Crow Hollow (8 page)

They wore scarves tied around their faces. Hoods drawn over their heads. Some men carried muskets laid across their saddles. Others held drawn swords. Their posture, tense and leaning forward in their saddles, spoke of violence.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

James ducked back into the coach. He drew his pistols and tucked his dagger into his belt.

“What is it?” Prudence demanded.

“Armed riders. Six of them.”

James checked the powder in the pans, to make sure the pistols were ready to fire.

“Reverend Stone must have sent them,” she said. “Tell Master Woory to stop. I’ll talk to them. They’ll see I’ve come of my own free will.”

“You’re wrong. They’re not here to bring you home. They’re masked. Whatever it is, they don’t want to be recognized.”

Peter rubbed at the window on his side to clear it of frost, then cupped his hands and peered through. There was no door on his side. “I can’t see behind us. Are they highwaymen?”

“Could be,” James said. “I waved around plenty of silver in Boston. Word might have got out when I was hiring the coach that I carried a goodly sum.”

“That’s impossible,” Prudence said.

“How so? There’d have been plenty of time to outfit riders and come after us.”

“There are no highwaymen in New England. No thieves of any kind. We are a lawful, Godly people.”

“A hungry man has no religion,” James said. “Half the western settlements burned. There must be a thousand desperate men roaming about.”

“I’m telling you—”

He cut her off. “Whatever it is, they won’t find me easy prey. I mean to fight back.”

She looked alarmed. “Against six men?”

“Six cowards and bullies. And you say they’re not thieves. Fine, then they’re murderers. If I surrender, they’ll kill me anyway.”

“There are no murderers in New England, either.”

“Give them what they want,” Peter said. “Whatever they ask, it isn’t worth spending thy God-given life, my friend.”

James said nothing to either of their ridiculous assertions. Instead, he went back to preparing himself for a fight. His heart pounded in his chest and he forced himself to remain calm. He had faced cutthroats and assassins before. Highwaymen among them.

The coach began to slow. Woory cracked his whip, but nothing he did could keep the team racing forward. They’d spent their strength. Two horses came by outside the door. More figures darkened the other side a moment later. The coach jerked to a halt.

“Stand and deliver!” a voice shouted.

Indeed, highwaymen.

Maybe Peter was right. James could turn over his purse while keeping the half crown and several shillings he’d sewn into the lining of his cloak. Enough money to hire a room in a tavern while he sent back to Boston with a letter of credit to raise more funds.

“What is this?” Woory cried. His voice was high and panicked.

“You heard me. Your goods, your arms, your money. Now.”

“Wait, I know you. What are you doing here? Goodman Wal—”

A musket fired and cut him off. Woory cried out. Then someone jumped from a horse and grabbed for the coach door.

“Out, all of you!” a man boomed from outside.

James leaned back onto Prudence and drove open the door with his legs. The man on the other side fell backward. When James jumped out, the man was on the edge of the icy road, fighting to regain his balance.

The man held a sword in hand. His eyes were tired, bloodshot. His kerchief had slipped down, revealing thick, almost feminine lips that were red with cold. Stubble stood out on his cheeks. He looked well fed, not thin and desperate like other highway robbers James had faced in England and France.

The man pulled back his sword to take a swipe at James’s head. But he was moving too slowly, and he’d need two steps to close with his weapon. James lifted one of the pistols, took steady aim at the man’s face, and pulled the trigger.

The flint in the cock struck the frizzen, which sparked the powder in the pan. The muzzle of the gun discharged with a woof of fire and smoke. The man’s head jerked back, and he fell with a scream. Blood sprayed across the snow. He lay writhing on the ground. James dropped the empty pistol and snatched the man’s sword.

The sword in his right hand, the remaining pistol in his left, James whirled as a second man came up behind him on horse. The rider lifted a musket.

James dropped to the ground and rolled against the back wheel. Hooves pranced around him. The man tried to aim down at him, but there was little room for the horse to maneuver between the coach and the tree roots that snatched at the edge of the road. His gun went off, but the ball slammed into the ground almost a foot clear of James’s head.

