Crow Hollow (6 page)

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

Later that afternoon, Prudence couldn’t help but glance at the thick, blown-glass windows as the shadows lengthened outside. Almost dusk. No sign of the two strangers from England. Not for hours.

The days had drawn short with the coming of late December, and it was only a few hours after the lighter midday meal when the women of the Stone household began preparing for supper. Children lit tallow candles and tended the fire while Prudence and Anne slid loaves of bread into the oven, together with a pair of large corn puddings to bake.

Reverend Stone sat at the table, penning letters to the ministers of congregations in Gloucester, Plymouth, and Roxbury. He looked up only to dip his quill or to blow on his hands and flex his fingers.

Anne and Prudence went to the pantry to fetch the Dutch oven. The two servant girls were chopping turnips to add to the two whole chickens, plus peas, carrots, and onions to cook in the broth.

“Will Master James be at supper?” Lucy asked.

Anne gave her a sharp look. “Don’t you worry. I’m sure
both
men will sup with us.”

“I meant the Indian too,” Lucy said quickly with a glance at her sister. Alice covered her mouth and turned away, as if suppressing a laugh.

“Are they out?” Prudence asked innocently as she helped Anne carry the Dutch oven into the front room, each woman gripping one of the iron handles. “I thought maybe they were upstairs, resting.”

“You know good and well that they’re out. I’ve seen you watching the door, looking out the window when you think I’m not paying attention.”

Prudence glanced at the reverend, but the man didn’t look up from his work. His brow furrowed and he touched at his forehead with an ink-stained hand, leaving smudges. Then the words seemed to come to him; he brightened and went back to forming his smooth, even letters, lips moving.

Prudence used the iron shovel to clear a space in the hearth. With tongs, the women eased the oven in and shoveled coals over the top. Anne made a notch on a candle to mark the time when she’d need to check the oven.

“What do you suppose they’re doing, anyway?” Prudence asked.

“Vexing the good folk of Boston, no doubt.”

“On the Sabbath?”

“It’s the devil’s work they’re about, and make no mistake.”

Was Anne right? Or was James even now in the Common, waiting to meet her? It was dusk already. Much longer and it would be too late.

Old John Porter came into the front room and made a show of looking at the wood box. It was still half full, but bringing firewood in from the shed out back was one of the few things the deaf old fellow could still do—his hands were too unsteady even to split kindling anymore—so he grabbed his cloak from its hook and made for the back door.

Prudence touched his shoulder to get his attention. “It’s icy out there. Let me help you.”

A smile brightened his aged face. She put on her cloak, and she took his elbow when they reached the wooden stairs out back, which were slick with ice.

When they came to the woodshed, she loaded his arms with split logs from the older, dry pile.

“I’m a grown woman. I kept my own household before Benjamin died.”

Old John turned. “Eh, what?”

Now was the time, but she hesitated, torn with guilt. “I don’t need anyone’s permission to come and go. Let Anne scold me when I return—what does it matter to me?”

He cupped a hand at his ear. “Speak up, child. These old baskets don’t gather like they used to.”

She only smiled at him, then helped him back up the stairs without bothering to gather wood herself. When he was inside, she pulled the door shut and walked quickly around the side of the house to the lane.

Her clogs clacked on the cobbles as she hurried up the lane, and she shortly regretted not having put on her good boots. It was at least a mile to the Common; her feet would be sore and cold by the time she arrived. But boots would have looked suspicious. Already she could picture Anne’s disappointed expression, see the judgment in the minister’s eyes.

“Let it be,” she said aloud.

How easy to falter, to doubt. It was like a blemish in the skin, and picking at it would only make it bleed, and then there would be a pock. Enough guilt and you could cover yourself with scars and blemishes. Her husband had told her that once, when she’d been worrying over some piece of gossip she’d idly passed along, and the more she’d thought about it since, the more true it seemed.

Sir Benjamin had been a nominal Puritan—perhaps not a true dissenter, but no friend of the Papist trappings of the Anglican Church, either. He was twenty-seven years old and handsome when he died. He owned a share in a small merchant fleet trading in furs from New England and sugar from the Indies. A fine house in Boston and six hundred acres of rich land in Winton, plus more land outside Springfield. By all accounts, a good husband.

