Crow Hollow (14 page)

The two men took their chairs closer to the fire, where they could converse without the children overhearing.

“I need to fetch Prudence from the barn and bring her somewhere warm,” James said. “Can your wife be trusted?”

“No,” Cooper said. “I mean, yes, she’s very trustworthy. But she’s also devout and loyal to the colony. If she finds out that you’re the instigator of this trouble, and that you’re traveling with an unmarried woman . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Understood.”

“If you’re right about Samuel Knapp, Springfield isn’t safe. Two of Knapp’s brothers live here. One is a selectman, and the other postmaster. Plus at least forty men who served with him in the militia.”

“Postmaster, you say?” James asked. That gave him an idea. “Have you ink and paper? I have a letter I’d like to post to the colonial government of Virginia.”

Cooper raised an eyebrow but fetched the paper. When James had written and sealed the letter, he handed it over. “It’s time to get back on the road, but first I want you to get this letter to the postmaster.”

Cooper nodded. “Before you leave, let me fetch you provisions. It’s the least I can do.”

“You’ll do a lot more than that,” James said. “You’re coming with me to Winton.”

Cooper blinked. “I can’t do that. I’ve got a shop to run, a family.”

“And an oath to serve King Charles. Your business and family are what you do while awaiting the king’s pleasure. I am calling on you now to fulfill your duties.”

“Lower your voice. My children—”

“Will you do your duty? Or have your sympathies shifted, as you put it?”

“Bailey, please. I’m old now, soft. What would it help you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” James said with a touch of sarcasm. “An extra hand to wield a musket or a sword. A witness if they try to kill me. Complications if they try to kill you too. Who could possibly see any aid in that?”

“If they kill me I’ll leave a widow twice over, and four orphans.”

James was growing irritated. “We’re not sending you twenty pounds a year to make barrels and sire a bushel of squalling whelps.”

“Damn you, Bailey. That was low.”

“Do your duty, man.”

Cooper looked like he would keep arguing, but gradually a look of resignation passed over his face. “Very well,” he said. “Where is this barn where you’ve got the woman and the horses?”

James told him.

Cooper nodded. “Go back and wait while I post the letter. Then I’ll pack a few things for our journey. Tell my wife a quick lie, heaven forgive me, and meet you on the road.”

“I’m not leaving yet. Not until I’m sure.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“In all good faith? No, I do not.”

Cooper stared at him, his jaw clenching. “Very well. Come with me.”

They passed the girls as they left the house to enter the shop. Cooper bent and kissed them each on their foreheads. The girls squirmed and grimaced, but they clearly loved the attention.

“Papa will be taking a short trip to Boston. Be of good cheer and lend a hand to your mother in the shop while I’m away. And make sure your brothers don’t get into mischief.”

When the men entered, there were no customers in the shop and Sarah Cooper was sweeping the floor with a birch broom, its ends slivered and lashed down. She hummed to herself as she worked, bending to brush shavings into a pan and then feed them to the fire. The fire blazed and crackled.

When she spotted her husband, she brightened and gave him a playful smile. “Bless me, but this is a fire risk. One stray spark, dear husband. One stray spark.”

“Pray, pardon me, Goody Cooper,” her husband said. “If I cleaned up, you would have no reason to bend over and collect the sweepings. And then I should have no excuse to admire your bottom.”

Sarah blushed furiously but looked delighted as Cooper took her in his arms. He nibbled at her neck, and she giggled and playfully pushed him away.

“What will your guest say? Bless me!”

“Why do you think I’m doing it? Goodman Bailey needs to see the benefits of marriage so he will do his duty and help settle this country.”

It was the sort of playful banter that James normally enjoyed, but there was something about the tableau that made him twinge. The girls in the next room with their slates and primers, the wife with a healthy color and good cheer. They held obvious affection for their father and husband. James was about to snatch the man away and put his life in danger.

Cooper made up a story about needing to secure a shipment of iron goods waiting on the docks at Boston Harbor. He didn’t have the ready money, but the shipment was worth a sizable sum and the Dutch merchant would only take silver and not credit. Cooper needed to collect some debts, and that meant traveling to Boston himself.

James’s sorrow grew as Cooper told his tale with convincing detail, and his wife accepted his coming absence without complaint. At first James thought his melancholy was because of the great risk he was putting the family in. Who was to say that Cooper wouldn’t end up like Peter Church, only leaving a widow and orphans behind?

But it was more than that. It was a wistfulness for the love this good, simple woman had for her husband. And he for her. James could see it; this was no trifle for Richard Cooper. He kissed her gently on the cheek and held her a moment too long with his eyes closed.

At that moment James felt as though he had never truly loved anyone the way these two loved each other, had never been loved.

You chose your life
, he told himself.
It wasn’t pressed upon you.

