“A profound pleasure,” Duncan said, question in his voice, “but I was summoned because of an attack by a human.”
“The northern warrior,” Hayes confirmed. “I had to leave Sadie to run after him, but then I lost him in one of those political marches.”
Duncan’s confusion was obvious. Hayes shrugged. “Perhaps we’d best collect our colleagues.”
Minutes later the strange crew had assembled in the meeting room. Occom, his bulk settled into a chair that seemed too small for him, glared alternately at Hayes and Conawago. Hancock and Livingston sat at the end of the table, exchanging worried whispers until they saw Duncan. Enoch Munro, apparently none the worse for his injury, had revived and now produced a dusty bottle with a wax seal, which he was prying off with his knife. Ishmael lingered on a barrel outside the door, mesmerized by Sadie as she swung from rafter to rafter.
Duncan broke the silence. “I warned you yesterday about the warrior.”
“You said he wouldn’t come into the city,” Hancock rejoined. “Take a seat, Duncan, please.”
“What I said,” Duncan corrected, “was that those who destroyed the Arcturus did not need him as a guide to come to Boston. So why,” he asked, aiming an accusatory gaze toward Hancock, “did he suddenly need to come here?”
Hancock and Livingston glanced at each other.
“Why?” Duncan pressed. “Why did he seek out Sarah Ramsey in her bedroom an hour ago?”
Hancock went pale. “Not Sarah!” he moaned. “Is she safe?” He still offered no answer.
“Then let the deaths be on you,” Duncan growled. “I am finished in Boston.”
“There was another secret here in this warehouse,” Hancock said to his back. “But it was expertly hidden away. This building was secure and guarded at every entrance.”
Duncan slowly turned toward him.
Livingston nodded his vigorous confirmation. “They could never have known about it,” he asserted. “It was between John and me, no one else. We took precautions.”
Duncan paced along the table, studying the two merchants. “Until two nights ago it was between the two of you,” he suggested. “Before that ledger was stolen and thirty-eight died.”
“The boy survived,” Livingston corrected.
“Thirty-seven, then!” Duncan snapped. “You owe them the truth! What did those men find in that ledger that made them come to Boston?”
Hancock sighed. “When I was last in Halifax, I left a note with my agent there to give to Pine when the Arcturus called, because I didn’t know when I would see Robert. But it was in code. It would be meaningless to anyone else, let alone some savage.”
Duncan glared at the merchant, who cast a guilty glance at Conawago. “Some savage like me and my wilderness friends?” Duncan snapped in the Mohawk tongue.
Hancock gaped at him in confusion, then seemed to grasp his intent and flushed with color. For the first time, Duncan saw a hint of a smile on Reverend Occom’s face. He had understood Duncan’s words.
“Besides,” Hancock continued, “no one could get into the building. No one did get into the building. He just appeared inside, as if through some dark conjuring. He injured the guards only when leaving.”
“Ishmael,” Duncan said to the young Nipmuc, who now listened from the doorway. “How would you get into the building if the street doors were locked?”
Ishmael grinned. “The stone walls are high but rough, with deep mortar points. The back wall has ivy growing nearly to the roof. The second and top floors have windows with wide sills and lintels. Practically like a ladder. There’s a watcher’s walk on the roof to survey the harbor, which means there is a hatch into the building.”
“But there were guards,” Livingston argued.
“Who were watching the street,” Duncan stated. “They would not be looking up. A quick diversion would pull them away long enough for the few seconds needed to gain the top floor.”
“A pile of straw burst into flame at the stable next door,” Munro recalled as he pulled on the cork of his bottle. “Everyone runs to a fire.”
“But the guard at the door was injured,” Hancock pointed out.
“Oh, aye,” Munro confirmed. “The brute accosted all of us on the way out. By then the surprise was gone, no need to climb back down from the roof. But his blows were like lightning, aimed only to disable us. And it weren’t us who made him flee, t’was the monkey, who started shrieking at him ’cause he hit her master when he tried to interfere. She followed him, up on the rafters, raising that racket of hers all the way. When he finally saw her, he lowered his knife and fled.”
