Crow Hollow (9 page)

When they reached the fork in the road and found it deserted, she put a hand on his wrist. “Now stop the coach and let me drive.” When he seemed reluctant, she added, “That way you can be ready with the guns.”

Minutes later, when they’d swapped positions and he had his pistols across his lap, she turned to him with a sweet smile. “Oh, and this will give you plenty of time to read my story while I watch the road.”

To his credit, this time he did not look nearly so skeptical when he took out the pages and began to read.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

They traveled in silence while Prudence drove the team and James read. He finished quickly, then hushed her questions and reread it, this time more slowly. She could barely stand the wait.

A frozen brook lay to their right, marked with solitary boulders that broke the surface. The land on that side of the coach had been cleared for pastures and farms all the way to the opposite hills, while the forest still crowded the road to their left.

Here and there stood farmhouses, some burned, but others intact, smoke curling from their chimneys. A woman stepped out of a house set a hundred yards or so from the road. She shielded her eyes against the sun to study them as they passed.

They were only around the next bend when a woodcutter emerged from the forest leading a mule. The mule pulled a sleigh loaded with lumber. The man waved for their attention, no doubt hoping for news, but they didn’t want to get close enough for him to see the extra horses and the bodies draped across their backs.

James put away Prudence’s narrative and scanned their surroundings.

“Well?” she asked.

“We’re close, aren’t we?”

“Yes, about two miles to Danforth’s Farms. Maybe three. But what about my story? Do you understand now?”

He continued to ignore her questions and instead pointed. “See that burned house? If we pulled the coach around the back, do you think it would be hidden from the road?”

“I suppose, but—”

“Do that, first. I need time to think.”

Fighting her impatience, Prudence took the coach across the hard, flat surface and around the house in question. The front wall had collapsed, but the back stood, held up in part by a brick chimney and its stone hearth. It must have been a year since it was burned, but nobody had touched the farmhouse since—not even, it would seem, to pick through the rubble. There were clothing, old chests, even iron kettles and ladles hanging from hooks on the mantle above the hearth.

When they were hidden around the back, they climbed down from the perch to check the injured men. Perhaps two hours had passed since the brutal encounter on the road. Prudence’s nerves could stay jangled only so long, and she now felt more exhausted than anything. The poor night of sleep hadn’t helped any. Also, it must be noon, and she hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours.

The first of the two injured men was dead, as they’d expected. They couldn’t tell with the second. He hadn’t stiffened, and he still felt warm to the touch beneath the blanket, but he wasn’t moving, and they couldn’t feel any breath with their numb fingers.

“Nothing to be done for it,” James said. “If he’s not gone already, he will be soon, and it makes matters simpler for us.”

He didn’t sound smug about it, but it was calculating enough that Prudence winced at the implications. “We should carry him with us, just in case.”

“We’ll never save his life.”

“That’s in God’s hands, not ours.”

“He stays.” His voice hardened. “No surgeon in the world could close up that wound. He’s lost too much blood already.”

She clenched her hands. “Very well.”

James’s expression softened, and he turned to untying the man’s body. “We’ll put them both in the coach with the others to keep the wolves off them until something can be done.”

She helped him carry the bodies to the coach, where they draped them across Peter and the final dead highwayman. It was a horrible mess, and again it brought her back to the war, to stacking bodies. First at Winton, then among the Nipmuk in her captivity, when children, the elderly, and the ill would fall by the roadside during the long forced marches.

The effort got her sluggish blood flowing again. The sun helped too. It was low in the sky, its light lacking the heat of gentler months, but it warmed her dark cloak and her body with it. When they’d finished unharnessing the horses from the team, her appetite was roaring. The perch box carried Woory’s breakfast: a hard block of cheese, a flask of buttermilk, and two boiled eggs still in their shells. James and Prudence shared the food.

James stepped into the ruins and kicked aside snow. He found a fallen wardrobe and tossed open the doors.

“Don’t do that,” she said sharply.

“Why not? They won’t be missing it.” He came up with a pair of gloves, a couple of linen shirts, and several pairs of socks. “Most of my possessions are back at your house. I couldn’t very well haul out my sea chests without arousing suspicion. Why don’t you see what you can find? There must have been a woman of the house as well.”

“I couldn’t possibly.”

“’Twill be less suspicious than riding into Danforth’s Farms without any possessions. You do want to find your daughter, don’t you?”

“Does that mean—?”

“Will you hurry?”

“But James, it’s stealing.”

“It’s not theft—these people are dead. And we’re exposed out here. We don’t have time. So quit gnawing at it.”

Reluctantly, she searched the ruins. She found a smock, two petticoats, a stay reinforced with rows of stitching that had been made for a woman with a figure similar to her own, and a green linen apron to wear over her petticoats. These she bundled and tied to the back of one of the horses. There was a pair of women’s boots of close to the right size, and she happily shed her wooden clogs and put them on. Searching through a broken chest, she found blank papers, ink, a pen, and blotter that had been protected from the elements wrapped in an oiled cloth. This cheered her.