Outside in the street, Cooper shut the door behind them. “Go on, then. I’ll need time to gather some things for the road. Keep two of the horses saddled. I’ll bring my own and dispose of the rest.”

It took effort for James to harden his heart. The temptation was too great, and the stakes too dear, for him to be soft on the man and let him return to his family and trade. And he needed Cooper to know the deadly seriousness of his intentions.

“I’ll wait, but so help me, if you don’t show up, my last act on these shores will be to tell every gossip in New England that you’re a no-good spy.”

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

James expected Richard Cooper to be a grudging companion if he showed up at all, but the man had regained some of his earlier cheer by the time he arrived at the barn outside of town. He climbed down from his horse, handed James a coin purse, and bowed extravagantly.

“Your treasure, m’lord,” he said with an ironic flourish.

“What’s this?”

“I sold Woory’s horses to a shifty fellow I know. At a steep discount, since the beasts were sight unseen, but he didn’t ask questions.”

“That’s the point of shifty fellows,” James said and tucked the money into a pocket in his cape. He felt guilty that he’d mistrusted his old friend. “Every man should have one at hand.”

“And I suppose now I’m yours.” Cooper raised his eyebrows. “That’s a reversal from France, isn’t it? I truly have gone soft.”

Prudence had looked worried since the mention of selling Woory’s horses, so James assured her that when they returned to Boston he’d dispose of the money properly. But their new companion was right, there was no sense in abandoning the horses—not to mention the suspicion that would have aroused when someone discovered them in the barn.

Cooper told them of a road leading out by the ice pond that would get them around Springfield and onto the road to Winton, so they set off in that direction.

Prudence and Cooper had apparently never met before, and she seemed disconcerted by his friendly familiarity as he asked her about Boston, about the Nipmuk, even about Crow Hollow.

After the fifth or so probing remark, James said, “Let be with the interrogation. You sound like the Papist inquisition.”

He blinked. “Pray, pardon me, Widow Cotton.”

“It’s no bother, Master Cooper,” Prudence said. “It’s my narrative, I understand.” She turned to James. “When I meet people, they seem to feel as if they know me already. They know me from my narrative, you see.”

James understood well enough. There was an intimacy in her account, and he’d felt the same way when he first met her. “Be that as it may, it must be a bother.”

“Aye, that it is. And also a sound lesson in the pitfalls of vanity, and a reminder to be humble before God and man.”

They passed the pond, where men were at work on the ice. They sawed out great blocks, hooked them with enormous tongs to lift them clear, then loaded them onto sleds to be carted back into town. The ice would be covered in sawdust and stored in ice houses to be used through the warmer months of the year.

The three riders swung back around to the highway shortly thereafter, having bypassed Springfield. The road traveled next to the Connecticut River, which cut a wild, vigorous passage through the forests and hills. Later, rocks forced the road away from its banks.

Here the fields thinned before disappearing entirely. James had thought the landscape west of Boston savage enough, but this forest was deeper, more intimidating still. No ax had ever touched these woods. The trunks of the largest oak and maple were so great that two men could not have encircled them with their arms outstretched. The road narrowed at places until a heavily laden cart would have struggled to pass.

And James spotted animals too: several deer, a fox, some sort of weaselly creature that blended into the snow except for its black nose, and a pair of curious furry animals who looked like they were wearing masks and walked with a distinctive waddle. Prudence called them raccoons.

Later, they entered hills where stands of towering pines reached into the leaden sky. Each tree would have made a fine mainmast for the flagship in His Majesty’s fleet. Cooper warned James not to leave the road. The snow wells that had formed around the bases of the pines were six feet deep and could swallow a horse to its withers.

“My husband bought land near here,” Prudence said when they came down into a valley again. “Two hundred acres. He wanted to settle with some other families. See that stream going down to the river? That’s where he intended to build a mill. That cascade was going to become the millrace.”

“Seems like a fine bit of land,” Cooper said.

“Then the war broke out.”

“Do you still own the land?” James asked.

“I couldn’t say,” she replied with a frown. “My brother-in-law settled Benjamin’s estate. He holds the proceeds for me in trust.”

Given more time, James would have liked to see those documents of trust and find out exactly what the reverend was doing with Prudence’s money.

Stone was quite prosperous, and Puritans paid their ministers well. Still, even a man of God could be tempted by the unguarded wealth of a young widow. Perhaps he was helping himself to funds, justifying it as the price for Prudence’s upkeep.

Perhaps. But proving it would be hard, and in any event, was that sufficient motive for murder? And if Stone were a murderer, why not kill Prudence herself and let the money fall into his wife’s hands as Prudence’s sister and heir?

The shadows were growing long when Cooper told them to wait while he rode ahead with some of James’s money to secure lodging.

