Savage Liberty

by Eliot Pattison

  “Bindings,” Munro whispered.

  Duncan considered the conclusion in silence, then bent over the dead Seneca’s neck. It was bruised and chafed along one side, to the front of the windpipe. He lifted an eyelid. The eye was red from burst capillaries.

  “Over,” he instructed the Scottish sailor.

  They turned the big man onto his belly and pulled away the tatters of his clothing.

  “A defiant bugger,” Munro muttered as he saw Pine’s back. The long, narrow scars were overlapped so heavily that it seemed almost as if Pine had scales on his back. The Scot glanced at Duncan. He had seen similar striations on Duncan’s own back.

  “Pine jumped ship in Jamaica five years ago,” Hancock said over Duncan’s shoulder. “He had sworn off whaling after two years in the Pacific, saying he could no longer take part in killing the gods of the seas. After his whaler returned to Nantucket, he signed on to the first ship that would have him. He didn’t understand what she was until they reached the coast off Gabon and traded their pipes of rum for human cargo.” Hancock stepped closer, holding a lantern over the ruined flesh. “Merciful God,” he groaned, and did not speak for several long breaths. “On the crossing, he was repeatedly caught taking extra food and water to the slaves belowdecks, and he was whipped more severely each time. In Jamaica he joined with one of my captains, who tried to pay him off when they reached Boston so he could go see his family. But Pine said his family had all been killed by the king, and he signed on for more voyages after we promised we did not run slaves.”

  Hancock hesitated, realizing that Duncan was staring at him.

  “So one of your seamen was serving on a Livingston ship,” Duncan declared.

  Hancock shot a glance at Livingston, whose eyes filled with warning. “He was trusted,” was all Hancock said.

  Duncan directed Hancock to hold the lantern over Pine’s head. He silently probed the Seneca’s scalp, finding first a soft, abraded spot just above the braid. He pushed away a lifeless arm and bent to study a wound between Pine’s ribs. The blade had been narrow, the stab expertly made to reach a kidney. He sighed, then straightened. “This is what killed him, at least why he didn’t drown. His tormentors wanted to be sure he was finished. Pine would have had only a few minutes after this dagger entered his ribs.” He signaled Munro to help him turn Pine over again.

  The Puritan at the end of the table had not stopped whispering his Latin prayers, still carefully avoiding eye contact with Duncan. Conawago no longer spoke, and now he just stared at the white beads in his fingers.

  “He was a fighter, to the very end,” Duncan whispered, struggling with an intense and unexpected grief for this man he had never known. He and Conawago had put to rest far too many members of the tribes. The noble face of each one still lingered in Duncan’s memories, and sometimes in his nightmares.

  “Jonathan was slow to anger,” Munro volunteered, “but when he did, he had the ferocity of a bear, in both body and mind, if ye ken what I mean.”

  Duncan looked up in surprise. “You knew him?”

  “It’s why I was sent to recover his body last night,” Munro replied. “We made several crossings together. If a sail needed trimmin’ in a blow, Pine and me be the first to go aloft.”

  “Sent last night?” Duncan asked. The ship had exploded only a few hours after dark. It was as if Munro had been standing by to meet the Arcturus.

  “Afore the navy could get there,” the Scot confirmed. “Not a task I’d care to ever do again,” he added in a hollow voice, “floating through that tide of death, lighting up the wretched faces with a lantern. That cutter had everything shut up tight an hour after dawn. The salvagers are furious, say it ain’t right for the navy to deprive them so.”

  “Enoch!” Hancock warned.

  “Then they would have been watching for anyone sailing in from that direction this morning,” Duncan suggested.

  “Aye, had to stand off until the harbor patrols were summoned away.” So far in Boston, the only regular patrols by the military were along the waterfront, to discourage smugglers.

  Duncan stared at Munro, then followed Conawago’s gaze back to the beads in his hand. The Nipmuc was reminding him that the truth was owed to the dead Seneca. Duncan turned to Hancock and Adams. “The Sons never marched in daylight until today,” he said in an accusing tone. “You arranged it, you put that customs man through that horror so the troops would be called away from the docks so you could steal Pine into your warehouse.”

