The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

“But judging by the great bundles being loaded into the wagons, it seems your mission was a success.” Reynolds had warmly greeted Ezra when they had arrived in Pittsburgh at the outset of their journey, and had been of great help in provisioning the Arabella. Duncan had later learned that the two had met when Reynolds had been downriver trading with the tribes during Ezra’s stay with the Shawnee.

  “We have a remarkable collection of zoological antiquities,” Duncan confirmed.

  Reynolds seemed not to sense the stiffness in Duncan’s voice. “Excellent!” he exclaimed, then shot an expectant glance toward his door. “Almost forgot!” He sprang to his feet and darted into the next room. He returned a moment later with a contented air, carrying a muslin sack with a bulky object inside. Duncan did not know Reynolds well, but the energetic, affable man was a friend of Duncan’s particular friend Patrick Woolford, deputy superintendent of Indian Affairs. Although Reynolds never spoke of it, Woolford had told Duncan that he had left the army in a fury after his commander, General Amherst, had allegedly tried to distribute disease-ridden blankets to the tribes living near Fort Pitt. Reynolds now aided not only the Sons of Liberty but also Woolford’s sometimes secret, sometimes unofficial missions on the frontier and had built his own network of sutlers and trappers in the Ohio territory.

  The merchant’s face glowed as he set the bag on the table. “Ordered it special from Philadelphia,” he declared. “Not one of the cheap ones used for trade goods, but the best in the city, the kind the wealthy Quakers set on their tables,” he added, then with a flourish folded back the sack to reveal a shining copper teakettle. “He said it was what she wanted most in all the world,” Reynolds explained. “He told me he would gladly pay with furs next spring but I will decline. I mean to tell him I am honored to make it my wedding gift to them.”

  An immense sadness swept over Duncan as he gazed at the finely worked kettle. “You best sit down, Reynolds.”

  The news of the murders of Ezra and his bride struck Reynolds like a physical blow. He sank his head into his hands and listened as Duncan recounted the events at the Bone Lick. “Not his wife too? Singing Deer? God, no!” For a moment Reynolds’s anger flared and he hammered the table with his fist. “She was so young, so lively, quick as an otter.” He put a hand on the kettle. “For weeks I’ve been anticipating Ezra’s joy on seeing this.” His gaze drifted out the window, toward the ancient bones being transferred into a wagon. “He was the son of a great chieftain of his African tribe, and she the granddaughter of the great Shawnee shaman.” He pounded the table again. “Why, Duncan?”

  “Because he was working for the Sons of Liberty.”

  For a long moment Reynolds seemed to stop breathing. “But no one knew,” he whispered, slowly shaking his head.

  “The letter that choked him to death was mostly ruined but I made out the word ‘Covenant,’ and the signature of Benjamin Franklin.”

  Reynolds grimaced, then rose to fetch a stoneware bottle and two glasses from a corner cupboard. “Only local corn whiskey,” he said as he poured, “but the farmer mixes in maple syrup to help it go down.” He poured and pushed a glass to Duncan. “Drink. Then talk.”

  Duncan left out no detail, including both Ezra’s strange vigil in the boneyard and his own blind passage to the bone chamber of the Shawnee prophet, followed by Boone’s report of two Iroquois being pursued by bountymen.

  When Reynolds finally spoke, his voice was hollow with pain. “Those two are safe,” he said, “but not those damned hounds who pursued them.” He answered the question on Duncan’s face. “When my—when those two reached Venango to the north, they sent me a message saying they had delivered the paper to the Shawnee as ordered and Ezra would bring it to me after getting Catchoka’s signature. They added that some bountymen tried to interfere with their return. Our couriers were Mohawk and Oneida, not likely to retreat. Their hunters won’t hunt again. Were they the ones who killed Ezra and his young bride?”

  “I don’t think so. Your men coming upriver had delivered the message, you said, and I take it their pursuers were hell-bent on learning its contents. They didn’t know it had been delivered to the Shawnee, who gave it to Ezra.”

  “But the message is lost nonetheless,” Reynolds said in a forlorn voice.

