Savage Liberty

by Eliot Pattison

  “Weapons are being stolen to arm the Sons?”

  The innkeeper broke off small pieces of the carrot and held them out for Sadie to eat. “One or two, here or there. It’ll never be enough, but if it comes to a fight, would ye just want a pitchfork or a little fowling piece against a heavy Brown Bess musket?”

  SARAH LEANED AGAINST THE DOOR as she shut it behind Duncan. The contentment that had settled over her countenance at dinner had been banished by the innkeeper’s words. “Stealing muskets from the king! Bribing army guards. This is how you will prove yourself innocent of treason! I beg you, Duncan, leave this behind before it is too late. Not only do you tarry too long, you tarry with men who will draw you deeper into danger. Hancock and Adams talk about building a strong hand for negotiation with Parliament. This is not what I heard in that dining room!”

  “Every cause has its zealots, Sarah. I have never been one, you know that.” Duncan tried to put a hand on her shoulder, and she pulled away.

  “Ride on, Duncan, I beg you. Ride to Edentown as fast as you can,” Sarah pleaded. “Forget the Abenaki! Forget the liars who wish to trap you. I will be not far behind.”

  Duncan held her gaze for a moment, then looked away. “This is the world where I must find the answers, Sarah, the world of the Sons, the world of zealots. I cannot be a fugitive the rest of my life.”

  “They are zealots for their own peculiar version of freedom. We have all the freedom we need already,” she replied. “When has the king ever bothered us in Edentown?”

  “Only when I find the answers will we be safe in Edentown,” Duncan insisted.

  Moisture welled in Sarah’s eyes, and she looked away. “I am frightened, Duncan, so frightened for us.” She let him wrap his arms around her, and after a moment she returned the embrace. They held each other in silence, pulling apart at a tap on the door. Munro appeared, carrying a sleeping Will Sterret.

  “Ye said the lad should sleep in yer chamber,” the Scot said with an awkward expression, “to keep him out of mischief.”

  Sarah forced a smile and pointed to a pallet by the hearth.

  DUNCAN WAS SURPRISED AT HOW troubled he was over the innkeeper’s words. He lay on a comforter beside Sarah’s bed, listening to the slow, quiet breathing of Sarah and Will, recalling prior conversations in Boston. The arguments with the king would never come to violence, Hancock and Sam Adams always insisted. King George would soon recognize that the inhabitants of his most valuable colonies had to be given the same respect as Englishmen in the home country, and all would then rally around their monarch. But the terrible visions of the innkeeper’s dying wife now visited him, vivid images of ill-trained colonists being massacred by British regulars, the massed bullets of their Brown Besses mowing down farmers and shopkeepers like the blade of a bloody scythe. Whenever a colonist fell, an Abenaki materialized to rip away his scalp.

  At last, all prospect of sleep banished, Duncan rose and found his way to the stable. In the first stall, by the light of a dimmed lantern, he saw Ishmael, Molly, and Hayes sleeping on a pile of fresh, sweet-smelling straw. Sadie’s bright, inquisitive eyes peered over Hayes’s shoulder, as if she were standing guard. Munro slept propped against a barrel, Duncan’s rifle across his legs. He found Conawago outside on a stack of firewood, where he had rearranged the logs into a makeshift chaise over which he had draped his blanket. Duncan silently settled on the ground beside him, leaning against the stack of cut logs. He knew instinctively that his friend was awake, though several minutes passed before the old man turned from looking at the stars to acknowledge him.

  The night sky was a blanket of thousands of shimmering points of light, intersected by the long, glowing finger of the Milky Way. Duncan, his hands locked behind his head, had quickly found the anchors of the mariner’s sky, Polaris, then Altair, Vega, and Deneb, the summer triplets, as his grandfather had called them.

  “I came out to go to the wheelwright’s house,” Duncan explained. “There is more for him to tell us, things best spoken of in the shadows.”