  Neither man returned Duncan’s gaze.

  “The wounds on his chest,” Adams put in. “Could they have been caused by the explosion?”

  “The punctures? Of course. A powder keg exploded only a few feet from him. He shielded his face with his hands.”

  Hancock looked at Duncan, his face pallid. “So he was alive when the keg was exploded?” he asked.

  “Barely, but yes. He died before inhaling any water. Did you cause that public protest as a subterfuge to get his body here?”

  “Is that important?” Adams asked impatiently. “How exactly did he die?”

  “It is important if you manipulate the Sons of Liberty to the gain of your personal affairs,” Duncan shot back.

  The guilty glance exchanged between Hancock and Adams filled Duncan with an urge to abandon them altogether. He should leave and keep his promise to dine with Sarah.

  Suddenly the stranger by Pine’s head looked up at Duncan for the first time. “Veritas vincit,” he declared in a deep bass voice. “Truth conquers.”

  At the other end of the table, Conawago shook the white beads and likewise stared at Duncan. The two men were saying the same thing. Conawago extended his hand, and Duncan accepted the beads, weaving them around his fingers as he had seen old sachems do at Iroquois council fires. He was deeply suspicious of the motives of Hancock and Adams, but the dead Seneca deserved the truth.

  “Pine was attacked and overcome, probably by at least two men,” he explained. “They tied him to an upright in a hold. He knew he was a dead man, but with his last breath he tried to save his shipmates.”

  A low moan escaped Adams’s throat.

  “Jesus, Mother Mary,” Munro muttered, then added in a hiss, “Damn the bastards who did this! May they rot in hell!”

  “Prithee, Duncan,” Hancock said in a voice tight with emotion, “suffer us the details.”

  “His washing in the ocean makes his body poor evidence,” Duncan warned, “but there is enough to understand his last moments.” He turned over Pine’s right hand. “The slices in the palm show no swelling, little bruising, meaning they were done just before his death. They suggest that he was fighting someone who had a blade, having no weapon available but his hands. He may have been successful, except someone hit him on the back of his head, a blow hard enough to disable him. That is probably when they drove the blade into his ribs.” Duncan pointed to the chafed skin at the wrists and neck. “These say he was tied, probably bound to a post, his hands behind him, his neck secured tight to the post. The scorched fingers,” he continued, gesturing to the charred fingertips, “show that at the end he was grasping at something that was burning intensely. We won’t ever know with certainty, but I suspect he broke his hands free and desperately reached out to try to snuff a burning fuse. The fuse eluded him, and at the last moment he raised his hands to his face, hence the splinters on the backs of his hands and torso and the absence of any in his face.”

  “There was more damage to his chest than splinters,” Hancock observed.

  “That,” Duncan replied in a pointed tone, “is no doubt why we are here.” When his companions offered no reply, he indicated the parallel slices on either side of the Seneca’s chest. “Pine had something fixed to his chest, something secreted and held there by strips of cloth, I suspect. It was cut away by those who attacked him after he was struck on the head. Then they lit the fuse. They didn’t just want it, they wanted to destroy all evidence that they had taken it.”

  �
��Dear Lord,” Adams groaned. “All is lost.”

  Duncan’s pity for Jonathan Pine was slowly being replaced with anger. “They blew up the ship!” he reminded his companions. “Are you the reason? Are you why all those lives were lost? How many good men died?”

  Hancock shut his eyes. Adams looked down at the floor.

  “Thirty-eight,” came a weak voice from the door. It was the taciturn Mr. Livingston. “Her crew was thirty-eight all told, including a ship’s boy. Without the log or the purser’s records we won’t know if she took any passengers.”

  Livingston. Duncan recalled the words of Henry Knox in the church tower. The Arcturus was owned by Mr. Livingston. Duncan and Sarah lived in Eden-town, inland from the Hudson. Everyone in the Hudson Valley knew the great manor family who owned a third of its lands and had ruthlessly dealt with squatters in recent years. “And what was a New York ship doing sailing into Boston?” he asked. “Why wasn’t its owner waiting in its home port?”

