Blood of the Oak: A Mystery Read online

  “It is in pieces but clearly it was a small caliber ball,” Duncan explained, “not a Brown Bess musket or one of the forest rifles.” The lead softened and soon formed a bright silver pool in the bottom of the spoon. “There,” he said, nodding at the melted metal.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Lead used in balls made on the frontier is melted in dirty molds over campfires and cookstoves, making it crude and dirty. This has no impurities. It was a bullet made for a gentleman’s gun, one of those expensive English fowling pieces I wager. The ball that hit Red Jacob was bigger, a heavy musket ball. Two weapons. Two men.”

  Conawago seemed unhappy with the announcement. “Does it matter? The killers have gone. Woolford lives. You need sleep.”

  “Patrick would have me understand what happened. A ranger was murdered, one of his rangers, a man he ran with for years. He would have justice, even on a trickster god.”

  His words clearly worried his friend. “Above all, he would have us keep Edentown safe,” the old Nipmuc said, and stepped to the other side of the rope bed. As if to help Duncan, Conawago untied a pouch from Woolford’s belt and opened it, tumbling musket balls and a small priming horn onto his palm. As he reached in to empty the pouch, Duncan did not miss the little twist of his fingers. The old man awkwardly looked away.

  “Conawago, I am trying to find the truth. The entire truth,” Duncan chided. “Not merely fragments of it.”

  Conawago frowned and slowly turned his hand up, revealing a slip of paper between two fingers. He remained silent as Duncan took the paper and read its single word.

  “Galilee,” he recited. “What does it signify?”

  “I do not know, Duncan. The Promised Land.”

  “But you were trying to hide it.”

  “The war may be long over but Woolford is still the ranger who works in the shadows. People pass through here all the time now, some staying overnight. His name comes up sometimes. Some speak of him with suspicion, for they fear those who work in secret. But these are troubled times and sometimes secret work must be done. The last time Sir William wrote”—meaning William Johnson, friend of the tribes and hero of the French war—“he said to be wary, not to trust outsiders, that the landscape is shifting and we must not fall when the chasms open. The frontier has always been the breeding place for troubles. I know nothing for certain, except that we can’t have those troubles brought here. Edentown needs you. Sarah needs you here. I need you here,” he added with an awkward glance.

  “You agree then that Edentown is in danger?”

  Conawago hesitated. “No. Surely not.”

  Duncan studied the weathered face of his friend, as vital and inscrutable as that of any wild creature in the forest. “Would you have us ignore the request of Adanahoe on her deathbed?”

  “Not us.”

  It took a moment for the Nipmuc’s meaning to sink in. “She said it was both of us in her dream.”

  “I have lived with the old gods all my life, Duncan. Blooddancer will not leave a trail a European can follow. He is not your god. Do you know the ancient words to say when you finally confront him? What do you know of the half king at the southern gate, who is said to be able to summon the old gods? This god travels south for a reason.”

  “Because it is where the thieves take him. Adanahoe did not call me to playact in some myth. Her desperation was real. Her grandson’s death was real. She sent for me, not you.”

  “Because I was too far away,” Conawago rejoined, with surprising stiffness. “You were the best messenger. I have received the message. You must stay here. I must go.”

  “What if it is just some treasure hunters who stole the mask? That is a trail I can follow.”

  “No. It was just an unhappy coincidence that Woolford and Red Jacob were attacked. Their trail crossed with the fleeing god. The god unleashed his anger and moved on. I will go south in the morning.”

  Duncan saw the pain on his friend’s face. He had no stomach for arguing with the old man, and he knew from long experience it was pointless to argue with him about matters of the forest spirits. “Woolford spoke of more men dying, of men who had to be saved. Those bullets were not fired by a stolen god. Patrick cannot help them. I must try.”

  “The words of an army officer worried about his men. He could have been delirious, invoking some memory from the wars. In any case that is government business, not ours. What you owe our friend Woolford, Duncan, is a few weeks of constant medical care.”

