Blood of the Oak: A Mystery Read online

“What I am certain of is that spring planting must be done and new fields cleared. Crispin and Conawago have laid out plans for a water wheel and a new mill. We owe it to our people.”

  “This is not just a random killing. Nineteen men. It has the sound of a conspiracy, of a plot. I still wake at night from nightmares of my mother and sisters being bayoneted, my father and uncles swinging from gibbets. They just wanted to be left alone too. But then a few men in the English government started plotting.”

  Sarah clenched her fists.

  “It started out with little things,” Duncan continued, speaking toward the teacher’s desk that had once been his. “A few bands of drovers disappearing along mountain tracks, never to be seen again. Tavern fights between English and Scots that had always ended with only a broken bone or two suddenly ending with Scots impaled on swords. A solitary traveler wearing a kilt shot from afar. Everyone wanted not to see. No one wanted to look behind the killings. Wars had come and gone in the outside world for centuries without affecting the Highlands. By the time anyone recognized the beast that had been unleashed on the clans it was too late. Villages bigger than this became inhabited only by ghosts.”

  “We need you here.”

  “There is no one else who can do it.”

  “Do what? Wander off to some unknown place to face God knows what to save men you have never met? You don’t know what to look for. You don’t even know their names.” Her voice was swollen with emotion. “Death Speaker is a playactor. You are not the Death Speaker, you are my . . .” she buried her head into her hands.

  “There is yet time to save them, or Woolford would not have been running south.”

  Sarah took a long time to reply. “Virginia, Duncan. Does it mean nothing to you? My father has plantations there. If he caught scent of you I would never see you again.” Sarah’s father had more than once vowed to take his vengeance on Duncan for interfering with his plans for his daughter and his scheme for carving a private kingdom out of the New York wilderness.

  “Lord Ramsey will never know to look for me. I will stay away from his lands.”

  “No!” He had never heard her speak so forcibly. “I forbid it!” The words came in an anguished voice and she turned away, back toward the slate. “I forbid it,” she said more steadily, invoking for the first time in all the years he had known her the harsh tone of the bond master. “You are indentured to me and I forbid it. If you run, Duncan, I swear I will send bounty hunters to drag you home.”

  Duncan stared at her back for several silent breaths, then turned and left the building.

  HE RETURNED TO THE SMITHY AND SAT AGAIN BY THE DEAD MAN, now in a shroud. He owed something to Red Jacob and he would not be able to pay it. He reached for the dead man’s pouch again and held the little broken die in his hand. Something about dice gnawed at the back of his mind.

  As he reentered the house a pale figure was sitting halfway down the stairway, clutching the rails with white knuckles.

  “Patrick!” Duncan leapt to his friend’s side. “You’ll kill yourself!”

  “Just a stroll . . .” Woolford offered with a weak smile, “to clear my head.”

  Fresh blood oozed from the bandage around his chest. “We will carry you back,” Duncan said.

  “Nonsense. I heard frolicking on the porch. I am quite fond of frolics.”

  Duncan cocked his head toward the front door, which had been left open to freshen the house. Jessica Ross ran by on the lawn, followed by Analie, laughing with abandon.

  When Woolford reached for the railing Duncan pushed his hand down. “Patrick, you underestimate your injuries. You suffered a terrible concussion. It took thirty stitches to close your scalp.”

  “A badge of honor for an Indian fighter.”

  “It was an Indian then?”

  Woolford shrugged. “They shot from the rocks. I dropped on my knee when the first shot hit my leg, then the shot in my ribs knocked me unconscious. They weren’t interested in me. When I came to, face down, I heard them rummaging in my pack. Two men, speaking English. Just as I started to raise my head, one shouted ‘I see the bastard!’ and ran down the slope. The other used his ax to quiet me.” Woolford made fists, tightening his knuckles against the pain. “They meant Red Jacob, didn’t they?”

  “He’s dead.”

  The ranger captain closed his eyes and for a moment Duncan thought he was sinking back into his coma. “His wife is a northern Mohawk, a Christian,” Woolford said. “She insisted I be the godfather to their son. What do I tell him? His father survived untold acts of heroism in the wars only to die in an ambush on some lonely trail in his own land?”