“You had a good glimpse of him?” Duncan asked.
“For a quick breath, aye. Wore a brown waistcoat and leggings.”
“Duncan flattened his hand and slanted it across his face. “A saber scar.”
“Aye, an ugly beast with eyes like a catamount, the kind of cool, cunning eyes that size ye up for its next meal. Wearing a stinking wee dead thing at his belt.”
Duncan drew up a chair and sat. “He was at Mrs. Pope’s house, attacking Sarah.”
“Surely that is impossible!” Hancock protested; then his voice faltered as he saw the fire in Duncan’s eyes. “Duncan, please know we never intended . . .”
“He was the one who killed that ranger?” Livingston asked.
Duncan nodded. He recalled seeing the patch of fur hanging at the Abenaki’s waist. “The wee dead thing was Daniel Oliver’s scalp.”
In the stunned silence Munro extracted the cork from his dusty bottle and hastily drank.
“Munro!” Hancock protested. “The governor’s whiskey!”
“And won’t he jist have to hear from ye about the lamentable breakage that occurs at sea.” The Scot extended the bottle to Duncan, but Hancock interrupted, raising his hand in surrender before retrieving several small pewter cups from the sideboard.
As Hancock poured, Livingston retrieved a tricorn hat from a corner chair. “He lost this in the scuffle with Mr. Munro,” he explained, handing it to Duncan.
As Duncan examined it, Conawago bent over his shoulder. “Ever the dressers, the ’Naki,” the Nipmuc declared. The Abenaki were fond of bright cloth and decoration and during the war were known for stripping off the scarlet uniforms of soldiers they had killed and adapting them to their own use. Although badly tattered now, the hat was of finely made felt, probably a war trophy taken from a colonial militia officer. Duncan recognized its stained blue rosette as one favored by Hudson Valley companies. Pinned inside the hat was another trophy, a tarnished brass badge that consisted of the numerals 42.
Duncan let Conawago take the hat as he exchanged a pointed glance with Munro. It was a badge of the Black Watch, the 42nd Regiment of Foot, which had first brought Munro to America. Abenaki had fought alongside the French on that terrible July day ten years earlier, when, obeying the orders of a mindless British general, more than half the 42nd had been slaughtered before the ramparts of Fort Ticonderoga. The Abenaki had scalped and plundered the casualties, not all of whom had been dead when the scalping blade was put to work.
The Scot’s eyes flared as he saw the badge, and he grabbed the hat from Conawago.
The old Nipmuc saved Munro from mouthing the sentiment he clearly felt. “They were indeed savages that day,” Conawago stated.
“He killed that ranger,” Munro observed, fixing Hancock with an accusatory stare. “He wears the badge of dead enemies. Like I said, he’s still fighting the war.”
“Enoch, steady, old man,” the merchant chided.
“Steady? Steady! I’ll give ye steady, ye spoiled pup!” The former soldier tore off the cap he always wore and pulled back the long, gray-streaked hair that lay over the crown of his head. Hancock jerked back in revulsion. Livingston choked on his whiskey. The top of Munro’s head was nothing but a mass of jagged scar tissue.
“I lay there for hours, shot in the leg, knowing if I moved ’afore those French muskets, I’d be the dead man they
took me for. My best friend, Archibald Brodie, lay half on top of me, a bullet through one beautiful blue eye, the other staring at me from his death all those hours. Then the 42nd pulled back, those who could walk, and the ’Nakis came for our hair, hooting and hollering. If I had cried out, they would have slashed my throat quick as that. T’was the devil’s own butcher’s shop. Steady be damned! Ye let one of those devils in here!”
“I didn’t . . .” Hancock muttered. “We couldn’t have known, surely you see that. Christ on the cross, Enoch! I did not ask for this!”
The Scot seemed not to hear Hancock. He had dropped into a chair and was staring, stricken, at the hat. It too could have been taken from the battlefield at Ticonderoga, or in any of the bloody north-country raids the Abenaki had been famous for.