Unable to get a clean shot himself, James sprang back to his feet when the horse passed. He thrust with the sword. It pierced the man’s cloak at his lower back. The man reached around for the blade with a cry as James pulled it free.

Conserving his second pistol, James slashed again with the sword, but this time the blade got caught in the man’s cloak, then hooked under his belt. James jerked it free, cutting loose the man’s powder horn. It fell, hit the ground, and spilled a fat black line of powder across the snow as the cap dislodged.

Meanwhile, the rider had recovered from the stab to his back. He fumbled for a pistol of his own, turning stiffly in the saddle as he tried to take aim.

James fled around the back of the coach before the man could bring it to bear. He came around the opposite side to discover three of the remaining highwaymen in front. Two had dismounted and stood over the prone, groaning form of Robert Woory. They thrust their sword tips into his belly.

The remaining man spotted James. He dropped the reins of his horse and lifted his musket.

But once again James had a chance to aim his pistol and take a calm, measured shot. He was farther away, so he aimed at the chest this time. The pistol kicked in his hand. The man fell from the saddle.

James had already dropped his discharged weapon and was charging at the two men standing over Woory. They came up with sword tips dripping blood. Woory was no longer moving. The villains had murdered him in cold blood. James brought the sword around from his shoulder to swing at the nearer of the two men.

The man lifted his sword and deflected the blow, but James had delivered it with such fury that it forced him to take two stumbled steps backward. James pressed his advantage. But his thrusts and stabs were parried aside. The second man circled and came charging in from James’s left.

This man was all aggression and no skill. James turned the initial thrust and swung around with his blade as the man rumbled past. His sword caught the man at the neck, and he fell.

But now the first swordsman was after him again. He had much more skill, and it was all James could do to fight him off. The two men were soon circling each other, trading ineffectual blows.

James gave a frantic glance to his rear. He’d shot two men with his pistols and cut down a third. That left this man and two more riders. Where were they? That stab wound hadn’t done enough to disable the first, and James hadn’t seen the other man since his initial glance out of the coach. Both men should be coming around to ride him down.

“Friends!” a familiar voice cried from the other side of the carriage, the speaker concealed by the snorting team of horses.

It was Peter. He came around the front of the coach with his hands held out beseechingly. He took in the carnage and his face slackened with dismay.

Go back, you fool!

“There has been enough bloodshed,” he said. “All of you, put down your weapons. Let us speak plainly one to another.”

A rider came up behind Peter. It was the man James had stabbed in the back earlier. He held himself stiffly in the saddle but had otherwise recovered. His sword gleamed in the bright light of dawn, reflecting off snow. As he came up behind the Indian, he leaned out.

“Peter, look out!”

The Indian turned toward the rider, but he didn’t cry out or throw himself clear. Instead, he stood in place while the man swept forward with his sword. It slashed him across the upper breast. Peter staggered but didn’t fall. He bent over with a cry, clutching at the wound as the rider turned his horse to renew the attack.

James tried to fight his way toward his companion, but he was hard pressed by the swordsman still coming at him. His opponent was an older man, and beginning to tire, his initial advantage dissipating. Had it been the two of them, James was confident he could hold the man off indefinitely until exhaustion settled the fight in his favor.

If only Peter would have the sense to throw himself from the road before the rider could get turned around to finish the business. The horse was having a hard time getting its footing on the snow and ice.

But then came the second missing rider. He must have been lurking behind the coach, perhaps watching the road. He brought his sword down from the shoulder as he overtook Peter. It struck the Indian across the neck. Peter fell. When the rider rose in the saddle, blood drenched his blade.

No!

This brutal attack had taken no more than a few seconds, but by the time James turned back to face his attacker, the man was already climbing back into the saddle of his horse. Meanwhile, the other two remaining riders spotted James and yanked on the reins to come at him.

James tried to shield himself with the edge of the coach. He didn’t stand a chance against three men on horse.

A pistol fired. The man who’d struck down Peter slumped in the saddle with a cry. His horse reared, snorting, and the man fell hard to the frozen ground. His horse galloped down the road without him.

What the devil?

