Crow Hollow (13 page)

“To tell the truth, I feel like the devil myself,” he said. “Introducing the forbidden fruit into the garden.”

“How do you mean?” Prudence asked.

“Goodman Meyer won’t be so quick to take in strangers in the future when he finds out that you were not, in fact, my wife. Perhaps that shouldn’t bother me, but it does.”

She had her own worries on that score. “Once this gets out, the scandal will sink me.”

“All you have to do is convince your brother-in-law of your virtue. The reverend will shield you.”

“Nothing shields a woman from malicious gossip. The likes of Goody Brockett will be whispering about me to their deathbeds.” She shook her head. “I’ll have to move to Providence.”

“How will that help?”

“There’s a reason they call it Rogue’s Island. Rhode Island is the chamber pot of New England. They even tolerate Quakers and Baptists.”

“Even that? No, never.” He smiled.

“Don’t mock. This is serious.”

“I can tell. But why settle for Providence? Come back to England. There’s a place for the likes of you in the service of the king. You’ve got a quick mind and steady nerves.”

“I could never do that,” she said, firmly. “My people are here. I belong in New England.”

He shrugged and they rode on for a stretch. The other riders had continued east, back toward Boston, and their tracks seemed to be the only ones across the fresh snow from Springfield to the west. They came to the junction with the main highway again. Two men led a team of mules in drawing a flat plow to clear snow from the road, and they followed the plow toward town.

“How about you?” she asked James. “When you see all this empty land waiting to be manured, doesn’t it make you want to settle?”

“You mean what I told Goodman Meyer? No, that was another lie. My allegiance is to the king.”

“And he has no need of men like you in the colonies? You’re not alone in the New World—you already admitted as much.”

“Of course there are others. It’s the only way to counter the French and the Dutch. But, well . . .”

“What?” she pressed.

“There’s the position of chancellor of royal agents to consider.”

“Perchance you could take the position and stay in New England.”

“No, I could not.”

“I see.” She felt disappointed in a way that was hard to identify.

He cleared his throat, turned away from her gaze. “If they’re plowing the road, we must be near Springfield,” he said. “Keep an eye out for a place to get the horses off the road. I’ll be going into town alone.”

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

James entered Springfield on foot, dressed like a Puritan. He wore a felted hat and long stockings gartered to his breeches—all items taken from the burned-out house where they’d left Woory’s carriage and the bodies. He strolled down the middle of the main street as if he had lived there all his life. He kept his head low, his face bundled behind a scarf, touching his hat and greeting people when they looked at him.

Springfield wasn’t a large, bustling city like Boston, but it wasn’t a provincial village, either. A respectable cloud of wood smoke capped the town. Several streets crisscrossed a flat stretch of land on the bluffs overlooking the Connecticut River, packed with houses and shops all shoulder-to-shoulder. There had to be a thousand inhabitants, and that gave James some small measure of anonymity as he scouted the town.

Before entering Springfield, he’d studied and deciphered the coded instructions for how to find his associate, Richard Cooper, but the man’s shop and home were not where his information claimed they would be. Prudence had warned him that Indians had sacked Springfield, but he was unprepared for the din of hammers and saws. Every other lot was a building site, with men raising roofs, masons rebuilding brick chimneys, carts unloading boards. When James got to Cooper’s house, he found it replaced by a lumberyard.

But there were only so many places the man could have relocated, and after about a half hour, he found what must surely be the man’s home. It was two stories, with a high, pitched roof and dormers in the attic. The lower level was a shop, with a flat wooden sign carved in the shape of a barrel and encircled with iron bands, simulating hoops. Two boys came out of the shop rolling oversize barrels, which they then helped their father load into the back of a cart.

As attested by his name, Cooper had come from a long family of artisans before joining the king’s service, and he had settled back into the family trade while he awaited the king’s pleasure. That would come today, whether or not Cooper was ready for it. James entered the shop.

The inside was warm, with a roaring fire in one corner, and smelled of hickory and ash. Piles of staves lay in every corner. Shavings and wood chips covered the floor a quarter inch deep, except near the fire, where they’d been carefully swept clear. Workbenches held barrels, buckets, and piggins in every stage of construction. Metal must be scarce, James noticed, because the hoops were all wood as well. Apparently the only iron hoops to be found were the ones on the sign outside.

A man without a cap, forearms bare, his hands huge and rough, was taking payment from a woman in return for a butter churn. James had worked with the man in France several years earlier, but he might not have recognized his old friend on first glance if he hadn’t been expecting the man. Cooper was older, sturdier, his hair thinner and his nose and ears lumpier. He wore a settled look.

James untied his scarf and removed his hat as the woman passed him with a nod and a look that turned to curiosity as she perhaps realized that he was a stranger.

“What cheer,” Cooper said.

“What cheer indeed,” James said.

Cooper’s eyes held a question about business, a hint of impatience. “Well?”