But in the two short years of their marriage, Prudence had not been a very good wife, she now realized. Instead, she found fault with his lax ways and too often tried to correct him, attempting to make him as devout as her own father.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Benjamin had thawed her, little by little, but more so, the birth of her daughter taught Prudence that not all things could be planned. You couldn’t perfect another, make him or her free from error. You couldn’t even do the same to yourself. And God, she was convinced, didn’t expect it.

Her blood was pumping, her heart pounding by the time she reached the top of the hill to High Street. The movement warmed her, inside and out. She’d shed her guilt and was now filled only with purpose.

Beacon Hill rose to her right, filled with a growing number of houses clustered around narrow streets. To her left, Fort Field, and the Great Cove below it, crowded with swaying ships. More houses lined High Street, but they thinned as she continued west toward the Common. She was high enough to see the Neck and the town gate, a couple of miles distant through the gloom.

A bell chimed and lanterns moved along the gate as it swung shut. Within the past two years the gate had been fortified with iron bars and a watchtower of cut stone. During the low point of the war, there had been talk of the entire population of the Bay Colony taking refuge on the peninsula until the militias could put down the Indian insurrection. An incident over guns and the death of a Praying Indian had led to war between Plymouth and King Philip of the Wampanoag, and then the conflict had quickly spread from tribe to tribe, colony to colony, until all of New England was in flames. Only by the grace of God had the English been preserved in this land.

Prudence soon reached the Common, which stretched from High Street toward the bay on the north side. It was a flat plain, studded with the rotting stumps of trees, still standing as mute witness to the forest cut down more than forty years earlier. Given the lateness of the season, the Common lay empty of animals, save for a lone hog, a big boar rooting in the snow along the rail fence. It came grunting toward her when she approached.

“Get along, you filthy thing, or I’ll call the hog reeve and you’ll end up in someone’s pot.” She kicked at it until it went away.

The last light was fading, and the moon wasn’t up yet. Lights twinkled from the town at her rear, and, more faintly, from Cambridge and Charlestown, north across the mouth of the Charles River, which twisted like an inky ribbon as it thrust westward into the interior. There wasn’t enough light to see clearly across the Common, but perhaps James was crouched at one of the stumps, waiting.

She watched for the pig, then climbed the fence and trudged through the snow. It was only an inch deep, but a fair bit ended up inside her shoes, melting through her woolen stockings. The wind pulled her hair from her head rail and whipped it around her face.

“Is anyone there?” she called. “Hello?”

She inspected the stumps one by one. Nothing. She’d almost crossed the field to the farmhouses on the opposite side when the clop of hooves reached her ears. A team of four horses came down High Street from the direction of town. They pulled a coach that jerked and bounced as it hit the frozen ruts in the mud surface. A driver sat on the perch, flicking a whip to drive them on. Two lanterns hung on long poles over the team. Their flames cast flickering cones of light that cut the gloom ahead.

Prudence’s first thought was to duck behind a stump and hide. By now they would be looking for her back at the house and probably organizing a search. But that would bring people on foot or horse, not a coach. This was someone hurrying to the gates to leave Boston at dark. Who had reason to sneak out? Who would break the Sabbath to hire a team?

James and Peter. It must be. But why?

Prudence sprang to her feet and ran across the snowy pasture to intercept the coach before it passed the Common. She scrambled over the rail fence and came into the road waving her arms as it approached.

The horses were snorting, pulling already, nervous at being out in such poor light. When they saw her emerging from the darkness, they reared and snorted. The driver cursed and cracked his whip. He hadn’t yet spotted her. In a moment they’d be past.

“Over here!”

“What the devil?” The man jerked back on the reins, dropped the whip, and fumbled in his cloak to remove a pistol, which he lowered when she came into the circle of lantern light.

“What is it, man?” a voice called from inside the coach. It sounded like James.

“A lady.” Then, to Prudence: “Out of the way, good woman. We’re in a hurry.” He groped around for his whip, but by the time he found it, tangled in the horses’ harness, she’d stepped in front of the coach to block it.

“Master Bailey!” she cried. “Where are you going?”

The coach door swung open and he leaned out. “You! What are you doing here?”

“You told me to come!”

“Oh. Well, you said no, so I supposed that . . . Anyway, matters have changed. Out of the way.”

“You’re leaving Boston, aren’t you? You’re going to Winton! You . . . you
lied
to me.”

“Oh, by all the saints—of course I did. Don’t you want me to find out who killed Sir Benjamin?”

“I know who killed my husband. I want you to find my daughter.”

“Not my business. Now clear off.”

“Is Peter with you?”