  Woolford’s hands starting shaking. Duncan realized his friend could pass out at any moment. “Patrick, you spoke to me of nineteen men who were going to die.”

  The ranger’s eyes seemed to glaze over. “Fear not until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane,” he whispered. His mind was sinking again. “That’s the bard’s word. But Sir William said they die when the castle comes to the wood. What could that mean? He wouldn’t confuse Macbeth by accident.”

  Duncan cocked his head. Woolford was speaking of the nineteen after all. “You came from Johnson Hall? Why would Sir William know men were going to die in the south?”

  Woolford leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he continued in a choked voice. “We sat in his library. He said he had received a devastating letter from Franklin.”

  “Franklin? Benjamin Franklin?”

  “Then his son Francis came in. He had just arrived from London and there was a dinner to celebrate his safe return. Halfway through the meal, Sir William’s hands began to shake and he excused himself. He insisted Molly help him back into the library instead of to his bed,” he explained, referring to Johnson’s Mohawk wife Molly Brant. “When she returned she told me this was happening every few weeks, a seizure of violent tremors that left him weak as a babe. But this was worse. He couldn’t focus, he couldn’t keep his balance.” Woolford opened his eyes and stared absently at the door. “When Red Jacob and I went into the library he was waiting for us, said we had to run, that very hour, that nineteen men will die if we don’t get there in time.”

  “Twelve rangers and seven Pennsylvania men,” Duncan inserted. “In a place called Galilee?”

  “The rangers went missing over the past three months. Corporal Larkin, Frazier, Hughes, Robson, and the others. The best of men, with me for years. Don’t know about the Pennsylvanians but that makes the nineteen. Johnson handed Red Jacob a map, said he must memorize it, that they must not find it on him.”

  “He inked it on his arm.”

  Woolford winced as he tried another nod. “Then Sir William struggled to his feet and staggered to the cabinet where he keeps his tribal treasures. ‘They die when Dunsinane comes to Birnam,’ he said, and threw the oaken armor at me, saying I would need it. Very old, with an ancient protective charm, goes the legend.”

  “It deflected the bullet and saved your life,” Duncan observed. “Charmed enough. Now let me help you back to your room.”

  Laughter rose outside again. Woolford seemed to revive. “Not yet,” he said, gesturing toward the front door. “It’s a poor heart that never rejoices.” He began rocking forward, as if to launch himself down the stairs. Duncan extended a reluctant hand.

  On the expanse of grass outside, close-cropped by sheep, Jessica played with Analie, tossing a leather lacrosse ball pinned with trailing red ribbons. From the porch Sarah cast an uneasy glance at Duncan and then called out joyful encouragement as she filled a mug of cider for Conawago. Her laugh was shallow but sincere. She worked so hard to keep the evils of the world away. Analie at least had found a place where she would be safe.

  “Long Runner!” Analie ran to hug Woolford as Duncan helped him into a chair. “A strong arm, Miss Ross,” Woolford called out with surprising vigor.

  “Comes from pitching Pennsylvania hay,” the Scottish girl quipped as she climbed onto the
porch. “A more honest labor than prancing around the woods with a rifle all day,” she chided good-naturedly, and poured some cider for Woolford.

  “When I recover,” Woolford vowed, “I’ll teach you two how to play a real game of lacrosse.”

  “I eagerly await the occasion,” Jessica cheerfully replied.

  Woolford, ever the devotee of Shakespeare, tipped his mug to her, then gestured with it toward all his friends. “Those friends thou hast, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of—”

  His words were cut off by a sharp crack of a rifle from the trees, instantly followed by a second shot. Conawago jerked backward and Jess seemed to sag against the wall as Duncan darted to protect Sarah. She pushed him aside and leapt to Conawago, whose shirt sprouted a bright bloom of crimson. The Nipmuc ignored her, instead bending to lift Jess.

  As he cradled the Scottish girl in his arms Duncan thought the blood on her dress was from Conawago’s wound. But the agony on the old man’s face was not for himself. A bullet had ripped into her heart. The joyful Jessica Ross was dead.