“Do you have a barrel sturdy enough to ship a man back to London?”

Cooper’s eyebrows lifted. “You! Why, you devil. I had no idea it would be you.”

“You didn’t get the letter? Who were you expecting?”

“What letter? No, I wasn’t expecting anyone. But I heard.” He whistled. “Oh, have I ever.” Cooper turned. “Sarah!”

A pretty woman appeared, about Prudence’s age, perhaps in her midtwenties. A good ten years younger than Cooper, but it was clear from the first glance between the two that she was his wife.

“It’s the man from Boston about the iron,” Cooper said. “Mind the shop, will you? Lang will be in for those pails. Make sure he doesn’t try to short you or take them on credit. That scoundrel still owes me ten shillings.”

Once she was behind the counter and Cooper had led James into the front room of his house, the man turned. “What a heap load of trouble you’ve got yourself in already. I’m surprised you’re even alive.”

“No more trouble than that time you stole that French priest’s sheep and dressed it in a woman’s bodice.”

Cooper grinned, revealing a mouth still full of straight, white teeth. Then he turned suddenly sober and glanced back over his shoulder toward the shop where he’d left his wife. “Different times, my friend. Different times.”

Two young boys, no older than three or four, sat in front of the fire, whittling on the end of broken barrel staves. Cooper scooted them out of the way, insisting that James take off his boots and prop his feet in front of the fire. He fetched a flask of beer and pressed a pipe into James’s hand. With the fire warming his feet, the beer his belly, and the pipe his lungs, James started to thaw for the first time in days.

“So you’re in trouble,” Cooper said, this time more insistently.

“Some trouble,” James admitted. “What have you heard?”

“Riders came through yesterday looking for you. They claim you ran off with some woman in Boston. That her family tried to get her back and you killed a couple of men. Someone said you’d taken up with an Indian and turned highwayman, but I had doubts about that much.”

“Oh, it’s all nonsense. Well, mostly.”

“How about the part about the woman? Not that it matters to me, but you know how these Puritans get.”

“That part is true enough,” James admitted. “Did they say who the woman was?”

“No. Some young widow.”

“Prudence Cotton,” James said.

Cooper’s eyes widened. “The one who lived with the Indians? Reverend Stone’s sister-in-law? That Prudence Cotton?”

“Is there another one?”

“You
are
in trouble, Bailey. Where is she now?”

“Freezing in a barn outside of town,” James said with a twinge of guilty conscience as he compared her circumstances to his own comfort. “I needed to see you alone, first.”

“Make sure I wouldn’t string you up for fornicating, eh?”

“Word had it you’d taken up with the natives. Had to verify your loyalty.”

“I’ve done some taking up, that I admit.” Cooper glanced at his boys with a shrug. “Met a good woman, married her, fathered a couple of children. But don’t worry, I can hold my tongue.”

“And you’re still loyal to the king?”

“Aye, that I am.” Cooper took the pitcher and refilled James’s mug. “But I’m about the only one in these parts who is. These New Englanders consider themselves to be under the laws of God, not king and Parliament. If not for the French up north and those conniving Dutch in New York, they’d be even more restless.”

“That’s the worry of the Crown, and why I’m here.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s time to rein in certain privileges.”

Cooper’s tone turned cautious. “What do you mean, rein them in? You’re not talking about the charters, are you?”

James didn’t speak but raised his eyebrows slightly.

“You don’t say. That’s bound to get ugly.” Cooper sat down and lit his own pipe. “Although it sounds like it’s ugly enough already. This thing with Prudence Cotton will see your neck in a noose if you’re not careful.”

“Forget about Prudence—I haven’t laid a finger on her, and I won’t. She’s desperate for answers about her husband, and what happened at Crow Hollow at the end of the war.”

He didn’t mention the part about her daughter, Mary, still being alive. That would sound outlandish.

“Aye, Sir Benjamin. Another king’s man who took up with the local folk. It’s an easy trap to fall into.”

“Are you suggesting that Sir Benjamin betrayed his loyalty to the Crown?” James asked.

“Not at all. But his eye was on the Dutch and French, not good English folk. He operated openly as the king’s representative, but there was no talk of challenging New England’s privileges. They’d have turned on him if he had.”

“And if the king had called on his services to do just that?”

Cooper shrugged. “He would have answered the summons, I suppose. ’Twouldn’t have been easy. You live here a spell and you find your sympathies shifting. Especially if you fall into the company of a good woman.”

“I can well imagine.”

Cooper fixed James with a sharp look. “You’re sure there’s nothing going on with the widow? Sir Benjamin found her enticing enough.”

“Certain,” he said firmly. “I’m going back to London as soon as this is settled.”

Cooper raised an eyebrow and took a puff from his pipe. “So you say.”

“There’s a position open as the king’s chancellor, and I mean to take it. That means no entanglements.”

“Ah, yes. Ambition. Well, then. I will believe that.” Another puff. “Tell me how you find yourself in this predicament.”