Then James spotted Prudence standing calmly, holding James’s pistols. Smoke leaked from the muzzle of the gun in her right hand. She dropped it and shifted over the second pistol.

The two surviving enemies exchanged a glance. Without a word they turned after the fleeing, riderless horse and galloped away.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

The instant the men turned to flee, Prudence’s hand and wrist began to tremble violently, and she thought she would be sick. She dropped the gun. It was unloaded; she’d not had time to load them both. She doubled over, her head light, and her knees buckling.

James flinched when the second gun hit the ground, as if expecting it to go off, but he quickly came over to catch her arm and steady her. “Where are you injured?” Worry pinched his voice.

The sharp tang of black powder filled the air, and a cloud of smoke hung around her head. She stepped away, into cleaner air. When she did, she felt a little stronger.

“I’m unhurt. Pray, pardon me, I—”

But James was already releasing her and pulling away. He whirled about, his sword outstretched, as if searching for remaining enemies. The tip was slick and red.

There were none who could fight. Only men groaning in various states of death.

They might have won, but at a terrible cost. Woory lay dead in a bloody puddle, shot through the shoulder and then stabbed to death. So much blood—it was hard to believe it came from one man.

Peter lay curled on his side, gasping, clutching at his neck, which was streaming blood. A second deep wound cut across his chest. Prudence took the kerchief from one of the wounded enemies and pressed it to his neck. James sat behind Peter’s shoulders and lifted his head.

Peter’s eyes moved slowly to James’s face. “I shall soon see my savior.”

James gave a hard, visible swallow. “Thou art brave and strong, friend.”

“Search for the inward light. Both of you. That is the way.”

There was too much blood seeping through the kerchief and into Prudence’s hands. Again, she felt lightheaded. The blood, the violence—suddenly she was back in Winton, on that awful day when the Indians overran the town. A child screaming, the smell of fire.

Not now. Please, not now.

With effort, she fought down her panic.

Peter’s eyes rolled back in his head. His breathing turned shallow and rapid. “Mother, please. I am here,” he muttered in his native tongue.

During the night, when he’d been struggling with his fever (or poison, as James claimed), he’d spoken in his sleep. It was nothing—something about digging for clams—but she’d been shocked by how well she’d understood. Not just Nipmuk, but the same dialect spoken by the tribe that had taken Prudence hostage.

“Peace, friend,” Prudence told him in Nipmuk.

“Mother. Are you there?”

“What is he saying?” James asked.

“He is asking for his mother.”

Peter shuddered and fell still. A final sigh leaked through his lips, and his body went limp. James set Peter’s head down in the snow, then buried his face in his hands. She reached out a hand of comfort, but James seemed to regain mastery of his emotions before she could touch him, and he lifted his face from his hands.

“I don’t even know if his mother is still alive,” he said. “I know nothing of his family, of his tribe.”

“You never spoke of such things?”

“He told me very little,” James said. “I know little of his life before he came to England.”

James got up to inspect their attackers, and she followed. She felt weak, the blood drained from her face, but refused to hide in the carriage while he sorted things out.

Of the four injured enemies, the first—the man with the face half-destroyed from James’s initial shot—was also near death and wouldn’t last more than another minute or two. The other three were in some stage of dying.

“We should try to get them help,” she said. “These three, at least.”

“Two of them won’t live out the hour. This wretch,” James said, pointing to the man Prudence had shot in the back, who was groaning piteously, “might survive, but you hit him right on the spine. If he does, he’ll never walk again.”

“We have to try.”

“And this is the man who murdered Peter Church,” he said. “I should put a ball in his head and count the world rid of another filthy vermin.”

“And a court of law will see him hanged.” She was surprised at the edge in her own voice. “Meanwhile, we’ll do our Christian duty.”

“All right. I suppose it would be better if he survived, anyway. Then I can question him.”

James collected the horses of the fallen and roped them to the team before tying the bodies of the injured men onto the animals’ backs. One man groaned, the other cried out in pain. The final man James wrapped in Peter’s blankets and carried back to the coach. He put Peter’s body in next to him.

