Crow Hollow (10 page)

She opened her eyes. “I don’t think I can continue. Pray, forgive me, James.”

He placed a hand on her wrist. “Faith, I know you can.”

Prudence swallowed hard. “May God grant me strength.”

She imagined that she was relaying a tale told her by another, not something she had endured herself. After a moment, her heart slowed its anxious pounding.

“We were unarmed. The Nipmuk, I mean. They had no weapons. The sachem didn’t know that the English wouldn’t follow the rules of parley that both sides had kept throughout the war. The war was won for the English. They no longer needed to.

“Knapp was furious the sachem wouldn’t submit,” she continued. “Both sides had put down their weapons for the parley, but Knapp lifted his hand and a dozen men with swords came rushing out of the woods. The Indians had watchers to guard against treachery, but they were fewer in number, plus thin and weak from weeks of forced march.”

Again, she had to stop as the memories came boiling to the surface. This time James remained quiet until she had recovered.

“Crow Hollow has no outlet, and soon Knapp had the Nipmuk backed against the hill. There were eleven Indian warriors, including the sachem and two of his sons. A few tried to fight, but most threw themselves to the ground and begged for mercy.” Prudence swallowed hard. She could taste bile. “Knapp showed none.”

“The sachem’s wife must have escaped.” James thumbed through the pages. “You mention her again when you lied to Knapp at the village.”

“Aye, Laka slipped away while the English were giving battle to the warriors. Knapp raged when he discovered she had escaped. They tracked her to the village. That was no battle, either.

“The sachem was dead, and most of his warriors as well. I screamed at the English to stop, cried for the Nipmuk to run, to save themselves. There was little resistance. Old women were shot in the back. Young children had their heads bashed in. Before that, I’d never seen anything as cruel and brutal as the Indian attack on Winton, or the way they’d tortured the surviving men. But this was worse.”

“Yet they call themselves Christians,” James said.

“There are no Christians in war.” Prudence blurted the words before she could reconsider. Horrified, she put her hand over her mouth. “Pray, pardon me. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Go on.”

“I was so weak and sick that I could scarcely stand as they laid out the bodies of the dead and made me look at them. Knapp was looking for Laka—he had stood beside her in Crow Hollow, but could not identify her now. That’s because she wasn’t there.”

“And that’s when you spoke false?” James asked.

Prudence felt the memories pressing in again. The horror of staring at those bodies, looking through them, terrified that she would see her daughter among the dead. She had swooned, and Knapp ordered her dragged to her feet. Then someone cried they had found Laka.

One of the Indian traitors, a Praying Indian, had identified a woman as the sachem’s wife, but it wasn’t Squa Laka, it was her sister. Prudence didn’t correct his mistake.

“There had been ninety-seven of us in the band. There were only eighty-four bodies here and in the hollow. Thirteen had escaped. One was Squa Laka and one was my daughter.”

“But it says here that you told Knapp they’d killed every Indian. And you also told him your daughter had died three weeks earlier and the Indians had let you bury her.”

“I spoke false. I couldn’t bear any more killing.”

“But your daughter, wouldn’t you want the English to search for her?”

Prudence shook her head, anguished, unsure how to explain. Her thoughts had been so fevered. She had been so afraid.

“Please, I’m trying to understand.”

“Can’t you see? The only hope for my daughter was that the remaining Nipmuk escape—if not, I was convinced the Indians would kill her before they fell. It is their way with prisoners. So I lied. How I wrote it here is how it really happened. You must believe me.”

He studied her face. “Are you all right? You look ill.”

“I can’t let it go. I feel as though I’m still there. A sound, a smell will spark my memories, like fire on dry tinder. Then suddenly I’m back in Winton. People burning in their homes. Women, children, screaming. The Indians have tied my husband up and are cutting off his fingers, his nose, his ears, while he screams for help—”

“Good Lord,” James said.

“And the massacre . . . the crows.”

“The crows?”

“They came down from the trees . . .” She couldn’t finish, could scarcely breathe, could only bury her face in her hands.

“Prudie,” he said, gently taking her hands down from her face. “You are strong enough to finish it.”

He’d called her Prudie. That was more intimate even than her Christian name. She was so shaken that she almost fell against his shoulder and asked him to hold her. She struggled to regain her composure.

“The crows were eating the dead,” she said. “I can see them, hear their calls, the tearing sound of beaks ripping at flesh. It seems so real, it’s as if I’m still there. Even the smell of blood. I can scarcely explain, but it is real.”