“Driver, move! Throw her from the road if you must.”

The driver lifted his whip to drive the horses forward, but before James could pull the door shut, a bell clanked from the direction of the town. Dogs barked. A man’s shout carried through the air, then swept away in the wind.

James leaned out and craned back toward the town. “Damn. How did they know?”

“As I warned thee,” Peter’s voice spoke from the darkened interior.

The driver cupped a hand to his ear. “’Tisn’t the general alarm.”

The man was so bundled in cloaks and scarves that she hadn’t recognized him, but she knew his gravelly voice. It was Robert Woory, an unmarried man who kept stables in the North End and ran an overland transport service to Gloucester and Plymouth. His custom had been devastated by the war with King Philip, which explained why he’d break the Sabbath to carry James and Peter out of town.

“Well if not that,” James said, “then what—”

“It’s the
initial
alarm,” Prudence cut in. “Soon they’ll have twenty armed men on horse. Then they’ll sound the general alarm.”

Woory grunted. “Eh? What is that you’re saying?”

What it was was a lie of the worst kind, and she burned with shame to utter it. But James had started it, lying to her first. And she was desperate.

Before Woory could overturn her story, she rushed around to the coach door and blocked James from closing it. “Take me with you. I know a side road through Cambridge that will get you off the highway. I’ll show you.”

“What kind of road is that?” Woory said, thankfully put off the subject of the bells for the moment. “Never heard of it.”

“And I can get you through the gates.” She didn’t speak to Woory, but directly to James. “But you must hurry.”

James grabbed her wrist and pulled her up to the coach. He stared hard into her eyes, and she thought he’d throw her aside, calling her a liar and a wretch. Instead, he nodded.

“Get in.”

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

James checked the load on his flintlock pistols as the coach approached the gates. He was almost, but not quite, certain the widow was lying to him about the bells raising the general alarm. But if she had told the truth, he might have to blast his way out. The men at the gates would have heard the alarm as well and would react appropriately.

Woory slowed the coach. James tucked his pistols into his breeches and got out the king’s commission. He wished Fitz-Simmons had not forced him to break the seal. It had carried more weight sealed and full of mystery.

“Tell them—” Prudence began.

“Quiet, you. I have the king’s commission.”

“Art thou too proud to listen to a woman?” Peter asked.

It was too dark to see the Indian’s face, but he sounded weaker. He’d stumbled earlier getting into the coach, and when James had steadied him, Peter’s hand had been damp and clammy. Sweat steamed on his forehead. He was now wrapped in two blankets but was still shivering and cold, compared to Prudence’s warmth.

“Tell them you received a signal from Charlestown across the bay,” Prudence said. “They sometimes flash messages when they need help. Then show them the commission and refuse to provide details, except to say that Charlestown needs you.”

Outside, the men at the gates shouted an aggressive challenge to the driver. Woory shouted back, told them his master would be out shortly.

“That’s a clever lie,” James told Prudence.

“May the Lord forgive me.”

“I didn’t mean it as an insult. It’s a compliment.”

“That makes me feel even more wretched,” she said.

He allowed a smile at her labored innocence. The lie had come easily to her lips, as had the one that got her into the coach in the first place. He was more certain now that she’d attempted to deceive him.

James got out, not so anxious about drawing his pistols as he had been. And a good thing too. The men in the squat tower held out a pole from the window with a lamp on the end so they could get a better look at him, but otherwise they stayed well protected behind their stone wall. One of them had a musket, which he aimed down at James. There would be no winning a shootout with these two.

So he followed Prudence’s advice. When they asked exactly what kind of signal he’d received, he refused to answer but held up the king’s commission and said he needed to get to Charlestown. They had apparently heard of him already and didn’t come down to inspect it. He put it away.

“Why not send a boat across?” one of the men asked. “You’d get there in half the time.”

“In this wind? I tried to hire a boat, but nobody would risk the swells at this hour, and on the Sabbath too.”

“Goodman Woory, is this true?”

“I know nothing but what this man tells me,” Woory said with a grunt. “’Tis the king’s emergency, he says, and I seen his papers. Couldn’t very well blame the wind and waves to keep me indoors. Heaven knows I don’t care to ride on the Sabbath, but what choice did I have?”

Woory had balked, it was true, but only until James shoveled silver into his paw. Then he was off to the stables like a hound after a rabbit.