James looked at Prudence and frowned. “I need to drive the team. I can’t be back here with you.”

“I want to sit up front, not back there.”

“It’s bitter cold.”

“Better than sitting alone with a murderer.”
And a dead man
, she thought, though this uncharitable thought filled her with shame. Poor Peter. To travel all the way across the ocean only to die almost the moment he reached his native soil.

While James checked the team of horses, Prudence climbed to the perch and drew her cloak against the cold. One of the men tied to the horses groaned. She pulled her hood closer around her face so she couldn’t see him out of the corner of her eye.

Panic still swam below the surface like a monster of the deep, all teeth and grasping tentacles. Memories.

For a moment she was not here, she was
there
.

A woman screams while men cut her throat. An old man holds his granddaughter in his arms and runs. A gunshot puts him down, then men bash the infant with the butts of their muskets.

Prudence is running with her daughter in her arms. They see her, they are coming.

“Hold still, you,” James said.

The words jolted Prudence from the horror of her memories. She drew back her hood to look. James stood over a groaning man tied to a horse. He pulled back the man’s head.

“Leave him be!” she cried. “He’s dying already.”

James came up holding an empty vial, which he tucked back into a pocket in his cloak. The man was no longer struggling.

“I gave him a taste of soporific dwale.”

“What is that?” she asked.

“Meant to render a man unconscious—a prisoner, or an enemy. In this case, ’twill ease the man’s suffering. He’ll die shortly, but I’d as soon not seem him die in agony.”

“Pray, pardon me. For a moment I thought . . .”

When he climbed next to her on the perch, James brought a cloak bundled with goods pilfered from their attackers. It took some coaxing of the horses before they were traveling back down the highway and leaving behind the scene of the violence.

“The second gun was unloaded,” James said. “You were bluffing.”

“Aye. I’d not time to load it, but thought it might still serve a purpose.”

“When did you reload the first pistol?”

“The attackers paid me no mind—their attention was fixed elsewhere. I saw the spilled powder horn and it gave me the idea. I searched the man you’d killed and found a pouch with lead balls.”

“Resourceful.”

“It isn’t the first time I’ve handled arms.”

“Reload the guns.” He gestured to the bundle at his feet. “Do it now, before your hands get too numb.”

She opened up the bundle, but found only a little canister with powder for priming the pan, not a full powder horn. No balls, either. Only small paper-wrapped packages.

“What’s this?” she asked, picking up one of the packages. “Cartridges? How do I—”

“Ah, yes. It’s so I can measure precisely. Thirty-five grains of powder. Bite off the end, pour the powder and ball down, then use the paper as a wad at the end when you ram it. Then prime the pan like you would otherwise. Understand?”

“I see, yes.”

He watched as she bit off the end of the paper. A bit of the powder got in her mouth, bitter and peppery, and she couldn’t help but turn and spit it out at once.

“Pardon!” Prudence said, aghast that he’d seen her spit.

“How dainty.” He grinned. “Good, now the other one. Tap the cartridge this time to get the powder to the bottom before you bite.”

When she finished, he reached back to the roof of the carriage and scraped off a bit of snow, which he used to wipe at the corner of her mouth where she’d stained it with black powder. She returned the favor, using a handful of snow to scrub at the dried blood from when he’d buried his face in his hands after Peter’s death.

“Do you know any of the dead men?” James asked as they continued down the road.

“The one I shot in the back is William Webb, from Andover. He has a wife and children. I don’t know how he fell in with such bad characters.”

“And the other three?”

“I don’t know any of them,” she said. “One of them might be from Springfield—he looks familiar. I’m not certain, though.”

“Woory started to identify another man. I think that’s why they shot him. Goodman Wal—something or other.”

Prudence thought about it. “I know a man named Waltham. Another named Walker. They’re both from Boston, and Woory might have known them.”

“A man whose business is coach and transport knows men from all over,” James said. “Even murderers posing as thieves.”

“Then you don’t think they’re highwaymen?”

“No. Do you?”

“I don’t know. I have never heard of such an attack. Maybe in New York, but this is New England. But they did command Woory to stand and deliver. He didn’t obey—he recognized them. So they killed him.”