  Conawago seemed uninterested in anything but the spectacle overhead. “An old Jesuit monk once took me to his workshop outside Paris. He was a renowned astronomer, had even constructed domed chambers at Versailles depicting the night sky in each season. He was obsessed with trying to explain why all celestial bodies do not move with the same motion. He had persuaded the king to lend him the royal clockmaker, jeweler, and silversmith. Together they made the most amazing machine. It was about to be shipped to the king, but the monk insisted on showing it to me, saying that once it arrived in the palace, any number of fools would probably break its delicate workings. It consisted of huge silver filigree rings defining several circular pathways set around a golden sun, the third one holding the earth, worked in copper with seas of inlaid lapis. Each of the other rings also held a planet, depicted as smaller orbs made of semiprecious stones. A movable half-dome cover laid with diamond bits represented the stars. Each ring moved around the sun, but in different directions, each according to its own rules—its predestined orbit, he called it. The movement of one body is always relative to another body, he said. The subtleties were lost on the Sun King, but he declared that he was happy to see the sun at the center and that it would be a delightful addition to his toys. He endowed a new monastery as the astronomer’s reward.”

  Duncan looked at his friend in frustration. Over the years, he had spent many wonderful hours talking about the mysteries of the stars with Conawago, but he wished the old man would understand that, for now, he was unable to focus on anything other than the mysteries of the deaths in Boston and the warrant on his head.

  The Nipmuc elder sat up and stretched. “I doubt there were more than half a dozen people in the palace who understood its lessons. Everything is correlated in position with everything else, and all actions can be understood if only one knows those correlations.” He fixed Duncan with a pointed expression.

  Duncan studied his wise old friend. “Are we still talking about astronomy?” he asked.

  “I never was. How could I speak idly of the night sky when there are men who seek your death, Duncan?” he asked, lifting Duncan’s heart. “You think the wheelwright knows something of the deaths in Boston?”

  “I don’t know,” Duncan replied. “The correlation is the motives. Two Frenchmen destroyed the Arcturus for one motive. I think the Abenaki killed for another motive, but the French made it possible because they needed him. And I worry about what else they need him for.”

  “It started with the ledger,” Conawago observed, “but we know so little about it, we will never find its orbit. It is dark to us. But there is another orbit intersecting it, affecting it, the orbit of packets with purple-inked letters sent to rangers. So why, I keep asking myself, would the French care about that list of rangers?”

  “Because,” Duncan suggested, thinking out loud, “either the rangers know secrets the French realize they need, or perhaps to the French they aren’t rangers, they are lightning rods, sources of ignition they might use to start another war against King George. You heard the words about stolen muskets and bribes at arsenals.”

  “Don’t speak nonsense. The French wouldn’t . . .” Conawago hesitated, chewing on his own words.

  “Wouldn’t want an uprising against King George?”

  He could sense the old Nipmuc’s shudder. “Don’t even speak of such things! Surely not. The rivers would run red with blood.”

  Duncan had no more words. Everywhere he turned, he found new fears.

  Conawago climbed off the pile of logs and looked up the hill toward the other side of the river. In the light of the half moon, the vanes of the big windmill moved like a circling of ghosts. “The wheelwright would be a careful man. An old ranger always watches and weighs before acting.”

  “I fear this particular ranger watches too much for a blond widow and seeds from Boston. I’ll have no more sleep this night, not until I speak with him. He is the link, he is the planet whose path
explains the others.” Duncan realized that Conawago had raised a pouch from the woodpile.

  “Help me, Duncan, in one small task, and then I will join you in a visit to the wheelworks. Fetch a bottle of the inn’s good ginger beer to loosen his tongue. You’ll find me near the river.”

