Shadowbrook

by Swerling, Beverly

  Groesbeck cocked his head and looked up at Quent. “The one who used to live by the Widow Krieger? With one seeing only?” He clapped a hand over his left eye.

  “That’s the one.”

  “Why you want to know about him?”

  “We had some business together last time I was here. Interrupted a conversation you and I were having, as I recall.”

  “Ja, ja. I remember. He’s dead, that one. Happened up at your place. Some kind of quarrel with your brother.”

  He’d found out what he wanted to know, how the death of Hamish Stewart was interpreted locally, and he need not pretend to mourn for a man he barely knew. “My brother’s not hard to argue with.”

  Groesbeck’s look darkened. “Not so bad when it’s another man, a fair fight. With a woman, even a—”

  “What woman?”

  The landlord jerked his head to the back of the taproom. “Annie the whore. She was a friend of the one-eye. She’s here tonight. First time in three weeks.”

  Quent nodded his thanks for the information and the beer and began making his way toward the rear. A path was instantly cleared for him. A few people nodded or murmured a greeting or slapped his arm in welcome, mostly locals who had known him since he was a boy. The rest kept a respectful distance.

  Annie Crotchett sat in her usual place in the rear of the taproom, near the door to the yard. Her right eye was swollen shut; her left was blacked, but usable. She saw Quentin Hale making his way toward her and waved away the two Yorkers who had been keeping her company. “Go on about yer business, lads. Annie’s got a special caller. Another Hale, as I live and breathe. The famous one.”

  Quent nodded to the Yorkers as they left, and straddled one of the stools they’d left vacant. “Good evening to you, Mistress Crotchett.”

  “It’s Annie I’m called. Even by the likes of you, Quentin Hale.”

  Her face and neck were marked with bruises just beginning to fade to a sickly yellow. “Very well. What happened to you, Annie?”

  “What do you think? Your bloody brother came at me with a fireplace poker. Nearly killed me he did. Good as killed me.” Gingerly she shifted her backside around on the bench and hiked up the skirt of her frock; both feet in their striped, knitted stockings were at odd angles to her legs. “Broke both me ankles, your poxed brother did. Won’t walk never again, the quack says. Ain’t no use hoping, ’cause it ain’t gonna help. Wouldn’t be here tonight except old Harry over there carried me. How am I supposed to earn my living if I can’t stand up or walk out to the yard? Much less hold myself up long enough to let a man—” She broke off, trembling with misery, putting her hand over the little pile of coins, mostly coppers and wooden pennies, that had been accumulating in front of her as each of her former customers stopped by to wish her well and make a small contribution in memory of good times past.

  Sweet Christ. “You know it was John Hale who did this?”

  “Of course I bloody know it was John Hale. Been a regular customer since I can’t remember when, your poxed brother. Wish to God I’d never seen him, but a fat lot of good that does me now.”

  “Why, Annie? Why did he turn on you now?”

  Two fat tears escaped from her swollen eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “Said I told. Said it was my fault Hamish knew—”

  “Hamish Stewart?”

  She nodded, but didn’t look at him when she whined, “I told John I didn’t know nothing to tell Hamish, but he didn’t believe me. How could I know when or why ‘bout business happens down to New York City? Ain’t never been nowhere but Albany. Never.” F Quent knew she was lying. John must have known as well. Still, to beat a woman until she was crippled… . “You know Stewart’s dead, don’t you?”

  More tears. “‘Course I knows that. Your poxed brother killed him. Hamish was a good man. He never—”

  The man who gave a little boy a dirk and showed him how to use it was good enough once. But Stewart had finished up a covetous bastard who sold his soul to land hunger. Quent dug into his pocket and came up with a handful of coins, a golden guinea among them. He spent little when he earned and managed to put nearly everything aside, but his last paying job had been a brief stint as a scout in the Ohio Country a year past. The money he put on the table in front of Annie was pretty much all he had left. Nonetheless he said, “There will be more. You have my word you won’t starve.”

  If that was true, Annie thought, if she could give up fucking for money and eat anyway, Christ Jesus it was worth it. Worth everything.