“Except Peter didn’t recognize them, wasn’t in any way a threat, and they killed him too,” James said. “They would have killed me too. Perhaps even you.”

“Once men start killing they don’t know when to stop.”

He studied her face, and she turned away, uncomfortable under his sharp gaze. “If there’s one thing I know,” she said, “it’s that my sister’s husband didn’t send them.”

“You might know that, but I don’t.”

“He’s not a murderer, James. You must believe me.”

“Perhaps.” He looked thoughtful. “Here’s what I do know. They came for killing, not robbery. I’ve faced robbers before. They are almost always in ones and twos. Nervous young men with shaking hands, as often as not. They aren’t older, well fed, with families. And they don’t typically come six at a time.

“And here’s another thing,” he added. “That last swordsman could have bested me. He didn’t. Why?”

Prudence finished loading the last gun, drew her cloak tighter, and put her hands between her thighs to thaw them.

“Maybe he couldn’t,” she said. “You looked to be holding your own to me.”

“When you saw me, yes. He was older than me, and tiring. But that man was a better swordsman than I. Early in the fight, he could have killed me. I’m sure of it.”

“I thought you said they would have killed us all. Anyway,” she added, “they killed poor Peter without a second thought.”

“That might be it exactly.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Their stratagem might have been to lure us out, meaning only to kill Peter,” James said. “Then Woory recognized one man, so they killed him too. I fought back. Some of the men tried to kill me, others kept their heads. Dangerous to kill an agent of the king. But an Indian . . .” James raised an eyebrow.

She understood. “If an Indian dies on the road, it draws scarcely more attention than when he dies of disease.”

“Or dies from poison made to look like disease.” He turned this over. “Yes, you’re right. Indians die in New England all the time. Nobody cares except other Indians.”

“I care,” Prudence protested.

“And so do I. Peter was an odd fellow, a honking goose in the chicken coop, if you will. I can’t say we were ever friends—except maybe in the Quaker use of the word—but I’d developed a soft spot for him. And he may not have been an agent of the Crown, but he was
my
agent. Attack my man and I get very angry.”

They weren’t just words; James looked truly upset. And she had seen real pain in his eyes during Peter’s last struggles for breath. She was beginning to rethink her assessment of this man as nothing more than a cunning spy for King Charles. That gave her hope for finding her daughter.

“You can kill an Indian on the road and nobody notices,” she said. “And maybe a driver can fall and nothing much happens.” Prudence chose her next words carefully. How to make James see what she needed him to see? “But after what happened to my husband, anyone can see what happens when an agent of the Crown dies in New England.”

He gave her a sidelong glance. “And what is that?”

“Another agent arrives. And he wants to know what happened to the first. At least that’s what happens the first time. Maybe you can tell me what happens when
two
different agents die in suspicious circumstances.”

“Prudence Cotton, you are much smarter than I gave you credit for.”

“Why do I think that by ‘smart,’ you really mean ‘devious’?”

James laughed, and she smiled back.

The coach entered a clearing of several hundred acres where slumping walls of fieldstone divided a pair of farms. Both houses had been reduced to piles of rubble almost entirely covered in snow. A double hill rose behind them.

“That’s what they call Camel Hill,” she said. “A few more miles and we’ll reach the town of Sudbury.”

“Where we may very well find those men waiting for us. They might have fetched reinforcements.”

“There’s a fork in another mile or two, where the Connecticut Path cuts southwest. It’s an old Indian trail that Thomas Hooker expanded when he led the settlers to Hartford. If we take it, we can go through Natick.”

“That sounds like an Indian village,” James said.

“Praying Indians, yes. But abandoned. The General Court shipped them to Deer Island last winter.” She frowned. “Most of them died of hunger and disease, from what I understand. The rest haven’t returned.”

“And if we go that way, what do we find after Natick?”

“Next is Danforth’s Farms—it’s a small settlement next to the Connecticut Path.” She hesitated. “You don’t suppose they’d search for us in that direction, do you?”

“They might,” he said. “But I’ll still take my chances off the main highway.”