Eliot Pattison - Blood of the Oak

“Look at ye now,” Teague laughed as he stepped onto the platform. “Christ knows I should have finished you both that day at Edentown. But Kincaid was in a hurry to get to the Susquehanna. Don’t start a job unless y’er going to finish it, I always say.” He balanced the remaining gaff in his outstretched arm as he approached them. Sarah threw herself over Duncan.

“Y’er such a wee thing,” Teague said to her. “I wager I can skewer ye both with one thrust,” he hissed. Through his fog of pain Duncan raised his hand, dripping with blood, to shove Sarah away, but she only rose enough to kneel beside him. As she reached for the bloody spear that had impaled Duncan a figure hurled past her with a furious Gaelic cry. Murdo hit Teague like an angry bull, knocking the spear from his grip and flattening him on the planks. He pounded the Irishman three times on the jaw before Teague could react. With a furious bellow Teague arched his back and threw Ross off.

“Ye murdered my little girl!” Ross shouted as he recovered, facing Teague with clenched fists.

The words caused Teague to hesitate. He grinned. “And such a sweet morsel she was. I only wish I had had the time to linger over her. I told Kincaid we should take her to the river with us but he said we had no time for sport.”

Sarah thrust the spear into Murdo’s hands. The big Scot made a feint toward Teague then threw it. It lodged in Teague’s side. With a howl of rage the Irishman tore the spear from his flesh and tossed it into the river.

“A darlin’ bud of a girl,” Teague continued as he inched forward. “When she tied on her petticoat that morn she never guessed she’d be gone by noon.”

“Don’t let him get close!” Duncan warned as he saw the cudgel in Teague’s hand.

But Murdo’s rage blinded him. He charged. The Irishman sidestepped and slammed the cudgel behind his ear. Murdo dropped with a groan then looked up, dazed, as Teague kicked him in the belly, knocking the wind out of him. The Irishman lifted Murdo’s torso into a sitting position and, holding him up with one hand, began pummeling him with the other. Duncan struggled to his knees and began crawling toward his friend but Sarah pushed him down and began dragging him away.

Murdo began to recover, landing weak blows on Teague’s shoulders, but the Irishman only gave a hideous laugh and hit him harder.

With a wild screech Analie burst out of a fish shed and launched herself at Teague’s feet. The Irishman was so intent on battering Murdo that he seemed not to notice at first, then aimed a kick that glanced off her shoulder. As the girl retreated, crablike on the wet boards, the Irishman paused, then let Murdo fall to the dock.

The girl had tied a rope to Teague’s knee. “Damned little banshee!” he hissed, then was about to turn back to Murdo when Tanaqua stepped out of the shadows. He was holding a heavy anchor stone. Teague hesitated, then cursed as he realized it was tied to the rope.

“You stole my god!” the Mohawk declared loud enough for the spirits to hear.

Teague frantically grabbed at the knot on his knee.

“You killed my brothers! Let the blackness take your soul,” Tanaqua declared, then tossed the anchor in a long arc into the deep river.

The rope tightened and Teague was jerked through the air. There was no chance for him to struggle, no time for him to free the knot that bound him to the anchor. With a surprisingly small splash the big Irishman entered the water and was gone.

The Penelope slipped through the night, throwing white foam off her bow. Duncan, his jagged wound washed and bound, sat on a barrel watching the stars, the lantern at his side extinguished now that he had finished reading the letters taken from Chestertown. He sensed someone behind him but did not turn.

“It made no sense,” he said, “that the name of Socrates Moon was on the forger’s wall, with an example of the old gentleman’s handwriting. Right up there with the leaders of the committees, with Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin. You knew all about the murders. You knew what was going on in Philadelphia and Boston and Williamsburg. You helped Patrick in his secret tasks and used Edentown, Conawago. I couldn’t understand that day in Edentown when Jessica Ross kept looking at you when she spoke of the missing men from Pennsylvania. You invited her there to establish a station in the network.”

“Not without Sarah’s consent,” the old Nipmuc replied as he leaned on the ship’s rail. “She was going to tell you, in her own time.” They watched a skein of ducks fly across the moon. “All my life I avoided choosing sides. I spent my years searching for my family. It was a fool’s errand. I knew kings. I could have made a difference. But I chose to keep my world small, just as you did. Duncan, we have been obsessed with phantoms. My family is gone. Your clan is gone.

“When you and I were up on the St. Lawrence we could have changed the outcome of the war with the French but I chose to keep the Canadian tribes out of the final bloodshed and you chose to keep all those Scots from dying as traitors. What have we got for the trouble? The French would have peacefully coexisted with the tribes as they had for centuries. But the British king despises the tribes. He and his lords will annihilate the tribes if they have their way, just as they would shackle the colonists with taxes and laws. Helping that kind of king was wrong. I see that now. Such a king has no place in America. That is the side I have chosen now. Not the French side, which is long lost. And not King George’s side. The side of this land. My land. Jahoska’s land. Your land. Europe has no place here. We can make it different.” A shadow emerged and stood beside the old Nipmuc. Woolford had been listening. He was not disagreeing.

“Words like that will get you killed,” Duncan said.

Conawago smiled as if welcoming the remark. “The age is turning, Duncan. Jahoska the half king understood that before the rest of us. And at every turning there is a fulcrum, a small group of men who set the new age in motion. We are the agents of the turning. America is destined as the place of the turning. There is something new meant for America.”

“It will get you killed,” Duncan repeated. “Enough good men have died.”

“I fear before it is over the good men who die will be like leaves on a tree,” the old Nipmuc said. “Does that make it wrong?”

The angel on the sign swinging over the tavern door faced an old man with a scythe on the opposite side of a setting sun. From the stable across the road Duncan watched the sign sway in the breeze, wondering if the austere Quaker innkeeper had chosen the image to dissuade the revelers that frequented the other inns of Lancaster. The World’s End, though not the most prosperous, was certainly the most respectable of the establishments in the community, well chosen by the committeemen for its quiet location at the edge of town, with the stable and Sabbath meetinghouse its only close neighbors.

The quick song of a lark came from the loft overhead and Duncan edged closer to the partially open door. An ornate coach was arriving from the direction of Philadelphia, the two guards riding on the top beside the driver springing down before it rolled to a stop. Two more men on escort horses dismounted, and hurried to assist the rotund passenger out of the coach and into the tavern. Gabriel, attired in a poorly fitting suit and tricorn hat, followed a step behind Lord Ramsey, clutching a leather case and muttering in his usual surly tone.

As soon as the door of the tavern closed behind Ramsey’s party, Duncan and Woolford circled behind the building, entered the kitchen, and slipped into the private dining chamber reserved by the committeemen months earlier. They sat in the shadows behind the half-drawn curtain used to divide the room.