by Tom Doyle
“You have no tongue for it.” The native pointed at his chest. “Powah.” He pointed to Thomas. “Powah. We are the same. Come. I’ll show you.”
The man, called Guardian, took Thomas to his village. Much of what they did seemed natural enough, the sort of things schoolboys did to show friendship—they shared food, mixed blood, exchanged gifts. But they didn’t discuss trade next. Instead, Guardian told him about the craft and showed him some of its workings. He explained that fledgling powahs, like many vulnerable things in nature, have protective camouflage, and that was why he hadn’t recognized Thomas immediately.
So I’m a witch, thought Thomas. The Puritans won’t be much pleased, or surprised.
The next day, Guardian showed Thomas a clearing in the backwoods. A small creek with a shallow embankment blocked their way; they’d have to get wet to cross. Guardian lined Thomas up on the embankment and said, “Close your eyes, and try to cross.”
“Whatever you say, brother.” There were worse initiations.
Guardian seemed worried. He needn’t have bothered. Thomas walked steadily ahead, not feeling any descent or creek water.
“Open your eyes,” said Guardian.
Thomas turned and saw that they had crossed on the now-visible trunk of an enormous tree. Animals were also now visible, beasts that Thomas had never seen before, including one he recognized as an elephant, but covered with hair.
“This is the place of lost things,” said Guardian.
Thomas thought the animals looked a little crowded. “It’s not very large.”
Guardian sighed. “It will grow.” He stretched his arms wide. “When your people turn against you, this place will protect you. Will you protect it?”
A stillness fell over the Sanctuary. In the hush, Thomas felt the right words. “I swear it, for me, for my children, and for all my descendants until the land is no more.”
* * *
On May 1, 1628, John Endicott stood quietly in the woods outside Thomas Morton’s settlement at Merry Mount. His beard hung grizzled and unimpressive on his face, but the face itself was as iron as his headpiece and breastplate, and no one in the Salem settlement dared challenge his authority.
His men were fanned out behind him, waiting for his orders. At first the men of Salem had questioned this attack on other countrymen, but John had prayed for the power of command, and as always God had answered him. “These are no longer fellow Englishmen,” he had argued. “Thomas Morton has come here to preach iniquity, and has led his followers into the arms of heathens and demons. But now shall it be seen that the Lord has sanctified this wilderness for his chosen people. Woe unto them that would defile it!”
From Merry Mount floated the seductive sounds of music, singing, and dancing. John could just see the top of the flower-covered Maypole and hear the words of the song’s chorus:
Drinke and be merry, merry, merry boyes,
Let all your delight be in Venus’s joyes.
He thought of Morton at the head of the dance, cavorting with his native women and performing the Satanic miracles he had learned from their priests. Just and true are your ways, Lord, he prayed. I will show him the supreme power of your miracles.
John drew his sword. When he prayed, it seemed that it could cut through almost anything or anyone that dared stand in its way. He hoped this fight would not come to mortal blows; he did not want to lose one of his own. Driving these new pagans from this new land would suffice.
He brandished his weapon. “To the flower-decked abomination! In the name of the Lord, forward!”
Part II. The Descendants of Thomas Morton
Morton married five craft-trained daughters of American Indian powahs and chiefs. When five of Morton’s children learned all the lore their parents could teach them, and learned to lighten their hair and complexion to pass by the lax standards of the Providence Plantation, they left Maine for Rhode Island. By Puritan and English law, they were illegitimate, but the New World was too large for such distinctions. Two of the daughters disappeared into families that would beget snooty members of the DAR. One of the sons missed the woods and journeyed north to join the Iroquois. Another son chased wealth under another name and forgot his lore.
The eldest son, Jonathan, kept the Morton name and lore and found a piece of half-cleared land not far from water that made the hairs of his arms stand on end. “Here, father,” he said to no one visible, drawing a native knife and slashing his palm. He dripped his blood into a porringer, then poured it out at the points of the star geometry preferred by the Cavaliers. He buried the empty porringer at the center of the star. On that ground, he built his House.
The first Morton House adopted a pious and unassuming camouflage, indistinguishable from its various neighbors and quickly forgotten, with only three low gables. The only overt occult decorations were the spirit stone carvings. One crack in the walls, a necessary imperfection, ran from basement to attic. No one here but us witches. Jonathan was determined to avoid his father’s exile. The mellow followers of Roger Williams were happy to oblige. Their colony prospered and Jonathan prospered, in mutual causation.
The successive debacles of King Philip’s War and Salem’s witch executions reminded Jonathan of ancient injustices, and he expanded his House. It now loomed up three stories with seven high and pointed gables, in an ostentatious yet grim and outmoded style shared by the sans-W Hathornes and the Endicotts. “I have built my House in deep sympathy with mine enemy’s,” Jonathan told his sons on his deathbed. “Remind them of their errors when you can.”