  THEIR EXCHANGE WEIGHED ON DUNCAN AS HE SOUGHT HIS LONG-OVERDUE sleep, its echo stirring him awake. His relationship with Conawago was as father and son, and Duncan knew him well enough to know he was withholding something. It was unlike the old man to keep secrets from him, except when they related to sacred trusts of the tribes. He did not know how he could bring himself to defy Conawago, and he would never violate those trusts, but it wasn’t a wandering god or Iroquois myths that troubled Duncan, it was a real killer, a merciless killer, on the very trail Conawago meant to take.

  At last, after four hours of fretful rest, he rose, scrubbed his face with cold water, retrieved a piece of paper from the library, and returned to the forge. The coals were cold. The smith was working outside, trimming the hooves of oxen.

  The dead Oneida seemed to call to Duncan, as if the two men had unfinished business. Someone had wrapped the amputated hand in linen and laid it beside the body. He set the paper on the bench beside the stump of the arm, extracted a writing lead, and replicated the lines that had been inked above the amputation, then, with clenched jaw, unwrapped the hand, which held the end of the random, wiggling lines, and sketched them as well. He folded the paper into his shirt and then stepped to Red Jacob’s pack, which had been left on the back workbench.

  Leaning on his pack was a hickory bow, dark with the patina of age, probably handed down for generations. Little stick figures of men and animals were etched in the wood. The pack itself had been skillfully made of heavy buckskin and decorated with a sunburst fashioned from the colored quills of a porcupine. It was fastened with two leather thongs, the end of which had been braided together. It would have made opening the pack a tedious affair, as if Red Jacob had meant to discourage a casual inspection. As Duncan moved it, however, a bundle of jerky fell out. He turned it upright. Someone had ignored the straps and opened the pack by slicing through the leather. He reached inside and emptied the pack, finding a pewter spoon, a small, chipped clay pipe, a pouch of surprisingly fine tobacco, a flint, and a striker. He lifted the tobacco again, holding the pouch under his nose. It was not the coarse tobacco of mullein and bark used in the northern tribes, but a richly scented Oronoco leaf from Virginia.

  As he returned the items to the pack he tried to recall where the pack had been when he had first found Red Jacob. In his mind’s eye he saw it still draped over one shoulder. The killer had been nearby, probably watching while Duncan had leaned over the body, then had come back to remove the pack, slice it open for his search, chop off the arm, sever the hand, incise the belly, and insert the hand inside. It had been a lot of work, more than one man could quickly handle.

  He heard movement behind him, then a gasp. Jess Ross was staring at the dead Oneida, with her fist over her mouth. He gazed at her for a long moment before she realized he had turned toward her. “It’s the captain, sir,” she stammered, lowering her eyes. “He woke and asked for you.”

  WOOLFORD SAT PROPPED UP IN HIS BED, MAKING A MESS AS HE tried to spoon porridge from a bowl. The hand holding the bowl shook. He seemed to have trouble finding his mouth with the spoon. Jess stepped from behind Duncan to take the bowl and was warned away with a low rumble in Woolford’s throat, until he saw who was helping him and relented, allowing her to feed him several spoonfuls before nodding off again. He woke and asked for you, the Scottish girl had said. She had been sitting with Woolford. Her fine blonde hair was combed and tied with a ribbon.

  “He’s going to be all right,” Jess said. It was a statement,
not a question.

  “He suffered grievous injury to his brain,” Duncan warned. “His life hangs in balance.”

  “He’s going to be all right,” the Scottish girl insisted, then sat on the bed to wipe Woolford’s face with a damp cloth. Duncan was about to stop her so he could check the bandages but then paused, surprised at the tender way she cared for his friend.

  Woolford’s eyes fluttered open and with obvious effort he smiled at Jess, then motioned her away and turned to Duncan. The ranger’s voice was so soft and hoarse that Duncan only made out his own name when he spoke. Woolford’s hand shot to his ribs and a shudder wracked his body. Duncan grabbed one of the vials he had left on the stand and opened it. Laudanum, tincture of opium, would make him forget the pain for another hour or two. But as the vial touched Woolford’s lips the ranger shoved it away.