  Outside the Albany palisade, in the woods that bordered the north road, the three-note call of the loon echoed softly twice, then a third time. Cormac appeared from the shadows of a stand of spruce.

  “Nekané,” Quent said. Little brother.

  “Sizé.” Elder brother. Corm pressed his palm to Quent’s. “Ahaw nikan.” My spirit greets you.

  “Bozho nikan.” And mine, you.

  “Took you long enough to get here,” Corm said. “I’ve been in these woods every night for almost a week.”

  “Your note said ten o’clock, before the Telling of Arriving Dark. It’s still Last Fruit far as I know.”

  The message written on the strip of bark had been pressed into Quent’s hand as he came out of the governor’s mansion the night he got back the deeds to Shadowbrook. The Indian who gave it to him had what looked like blue Mohawk tattoos on both cheeks, but he’d whispered “Nikan, Kwashko” as he brushed past. A Potawatomi greeting using Quent’s sacred Potawatomi name. “That was Lashi’s boy wasn’t it? Bishkek’s grandson.”

  “Yes, Pondise. The Mohawk thing was his idea. He said he thought it would be better to look like a snake among their allies.”

  “New York City people can’t tell one Indian from another. And they’re terrified of them all. Bede was with me when Pondise appeared.” Quent chuckled at the memory. “The old boy nearly fainted. I tried to find Pondise again later. Couldn’t do it.”

  It was Corm’s turn to laugh. “That’s because you’re becoming white through and through. Look at you. How long since you’ve had on buckskins?”

  “Too damn long,” Quent admitted. “Nearly five months, I reckon. Not very sensible to go around London looking like a woodsman.” As if he needed to apologize to Corm. “You have to fit in.”

  Not here in Albany. Quent knew he could have changed before he left the city, or on the boat coming up here. The only reason he hadn’t was because he didn’t want to.

  “Tell me about Pitt,” Corm said.

  “We’ve got everything we wanted. Everything, Corm. The French don’t know it yet, but they’re finished. The Anishinabeg will have Canada.” The thrill of it rose up in him the way it had back in London when he realized that Pitt had been convinced. “The Indian way and the Cmokmanuk way; they’re going to survive side by side. We’ll learn from each other.” Quent was suddenly conscious of being in the open, on a well-traveled road. He looked around. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”

  Corm led the way deeper into the woods to a spot he’d already scouted. The night was unseasonably mild, but the place he’d chosen was in the lee of a boulder taller than either of them, protected from any wind that might rise. The ground was cushioned by a deep layer of blue-green spruce needles. Corm sat, leaning against the face of the huge stone, watching Quent, knowing he had to let him take his own time and tell the story in his own way.

  Quent opened the canvas bag that had accompanied him on the journey from America to England and back again. His long gun came out first. Then his buckskins. “Let me change, then we’ll talk,”

  There’s a war inside him, Corm thought. Always, has been, in some ways. But now he’s being sucked into the world of men who wear city clothes, men of power. White men.

  “I feel like I’m back in my own skin,” Quent said when the breeches and the velvet coat were packed away.

  “They’re both your skins,” Corm said. “Almost as much as they’re both mine.”

  “
Maybe,” Quent agreed, but he didn’t want to talk about such things; there was too much else to tell. “I’ll start with Pitt. I was in London nearly two months before I got to see him. I—Christ Almighty, Corm, what a place London is. You can’t credit the numbers of people, or how they look, or the goods in the shops, or the traffic in the streets. There are so many carriages you can’t count the number on even one stretch of road, any stretch of road. And the women … They’re something, Corm. Remarkable.”

  “You thinking of going back there? Settling there, maybe?”

  “In London?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course not. I want to tell you what it was like, because I went and you didn’t, but … I’m an American, Corm. The time I spent in London only made that more clear. The English and us, there’s a difference. Besides, this is my home. I could never go so far from Shadowbrook.”

  “You were going to tell me about Pitt,” Corm reminded him.