James explained most of what had befallen him since he’d arrived in Boston, from his rude reception by Samuel Knapp, to the way Peter had disrupted services and his trial, as it were, at the hands of Stone, Fitz-Simmons, and Knapp. Then, Peter’s ugly death on the highway, followed by James and Prudence’s flight across Massachusetts.

He did leave out a few things. How he’d nearly bedded Lucy Branch. The name of the family who’d hidden James and Prudence in their barn, then lied to the riders. That Prudence thought her daughter was still alive. This last bit not so much because he didn’t trust his old companion, but because he didn’t want to raise more suspicions about his involvement. It was not, James told himself, personal.

“Are you sure someone was poisoning the Indian?” Cooper asked. “And under the reverend’s roof too? That’s a devil of an accusation.”

“Peter Church recovered as soon as he stopped eating their food. Then the highwaymen murdered him on the road anyway. Peter was unarmed and no kind of physical threat.”

“Hmm.”

“Any speculation about motives?” James asked.

“My first thought was revenge. Quakers are banished from Massachusetts, and this one provoked a violent outburst. But that’s no motive for murder. No, I suspect they’re hiding something from you in Winton, something that only the natives know. And this Church fellow spoke Nipmuk, right?”

“Very good,” James said, impressed. “It took me two days to puzzle that out.”

Cooper gave a shrug, as if it were nothing, but didn’t quite scrub the satisfaction from his face. “Easy enough to do here in front of the fire with a good pipe in my hand. I wasn’t facing murderers on the highway.”

“That touches on the central mystery of this matter,” James said. “Why did the Indians attack Winton, when they had pledged eternal amity?”

“The devil put it to them, I should say.”

“I do not believe that, and neither do you.” James considered further. “Who might have administered the poison to Peter Church?”

“I can’t see any of them doing it. Reverend Stone is a good fellow—at least by reputation—and Widow Cotton’s sister . . .” He shook his head. “You and I both know a woman can be as ruthless as a man, but her own sister?”

“Prudence says no. She’s adamant.” James shrugged. “What about the attackers on the road? The deputy governor, perchance? He has the means—he could raise the men.”

“I don’t know much about William Fitz-Simmons, but I can’t see a motive.”

“New England sovereignty. I’m a threat.”

“How is murdering government agents going to help him with that?” Cooper asked. “No, I would expect him to cooperate, to confuse and lie if there’s something to be hidden about Sir Benjamin’s death. But he’s a political sort, and this is a political matter. Murder is too blunt an instrument.”

“I’m not convinced,” James said. “Anyway, what about Captain Knapp?”

“Knapp, yes. He’s a brutal sort—proved it in the war. If he were implicated in Sir Benjamin’s death, he might kill for that. That might explain the attack on the highway, but what about the poison?”

James shook his head. “Knapp had no access to the Stone kitchen that I can see. No way to poison Peter Church. What’s more, how did he catch us so quickly on the highway? Someone must have told him. Someone living with the Stones.”

“So we’re back to the reverend and his wife,” Cooper said. “Only that’s impossible.”

Two girls came down the stairs holding their primers and slate boards, which they carried to the table on the opposite side of the room. The girls were older than the two whittling boys, maybe eight and ten years old. And yet Cooper had only been in the country six years.

When he turned, Cooper was studying him. “Prudence Cotton wasn’t the only war widow,” he said. “My own Sarah was among them.”

The girls stared at James with naked curiosity before their father urged them to take up their books instead of gawking. One of the girls, James was surprised to see, had dark, shiny hair, thick and straight. Skin the color of hickory. A sharp nose and prominent cheekbones. The only other person James had seen who looked like that was Peter Church. This girl looked similar enough to have been his daughter.

Cooper lowered his voice. “There were plenty of orphans too, and not all of them our own.”

“I don’t understand.”

The man’s tone turned defensive, even as he lowered his voice further, to a near whisper. “She is a Christian soul. I won’t have you speaking ill.”

“I mean no ill,” James said quickly. “But her people . . . what of them? Was there no relative to take her in?”

“Ah. So far as we can tell, she had none. Living, that is. We’re Abigail’s people now.”

“Abigail? That’s her name?”

“Her name was Quipamian . . . something or other. We couldn’t very well call her that. What is that expression on your face? What are you thinking?”

“There is no expression,” James said, not entirely truthfully.

“Abigail even speaks English—she picked it up quickly. Not even an accent. You know how children learn. She’ll be one of us, and I’ll love her like any of my other children.”

“Of course you will.”

A week ago James might have accepted all of this without a second thought. But almost at once he thought of little Mary Cotton. If Prudence was right, and her daughter was still alive, Mary would be speaking Nipmuk fluently by now, being raised to think of herself as one of them. Maybe they’d even given her a Nipmuk name. The thought was confusing, unsettling in a way that was hard to define.