  He grabbed Duncan’s arm. “They have their tentacles around the bard!” he gasped. “The King knows nothing!” His eyes closed again and he seemed to drift back into unconsciousness.

  Shakespeare. The only part of Woolford’s brain that was working was that obsessed with his beloved Shakespeare.

  The floorboard squeaked. Jess was standing in the hall, as if trying to listen. She seemed strangely frightened.

  Suddenly Woolford pulled him back. His eyes cleared for a moment and his words came in an urgent whisper. “The nineteen are dead and don’t know it!” he groaned, the effort clearly costing him pain. “The lie will be written and they will all die! It’s up to you Duncan! Go! They can be saved in Galilee! Their only hope!” he groaned, and lost consciousness.

  The floorboard squeaked again. Jess had fled.

  Duncan turned back to his friend with new worry. Woolford’s forehead was feverish. Whether caused by the violent blow to his head, the shattering wound to his ribs, or some mortification in his blood, he was losing his grip on reality. Such ravings about tentacles and the bard and men who were dead but alive could only mean the fever was overwhelming him. Not entirely knowing why, Duncan looked again at the paper with the lines drawn from Red Jacob’s arm. The killer had left Woolford alive to catch up with Red Jacob, killing him to search his pack and then cut off his arm. If it had not been a vengeful god then it had been someone who recognized something on the arm, as if that was what he had searched for. Duncan was the only hope for nineteen men, but he was given nothing but meaningless words and meaningless drawings to help him.

  At midday Sarah insisted they have what she called a household dinner, with everyone who lived and worked in the great house crowding the table in the dining room. With what Duncan knew was studied effort to distract them, she made small talk, asking Crispin to explain what his students were learning that week, and soliciting Conawago’s view on where they should grow pumpkins that year. A new calf had arrived that morning. At dusk the Welsh laundress had seen a mother skunk with four tiny young ones riding on her back.

  Duncan’s gaze drifted toward the map on the wall, a new one of the colonies fresh from the printer in London. Duncan absently lifted a piece of a cold chicken leg and looked back at the map.

  “Duncan,” he heard Sarah say in a raised voice. “Crispin was asking about the iron ore mine being built at Brannock’s ford.”

  He rose from his chair. “Still clearing the ox road,” he said in a distracted voice, then stepped to the map, quickening his pace as he neared it. “The northern branch of the Susquehanna!” he exclaimed as he pulled out his sketch of the lines from the dead Oneida’s upper arm. He laid his paper under the river on the map. “See how the line turns out of Lake Otsego!”

  “And here where the streams join to the west of here!” came Conawago’s excited voice. The Nipmuc was pointing over his shoulder to the spidery lines that joined the main river.

  Duncan folded over the paper so that only its bottom portion showed, where he had sketched the lines from Red Jacob’s hand. He rotated the paper to the left, then the right, sliding it over the map below the Susquehanna forks.

  “There!” he cried, and pointed to two rivers that lined up in the same pattern as the sketch. “There!” he repeated, more emphatically, then his voice lowered in surprise. “Virginia. It leads to Virginia. The Rappahannock and the Potomac.”

  Duncan spun about to face Analie. “Nineteen men to be saved. What does that mean?”

  The French girl shrank back, her eyes shifting from Duncan to Conawago. “They put me in a chair to look at a book while the captain and Red Jacob talked with Sir William. I was at Johnstown, because they said maybe I should join the school there.” Duncan choose not to interrupt to remind the girl she had previously told them Red Jacob was taking her to relatives in the south. “They were comparing notes, making a tally. They didn’t know I listened. Twelve men had disappeared, all rangers, some of them Oneida and Mohawk. Later I asked Red Jacob why he was studying a map and he said they were going south to bring them back. Like they weren’t just lost, like they were captured in a war. Twelve,” she repeated. “I remember, like the apostles.”

  Duncan sagged. Twelve, not nineteen. For a moment he thought it was possible Woolford had not been unhinged, that his friend had not been raving but speaking an urgent truth.