Duncan studied each man as he tried to make sense of the night’s events. The mysterious Solomon Hayes, the only man who had given chase to the warrior, had said nothing, listening with intense interest. Reverend Occom, whose presence Duncan could not explain, had also remained silent, apparently nursing his injured pride. Duncan spoke slowly, insistently. “Why was he here, John?”
“I told you, Duncan. He came for a secret we had concealed here. The ledger was of interest because of the Sons. But this had nothing to do with the Sons. He must have misunderstood something.”
“Where?”
Hancock glanced uncertainly at Livingston. “The code simply described where the secret cache was. But surely he could not have understood it—”
“If you recall,” Duncan interrupted, working hard to contain his temper, “he was not alone. The saboteurs of the Arcturus are with him, walking the streets of Boston! They were watching Mrs. Pope’s house! Show me the code.”
Hancock looked stricken. His voice took on a whining tone. “Duncan, surely you understand I can’t just . . .”
“Thirty-seven men died in the harbor. A butcher is loosed on Boston, and you will fuss over a secret between merchants? Show me, or we can go meet with the governor,” he stated, raising a worried look between Hancock and Livingston. “Just give me the coded message, that’s all. I would see it as the killer and his companions saw it.”
Livingston leaned back in his chair, as if retreating from Duncan’s heat, then nervously nodded at Hancock. The Boston merchant opened a drawer in the sideboard, produced a piece of foolscap, and leaned over it with a writing lead. When he finally looked up, Duncan lifted the paper from between his hands. “The best I can do, from memory,” Hancock said in a tight voice.
Duncan shook his head in angry surprise and stretched the paper out for Conawago to see. The old Nipmuc muttered under his breath.
“You invited them here,” Duncan stated. “You made it so easy they could not resist.”
“Of course not, Duncan. We took great precautions by using this code,” Hancock argued.
“It’s a damned pigpen code! The military has used it for years! I could give this to young Henry Knox and he would crack it in minutes!” With undisguised impatience he took another sheet of paper and drew two sets of two vertical parallel lines, each intersected by two horizontal lines. Below these he drew two large Xs. He filled the top row of the first large hatch mark with A, B, C; continued down the squares; and wrote J through R in the second set. He positioned dots along the edge of each box of that set, then finished the alphabet by placing letters in each triangle formed by the Xs, adding dots to the last four.
“Each letter is outlined by a unique shape, distinctive to it alone,” he explained. He drew a backward L with a dot in it, a U turned on its right side with a dot in it, an upside-down U, and a four-sided square with a dot. “That says ‘John.’ ”
Hancock downed a shot of whiskey and poured another. The bottle shook in his hand. “An old bookseller in New York told us about it, said it was a secret of the Roman generals. He accepted a handsome fee to guarantee he would not share it with anyone else.”
“I’m sure he did,” was Duncan’s only reply, knowing how Hancock and Livingston fancied themselves as Caesars of the New World. He flattened the coded paper inscribed by Hancock and began deciphering the angular shapes.
He had barely finished the first word when Conawago bent over his shoulder and slowly dictated, pointing to each group of symbols in succession. “South wall, center top rack. Portuguese XX,” he recited, then looked to the much-diminished Hancock. “A cask of brandy? Or is it port?” Conawago asked the brooding merchant, then spun about and left the room.
Duncan followed the old Nipmuc out the door and toward the deeper shadows along the back wall, grabbing a lantern off its wall hook. “Smells like brandy,” Conawago observed as they approached the south wall. The cask stood upright on the floor, sitting in a pool of the pungent liquor. On its side a double X had been marked in chalk. Duncan knelt to examine the cask and the shards of wood beside it. A heavy blade, probably a tomahawk, had shattered the top, exposing a shallow watertight compartment that had been cleverly built into the end of the cask, allowing a storage space three inches deep. Duncan fixed Hancock with a disappointed gaze as the merchant appeared.
“More good men nearly died tonight,” Duncan declared, “for a parcel poorly hidden in a cask of brandy.”
Hancock looked like a frightened boy whose mischief had just been discovered. “I had given orders to ship the entire cask to Robert if something happened to me.” His voice cracked. “You have to get it back, Duncan!”