  “Yes. As I said it was more than eight weeks before he saw me, and just as well, as it turned out. It gave me a chance to find out how things stood. Seems Pitt’s been in and out of favor for years. He takes the part of the next king, the Prince of Wales, more often than that of the prince’s father. George II has no choice in that, by the way. Eldest son’s the next king. Always.”

  “I know.” Miss Lorene’s history lessons, no telling when they suddenly came in handy.

  “Thing is, there’s bad blood between George and his son. And Pitt, he’s close to Wales, which makes the king detest him more. All the same, he’s finally given Pitt complete charge of the conduct of the war. Had to. The people demanded it.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it’s much use being king.”

  “Sometimes, no, it isn’t. George’s people come from Hanover over in Germany, and France is at war with Hanover as well as us. The king always wants the main British military effort to go toward helping his relatives in Europe rather than us colonials here in America.”

  “I take it Pitt doesn’t agree.”

  “Absolutely not. He’s got this idea that what matters is building an empire, America and India. Thinks if England loses either to France, Great Britain’s as good as finished. A toothless lion, he said. “But that need not happen, Mr. Hale. I can save this country and I must, because no one else will.’ That’s what he told me, Corm.”

  “Is it true?”

  “I’ve no idea about India, but here … Yes, I think it is true.” Quent grubbed about until he came up with a handful of small stones. “Look, this is how it’s to be.” He positioned three of the stones in a triangle on the earth between them. “Say this is Fort Duquesne down in the Ohio Country.” He pointed to the right bottom stone. “It guards the way to the rest of the French territory south and west.”

  “Louisiana, you mean.” That was the only place Corm had ever heard of where people ate kokotni. If Marni were eating alligators, she had to be in Louisiana.

  “Yes,” Quent agreed. “Louisiana. And all the land to the west the French claim. The key to their holding it is Fort Duquesne. If we take that, they’re finished.”

  “Braddock already tried to take Fort Duquesne. We know how that came out.”

  “Yes, but Braddock was sent over with fewer redcoats than he needed and told to make up his strength with colonials. That’s never going to work I told Pitt as much, but frankly he already knew. Massive force, that’s his plan. There’ll be so many of them to take Duquesne the French won’t stand a chance. Besides”—Quent looked at Corm, watching his reaction—“I hear it’s a lot more difficult for Onontio to get his war belts accepted by the Anishinabeg. You know anything about that?”

  “Later,” Corm said. “Finish about Pitt first.”

  “Fair enough. First thing to go will be Duquesne. We’ll take it with the biggest guns you ever saw, and overwhelming numbers of redcoats.”

  “There’ll be some local help as well. Your old friend Washington, he’s raised a new regiment, the First Virginia. A force to be reckoned with, they tell me. Better than that ragtag bunch of farmers he had with him back in that cursed glen.”

  Quent nodded. “We’re all a little wiser than we were four years ago. Pitt’s gotten the parliament in London to agree to help pay colonial soldiers a living wage. Washington can recruit real officers, men with some experience, for the First Virginia.” He pointed to one of the two stones that remained. “Second objective is Carillon.”

  “The fort up on the French end of Bright Fish Water?”

  Quent nodded.

  “How did you get him to make that a major objective?”

  “Ticonderoga is critical for the corridor between Canada and the Ohio Country. Take Carillon and you cut New France in half.”

  And the fact that it was better not to have French forces five days’ march from the Patent was simply a bonus. Well earned, Corm thought. Quent deserves something for all he’s done for the English. “Same plan?”

  “Same plan.” Quent chuckled. “I just came from the Nag’s Head. There’s so much custom old man Groesbeck’s like a pig with his snout in the swill. When he sees what’s coming he may die of joy.” Quent swept the second stone away with the edge of his palm. “Thousands of redcoats, and we turn the French out of Ticonderoga. We’ll be in complete control of everything between Lake Champlain and Bright Fish Water.”

  “The Huron,” Corm said quietly, “they call that stretch between the lakes the Great Warpath. Because it led them to their enemies.”

  “Call it what you will, once we take Carillon, it’s ours.”

  Corm pointed to the single stone that remained. “And what’s this?”