  A nervous voice inserted itself into the silence. “Pennsylvania rangers started disappearing months ago, and some farmers who had been in our militia.” Jess Ross fixed the French girl with an inquiring gaze, as if assessing the truth of her words.

  Sarah stepped forward to put her hand on the woman’s shoulder as if to quiet her. “Jess, surely you would not know that.”

  “Rangers stop at our farm.” She cast a nervous glance in Conawago’s direction. “They get letters from other rangers they served with,” she said to Duncan. “There’s a bond, you know, between the men who run the woods.”

  Duncan pushed past Sarah. “How many, Jessica? How many disappeared?”

  “Seven, last I heard. If the killers are going south I must send a message.”

  “Twelve from the north and seven from Pennsylvania,” Duncan said. “Nineteen! Nineteen men to die.” He needed to believe what he had heard from his delirious friend after all. “Woolford and Red Jacob were going to Virginia to save them and they were stopped. Why? The war is over.” He searched the faces of his friends for answers. Conawago lowered his head. Crispin looked at Sarah, whose face was coloring. Duncan had expected fear or sorrow on her face, not the smoldering expression she fixed him with before hurrying out of the room.

  The meal was over. When the table was cleared Duncan sat and faced Conawago, who lingered at the hearth, smoking his pipe.

  “What do you know?” Duncan demanded. “What is it you are not telling me?”

  “I know it is not the way of Edentown. Not Sarah’s way of the willow.” Conawago’s expression turned to one of pleading. “She struggles so when you are not here, Duncan. But sometimes I think she struggles more when you are here.”

  Sarah had declared that the population of Edentown and its dependencies had to let the strife and violence of the outside world pass over it, that it had to bend like the willow, keeping strong, surviving by being flexible. It was a speech he had also heard at the fire of the Great Council of the Iroquois.

  “I accept that she won’t take sides in the affairs of governments,” Duncan argued. “But surely she understands this is different. We aren’t talking about government, but of brutal murder. If we alone know and don’t save those men we are complicit in their deaths.”

  “She asked for my vow, Duncan, when I asked if there might be a place for me at Edentown. It was very simple. Above all else, keep this place protected from the world. And I told you. When you made your own vow to Adanahoe you bound me too. It is the Iroquois we must help. Not nineteen strangers who only inhabit Woolford’s ravings. There is a lost relic to find, that is all we know for certain. And one of us must stay.” There was pain on his friend’s weathered face but also a grim determination. What was the secret the old Nipmuc refused to share with hi
m? Duncan turned away.

  He found Sarah in the little log schoolhouse, where he had helped her learn about the ways of the Europeans after her years with the tribes. She had been wild and skittish, with an insatiable curiosity about what the books called “civilization.” She sat now on the very school bench she had occupied during those first days, facing the large slate on the wall where, as then, chalk-drawn images were centered over their English words.

  She did not turn when he approached. “You shall not go, Duncan,” she declared in a tight voice, speaking toward the slate. “You are bonded to me.”

  He spoke to her back. “I shall not go. I am your servant.”

  His words clearly saddened her. Her hand moved to her face to push aside a lock of auburn hair but he did not miss the way she also wiped at an eye.

  “I used to go among the villages with my father, my one father,” she said, adding the phrase that she always reserved for the beloved old chieftain who had adopted her, killed by the aristocrat who was her biological father. “Some of the villages had already lost most of their men. In many there were more captives adopted into the clans than warriors of Iroquois blood. I asked him why we must have so much war and he said because our enemies make war and our gods wanted to keep the Iroquois free. If we are not free we are nobody,” she added.

  He hesitated, confused at her shift in tense, as if she were speaking now of recent events. “I’m not talking about war,” he said. “I’m talking about Woolford and Red Jacob and nineteen more like them. Would you have Red Jacob die for nothing? Would you ignore justice? Would you not have me try to save more men from these murderers?”

  “I would have you live, Duncan McCallum. I would have you keep the troubles of the world out of Edentown. We will not become part of this trail of death you seek to follow.”

  “Are you so certain it is something you can decide?”