him to be discreet as to how he came by knowledge of Nicholls’s true mission.

  – CHAPTER 21 –

  The Razor’s Edge

  Thankful remained at the Cobb farmhouse to help Mrs. Cobb tend to Balty and Huncks.

  Balty’s dizzy spells from blood loss kept him in bed for days. One afternoon he got up and wobbled about the house. He took care to stay away from windows and doorways, but one day glimpsed Thankful arranging flowers over the two false graves Bartholomew had dug to deceive Repent.

  “Very thoughtful,” he said, when she came in.

  She seemed embarrassed. “The Quiripi know that we put flowers on our graves. If there were none on these, they might wonder.”

  “You seemed to recognize the one with the thing on his face.”

  Thankful blushed and left the room without responding.

  Later that same day, Balty sat at the kitchen table, gnawing on yet another serving of raw meat. He and Mrs. Cobb were alone.

  “Bit of a mystery, isn’t she?” Balty said.

  Mrs. Cobb’s back was to him. She went on with her washing. “How so, Mr. Balty?”

  “She won’t explain why she was there in the worship house, naked as Eve. Never mind why she was there a second time. This morning I asked her if she recognized the Indian who came to finish us off, and she went pale as milk. Can’t make sense of her.”

  “Why must you?”

  “I only want to understand her. I realize this is New England. But in old England, people don’t swan into church stark naked. Certainly not if they’ve been whipped within an inch of their lives for doing it before. It’s a bit fruity. But maybe that’s it. Is she . . . all right?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “In the head.”

  “She’d have every right not to be, after what she’s been through.”

  “I don’t mean to pry.”

  “Then why are you prying?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps I feel responsible for her. Aren’t you supposed to feel responsible if you’ve rescued someone?”

  Mrs. Cobb went on with her scrubbing, her back to Balty.

  “She and her husband, Gideon, they came from Barbadoes. They never thought to stay in New Haven. It’s sure no place for Quakers. But they’d no money. Sweet pair. Always a good word.

  “They managed. Built a little cabin not far from here. Repent, the one who came for you, he took a fancy to her. Began skulking about. Being Quaker, they didn’t do nothing. Went on about their own business. But after a time, his skulking worked on her nerves.

  “Gideon asked him not to hang about. Polite like. But he went on hanging about. Gideon went to the magistrate. Mr. Dependable Feake, him who you’ve met. He asked him to speak to the Reverend Davenport, Repent being Davenport’s Indian godson, or whatever you’d call him. Don’t know if Feake ever did speak to Davenport. Repent kept on with his skulking. Gideon and Thankful tried to make their peace with it and get on.

  “One day Gideon went out to hunt and didn’t come back. There was a search. He was found, dead. Snakebit. Terrible. They counted over twenty bites on him.”

  “Good Lord,” Balty said. “So many?”

  “It was reckoned he’d stepped in a nest. But when the body was given to Thankful to prepare for burial, she saw marks on his wrists and ankles. Rope marks. And the bites, they were all on one side of him. His front. If you go stepping into a snake nest, you’ll be bitten front, back, every part of you. Even so, how were the rope marks to be explained?

  “She went to Feake. He said they could have been from anything. Anything! Far as he were concerned, it were no tragedy there was one less Quaker in New Haven. He told her to get the body into the ground quick like, or he’d fine her. That was the justice she got from our magistrate.

  “She buried him. The next day Repent appeared at her door and asked her to marry him. That was when she knew it was him had killed Gideon. She refused. Then . . .”

  Mrs. Cobb paused in her scrubbing. “. . . he done worse to her. Had his way. She went to Davenport. And what did he tell her? That he’d never permit no godson of his, white or red, to marry a Quaker.

  “So she made her protest in the worship house, in the Quaker way. You saw her back, what they done to her.

  “I nursed her back to health. It was days until she healed enough to walk. Then on the Sabbath day, she was gone, without telling us. To make another protest. Knowing full well it would be at the cost of her life. That was the day you first saw her.”

  Mrs. Cobb finished her washing and left Balty alone in the kitchen.

  * * *

  Ten days after Surgeon DeVrootje’s visit, Huncks had regained only slight feeling in his toes. Thankful and Mrs. Cobb did what they could to lift his spirits. Thankful cut fresh flowers every morning for his bedside; Mrs. Cobb varied the seasonings in the relentless servings of chowder. Huncks finally announced that he would eat not one more clam, not one more spoonful of chowder, and lapsed into a silence from which no entreaty or pleasantry could beguile him.

  One afternoon when Balty went to look in on him, Huncks surprised him by asking for a razor.

  “A shave.” Balty said. “Just the thing. I’ll have Mrs. Cobb heat some water.”

  “Just the razor will do.”

  “No need to dry-shave. Mrs. Cobb would be happy to—”

  “Damn it, man. I want a razor. Nothing more.”

  Balty sat down on the edge of the bed. “Is that why you were so anxious about your pistol?”

  “I’ve no intention to spend the rest of my life in Mrs. Cobb’s bed.”

  “She’ll be cross if you ruin another of her pillows. Look here, old man. Let’s not give up just yet.”

  “I’m done, Balty.”

  “I won’t have your death on my conscience.”

  “Then bugger off.”

  “There’s gratitude. Should have left you at the cliff.”

  “Get out.”

  “As you’re in no mood for company, I
shall leave.”

  Balty went to the kitchen. Thankful asked, “What ails thee, Mr. Balty?”

  “He asked me for a razor. Not for shaving. He’s given up.”

  “Poor man.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Thou cannot do that. Life is God’s to take, not ours.”

  “Yes.” Balty sighed. “I know all that.”

  “Supper’s on the table. I’ll stay with him awhile.”

  * * *

  Balty sat glumly at the table. Bartholomew had been to market in New Haven and had overheard people talking about two English grave robbers who’d been killed falling off East Hill.

  Balty groaned. “This is how I’m to be remembered. For scavenging Indian tombs.”

  “The fellow what led you into the trap. Called himself Mr. Fish, were it?”

  “Simeon Fish. Bastard.”

  “We don’t talk that way at table, Mr. Balty,” Mrs. Cobb said. “Nor anywhere else.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What’d he look like?” Bartholomew asked.

  “Biggish fellow. Fat. Great bushy eyebrows and rum-blossom cheeks.”

  “What’s rum-blossom?” Micah asked.

  “When blood vessels burst under the skin. Leaves red spiderwebby marks.”

  “From excess of drink,” Mrs. Cobb added.

  Micah said, “That’s Mr. William Jones.”

  Bartholomew and Mrs. Cobb glanced at each other.

  “We don’t know that, boy,” his father said.

  “He’s got eyebrows like bushes. And rum-blossoms all over his face.”

  “That’s enough, boy. Eat your food.”

  Balty said, “Who’s William Jones?”

  “Prominent citizen. And I much doubt someone of his station would be up to such mischief as luring people into traps at night.”

  “Why did you walk into his trap, Mr. Balty?” Micah asked. “Weren’t it foolish to do so?”

  “Micah,” his father rebuked, “don’t be disrespectful.”

  “You were the one called them fools.”

  “You’ll feel the back of my hand.”

  “Now, now,” Balty said. “No disrespect taken. Yes, Micah, it was foolish. But, you see, Colonel Huncks knew it was a trap, so . . .”