“I’ve heard of this before,” James said. “Men who have survived bombardment in a castle, or lived through a horrific battle. Sometimes they can’t escape their memories. It’s a living nightmare.”

“Early on, I’d wake at night, screaming, drenched in sweat. My sister thought I was possessed of an evil spirit, or under the spell of a witch. Only I wasn’t, it was the war. Later, when I wrote my account, Anne wouldn’t believe me when I said my daughter was still alive. She thought it was my fevered imagination. She spoke to the reverend, the printer. They stripped it from my account before publication.”

James looked thoughtfully at the pages in his hand. “Who else has read this?”

“Only my sister and her husband, plus the printer when I tried to get him to include it anyway. And now you.”

“You didn’t show it to Knapp?”

“Bless me, no! I detest the man—I’d as soon never speak to him again in my life. Why?”

“I have an idea. Or the beginnings of one.”

“Tell me,” she urged.

“Let’s get these horses back on the road. I don’t want to stop in Danforth’s Farms. It’s too close. What’s the next town?”

“If we cut back toward the highway, Marlborough. It’s another five miles, more or less. There’s an inn.”

“Good. We’ll stay there.”

They left the coach itself hidden behind the ruins of the farmhouse. James and Prudence rode two of the highwaymen’s horses and led the last, together with Robert Woory’s team, who seemed relieved to be free of the burden they’d dragged all night and half the morning.

Prudence didn’t have a pair of stirrup stockings to cover her to her waist, as proper women wore when they rode. The pistol tucked into her apron made her feel even less ladylike.

She rode next to James, wondering how long she could wait before pushing him about her daughter. He seemed lost in his own thoughts, his brow furrowed, his gaze distant.

His suspicions had fallen on Samuel Knapp, that much was certain.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

Not long after they had set out again, James cast a glance at Prudence. She met his gaze eagerly, clearly bursting with questions. Within five minutes of regaining the highway, he was ready to share his conclusions, but instead he made her wait. He was enjoying watching her squirm with curiosity, and he wanted to think about
her
for a moment, if for no other reason than to get his mind off the murder of Peter Church.

Prudence Cotton was becoming one of the most interesting women he’d ever known. She had a sharp mind and a flare of independence. And determined as the devil himself. She’d forced her way into the coach, helped him bluff his way past the gates in Boston, and then calmly shot a man in the back.

Yet at the same time she was sensitive and vulnerable. When telling about Crow Hollow, she’d been on the verge of tears most of the way through.

Be easy on her. You only know the half of what she’s suffered.

That wasn’t the point. The point was that the pain and need in her eyes made him want to take her in his arms. Comfort her. And yes, if he were to admit to his less-than-noble desires—call them lusts, to be absolutely clear—he wanted to do more than comfort.

He wanted to release her raven hair from that silly head rail, wanted to free her breasts from her waistcoat and stay, wanted to get her out of her apron and petticoats. Well, maybe when they got somewhere warm.

“I can’t stand it anymore,” Prudence blurted. “What are you thinking about? You have to tell me.”

“I’m thinking about what you said,” he lied. “About speaking Nipmuk. Who else knows?”

She looked confused. “Everybody. It’s in the book.”

“Aye, but in a subtle way. I’d been under the impression you spoke a few words, maybe a phrase or two. It’s only clear in the missing chapter that you can understand actual conversations.”

“I don’t talk much about the language. Every town, every congregation, has people who lost family. When people question me, it’s only to confirm their own beliefs about the war.”

“What does that have to do with speaking Nipmuk?”

“You don’t learn a foreign tongue from a jailer,” she said. “You learn it through long, struggled conversations. A mutual attempt to understand. You learn it from a friend.”

“I see. And that proves your sympathy with the savages.”

“I should not have prevaricated, I should have stated the matter baldly. Indicted Captain Knapp for his brutality, whether the charge be believed or no. He was offered peace, but chose cold-blooded murder instead. The world needs to see that.”

“So how many know the extent of your Nipmuk?” James asked. “Only the ones who’ve read this chapter?”

“The same. Anne, her husband, the printer. So what is it, what are you thinking? Tell me.”

“I start with the assumption that the highwaymen intended to murder Peter Church all along. Maybe they’d have killed the two of us too—they shot Woory casually enough—but Peter was their real target. Maybe it was revenge for disrupting services yesterday, or maybe the conspirators hate all Indians and wanted to kill him for that.”