  “Not exactly,” Duncan said, then extracted the map delivered to him by Boone and laid it before Reynolds. It had meant nothing to him, but the former officer gave a surprised grunt, then studied it with obvious satisfaction. “Thank you, McCallum. At least Ezra’s mission was completed. You performed double duty, as it were.”

  “You can cipher out its meaning?” Duncan asked, then indicated the signature at the corner. “You recognize this Irishman?”

  Reynolds’s lips curled slightly and he poured them each another two fingers of the whiskey and drained his glass before replying. “You are trusted by Hancock, Adams, and Charles Thomson,” he said, referring to the leaders of the Sons of Liberty in Boston and Philadelphia. “But what do you know of the Covenant?”

  “Used to be what the tribes called the bond with the British that kept the peace for decades.”

  Reynolds shook his head. “That’s been gone for too many years. You must know about the Non-importation Pact.”

  Duncan shrugged. “The Sons and others are trying to organize a boycott of English goods to protest against the Townshend duties.” The punitive duties were causing hardship throughout the colonies and protests against them were reaching the ferocity of those against the Stamp Tax years earlier.

  Reynolds nodded. “The colonies are the biggest market for British manufacturers. Choke off those purchases and the tradesmen of Britain will run screaming to Parliament. But to make it work we need new imports, and to advance manufacture of goods on this side of the Atlantic, something London abhors. It means shifting patterns of trade, which is why we’ve been trying to open channels for import of French and Spanish goods, through the back door, as it were.”

  “Benjamin Franklin suggested smuggling up the Mississippi and Ohio?”

  “The leader of the Covenant has the code name Hephaestus, after the Greek god of industry. Hephaestus says we should think of it more as opening the colonies to the commerce they deserve. Ezra was going to be our western eyes and ears, and help the boats coming upriver.”

  Duncan glanced down at the signature of the Irish O’Reilly. “The old Louisiana lands are now held by the Spanish,” he pointed out. “The Spanish and the river tribes.”

  Reynolds indicated the signatures on the secret message, starting with the one in the corner. “Alejandro O’Reilly was born in Dublin, but he became a mercenary for the Spanish king and today he is Generalísimo O’Reilly, the new Spanish governor of Louisiana. And the other marks are all from chieftains along the rivers. We will have to pay tribute for each passage, but this paper means they all gave their consent.” He grew more enthusiastic as he spoke. “This is momentous news!”

  Duncan weighed his words, and his enthusiasm, grateful that Reynolds had found something that banished his despair over Ezra and his wife, however briefly.

  But Reynolds quickly sobered. “I had written a report after meeting Ezra on his first voyage, suggesting that he could play a role. I wasn’t aware that Franklin knew him already, and he quickly endorsed the idea. I asked for a letter from Franklin, and set forth the points to be included.” He paused as if to weigh his own words. “Jesus bloody wept!” Reynolds said with a despairing groan. “I said the letter might be used to further the arrangements to the tribes and boat captains, so it needed to explain the route, the role of Ezra at one of the Shawnee landings, even a confirmation that a small percentage of cargos would be paid as tribute.” Reynolds’s voice seemed to shrink. “It would have been like a map, a chart for defeating the plan and killing Ezra.”

  “You did not kill Ezra or his wife, Reynolds.”

  When Reynolds offered no reply, Duncan tried a different approach. “The Iroquois speak of the gate to the western lands,
and of the Senecas as the gatekeeper of the west,” he observed. “You are the Sons’ gatekeeper.” He gestured to the paper before them. “The plan survives. With your help it will assure harmony in the Ohio lands. The Sons can build trust with the tribes this way. You can lay the foundations for peace in these lands.”

  Reynolds stared into his glass. “This land has settled into my heart,” he said. “I went back to England for a few weeks last year, to buy inventory. It was stifling. After being in the American wilderness for three years I felt I was being suffocated. No matter where I went it seemed like I was under the thumb of the king. New taxes, new rules on trade, new rules on voting.” He gave a sardonic grin. “America ruined England for me. I want this land to be more American and less English. And I believe the Sons have another gatekeeper for the New York frontier, a Highlander in Edentown.”