It went back and forth with more pointless arguing, but neither of the guards took notice of the occasional clanking still to be heard in the direction of the town. James wouldn’t be able to relax until they got well clear of Boston, but he no longer expected to be shot down.

At last the guards came down to unlock and open the gates. The moment they were open, James hopped back inside, and Woory had the horses moving down the darkened highway. The gates closed behind them, severing the last light of town, and soon they were clomping across the Neck, then onto the mainland by what little light was cast by the lanterns. Inside, James dropped the curtain for warmth, plunging them into darkness.

“Now, where did a Godly woman such as yourself learn to lie so prettily?” James said to Prudence.

“Pray don’t remind me,” she said. “I know it was wrong to deceive those men.”

“I’m talking about the lie you told to get yourself onto the coach.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been lied to in Paris and London. Faced French spies and assassins sent by the Vatican. Did you think a devout Puritan from Boston could deceive me so easily?” When she didn’t answer, he added, “Those bells weren’t for me, they were for you. I’ll wager you ran off, didn’t you?”

“I had no choice.” She took a deep breath. “Pray, pardon me. You’re angry, aren’t you?”

“Not at all. I’m delighted. I thought I’d be traveling all night with this dour Quaker. Now I’ve got a beautiful, charming woman, instead.”

“If I thought you were serious, I would be highly offended.”

He laughed. The situation was delightful, or would be, if not for the increased danger he’d put himself in.

The coach hit a rock and would have thrown them from their seats if they hadn’t been packed in so tightly. Peter let out a small groan as he resettled himself.

“Are you all right, Master Church?” Prudence asked.

“Call me ‘friend,’ please. And lying is never right. Let thy language be plain, thy words unadorned and without deception.”

“No, he’s not all right,” James said. “He’s very ill.”

“Then why did you take him out?”

“To save his life. Someone is trying to kill him. Maybe me too.”

“But aren’t we in danger breathing his bad air?” She stopped. “Wait, what do you mean?”

“He was fine until we got to Boston. Suddenly, he’s taken ill? I asked in town this evening. There’s no fever in Boston at the moment, no plague or pox.”

“Maybe he picked it up on the ship and it’s only manifesting itself now.”

“No. We lost several souls on the journey, but nobody for weeks.”

“But he’s an Indian,” she protested. “You know how they suffer our ailments.”

“Ten years in England without so much as a cough, isn’t that right, Peter?”

Peter groaned.

“There were two others with him, a Pequot and a Narragansett,” James continued. “They both died in England. But not Peter. He even survived the miasma of London. Then the crossing. Still nothing. So now, we arrive under the Stone roof and twenty-four hours later he’s dying.”

“Oh, please. Don’t say that. I couldn’t bear it.”

Prudence fumbled in the dark and a moment later had her cloak off, which she reached over James to wrap around Peter, who slumped against the door on the opposite side of the coach.

Now she was shivering too. James opened his overcoat and offered to share it with her.

“No, no, I couldn’t. That’s not proper.”

“As you wish.”

“But how will getting him out of Boston save him? If he took bad airs under our roof, it’s in him now. He’ll either fight it off or die.”

“He didn’t take any bad airs. He’s been poisoned.”

Prudence stiffened. When she spoke, it was in a low, chilly voice. “You are mistaken, sir.”

“Give it some thought, you’ll see.”

“No, it’s impossible.”

She fell silent after that, resisting James’s attempts to draw her out. So much for his hopes of improved company.

Peter slipped into a delirious sleep, where he muttered in what must be his native tongue. Once, he said something and Prudence drew in her breath, and James realized that she understood at least some of what the Indian was saying. He wondered how much she’d picked up in her captivity.

They continued in silence for a good stretch, the coach rattling down the bone-shaking road, a little faster than a man could walk. James tucked his head against his shoulder and tried to sleep. A few minutes later, Prudence slumped against him. She was icy cold and didn’t resist this time when he shared his overcoat with her, making sure not to touch her more than necessary. Silly woman, he should let her freeze if she was that offended by the contact.

It was after midnight when Woory banged on the door and told James to come out. The coach was stopped, the horses stood blowing and snorting. Woory said they’d hit a deep rut while going up a hill and become stuck. He’d already tried to push, but without success.

“Can’t scarcely believe you slept through it,” Woory grumbled.

James climbed over Prudence, who groaned and shifted as she came awake. He closed the door behind him. Outside it was brittle cold of the kind where every breath stole heat from his lungs. The forest rose dark and forbidding on either side.