  “Two things, actually,” Quent said. “Louisbourg and Québec. Force,” he said quietly. “Irresistible force. The whole bloody English navy if that’s what it takes.” He scooped up the remaining stone and flung it into the trees. “Québec falls and Canada is ours.”

  Corm stiffened. He felt a sudden chill despite the mild night. “Ours? Do you mean that Canada will be British?”

  “Only in a manner of speaking,” Quent said. “I didn’t mean to imply the English Cmokmanuk would replace the French. I told him, Corm. Everything you’ve always said, everything we agreed on. The Amshinabeg get Canada and the Cmokmanuk stay down here on the land the English hold now. In return, peace between us and the Indians, no more frontier harassment, no raids. We draw a line and everybody stays on their own side.”

  “I know you understand,” Corm said softly. “What I’m waiting to hear is that your friend Pitt also understands.”

  “Pitt’s a friend to himself only, I suspect. But about Canada … We talked four evenings running, about the war, everything.” In the Palace of Westminster Quent had been led to Pitt’s private apartments through the most splendid corridors he’d ever seen, lit with an uncountable number of candles, alive with Turkey carpets glowing in colors he’d never imagined. “That last night, we talked of nothing but the Anishinabeg. He wanted to know all about them, to understand their ways. What happened up at Fort William Henry, it concentrated his mind—”

  “—on the fact that Indians are bloodthirsty savages,” Corm broke in, suddenly fierce. “That’s what the whites are saying. Not just in New York and the rest of the colonies. The French are equally as ignorant. Montcalm wrings his hands and pretends not to understand how the ‘savages’ could have gone back on his word. His word, mind you, not theirs.”

  “I admit, it was pretty hard for them to understand in London as well. But as for Pitt … He’s not a closed-minded man, Corm. I think he understood in the end. I really do.”

  “And he agrees? We’ll have Canada?”

  It was maybe the first time Quent had heard Corm align himself entirely to his Indian heritage. “He agrees that whites and Indians have to find a way to live together if there’s ever to be peace and prosperity in America.”

  “Did he give you his word Quent?”

  “He promised me he’d try, Corm. He swore he’d be
nd every effort to make it happen. It was the best I could get, so I took it.”

  It was the same thing Pontiac had said when he accepted the Súki bead with the spider carving, that he’d try. Cmokman or Anishinabeg, sometimes to try was the only promise possible. “There’s something else.” Corm found another stone and held it out in his open palm. “This attack on Québec. Presuming the English warships get close enough to do any damage, it’s the Lower Town they’ll smash first. You given that any thought?”

  Quent nodded. “I have. That convent is not a hundred paces from the harbor.”

  “Closer, maybe.”

  “Ahaw.” It was the first time either of them had slipped into Potawatomi. “Wijewe,” Quent said. “I got Pitt’s word on that as well. When the time comes to take Québec, I’ll be there.”

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1757

  SHADOWBROOK

  John must die. Not now, though. The night he confronted his brother about the exchange of Shadowbrook for cane land, Jeremiah had said: Ain’t no good going to come from spilling your brother’s blood. Mark o’ Cain that be. Don’t you do it. For your Mama’s sake. The mark of Cain didn’t bother Quent; John had to die to preserve the Patent. John must die. But about his mother, Jeremiah was right.

  Lorene sat at her bedroom window the way she did so often these days; Taba sat on the floor not far from her, mending a piece of fine lace with the careful little stitches her mistress had taught her. Lorene looked out and there was Quent, walking up the path.

  Lorene flew down the stairs and out the door, rushing to meet him before he got to the house—only partly because she hadn’t seen her youngest boy for such a long time.

  “Where’s John?” he asked. If he came on his brother suddenly, without being prepared, he wasn’t sure what he would do. John must die, but he didn’t want it to be today, like this, with his mother watching.

  “He’s not here. Quentin, I’ve so much to tell you. There’s so much you don’t know.” Her blue eyes were dark with anxiety, and her chest rose and fell with quick, sharp breaths.

  “Calm yourself, Madam. I know more than you think I saw Uncle Bede before I went to see the governor.”