  Duncan raised his glass in salute. “To our dangerous sentiments,” he declared, and they drained their glasses. He stared out toward the river, the pathway of commerce, and murder. “Who else knew? Did you correspond directly with Franklin?”

  “Never. My contacts are in Philadelphia. They have ways to correspond secretly with Franklin.”

  “Not too secretly,” Duncan observed. “The killers would not have known enough to stalk us if all they had was your note. They acted based on the letter from Franklin to Ezra, sent to him from London.”

  “Meaning?” Reynolds asked.

  “Meaning they learned what they needed in London, months ago. They came from London to Pittsburgh, where they hired new conspirators on a black-and-white checkered keelboat.”

  “The crew of the Muskrat were just watermen earning some extra silver,” Reynolds observed. “They are fools but not criminals. Their lips loosened quickly when they started spending it on ale. They had two well-paying passengers who left on fast horses an hour after the Muskrat docked.”

  Duncan wrapped his fingers tightly around his glass. “The two men who killed Ezra.”

  “It seems likely.” Reynolds made a rumbling sound in his throat. “London,” he spat. “Meaning someone powerful in government who is set against the colonies and who has a spy in our network,” he concluded, then poured a last round of whiskey. “There is no other possibility. You and I might be prepared for such battles, McCallum. But it wasn’t you and I who suffered, and what spilled the blood at the Lick is something new to the tribes, new to most everyone. Our friend the former slave and his Shawnee wife died in the cause of American liberty.”

  Chapter 4

  DUNCAN PAUSED ON HIS WAY to the wharves to examine the wounded crewman slumped against the tree, who had suffered a bad gash on his forearm. “Ishmael saw to it,” the man said, and Duncan nodded with approval at the dressing of moss and cobwebs, the native remedy for hemorrhaging wounds.

  “Nae trouble yerself,” the man said as Duncan studied another wound on his head. “A snippet of rum and I’ll be right as rain. ’Tis the captain who needs ye, in the far storehouse. He’s got the bastard with ’im,” he said, pointing to a row of crude structures that ran along the waterfront.

  A crewman of the Arabella was standing guard at the door of the shed and waved Duncan inside. The captain sat at one end of a table of rough-hewn timbers on which two candles burned. At the other end a battered man was tied to a chair.

  “This gentleman be the mate of the Muskrat,” the Arabella’s captain declared. “Another Cornishman, imagine that. He took his beating like a man since he knew he deserved it.”

  “Where’s your captain?” Duncan demanded of the mate.

  The man frowned and looked down at the table, speaking through a swollen lip. “We had no cargo to trouble us, just them passengers flush with silver. The captain ran north up the Allegheny an hour after landing, said I should pay a month’s berthing fees and he’d be back by then for a proper trip. He has a woman up Venango way.”

  “Then where are the two murderers?” Duncan asked in a low, harsh whisper.

  The man’s eyes flashed with fear. “Christ on the cross! We didn’t know about that dark business, I told yer captain already, I swear it! They showed up with fat purses, saying they needed to get to the Lick as quick as ever we could. When the captain said he had to wait for a cargo, they produced a pile of silver and paid the value of a full boat and even hired more men for extra poles. It was like they was in some desperate race. We didn’t understand what we was racing against until they saw the Arabella pulled up at the landing by the Lick. Then they took out a telescope, studied the shore, and clapped each other on the back, saying we’d all have a keg of ale to share that night.”

  “How did they know it was the Arabella?” Duncan asked.

  “I knew her well enough, though they didn’t ask. They knew ’cause there was something tied to a tree by the landing. A yellow cloth. As soon as they saw that yellow cloth, that’s when they acted as if they had won a prize.

  “We was that surprised then when they said keep going. We found a little cove a mile downriver and tied up there near that rundown settlement. They went inside their cabin and came out in hunting clothes with right fine weapons. Each had a dagger, a pistol, and a tomahawk. Put me in mind of the English soldiers I saw when I fought on Champlain. Ye know, the ones who trained alongside the rangers in the French War. Off they went into the forest, even though a hard rain had started. We didn’t see them ’til the next morning. They were angry as hell when they returned but said we had to leave for Fort Pitt right away, to put miles between us and the Arabella.”

