Kathleen Kent - The Wolves of Andover

Georgie gazed over his shoulder, staring at Daniel with the slack-jawed, trembling look of the battlefield injured, his eyes questioning.

Daniel gently wrapped his greatcoat around the boy’s shivering frame and held his shoulders with a fatherly steadying grip. Gesturing to Robert, standing alone in front of the already diminishing fire, he said, “He’s paying a debt, boy.”

Transcript of General Court Session, Town of Billerica 23rd day of the 10th month, 1673

Presided by: General Daniel Gookin, Magistrate of Concord, Carlisle, Bedford, Wilmington, and Billerica

Formerly in Dispute, Now Resolved: 3 Acres land, promontory lying southerly to Treble Cove on the Concord River, bounded by Billerica Great Common Field to the North, Concord River to the West, Fox Brook Road to the East, and Main Street to the South, sufficiently bounded by Marked Trees and Pillars of Stone.

By Jonathan Danforth, Surveyor

It is jointly agreed between Daniel Taylor, of Billerica, and Asa Rogers, late of Salem, that the aforementioned Daniel Taylor shall make sale of designated land, becoming Seller, giving assurances that the three acres shall be granted to aforementioned Asa Rogers, becoming Buyer, with full rights of ownership, and that such Seller does hereby, fully, clearly, and absolutely give up his whole interest, right, and title to land; and that subsequent to affixing his signature and transference of settled price, Asa Rogers can make sale of and dispose of land as he sees fit for his person, his assigns, and estate.

Asa Rogers, as Buyer, hereby agrees to make said purchase for Four Pounds Sterling upon execution of this Document.

Witness my hand the day and year above

Written, together with Buyer and Seller

Gen. D. Gookin

Daniel Taylor

Asa Rogers

Copied by Town Clerk: Tho. Adams

Post Script to Mr. James Davids, New Haven, Connecticut:

Dear friend James,

Forgive these hasty scratchings as I have much withal to concern me: meetings of the governor and General Council and, more important I believe to the immediate welfare of these wilderness settlements, the visitation of Indian villages. There has been of late much unease regarding relations between the colonists and the natives, and I have endeavored to begin a work which I hope to publish for the benefit of peace: “The Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indian.”

More to the point of this missive, I have sent the above copy of a court transcript for your enlightenment as it concerns the carter Daniel Taylor, also your agent in the surrounds of Boston. Goodman Taylor solicited me to help settle a land dispute between Asa Rogers and a hired man, one Thomas Morgan, a rumored regicide.

It will please you to know that Morgan is popularly believed to have been executed by bounty men, his head struck from his body (the head of which I, being responsible in part for His Majesty’s Will and Charters in the colonies, have myself witnessed). This disjointed head, I must add, is most decidedly small for such a reputedly large man, the forehead cross-hatched with a multitude of scars. The skull is to be conveyed back to England on the ship The Swallow with a captain of our very close acquaintance, Captain Koogin, for the satisfaction of the Crown. On the shipping barrel will be writ, no doubt by some wayward scoundrel: “Here lies the head of Thomas Morgan, regicide; to which state every head of state must someday find.” His Majesty will want to know, through endless correspondences, I am certain, how we, the colonists, hold in regard the Royal Court to make such rustic jokes and bite our thumbs at Consequence and Ceremony.

Once Thomas Morgan had proven to be officially dead, and therefore unable to make a claim upon the Taylor land—a cunning well-ordered spot on the Concord—Asa Rogers stepped forward most vigorously to claim it for his mill (bringing poignantly to mind that “the mills of the gods grind slow, but exceeding fine”). Rogers paid in full, and hurriedly, for his plot of land. He, upon some reflection, has taken my word as a magistrate that Thomas Morgan is gone from this earth. The more so after describing to him, in most painstaking detail, the attendant hackings, burnings, and dismemberments by Indians that may take place upon a settler without the protection of the militia, under my command.

To more felicitous duties. I had, upon completion of the sale of land, the satisfaction of officiating in the marriage of one Thomas Carrier of Billerica to a Martha Allen, late of Andover, and cousin to the wife of Goodman Taylor. As they stood, still and solemn before me, making their vows—he as exceptionally tall a man as I have ever seen, and she wearing a fine green-gray cloak—they brought to my mind stone carvings I had seen in a great abbey in London. There, resting in a shadowed, forgotten nave, were likenesses of some long-absent king and queen, both alike in dignity, their brows crimped in imponderable thoughts. And though their eyes were closed, their heads inclined together, speaking to the onlooker, “We have endured.”

Goodman Taylor was witness to the ceremony and discreetly presented the bride afterwards a fine down quilt, such as is rarely seen in the colonies. In a peculiar aside, I overheard him say quietly to her that there was, within, an accounting book, a red one, if such extravagances can be believed.

“Keep it well, cousin,” he told her, “until such time as it can be brought forward to illuminate a world more equal to its subject.”

The couple being poor, and they being of remarkable fortitude for work, I have offered them, along with Carrier’s man, John Levistone, a good plot of land from my own holdings, in return for some period of labor and a gold coin given to Goodwife Carrier by her father.

Thomas Carrier accompanied me to Boston to deliver Morgan’s head, kept from corruption in a salt barrel, to the ship at Boston Harbor. Along with us came my new aide, George Afton, who is an able lad (formerly an eel boy in London, such is the greatness of opportunities in the colonies for inventive men). Along with Morgan’s head was found a scroll wrapped around a small wooden stake. After gaining my permission to open the scroll, Georgie began to read aloud to us the words inscribed by the hand of the great Lord Protector of England, whose orders of battles, instructions to Parliament, and writs of execution I have seen with my own eyes. This scroll will be sent to England along with Morgan’s remains.

The words are from Revelation, the meaning, and signature, of which may serve to confound and torment His Majesty everlastingly:

“You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals… and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom.

Oliver Cromwell”

In God’s trust, I remain,

Gen. Daniel Gookin

ONCE THE HEAD, as it came to be known, had been presented to Charles Stuart in his private chambers, accompanied only by an examining audience of the Earl of Arlington, the Duke of Buckingham, and Sir Joseph Williamson, nothing was ever again right for the sovereign.

The viewing of the barrel’s contents had begun before it had even left the dock. Advance news spread across the city that the remains of the executioner that took the head of the first Charles had landed aboard the ship The Swallow , and carriages of nobles, titled ladies, and serving orderlies mingled with curious, rude ’prentices and common people, who all gawked, for a fee, inside the barrel. After all, the dock courier reasoned, its lid had not been secured, there being no royal seal, and the captain of the escorting guard was amenable to retaining an accommodation fee for himself. Very quickly, the joke had been had; the shrunken, tarred head with its ridiculous topknot and the scribbling on the barrel itself, alluding to the inevitable fate of kings, brought first knowing smiles and then waterfalls of derisive laughter. Tiernan Blood, cloaked and hooded within the crowd, drew near for a peek and, recognizing the cross-hatching scars, laughed the loudest.