Crow Hollow
Authors: Michael Wallace
A
LSO BY
M
ICHAEL
W
ALLACE
Historical Novels:
The Red Rooster
Wolf Hook
The Wolves of Paris
The Crescent Spy
(November 2015)
Suspense and Mystery:
The Righteous series
The Devil’s Deep
The Devil’s Peak
The Devil’s Cauldron
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Michael Wallace
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of
Amazon.com
, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477828014
ISBN-10: 147782801X
Cover design by Laura Klynstra
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953298
C
ONTENTS
C
HAPTER
O
NE
Boston Harbor, December 16, 1676
James Bailey stared down from the main deck of the
Vigilant
as it eased up to the wharves, a knot of excitement forming in his belly.
Twenty men armed with muskets waited for him along the shore. A short man stood at the front of the formation, staring up at the ship with sharp eyes. A strong wind snapped in off the North Atlantic, blowing his shoulder-length blond hair around his face. He rested a hand on the pommel of his sword.
James met the man’s gaze. After eight weeks at sea, he was anxious to get off this rickety, barely seaworthy barrel and set about the king’s business. If that meant confrontation with a colonial welcoming party, he relished it.
The ship made contact with the pier, groaning as it heaved against the wooden pilings. Sailors scrambled off the decks like so many bilge rats, leaping to the pier, tossing ropes, and hauling the gangplank into position.
Peter Church stood at James’s side. The older man wore the same serene smile that seemed fixed to his face at all times, whether he was about to say one of his curious Quaker prayers or was staring into the driving rain of an ocean gale.
“I had supposed we had sailed from Weymouth in secrecy,” Peter said. “Yet it seems our reputation precedes us.”
James looked around at the forest of masts that dotted the harbor. “Did you see that pinnace when we were heaving to? I swear it’s the same ship we saw off the Cornish coast.”
On the first full day out of port, a full-rigged pinnace had overtaken them while they were still in sight of land. It swooped in until it lurked a quarter mile off starboard. The
Vigilant
’s captain had cursed, thinking they were about to be attacked by pirates out of Dunkirk. But the other ship had continued past them without sign or signal. James had spotted two men on deck watching them through spyglasses. After that, he noticed several suspicious characters among the crew and passengers of the
Vigilant
itself. Men who seemed to watch him when he came onto the deck, or sat too close when he and Peter took their supper.
“Did the Puritans send spies?” Peter asked.
“Why not?” James said. “
We
certainly did.” This was largely bluster. No more than a handful of royal agents operated between Quebec and the Province of Carolina.
“But who sent them?”
“Hard to say. These stiff-necked fools have plenty of friends in Parliament. Any one could have sent word.” James eyed the older man. “And when they hear you’re on board, we’re bound to attract a special flavor of vitriol.”
By now, the immigrants crowding the deck were making such a noise in anticipation of landfall that the two men had to raise their voices to be heard.
Peter Church chuckled. “Which will upset them more? That I’m an Indian or that I’m a Quaker?”
“Let’s see if you live long enough to find out.”
The gangplank fell into place with a thunk. Passengers lined up to file off the boat that had held them prisoner for eight cold, wet weeks. Sailors grabbed trunks and muscled into the fray. Any longer and the two men would be caught in the crush.
James reached into his cloak to verify that he hadn’t left the king’s commission in his sea chest. He had left his pistols and sword behind and carried only a small hidden dagger that had served him well in Paris and London. Also in the chest, a tidy sum in silver coin, plus the money he had on his person.
The air smelled of brine and fish guts. Seagulls wheeled overhead, crying. All around, men shouted. Sailors, fishermen, immigrants on the deck yelled back and forth to people waiting on the shore.
James cleared a path through the passengers and seamen and clomped down the gangplank, with Peter following. A rime of sea ice encrusted the wooden pilings and the surface of the pier itself. James made sure of his footing before stepping off the gangplank.
For a moment he thought the pier was floating, because everything was still swaying. Even the ramshackle wooden buildings that lined the harbor seemed to be rocking from side to side as if carried by the waves. Further into the town, everything wobbled: the crowded brick buildings, the chimneys, even the smoke trailing into the cold December air.