  Livingston turned away. He staggered, steadied himself on the back of a chair, and sat, gazing emptily at the table. “Thirty-eight,” he repeated in a desolate voice, as if the scope of the tragedy had finally struck him.

  “What was he carrying for the Sons of Liberty?” Duncan asked in a harsh tone. None of the three men would meet his gaze. He pulled the beads from his hand and moved them in front of Hancock. “Do you know what these are? They are touched by the Iroquois spirits. The man who touches them must tell the truth or feel the wrath of those spirits.”

  Hancock visibly shuddered as Duncan put the beads into the merchant’s palm and closed the man’s fingers around them. “Was he a messenger for the Sons, sailing from London?” he demanded.

  The color drained from Hancock’s face. Duncan pointed to the seagull and the snake inked on the man’s chest. “This is the story of his life, and that image tells the tale of his life since leaving the whaling grounds. Birds and snakes are both messengers of the gods. His bird was a seabird. He was saying that he was a messenger on the sea, a messenger for very important people, almost godlike people. He was very proud of it.” An unexpected vehemence heated Duncan’s voice. “Would you deny him the truth of that now, as he lies here dead because of a task he was performing for you?”

  Hancock suddenly dropped the beads on the table as if they had burned him. “Yes, Duncan. He was bringing something vital to the Sons.”

  “Something worth thirty-eight lives?”

  Hancock, Livingston, and Adams had no answer. They looked strangely frightened now. Adams glanced at the door, as if about to bolt.

  Duncan gestured to the slices in Pine’s chest. “It was bigger than a letter. A small book. A journal or a ledger perhaps?”

  “Not a journal,” Hancock murmured.

  “A ledger then,” Duncan concluded. “An account book.”

  No one disagreed, but Adams and Livingston turned their backs to Duncan and stepped into the larger chamber, as if trying to ignore Duncan’s words. Hancock simply stared at the dead man.

  Duncan sighed and put a hand on Pine’s shoulder, as if to comfort him. “His body needs to be cleansed,” he declared. “I would like to remove the splinters and stitch his wounds.” He glanced at Conawago. “There are more words of the tribes to be spoken.”

  Suddenly the broad-shouldered Puritan at the end of the table spoke. “He will be given a Christian burial.”

  “His blood was of the Haudenosaunee,” Conawago stated, challenge in his voice.

  “Jonathan Pine was anointed with the words of the Lord Jesus,” the big man pressed.

  Duncan braced himself as he saw Conawago’s mouth twist. The old Nipmuc almost never lost his temper, but when he did, it was best to keep a distance. “And his ancestors in the Haudenosaunee heaven never learned those words,” he rejoined in a voice like ice.

  “Surely, Reverend Occom, such a soul would want to hear the prayers of his natural fathers as well as of his spiritual father,” Hancock nervously offered. “I will see that he has a coffin of fine cherrywood,” he added.

  “Haudenosaunee!” Conawago growled.

  As the big-shouldered man named Occom leaned forward, Duncan had the impression of an angry bull about to launch itself at a rival.

  Conawago leaned forward himself, as if eager to accept the challenge; then Duncan set the white beads over the old man’s wrist. The Nipmuc looked down at them, and his fire dimmed. “Oak, not cherry,” he said in a hollow voice. “Red oak.”

  “Of course, whatever you—” Hancock began; then Adams grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the chamber.

  “I will clean the body,” Conawago declared, fixing the pastor with a cool stare. There was an argument between the two men that Duncan did not fully fathom. Defiance ignited again in Occom’s dark eyes; then he gripped the cross that hung from his neck and quieted. He placed a hand on Pine’s forehead for a moment and removed his jacket. “I will help you, my chief,” the puritanical Occom said.

  Duncan stared in utter disbelief. Revealed on Occom’s wrist was the tattoo of a fish. He had spoken the last words in the Nipmuc tongue.