James jumped down to stretch his legs. He tried to help Prudence down, but she declined.

“My feet ache. I’d rather not.”

“How so? We’ve been riding all day.”

“From the cold, James, not walking.”

He didn’t like this, and he remembered how he’d left her in the cold barn while he’d toasted his feet by Cooper’s fire.

“Let me take a look,” he said and pulled at one of her boots.

“I can feel them, they’re not frostbit. They hurt is all.”

Still, he persisted. She winced when he got the boot off and then gasped as he peeled back the sock to look. Her toes were a rosy red, with an almost blistered appearance. His hands were hardly warm, but her feet still felt chill when he took hold of them.

“You’ve got chilblains. We need to get you inside and soaking these feet.”

She peered down with a worried look, but he was already putting her sock back on. It didn’t help that her socks were damp, either. He couldn’t decide if rubbing her feet would help, or simply cause her more pain, so he laced up her boot without doing anything.

James looked down the road. “Where is that devil, anyway?”

“Why didn’t we all go together? Doesn’t Goodman Cooper trust this man already?”

“He’s undoubtedly another of Cooper’s shifty fellows. And no, you never trust a shifty fellow.”

“I don’t know many shifty fellows,” she said. “Only you, James.” Her voice was perfectly innocent.

“Hah. Well, I’m sure it will be fine. These men have their loyalties, if you know what I mean.”

“The god of mammon.”

“Exactly.”

Cooper was grinning when he came back. “We have the house, and we have it to ourselves. I paid the man to ride back to Springfield and stay with his brother for the night.”

“Will he be passing this way?” James asked.

“Aye, as soon as he can saddle up a horse. Best keep your heads down, the both of you.”

James pulled his cap low and his hood up as the horses continued up the road. Prudence did the same. It seemed a bigger risk for her, given how well she was known in these parts, but he wasn’t sure it mattered anyway. It all came down to how trustworthy Cooper’s man was. Almost by definition, not very.

A chestnut horse came trotting down the snowy road minutes later. Neither side offered a greeting as they approached, but James couldn’t help but glance over as the man passed. The man met his gaze. He looked like the sort of weasel James had expected, with too-narrow eyes, a large forehead, and hair pulled back and greasy. Dirty hands, an underfed horse. Breeches threadbare at the knees and worn boots in the stirrups. He disappeared to their rear.

“I hope the bedding is free of vermin,” James said, imagining what sort of house a man like that would live in. Filled with fleas and lice, no doubt.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Cooper said. “And I’d check the meat for maggots too.”

“I knew that man in Winton,” Prudence said with a glance over her shoulder. “Goodman Burrows, though there’s nothing good about him.”

“You were supposed to be keeping your head down,” James said.

“As were you.”

He grinned at this.

“Burrows was accused of witchcraft,” Prudence continued. “A child saw him dancing naked in the forest with three imps, holding a black mass. His defense was that he’d been in Boston at the time. Three men signed an affidavit testifying they’d had supper with him on the night in question.”

“You’ll have to admit that sounds like compelling evidence,” James said.

“Except that the morning following the night in question, two other people had spotted cloven hoofprints in the snow,” she said.

“A stray goat.”

“Walking across the roofs of town?” She shook her head. “That could have only been the devil or one of his imps.”

What nonsense. James grunted his disbelief.

“The only thing in New England more dangerous than practicing witchcraft,” Cooper offered drily, “is disbelieving in witchcraft.”

“I don’t disbelieve in witchcraft,” James said. “Of course the devil is abroad in the land, and he’s looking for recruits. No right thinking man would claim otherwise.”

The others seemed satisfied with this answer.

Nevertheless, it did seem curious that witchcraft accusations would sweep through an area, leading to mass denunciations, a trail of beatings, censure, and sometimes even hanging of the accused, only to have people retract some weeks or years later. Anyway, James had learned through hard lessons in His Majesty’s service that most explanations were natural, not spiritual. But there would be no convincing these two.

They rounded the corner. A rude log cabin sat against the highway, surrounded by a small clearing of several acres on flat, rocky ground. The barn wasn’t much bigger than the outdoor privy. A sluggish, desultory trickle of smoke leaked from the chimney of the house itself.

“There it is,” Cooper said. “Word has it that Burrows lived here through the war. Yet look at the house. Right on the road, but never burned, never looted. And not one greasy hair harmed on the man’s head. It’s hard to imagine how that would happen unless Burrows was in league with those devils.”

“The Indians may be heathens,” Prudence said. “But I never did see them consorting with Satan.”

Cooper offered a shrug. “The good news for us is that no other Godly company will have anything to do with the man. That makes him easily bribed.”

Perhaps too easily, James thought, as they dismounted to check out the house. Even now this Burrows was hurrying to Springfield, where there were men who would pay handsomely for word of three strangers on the road.