“Except if you were right about the other thing—that they were already poisoning him from the first night you arrived—it couldn’t have been about Sunday services.”

“Exactly,” he said, pleased at how her mind worked. “And they continued poisoning him up to the moment we left. To make it look like actual disease. It was planned all along.”

“Only he left before they could finish him,” Prudence said. “That’s why they sent men to attack us on the road.”

“Keep going,” he urged. “Why am I asking about the language?”

Her face lit up. “Because Peter spoke Nipmuk. Maybe that’s why they wanted to kill him in the first place.” She grew even more animated. “There must be something they don’t want you to find out from the Nipmuk. Something about what happened to my husband or my daughter. But
I
speak it. I can go with you and translate!”

He smiled at her enthusiasm. “All we have to do is track the Indians into the wilderness and hope they don’t kill us.”

“I can do that. I can help.”

James scanned the road ahead. The farms were growing thicker, and people were out in some of them, feeding livestock or carrying milk from barns. People eyed them, but as of yet nobody came running to the road to question them or ask them for news or mail.

“We must be close to Danforth’s Farms,” he said. “Time to concoct a story.”

“Oh, yes. What should we say?”

“I’ll be fine, it’s you I’m worried about. Keep your face bundled against the cold. That will keep anyone from recognizing you. If we’re challenged, you’re my wife.”

“Your wife! I could never say that.”

“Fine, then you’re my lover from the city. You’ve run away from your husband with a handsome young stranger.”

“James!” She sighed. “All right, I’ll be your wife.”

“Thank you, my dear, I’d be honored. Where is your father? I should ask his permission. Then the church should publish the banns. That way you can be assured I’m not already married.”

“You’re not, are you?” she asked.

“What does it matter, if it’s only playacting?” He smiled at the worried look on her face. “I’m not married. Yet.”

“Oh, you’re terrible.” She looked like she was trying, but not quite succeeding, to look offended. “Anyway, magistrates marry us in New England, not the church. Marriage rites are not biblical.”

“Is that what they claim around here? You people have some odd customs.”

“How do we explain the horses?” she asked.

“We’ll say we’re from Winton—we’re trying to rebuild. We bought goods in Boston, including these animals to help on the farm.”

“These aren’t draft horses,” she said.

“Did I say farm? I meant for the coach service I’m hoping to establish.”

“Better.”

Their discussion was fortuitously timed. They came over the next rise and into Danforth’s Farms a few minutes later. A wooden palisade cut across fields and cleared forest to enclose an area that was roughly half a mile square. The gates were open and nobody manned the watchtower.

Inside the gates they found a tidy village of thirty or forty houses wrapped around a commons. The snow had grown thicker the farther inland they traveled, and here it was a fluffy blanket two or three feet thick across the commons and atop the roofs.

A box-like meetinghouse with a squat steeple marked the near side of the commons, its outer wall abutting the road. Snarling, grimacing wolf heads had been nailed to the meetinghouse above the reach of dogs, with names scrawled right on the building to indicate the men who’d claimed the bounties.

A cold, miserable-looking fellow sat at the stocks in front of the meetinghouse, his hands, head, and feet sticking out the holes. He strained to turn his head as James and Prudence rode past.

“What cheer, good folk,” he offered in greeting. “Any news from Boston?”

“Governor Leverett traveled to Hartford to negotiate the border with Connecticut,” Prudence said.

“I heard that already. Anything else? Pray, slow down.”

They slowed the horses. “A French fleet was spotted off Nantucket,” Prudence said. “Five ships of the line.”

“Oh, that’s something new. Thank you, Goodwife. And a good day to you, sir.”

There were others about, watching curiously from their stoops, and James didn’t want to appear unsociable and thereby make himself look suspicious. He turned in the saddle as they passed the man.

“What of the weather?” James asked. “Think these clouds will bring snow?”

The man turned his eyes skyward. “Could be. Hard to tell from not knowing.”

“What was that supposed to mean?” James asked Prudence when they’d left the man behind and trotted alongside the commons.

“That’s what passes for Puritan wisdom in these parts. You know, like ‘a hot iron pierces sooner than a cold one.’”

“That sounds painful,” he said. “Anyway, I suppose it’s best not to predict the weather in these parts. If you guess wrong, they throw you in the pillories.”

“And guessing
right
gets you accused of witchcraft. Only the devil knows the weather.”

If she hadn’t raised an eyebrow, he’d have thought her serious.