  Duncan could not see his friend when he arrived at the riverbank a few minutes later, but he heard the murmur of a Nipmuc prayer coming from the shadows. He discovered the old man kneeling along the bank, clawing at the earth, then pounding his club of ancient oak onto the spot. He watched in confusion as his friend rose, took two steps along the river, then repeated the motion. He was digging, depositing something, covering it, and sealing the hole with a thrust of his club. With a stab of pain Duncan remembered what was in the doeskin pouch. It contained strands of beads made by Conawago’s mother and grandmother, given to him to keep tradition alive when he left his village in the prior century. He was burying artifacts of his clan on the site of the long-ago Nipmuc mother town. He was, Duncan realized with a wrench of his heart, closing the story of his life. For decades Conawago had searched for his mother and siblings, insisting that he would return the old beads to them for a still-younger generation; then he had sought only traces—at least a neglected grave where he could stand vigil and leave the beads with old bones. Now, here in ancient Quinsigamond, he was surrendering all prospects, all hopes of the quest that had defined his life, as if he were abandoning part of himself, the vital part of his existence that had now become hopeless. Duncan pushed down the agonizing question that rose from his heart. What, after this, would be left of the old man? He silently bent and took the pouch, reverently handing Conawago a bead from a broken strand at the next hole, and at the next, as the old Nipmuc returned the last vestiges of his family to the soil of his ancient tribe.

  When they finished with all the beads of the broken strand, they stood side by side at the river, looking back along the nearly imperceptible circles of packed earth that marked the tiny burials. Conawago’s voice was dry as twigs. “They’ll probably just get washed out in the next heavy rain,” he said.

  “Not washed out and lost,” Duncan replied. “This river was here long before your people were here.”

  Conawago looked out at the river, then back to Duncan. “I confess I do not follow.”

  “Your people were giving things to this river for centuries, accidentally and otherwise. There is a Nipmuc graveyard here. It is in the bed of the river.”

  Conawago silently weighed Duncan’s words, then slowly nodded and dropped onto one knee. “Be at peace,” he said to his ancestors. “I am coming.”

  As they watched the dark, flickering current, a figure moved out of the shadows of the stacked timber logs. Duncan’s hand instinctively went to his knife, but Conawago reached out to restrain him.

  “My boy,” he said, and Duncan recognized Ishmael, the black shape of Molly a few steps behind him.

  As they walked along the darkened street above the bridge, Ishmael suddenly pushed them into the cover of a clump of alders as a young groom, less than twenty feet away, walked four tired horses from the front of an inn to its rear stable. Ishmael’s hand shot out. “There!” he whispered urgently.

  Duncan did not understand at first; then Ishmael pointed three more times, to the rear flank of each horse. He was pointing to a large brand that appeared on each of the tall thoroughbreds. Duncan crouched, slipping alongside the nearest of the sweat-stained horses as it turned, exposing the brand in the moonlight. His heart sank as he recognized the broad arrow, the mark put on the property of the British military. He glanced into the anxious face of Conawago, who was gesturing him back to cover; then he casually stepped toward the groom.

  “These mounts are cruelly used,” he observed conversationally. “Who would treat them so ill?”

  The teenage stable boy snapped his head up in surprise, then shrugged, apparently deciding that Duncan was just one of the many workmen who started their day before dawn. “Four soldiers, riding hard from Boston.” He hesitated, then seemed to relax as Duncan began to remove the saddle from the nearest mount, a big, heavily muscled black horse. “Dragoons, by the look of their tack,” Duncan observed. “I fought alongside some in Canada.”

  “You were in the war, sir?” The groom’s caution was replaced by a boyish curiosity, reminiscent of Henry Knox.

  “Aye, I was there when the French surrendered at Montreal.” Duncan hoisted the saddle off. “Where do you want this, lad?” The boy pointed to a long trestle near the front of the stable aisle. “What possible reason would they have to run so hard over darkened roads?”

  “Urgent business for the Crown, that lieutenant said. He pounded a tankard on the counter, rudely shouting until the innkeeper appeared in his nightshirt. I was sleeping by the hearth. The lieutenant demanded the best room, took a bottle of ale, and asked for a woman to be sent up. When he was told that this was not that kind of establishment, he cursed and climbed the stairs.”

  “The others?”

  “In the tavern, downing the last of yesterday’s stew.”

  “Did the officer give a name?”

  “Only on the register, sir.”

  Duncan handed the boy a two-penny coin. “I’d like to know it. Might be an old friend of mine whom I could surprise at breakfast. Just a quick look, between you and me.”