Eight weeks crossing the vast ocean, and his head could no longer tell the difference between the swell of waves and the solid feel of rooted timbers beneath his feet.
James had been to sea before, of course, had traveled a dozen times across the Channel to Holland or France, sometimes openly, other times on clandestine business for the Crown. Pockets full of silver to bribe French officials, or carrying secret treaties to negotiate with avaricious Dutch merchants. But he’d never before lost sight of land for more than a day or two.
The seas had turned angry west of the Cornish coast, and he’d spent a week spewing his supper over the rail until he wanted to throw himself into the ocean to relieve the misery of it. The swaying wharf reminded him of that awful stretch.
“Art thou feeling well?” Peter Church asked.
“Well enough. You?”
“In good health, praise be.”
“Of course you are.” James looked down the pier to the armed men standing on the shore. “This is delicate business. Can you hold your tongue?”
“I speak as the spirit urges. As thou knowest, James.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. This business with Christian names, all of your thee-ing and thou-ing—you’ll get us flogged and thrown into the pillories. If they don’t hang
you
outright.”
“I don’t fear death.”
“No? Well, I do.”
Peter’s smile broadened slightly. “And what about the king’s commission? Doesn’t it offer thee protection?”
“Yes, and no.”
James had orders to do the king’s bidding, but not the power to do so without subterfuge and outright deception. And yet, didn’t that give him
more
freedom?
More
latitude to use whatever means and measures he saw fit? He’d vowed before leaving English soil that he would return in triumph, take the prize that was waiting for him in London.
“You’ll have plenty of time for Quaker nonsense,” James said. “When the time comes, I’ll even encourage it. For now, patience.”
The Indian didn’t answer. In James’s experience, that meant he intended to obey but did not consent.
A small crowd had gathered on the wharf near the armed men James had already identified. They were mostly strong, sober-looking fellows in leather breeches, with heavy woolen cloaks and short-brimmed caps with the flaps pulled down against their ears. They wore wooden clogs over their felt shoes as they stood in the freezing mud. A few boys and women waited among the men, but there was none of the rabble James was accustomed to seeing. In England or on the Continent, any harbor was infested with pickpockets, drunks, and other shifty sorts looking to separate the travel-weary from his possessions. Boston, with all of its cold, huddled look, also had a certain tidiness about it.
James and Peter strode down the pier toward dry land. James thought briefly about calling for the dockers now unloading trunks from the
Vigilant
, retrieving his possessions, and then forcing his way past the men with their muskets. But these men were staring with such hard expressions that it would be openly disingenuous to pretend he didn’t see. And so he led Peter right up to the short, blond man at their head.
“Well?” he demanded. “What is this?”
“Are you James Bailey?”
“Aye.”
“You are ordered to return to your ship and remain there until she puts out to sea. You are not to set foot in Boston or anywhere else on the New England coast.”
James drew up to his full height and looked down at the man. He kept his voice cold. “And who are you, sir?”
“I am Samuel Knapp.”
“That name means nothing to me. Who?”
“I’m a servant of Governor Leverett and a constable of Boston Town.”
“And I am in Massachusetts on royal business.”
“Royal business?” Knapp’s eyes widened slightly. His tongue passed over his lips. “I was told you were hired by Sir Benjamin’s heirs.”
“For what purpose? To confirm his death? That’s stale business, Master Knapp. His death is confirmed and his estate settled, both in England and the colonies. I am here on orders of His Majesty King Charles.”
Knapp looked at Peter Church, then glanced at his men, who still clenched their flintlocks but with markedly less certainty.
“What kind of royal business?”
“Samuel Knapp, did you say?”
“Captain Samuel Knapp. Yes.”
James snapped his fingers, as if it were just now coming to him. “Wait, I
do
know that name. From the war. You chased King Philip through the wilderness. An Indian fighter.”
“Indian
killer
,” Knapp said with a glance at Peter and an expression approaching a sneer. “Yes, I put down plenty of heathens in the war.”
King Philip—or Metacomet, as he’d been known before adopting an English name—had raised so many tribes into war that the whole of New England had been threatened with destruction. Suspicions had been growing in London that much of the fault of the war lay with the colonists themselves.
“What do you think of that?” James asked his companion. “This man delights in the Godly work of killing your brethren.”