  “Not before your passengers met with three men in a dugout.”

  The mate looked up at Duncan in surprise. “Yea, well, them were just some hard cases from that settlement looking for quick coin. Shifty eyes. Shifty hands. Glad they never came on board, for we was hard pressed to race back up the river.”

  “So you could chop that tree to block the channel!” the captain spat.

  “And build a monster for burning,” Duncan added. “Then try to steal the Arabella.”

  Their prisoner shook his head emphatically. “Didn’t know anything about stealing another keelboat. We ain’t pirates. The tree and the raft creature, sure, but our passengers said that was to be a big joke on the Arabella. Then we was told to stand ready to take over the Arabella for them when she drifted free. I think they meant to sink her, ’cause we didn’t have the crew to handle two keelboats. But some marksman ended that. A damned good shot given the dim light—got old Tom right in the shoulder before we could reach the Arabella. We had enough of that business. We don’t mind fending off savages from time to time but we ain’t gonna raise arms against other rivermen.”

  Duncan exchanged a long glance with the captain. Did he understand the significance of the man’s words? “And your two passengers, who were they?”

  “Haughty gents who kept to themselves. Told us their names were Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson. I recollect that the former schoolteacher we had on the crew laughed at that, though he kept the joke to himself.”

  “He thought perhaps they were names of convenience?” Duncan suggested. Apparently only the onetime schoolteacher had been familiar with famous English writers.

  “P’raps so. None of my concern, now, was it? The river is awash with secrets, and it don’t do to poke yer nose into those of other folks. Mind yer own biscuits, my dear ma used to say.” The Cornishman gazed down at the table and spoke with remorse. “They paid a lot of silver. The bigger the purse, the bigger the secret. And they brought extra kegs of ale and rum. They could have declared themselves to be Merlin and Moses, for all we cared.”

  The prisoner shuddered when Duncan extracted the knife from his belt and drew back in fear as Duncan leaned over him. “Tell me more about them,” Duncan said, and cut the man’s bindings. “I’ll brew you some willow bark tea when you’re done to ease your pain. Start with everything you remember about how they dressed that night they went on shore by the Lick.”

  The mate of the Muskrat, once he real
ized that Duncan intended him no further harm, was more than happy to salve his conscience by cooperating. The men had gone into the night with high leggings of hunter green tied around their thighs and tight brown waistcoats. The older one was the taller of the two, of Duncan’s own six-foot height, his companion a few inches shorter. The one called “Samuel Johnson” had black hair and was near to forty years and his companion, “Pope,” had brown hair and was three or four years younger. “They never wore wigs,” the mate recounted, “but still put on the airs of refined gentlemen and both carried snuffboxes with enameled images of naked Roman ladies in a bath. They made us build a wall inside the main cabin so they had their own compartment where they slept and played cards and studied papers and such.”

  He glanced at Duncan and hesitated, then nodded as if deciding something. “Ye done me fair. I owe ye. So I’ll tell ye they spent more money on a couple rough characters here, told them to keep the Arabella’s passengers from traveling to Philadelphia for a week or two. One of ’em started carrying a heavy hammer in his belt, like maybe to break some bones. Excepting they ain’t expecting ye so soon. A couple hours ago they was besotted with rum in the tavern by the cooper’s shop.”

  The captain answered with a perverse gleam. “Then ye shall point them out to us so we can truss ’em up and throw them in our hold for a couple days,” he said with a nod to Duncan. “While ye can be well on your way to the Quaker city.”

  The mate shook his head and asked the Arabella’s captain, “How the devil did ye get here so fast? Our skipper said we had four or five days to relax here but then to make ourselves scarce.”

  The captain pointed to Duncan. “This crazy Highlander spent too much time sailing as a boy,” he explained with a grin.

  “I don’t understand something,” Duncan said. “You say you were rowing to the Arabella that night of the burning monster but turned around after your companion was shot. But someone still reached the Arabella and dumped the poles.”