  The youth’s eyes went round and with a mischievous gleam he darted into the inn. Duncan and his companions ventured a look through the window. Three soldiers, seasoned, gristle-faced veterans, sat with legs stretched out toward the heat of the hearth as they nursed their tankards.

  “It’s hard to read,” the groom said when he returned. “The Christian name Horace or Horatio, I think, then four letters. Bart maybe, or Berk.”

  Duncan’s heart tightened. “Beck,” he suggested, now realizing why they had not seen any warrant men on the road. Horatio Beck himself had come for Duncan.

  “And he settled into his room for a rest?”

  “Oh, aye, they were all exhausted. And their mounts were spent, though with a little grain I’ll soon have them restored.”

  Duncan handed the boy an extra coin. “No need to speak of this with anyone.”

  “No need at all, sir,” the groom confirmed with a conspiratorial grin.

  As the boy disappeared into the stable, Conawago spoke with a new urgency in his voice and motioned Duncan around the back of the wheel shop. “As you said, best speak to the wheelwright in the night.”

  But the old ranger was not on the rope bed in the back shed that was his home.

  “Maybe he’s with his brother’s widow,” Conawago suggested as he stared at the empty bed.

  “No,” Duncan replied as he set down the jar of beer he had brought from the inn and put his hand on his knife. “You didn’t hear the reverent way he spoke of her. He’s planting the flowers of Shakespeare for her. That’s not a man who would put a shadow over her good name by being in her house after midnight.” He pointed to a blanket lying on the floor by the bed as if hastily discarded.

  Back in the shop, they found scraps of iron on the packed-earth floor, dumped from a shelf. Conawago stumbled as he stole along the back wall, and from the deep shadows at his foot he lifted the object that had tripped him. It was the spade they had seen in the garden. Fresh dirt still clung from its iron-tipped blade. “He’s retrieved the hidden package from the boneyard,” Duncan observed. He pushed on into the shadows, the hairs on his neck bristling in alarm, then bent to pick up a braided leather thong and held it out, dangling the pewter and porcelain beads that had hung from Chisholm’s neck. “Someone else was here. He would not have given that up voluntarily.”

  Conawago raised his club and with a low, warbling whistle sent Ishmael into the shadows of the trees between the shop and the street. Duncan stole forward, knife in hand.

  Ishmael whistled and pointed to something shining in the moonlight, a patch the size of a shilling.

  “Blood, freshly s
pilled,” Conawago declared as he knelt beside the little silvery pool. Ishmael indicated a second pool, then a third.

  With a sinking heart Duncan followed the trail up the little knoll to a larger pool in front of the old windmill.

  “He couldn’t just disappear,” Ishmael said. “He must have been put on a horse or wagon,” the young Nipmuc announced, and bent to search for tracks.

  “There’s a breeze,” Conawago observed. As Duncan turned to his friend in query, they both heard a dull, repetitive thumping sound behind them.

  “There’s a breeze, but the windmill doesn’t turn,” Duncan said, grasping his friend’s point. Then he noticed that his hand was wet. Something was dripping on him. Both men looked up.

  The ghostly figure that looked over the town seemed to have been crucified on the topmost vane, his arms spread and tied to the frame, his body and legs carefully fastened so that when the gears were blocked, the dead man gazed out over Worcester from its highest point.

  Conawago murmured a prayer and stepped inside the mill. A moment later a mangled pitchfork was thrown out of the door, and the great wind vanes groaned into motion. He and Duncan caught the vane that held the body as it approached and quickly cut it free. Chisholm’s shirt was soaked with blood, still seeping from the hole where his heart had been cut out. His face had been viciously slashed, a piece of Abenaki linen stuffed into his mouth. Blood dripped from his eyes, each of which was pierced with a nail. His scalp had been taken. The old ranger would never plant Shakespeare’s flowers for his brother’s fair-haired widow.

  7

  DUNCAN REINED IN THE TALL thoroughbred at an opening in the thick brush of the ridge above the road, letting it rest after two hours of hard riding. He gazed eastward, not for the first time that morning, and considered abandoning his flight. Ishmael was in grave danger, and Duncan would never forgive himself if the youth lost his life on his account.