The placid smile never left the older man’s face. “If this man is a killer, then we’re fortunate peace has returned, praise be.” He met Knapp’s gaze. “But I’m no heathen, Samuel.”
Knapp sputtered at the use of his Christian name. “Who the devil do you think you are? Blasted Praying Indian, have you no shame?”
James allowed himself a smile. Here in Boston, even mild cursing could land one in the pillories. One of James’s delights was seeing a rival lose his temper, and it had scarcely taken two minutes to goad Samuel Knapp sufficiently.
“Forgive my friend,” James said. “He’s a Quaker.”
“A
what
?”
Now Knapp looked ready to burst, like a tick engorged on blood. The men around him muttered darkly.
“Wretched business,” James said. “I don’t care for it either. In the Church of England—I’m still faithful to the mother church, of course—we’d be happy to drive the Quakers to Holland or some other godless cesspool. But His Majesty has ordered the peace be kept. So I endure. As will you.”
“Now, you listen to me—”
“No, sir, I won’t,” James interrupted. “I have no time for it. My duty is to the Crown, not to your seditious orders.”
At the mention of sedition, Knapp and the others fell silent. These were dangerous times, with the Crown restored and the last memories of the Puritan violence in England moldering along with Oliver Cromwell’s head, which rested on a spike on the roof of Westminster Hall, where it had remained since 1661. Yet more than fifteen years later, when peace had descended upon England herself, a rabble of dissenters and separatists sneered from their supposed safety on the edge of the American continent.
That would soon change.
By now there was considerable traffic to and from the ship. Dockers, the immigrants, and waiting friends and family from shore hauled out trunks, furniture, carts laden with household items, and anything else the travelers had brought from home. In addition, the dockers unloaded goods from England: nails, glass windows, linen cloth, paper, crates of pewter and iron manufactures, and every other necessity that wasn’t produced in New England. Soon other goods would be packed into the
Vigilant
’s hold for the return journey: dried fish, barrels of grain and cheese, and, of course, furs worth hundreds of pounds.
Plenty of these people coming and going were openly eavesdropping as they passed Knapp and his armed men. Knapp scowled at one ugly docker who was gaping at them, until the man looked away and continued past with his burden, breath billowing in the cold winter air.
“There’s no sedition here, Master Bailey,” Knapp said, his tone more conciliatory. “But we’re cautious of strangers. And Indians.” Another glance at Peter. “Hundreds fell to the heathens. Nearly every family was cursed by the devilry of our enemies. And people in England have delighted in our troubles.”
“Nobody delights in the death of good Englishmen.” James took out the king’s commission and showed the wax seal marked with King Charles’s emblem. “For Governor Leverett. I demand an audience.”
“The governor is in Hartford and will be gone at least another week.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Knapp’s face reddened, but talk of sedition seemed to have bridled his tongue for the moment. “It’s the truth, Master Bailey. The last of the Nipmuk fled north, looking to the French and Abenaki for protection. That leaves us virgin land to settle, and a disputed border between the two colonies. Leverett went to Hartford to settle it.”
James rubbed his thumb over the wax seal on the paper before tucking it back into an interior pocket. This was unexpected and unwelcome.
“Why don’t you share it with me?” Knapp said. “I’m commissioned by the General Court to keep order in Boston.”
“I didn’t know Boston was in
dis
order.”
Knapp gave a sad shake of the head. “It’s these wretches left destitute by the war. The town is full of them. They’re resettling, but slowly.”
“Who commands Massachusetts in the governor’s absence? The General Court?”
“Aye, the court. And William Fitz-Simmons, the deputy governor.” Knapp frowned. “If it’s not Sir Benjamin’s death that brings you, then what?”
“It is his death, in part. But not in the way you suppose.”
Knapp continued, as if he hadn’t been listening. “The sachem who ordered his murder was put to death, his entire tribe shipped to Barbados and sold into bondage. And Sir Benjamin’s estate is settled, as you said.” Knapp looked at Peter Church. “Why are you traveling with a Praying Indian? Which tribe gave birth to this man?”
Knapp’s questions risked exposing James’s real purpose in entering the Bay Colony, so he deflected. “If Leverett is in Hartford, I have no choice. Take me to Master Fitz-Simmons.”