  3

  BOSTON HARBOR SLEPT UNDER A blanket of fog as Enoch Munro guided their gig away from Hancock Wharf. Duncan and Conawago used oars to push past the hulls of the closely packed merchant ships as they coasted into deeper water and then, with a nod from Munro, hoisted the small, solitary sail. The breeze flexed the canvas, and the sturdy little boat swung to the northeast, ghosting past half a dozen huge square-rigged vessels recently arrived from the Wine Islands and the West Indies. No one spoke. It had been a grim, debilitating night, and now they were proceeding toward more death. Conawago settled into the bow and stared straight ahead, as still and somber as a figurehead. Duncan lowered himself against the slender mast. The gentle rocking of the boat soon lulled him to sleep.

  “Captain McCallum, sir, if you please,” intoned the sailor hovering over him.

  Duncan stirred with the confusion of slumber, then recognized Munro, who had been his first mate on their voyage to Bermuda. “Captain no longer, Enoch,” he replied, “just Duncan.”

  Conawago now had the tiller, and Enoch was lowering the sail. Shirley Point was less than half a mile away off their port bow. The sun was nearly an hour above the horizon, the fog reduced to a few wisps in the inlets.

  The Point was alive with activity. Duncan had expected to see the usual scavengers of nature who descended on shipwrecks, pecking at ruptured barrels of meat or other ship’s stores, but he was not expecting the huge flock of the human variety that scrambled along the tideline. A sunken ship often yielded little more than the flotsam from its open deck, but a ship that had been ripped apart like the Arcturus offered vast quantities of floating treasure. The broken hull was yielding up not just mangled sections of its oaken hull, some of which might still be put to good service by onshore carpenters, but also spars, chairs, and unopened trunks and crates. Most of its bounty, though, consisted of kegs, casks, and barrels. Men and women, many of them soaked to their waists after leaping into the water to claim their prizes, were calling out their discoveries.

  “Salt pork!” shouted a corpulent woman whose calico dress clung unflatteringly to her body.

  “Madeira!” exclaimed a bearded man nearby.

  Watching over all was a sloop of war, a large cutter designed for swift sailing in coastal waters. The revenue cutter, which had arrived from Halifax the night of the sinking, was anchored in the center of a roughly quarter-mile circle in which there was no activity except for two naval launches dragging lines through the water, equipped with swivel guns and manned by marines who kept muskets at the ready. His Majesty’s Navy may have yielded the beach, but it was not letting anyone near the site of the explosion.

  As Conawago guided the gig into shallow water, Duncan leapt off with a line and secured it to an overhanging pine. Minutes later the three men were in the middle of the salvage frenzy. A farmer was loading casks of molasses onto an oxcart, laughing
at another man whose own too-full cart had become mired in the soft sand. An aged man bent with a keg on his back, exhorting his wife to tie it tight to his spine. Cats, gulls, and a few scrawny dogs worked at the hundreds of herring that had been killed in the explosion and washed onto the wrack line. It had been more than a day since the disaster, but much of the debris, having been pushed out on the tide, was now washing back toward the scavengers.

  At the end of the narrow beach, larger horse-drawn wagons waited, and as the three men continued down the beach, a line of carriages became visible, carrying onlookers who stared grimly at the dark shapes that had been assembled along the edge of the sand. The dead had been laid out in two rows on the off chance that a Massachusetts waterman might recognize a fatality from the New York ship.

  Conawago, Munro, and Duncan stepped slowly along the beach, each now at his own pace. Conawago paused to help two children load pieces of shattered wood onto a milk cart pulled by a large dog. Munro waded into the shallows to help a struggling gray-haired woman tie a line around a drifting barrel. Duncan walked purposefully toward the rows of dead.

  He counted two dozen bodies. There had been thirty-eight crew members, but some no doubt were trapped in the wreckage and others may have been taken out to sea on the shifting currents. The bodies were men of all ages, colors, and shapes. An African youth with a circular pattern of scars on one cheek stared lifelessly toward the sky, a long length of kelp wrapped around his neck like a scarf. A man with a balding head wore a leather apron. A crab scurried out of the mouth of a sailor with curly blond hair who clung with a desperate hand to the trunk of a gnarled pine, meaning that he had made it to shore before dying. A foot-long splinter of wood pierced his back. At least a dozen had most of their clothing burned away, one so completely that someone had draped his privates with seaweed.