  “Jess! Noooo!” Woolford reached a trembling hand toward the girl but the effort, and the shock, proved too much. He slumped forward, unconscious.

  A tear rolled down Sarah’s cheek as she looked up at Duncan. “Go, damned you,” she cried. “Stop them. Stop this trail of death.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A CHILL HAD RISEN, IN THE AIR AND IN DUNCAN’S HEART. HE WAS leaving his friends, his comforts, even the books that he usually carried to read at his campfires. He was chasing murder and mayhem and had to be as light and stealthy as possible. At the top of the high ridge overlooking Edentown he paused. Snowflakes tumbled among the spring violets at his feet. An owl, companion of death, hooted in the greyness ahead of him.

  He should have left hours earlier, as soon as their search parties had confirmed that the shooters in the forest had fled, but Sarah would not let him set out in the night, and his friends had needed him. Conawago had been shaken deeply, not by the wound in his side but by the loss of young Jess. Despite his injury—a bullet had ripped along his rib cage and exited his back—the old Nipmuc had kept vigil beside her as she was cleaned for her burial shroud. He had proclaimed that she had to be laid to rest on the little knoll above the orchard where she could watch the birds she loved so much. Sarah had dressed the Scottish woman in one of her own best dresses and, to Duncan’s great surprise, Conawago had wrapped a worn wampum bead necklace around her folded hands. The necklace, he knew, had belonged to the old Nipmuc’s mother, and he had carried it for decades. Duncan could not fully fathom the bond that was apparent between Conawago and the Ross woman, but he was grateful at least that between his wound and his grief Conawago had no heart for arguing that he should join in Duncan’s race to the south.

  Sarah had been stricken nearly beyond words, staring numbly as Crispin and Duncan led men into the forest in search of the killers. For a second dreadful night she had kept a vigil, sitting beside Jess and only murmuring short, choked syllables when spoken to. For the first time in memory she had not been there to see him off. But beside his rifle and pack there had been one of her kerchiefs, tied around a bundle of twice-cooked cornmeal balls and the venison jerky cured in maple syrup and salt that Duncan favored in his travels.

  Three hours after his last glimpse of Edentown Duncan abruptly darted into an outcropping at the side of the trail, found a perch among its heavy boulders, and cocked his rifle. The instincts of the forest warrior, instilled after years with the natives, had begun to nag him.

  The slight figure in brown homespun appeared minutes later, her drawstring pouch on her shoulder. Duncan slipped down the rocks, raised a stick, and tripped Analie as she hurried by. As she fell he pounced on her, pinning her none too gently with a foot on her shoulder.

  “This is no trail for a sprout!” he snapped. “You are safe in Edentown and welcomed there. Go back and help Sarah. If you still want to leave in a few weeks Conawago can take you to one of the river landings to catch a trading convoy going south.”

  “I go where I wish!” the French girl declared defiantly. Sometimes she seemed the innocent, vulnerable child but now she spoke like a very impatient older woman.

  “Your business in the south can wait.”

  “You do not own me, Duncan McCallum!”

  Duncan pulled away his foot and the girl sat up, brushing dried leaves from her dirty blonde pigtails. “You’ve seen the work of the Blooddancer, Analie. I heard you singing that day. I will never go in the woods alone, you sang.”

  The reminder of Red Jacob’s death took the fire from her eyes. “You don’t believe in such things as the Blooddancer.”

  “I believe in the power that the masks hold for the Iroquois. I believe the tribes know aspects of the world that I can only glimpse. Someone tried to finish their work on Captain Woolford and tried to kill Conawago, and Jess Ross died for it. This is no longer about a wandering spirit. There is murder on this trail.” He extended a hand to help her up.

  “I have no home,” the girl declared in her lost waif voice.

  Duncan hardened his heart. “Edentown is made up of orphans and the dispossessed. There is no place better for you. Conawago has many friends among the French in Canada. It would be easier to pick up the trail of your relatives there. Speak with him and he can send letters asking about your people.”

  The girl cocked her head at him and then nodded. “Letters would be good.”

  “Go now. Hurry and you can be back before dinner.”