Others hailed them as the Connecticut Path left the commons and divided two rows of houses on its way out of town. Prudence did most of the talking, greeting people and asking if the road ahead had been cleared of snow. It had until Marlborough. After that, no. Not until it connected with the highway outside Springfield.

She stopped to chat with one woman for a few minutes, even asked if any riders had come through earlier that day, because they’d found a hat someone had dropped on the road. No, nobody had entered or left the village all day. They were the first outsiders since before the Sabbath.

“I didn’t recognize any of those people,” Prudence said when they’d regained the open country. “So I figured there was no harm in asking.”

“You’d make a good spy.”

“Is that your way of telling me again what a good liar I am?”

“There’s a difference between lying for gain or to cause harm, and lying for duty or honest purpose.”

“Lying for honest purpose. Clever wording.”

“But it’s not just that,” he said. “You carry yourself well, you keep your wits in a scrape. A clever woman makes a good spy if for no other reason than men discount her. Men like to impress a woman, so they’ll blather and boast.”

“Are there many female spies?”

He thought about the few he’d known. “Not nearly as many as you’d expect.”

“Women have more scruples,” she said. “We are reluctant to give them up.”

James chuckled at this. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

“Well, I happen to like mine,” she said firmly, “and have no intention of surrendering them.”

“You’d better get over some of them in a hurry. As soon as we arrive in Marlborough, I’m going to find us a room in the inn. That means more lying about being my wife.”

She fixed him with a horrified look. “The roads are quiet—there will be more than one room at the inn, surely.”

“For a husband and wife traveling together? ’Twould raise less suspicion to ask separate quarters for one’s dog.”

“But I . . . we can’t . . .”

“I’m not going to attack your virtue,” he said. “So put that out of your mind. Or are you worried about what people will think?”

“As a matter of fact, I am. People may not know me by appearance out here, but everyone has heard of me. When this all gets out—and it will, you know it will—every detail of our journey together will be known. Including the part where I spent a night at an inn with a strange man from England. Meanwhile, you’ll skip your way back to London to give your report, and if any of your friends hear what happened, they’ll grin, you’ll wink, and they’ll slap you on the back.”

“You must take me for a complete scoundrel.”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“I’m not the winking sort.”

“I hope not, James. But I reserve judgment.”

He grunted at this. Nevertheless, she was probably right about what people would say. “I’m sorry, there’s no way around it. You might face some humiliation.”

“Humiliation is only one of my worries. They hang adulterers in New England.”

“Then I’ll take you back to England if that’s what it takes to keep you safe. Good Lord, woman, do you want to help your daughter or not?”

“Of course I’ll do it for my daughter. Is that what you’re promising?”

He stopped and turned in the saddle. “Ah, you’re clever.”

“Clever enough. Peter is dead because of you. Goodman Woory too. I don’t mean to join them.”

“I didn’t kill those men.”

“But they’re dead because of . . . whatever it is you’re doing out here. Which is what, exactly?”

“To find out what happened to Sir Benjamin.”

“So you say.”

She was getting uncomfortably close to the truth. “I won’t sacrifice you to my cause, if that’s what you’re driving at. Whatever kind of scoundrel I am, it’s not that.”

“Do you swear it?”

“Did I play the coward when those men attacked us on the road?”

“Nay, you fought like a lion.” She nodded. “So you’ll swear it?”

“I swear I will do everything in my power to keep you from harm.”

“Everything?”

“Everything reasonable—there are murderers after us, after all.” She still didn’t look satisfied, so he added, “I swear that I will not lay hands on you, so help me God, even if we have to spend the night in the same bed.”

“Heaven forbid.” She nodded. “And my daughter. You will help her. Swear it.”

“Now that’s going too far. What are you giving me in return?”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to translate. I want you to lie when necessary. When the time comes, you will testify against Knapp, Fitz-Simmons, Reverend Stone—anyone who might be implicated in the murder of Peter Church and Robert Woory and any other crimes we uncover.”

“I would testify against my own sister if she were guilty of murder.”

“Then I’ll swear to help you find your daughter.”

James met Prudence’s gaze. For a long moment they stared into each other’s eyes. At last he looked away to keep an eye on the road, but still he felt her watching him. Probing, testing. Looking for some sign that he was lying or trying to deceive her in some way.

He wasn’t, he was absolutely sincere, and it was a good thing too. Something inside his head was ringing, warning him. Every bit of experience James had ever had in life told him that crossing this woman would be dangerous.

Whatever had kept her docile and compliant while living under the roof of her sister and the reverend was gone now.