“What I have to do, John, is to go back across the Hudson with my—” He started over. “I have to return to Edentown. I told you. The intrigues of wine merchants are no concern of mine.”
His words seemed to sadden Hancock. “I don’t know how to—” the merchant began, looking back and forth from Duncan to Conawago. “I mean, Sam Adams may be right. Who can do this if not the two of you? I need you to hear me out. I have been a fool. Men have died, and I am devastated by the loss.” His voice choked with emotion and faded away. “This is something of your world, not of mine,” he added after a few heartbeats.
“Samuel is right about what?” Duncan demanded. He was about to gesture Ishmael back up to the street when a new figure appeared on the stairs, his large frame silhouetted by the lantern behind him. Before the door outside was pulled shut, the angry voice of an infantry officer could be heard over the marching boots of soldiers. “Surely, Duncan, you can linger for a final dram,” Samuel Adams said in a despondent voice, “on a night when the soul of liberty is being crushed.”
The sound of the boots seemed to be a cue for Hayes, who bent to Hancock’s ear, then quickly disappeared up the stairway, his capuchin in a pouch slung under his shoulder. As they reentered the meeting room, Duncan became aware of sounds from the chamber where Pine’s body had laid. Impatient with the secrecy of his companions, he pushed open the door and stepped into the room. A bright whale oil lamp burned at the end of the workbench. Reverend Occom sat there as he had the night before, but now he was bent over a small stack of papers.
The native pastor, much recovered from his fright, cocked his head and returned Duncan’s cool stare, then gestured to the empty place where Pine’s body had lain the night before. “We surrendered him to Abraham’s embrace at dusk,” Occom announced. “I have left funds for a stone to be carved.” He seemed to think he owed something to Duncan. “I asked that an eel be carved on his stone, with arrows pointing to the heavens.”
“At the Old North Church?” Duncan asked.
Occom nodded.
“So the wandering, courageous Seneca is laid to rest among the Puritans,” Duncan observed. He was beginning to understand Conawago’s resentment of Occom, whose pious, superior expression seemed almost permanently etched on his countenance.
Occom bristled. “Laid to rest among his fellow lovers of Christ.”
“The only member of his eel clan in the Old North yard, I wager.”
Disapproval clouded Occom’s face. “Who were his people, McCallum?” The question had a bitter tone.
Duncan heard chairs being pulled out at the table in the chamber behind him, but he did not turn. “Why are you here, Reverend?”
“I had an emissary on the Arcturus,” Occom confided in a forlorn tone. “We are building a college on the Connecticut River for all the tribes. I arrived only last week after two years in England, for which Mr. Hancock paid the passage. My man was bringing the final drafts from our donors.”
“You mean someone other than Pine.”
Occom nodded. “The captain’s steward.”
“And he died. I am sorry.”
“He kept the drafts in a sealskin pouch on his person.” Occom gestured to the papers in front of him. “We recovered them from his body as it lay on the beach. All funds are now accounted for. Over twelve thousand pounds in total.”
Duncan gazed in disbelief. The Arcturus had been overburdened with secrets. The sum was beyond extraordinary, enough to build a substantial institution and operate it for years. “And I thought you had gone to that beach to bless the dead,” Duncan said, not trying to conceal the bitterness in his voice. “Men would kill for such money—even destroy a ship.”
“The drafts are just for the final installment, as it were, and made out to me, to be deposited here in Boston.”
“Which for now makes you very valuable and very vulnerable.”
“Surely not.”
“Someone could capture you and force you to sign them over. Someone could steal them and impersonate you.”
“No one knows about them.”
Duncan rolled his eyes. “Surely you understand that knowledge hidden in this house is about as secret as tonight’s quarter moon.” The reverent way Occom treated the drafts disturbed him. Some pastors were men of faith, some men of learning, others men of money. Duncan was learning which one Occom was.
“Why the Arcturus?” he asked. “Why put the ledger and the funds on board the same ship?”
Occom winced. “The captain and his steward were devout men who had been helping us for years. It seemed the safest route.”
Savage Liberty Page 8