  Analie gave an exaggerated shrug, then hoisted her flour-sack pouch onto her shoulder and nodded again, backing up a few steps. With an awkward wave, she turned and began skipping back up the trail, singing one of her songs.

  Duncan shook his head in the direction of the confused girl, then tightened his pack and broke into long, loping strides. He drove himself hard, aware that if he did not meet up with one of the trading convoys on the Susquehanna he would lose precious days, and fewer convoys were plying the river. Even before the wars that had discouraged the traders, the furs that drove the trade had been harder and harder to come by. The wild was being driven out of the forests.

  He stopped at dusk, knowing he risked a twisted ankle or worse if he continued in the darkness. Making a shelter of some fallen limbs and hemlock boughs braced against a low ledge, he lit a fire for tea, then opened his pack, setting aside the parcel he had promised to deliver to Jessica Ross’s family, and withdrew Red Jacob’s pouch. He heaped on dried branches and by the light of the fire examined the contents again, lifting the piece of quillwork for closer examination. It was not crafted with the delicate, skilled hand of Adanahoe, but was clearly done by a native hand. It held the image of a fat bird, probably a grouse. It was unusually thick, and he saw now how the back side had a double layer of doeskin, forming a pocket. From it he extracted a slip of paper, which he straightened in the flickering light.

  It was a verse:

  Childe Rowland to the dark tower came,

  His word was still Fi, fo, and fum

  I smell the blood of a British man.

  ALTHOUGH THE IDEA OF THE STALKING GIANT WAS FROM ANCIENT legend, Duncan recognized this particular version as coming from King Lear. He doubted that Red Jacob could read, but the Oneida had been carrying a verse of Shakespeare. Not just carrying it but concealing it. Some natives considered that powerful words, when written, created powerful charms. He read the words out loud then bent closer to the light to examine the slip of paper. On the reverse, in pencil lead, was a large numeral 5. It could signify Red Jacob’s squad number. It could just be a convenient chit for a gambling debt. But he recalled how the killer had searched Red Jacob’s belongings. Could this be the real secret Red Jacob had been hiding?

  A vision of the awful moment at the front of Sarah’s house flashed through his mind. Woolford had been at the center, seated, solidly braced against movement due to the pain each motion brought, yet the shooters had missed him. The man who had
killed Red Jacob had been an expert marksman, but the two shooters at Edentown had missed their mark, killing Jess and wounding Conawago. How many were in this conspiracy of murder?

  He slept fitfully, grateful for his makeshift shelter when rain began to fall after midnight. A vision of men hanging on a long English gibbet haunted his sleep. At first he thought they were the bodies of his father and clansmen who so often inhabited his dreams but then he saw they were tribesmen. A raven was perched on the gibbet, watching him as he paced along, counting the rotting dead, passing before a rank of powdered British officers who took no notice of him. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, then two more, on a separate scaffold.

  He jerked awake, his heart hammering. The last two bodies were those of Conawago and Woolford. His hand was on his knife hilt, as if part of him sensed more immediate danger. As he listened, the pounding of his heart lessened, replaced by a nearby breathing. Something large, perhaps even a bear or a catamount, was sleeping only a few feet away. He lifted his blade and looked about in the grey twilight, then rose, took a step past the remains of his fire, and cursed.

  Analie had blanketed herself with dried leaves and slept with her precious sack clutched to her breast. On a flat rock beside her, like an offering, was a small pile of spring berries. He paused for a moment, admiring how she could look so peaceful, so innocent after having been so battered by life. He had had a sister, Mary, who had burned with the same energy. She had been Analie’s age when he had last seen her, destined to die on a British bayonet.

  He tapped her lightly with his foot, without effect, then kicked harder. She shot up, wide-eyed and frightened. The sack fell away and in the hand underneath was a treacherous little skinning knife, which she quickly hid in the folds of her dress.

  “Before dark I picked wild strawberries for our breakfast,” she offered in a tentative voice, accented with an uncertain smile. “I smelled tea. I like strong tea. We could drop a peppermint leaf in it; it grows by the hemlocks.”

  “I wasn’t going to trouble with a morning fire,” he growled. “I’ve thirty miles to span before sunset.”