He eyed the coach by the light of the moon. Didn’t look too bad. If they hadn’t been going uphill, he doubted they’d have even got stuck.

“I didn’t even realize we’d stopped.”

“What about them wolves?” Woory asked.

“Wolves?”

“About an hour back, they paced us for a stretch. Bloody vermin—I thought you’d be checking your powder.”

James was alarmed. “No, sorry.”

“No sign of them now, but you never can tell. Let’s get her moving again.”

James pushed from the rear, while Woory pulled up front and slapped at the haunches of the four horses. The wheels rocked back and forth in the ruts but didn’t come loose. Moments later, Prudence came out, yawning and stretching. James gave her his overcoat.

Woory had them untie the trunk from the back and put it in the road, then he opened the coach door. “Get out, you. You’re weighing us down.”

“Leave him be,” James said. “He’s deathly ill.”

Then, to his surprise, Peter came out, still bundled in blankets and with Prudence’s cloak wrapped around his shoulders. He leaned against the side of the coach.

“I feel improved. I think it’s passing.”

“Really? Wonderful.” James gave Prudence a sharp look. “Well? What do you think now? If he wasn’t poisoned, why is he improving so quickly?”

She turned away.

Peter staggered off the road to take a piss, but James didn’t want him pushing anyway. Together, the burden lighter, the three others rocked and heaved until they got the coach clear of the rut. Woory led the team ahead ten or twenty yards until he found an even stretch where the horses could get a good run at it. Then they loaded up the coach again and a few minutes later were off.

Again they traveled in silence for a spell, but while Peter slipped back into sleep, Prudence stayed upright. James could almost feel her thinking.

“People do recover miraculously at times, God willing,” she said at last.

“He was fine yesterday morning. He first complained of illness after he entered the reverend’s house. We ate and drank nothing but what Stone provided until this evening, during which time Peter grew progressively worse, meal by meal. Now that we’re away, he seems to be recovering.”

“The reverend is a God-fearing man.”

“As are many men who kill in the name of God.”

“But he’s gentle, peaceable. He was against the war, tried to calm the bloodlust. When he heard that one of Philip’s sachems could read and write, the reverend wrote him letters to seek a negotiated peace. And he has never hanged an adulterer or burned a witch. He would never murder a man.”

“It must be someone in your house, then. One of the servants?”

She let out a harsh laugh. “Old John Porter? He’s a gentle sort, and quite deaf. Lucy and Alice Branch are silly, light-minded girls, without an original thought between them. They know little of the world and care less. Half their life is spent giggling about handsome young men they spy around town. The sooner they marry, the better. They are one stray glance from falling into sin.”

James thought of his own interaction with Lucy and was glad Prudence couldn’t see his face in the darkness for fear of what it might give away.

“Well then,” he began cautiously. “That leaves your sister.”

“Bless me, no!”

“She had access to Peter’s food and drink.”

“My sister is the wisest, most upright person I know. I was the youngest of eleven children, and Anne the oldest. She practically raised me herself. I have never seen her shirk her duty. She would accuse her own husband if she thought he was guilty of such an odious crime. Not that he would ever do such a thing, either,” she added quickly.

Then who? Unless it had been one of the Stone children—highly unlikely—there had been one other person in the house, James realized, and she was sitting next to him. Prudence had lied before. No doubt she was capable of more lies.

“It had to happen under your roof,” he said. “If not, others would have sickened as well.”

“Then you must be wrong. It wasn’t poison.”

“Hmm.”

Liar or no, Prudence might be useful on the journey. If he remembered his maps, it would take at least two days to reach Springfield, depending on the condition of the roads. Then another day to Winton. He could harvest whatever information he could extract from her about the death of Sir Benjamin, use her to ease their passage through the more prickly Puritan towns ahead, then leave her in Winton if he and Peter needed to continue beyond that. Into Indian country.

The road opened up as the first light began to filter around the curtain. James drew it back to look past Prudence and through the tiny window. The landscape had turned from black to gray. No sign yet of the sun, but it would soon rise. They were passing through an area of overgrown pasture and ruined farmhouses, reduced to chimneys and charred support beams. Destroyed in the war, Prudence said.

After studying the terrain, she declared that they were west of Waltham.

As it brightened, Peter woke and licked his lips. He drew open the curtain on his side and looked out the window.

“’Twould seem,” the Indian said at last, “that I have survived the night.”