Obedient to their father, they buried some rocks in his coffin and burned his body by night in the woods. They took his ashes and mixed them in mortar with their own summer sweat, then built the high stone walls of the inner courtyard. “That I may stay with you as long as I am able,” Jonathan had said. “Remember that you are begotten of brave warriors of the Englands, old and new. Learn the mundane arts of war and our lore of craft, and when the way is prepared, use your skills to free this land.”
When Jonathan had said this, his sons had thought that he was half in the bag with the farm’s whiskey and half-infected with Puritan bombast. But to repeat, they were obedient. They trained their children in the family arts. Those that were craft-worthy joined the so-called French and Indian War, but didn’t dare reveal their peculiar talents except to their native craft enemies.
After Jonathan, the Morton line split. The eldest son fathered the orthodox line, while the second eldest fathered the Left-Hand lineage.
Then came the Revolution. The eldest son of that generation, Captain Philip Morton, revealed himself to General Washington during the siege of Boston. After the Battle of Brooklyn Heights, Philip summoned the bad weather that delayed the British advance and saved the Continental Army from destruction. During the Battle of Yorktown, where several of the craft families were active on land and sea to insure the trap, Philip became the first in a long line of Captain Mortons to die for their new country. Like the Morton courtyard wall, the relationship of craft and army was cemented with blood.
Washington and his inner circle were grateful enough to the craft families to sign a secret covenant with them, pledging the new country’s protection in recognition of their services. The Mortons and Endicotts tried to exclude each other from the covenant, but Washington wasn’t interested in their feud.
After the Revolution, the more vital, orthodox parts of the Morton line scattered to the far ends of their new country’s service: attending the new military college at West Point, trying out their craft at sea against the British, pirates, and whales, and riding with Sam Houston (they weren’t at the suicidal Alamo though—using a Catholic mission for a defensive position was a nonstarter for a Morton).
The story of the Left-Hand Mortons, the disappearance of Ezekiel, and his grandson Joshua’s successful fight against Roderick and Madeline is recounted elsewhere. Joshua led the Union Mortons during the Civil War. He was responsible for the death of Thomas “Sto
newall” Jackson and fought against his brother Jebediah “Jeb” Morton at Gettysburg.
Of the Mortons between the Civil War and Dale’s time, two were particularly noteworthy. The first was Joshua’s son, William “Mad Buffalo” Morton. Bill ignored the Family boycott and fought in the Plains Indian Wars. He then went completely insane.
The second noteworthy Morton was Richard “Dick” Morton. Dick Morton mitigated the weather over the English Channel enough to allow the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944.
BRIEF NOTES ON THE OTHER FIGHTING FAMILIES
Endicotts
American Founder: John Endicott (before 1601–1665). Name also spelled Endecott. John featured in the Nathaniel Hawthorne stories “The May-pole of Merry Mount” and “Endicott and the Red Cross.” Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts, was named for him.
Abram Endicott. Antebellum patriarch of the Family, Abram (along with Joshua Morton) led the craft forces that besieged the House of Morton and defeated the Left Hand under Roderick and Madeline.
Oliver Cromwell Endicott. Father of Michael Endicott and head of countercraft operations.
Michael Gabriel Endicott. Son of Oliver, code name Sword.
Hutchinsons
American Founder: Anne Hutchinson (1591–1643). Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a biographical sketch about her and may have used her as a model for the character of Hester Prynne. The Hutchinson River Parkway in New York was named for her.
Elizabeth Hutchinson. H-ring colonel and Dale Morton’s superior officer.
Attuckses
First Historically Known American Founder: Crispus Attucks (c. 1723–1770). British soldiers killed Crispus in the Boston Massacre. The memorial to the massacre in Boston Common depicts his death in the foreground of its bas-relief bronze plaque.
Calvin Attucks. Head of countercraft operations in The Left-Hand Way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Doyle’s first novel, American Craftsmen, is the beginning of his original military fantasy series. A graduate of the Clarion Writing Workshop, Doyle has won the WSFA Small Press Award in 2008 for his short story “The Wizard of Macatawa” and third prize in the 2012 Writers of the Future contest for “While Ireland Holds These Graves.” The Internet Review of Science Fiction has hailed Tom Doyle’s writing as “beautiful and brilliant,” and Locus magazine has called his stories “fascinating and transgressive.” Doyle resides in Washington, D.C.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
AMERICAN CRAFTSMEN
Copyright © 2014 by Tom Doyle
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Dominick Saponaro
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Doyle, Tom, 1964–
American craftsmen / Tom Doyle. — First edition.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”
ISBN 978-0-7653-3751-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-3457-6 (e-book)
1. Soldiers—United States—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.O9555A44 2014
813'.6–dc23
2013029669
e-ISBN 9781466834576
First Edition: May 2014
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Part I: The Veterans of a Thousand Psychic Wars
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part II: Scherezade and the Other House of Seven Gables
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part III: The Fall of the House of Morton
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part IV: On the Road
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part V: Never Call Retreat
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part VI: Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Appendix
About the Author
Copyright