“What do you need with that?” James asked.

“If there’s one thing I wished I’d had in captivity, it was pen and paper. I never knew if I’d be able to write my narrative or if my story would die with me.”

“Thankfully, it didn’t.”

“Now I’m in another fight for my life. I don’t want to die without telling people what happened.”

“Put that out of your head,” James said firmly. “You’re not going to die.”

Later, sitting on the perch of the carriage, out of sight of the road, Prudence tried again. “You read the missing chapter. Tell me what you think.”

“I think it reads like the imagination of a terrified woman who has lost her child, was kidnapped by savages, and misremembers key details. It doesn’t make sense.”

“You sound like my sister and the reverend,” Prudence said bitterly. “And the printer in Boston too. He said the same thing.”

James reached for her wrist as she turned. “Steady. I said that’s what it reads like. Taken in isolation.”

“What do you mean, isolation?”

“I read the rest of the book too. You have a clear eye for details, a sober way of reflecting. You were even sympathetic toward the men who had taken you captive.”

“Some say I was
too
sympathetic.”

“I’ve spent the last two months in close company with a Quaker Indian. In many ways he was a fool, hopelessly swept away in his religion. It got him killed in the end. Begging murderers to set down their arms instead of defending himself.” James shook his head. “But he was a fool in the same manner as any other man. Not a barbarian or a savage. So when I read an account that paints both sides as saints and sinners, clever one moment and stupid the next, kind to this person and brutal to that one, it makes the account
more
credible, not less.”

“Then you
do
believe me.”

“I don’t disbelieve you—we’ll leave it there.” He blew into his palms, then opened his overcoat and tucked his hands under his armpits. “You left your daughter with the Nipmuk. They promised to kill her if you didn’t return. You didn’t. So why isn’t the child dead?”

“Squa Laka wanted me to believe it. She tied a cord around Mary’s neck and drew it tight.” Prudence dug her nails into her palms to block the images. “She tightened the cord until the babe could scarcely manage a whimper. ‘If you don’t return,’ she said, ‘I’ll draw it tight like this, until she dies.’ Laka was angry, frightened, it is true. But I do not think she had it in her to murder a child.”

James considered this. “It does sound like Laka saved you from the Nipmuk men.”

“She certainly did, yes. Some of them wanted to kill me. They were young and hot, and they believed they were going to die anyway. Why not kill as many English as they could before they fell? In a way they were right, in the end. The English put them all to death.”

“You don’t name the young English officer. It was Samuel Knapp, wasn’t it?”

“Why would you say that?” she asked, surprised.

James took out the pages. “In the meeting where you translated, the sachem’s wife looked down on him, so he must have been short. If I remember right, you said earlier that Laka was about your height. You are five feet six, more or less.”

“Yes, more or less.”

He nodded. “So if you were looking down on a man, he would have to be at least two inches shorter than you. That would put him at five feet four, which is roughly Knapp’s height.”

She marveled. “That’s right.”

“Why didn’t you name him?”

“I knew there would be no point. Reverend Stone would neither believe it nor let it see print. He holds Knapp in great esteem. He’s even hinted that I should marry him, if Knapp would have me. Not that I’d be such a fool.”

“No, I would say not. He sounds like a brute, and all too bloodthirsty.”

“Those traits stood Knapp in good stead during the recent troubles. ’Tis not so easy to condemn a man for killing Indians in wartime. Such a man is hailed as a hero.”

James thumbed through the pages. “How confident are you of your translation of the Nipmuk parley?”

“Very. I spoke the language well by that time.”

“So the sachem asks if the English have had enough killing, and Knapp says God will decide. Then the sachem asks if they will kill women and children. Knapp says yes, they will kill every man, woman, and child if the Indians don’t surrender. But of course surrender means enslavement in the Indies. The Nipmuk know this by now.”

“That’s when I should have changed the translation from Nipmuk to English,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking quickly enough.” She shook her head slowly, darkening. “That failure haunts me.”

“How do you mean?”

“The very words of the sachem were, ‘We killed Sir Benjamin. He begged us for mercy, but we showed him none. We shall kill you too, and all your men and horses. And this woman, and this woman’s child. Then we shall kill every English in the land, drive them into the sea.’”

“I don’t understand that part,” James said. “The war was lost for them. Once they could no longer flee, they had no hope but surrender, slavery or no. So how would it help to taunt Knapp?”

“That’s what I mean. The sachem wasn’t taunting, he was negotiating. That’s their manner—it was a figure of speech. Knapp didn’t seem to know—or pretended not to know—what the sachem meant.”

James looked confused. “I am uncertain myself.”

She turned it over, struggling to take the meaning in Nipmuk and translate it into English. Not only the meaning of the words themselves, but the very Nipmuk way of thinking. It was like taking water and explaining ice to one who has never been cold.

“The sachem was asking the limits of the English warfare. ‘Haven’t you had enough killing? Has not the time come to make peace?’ But Knapp said no, we’ll keep killing until God tells us to stop. Then the sachem asked that if the fight continues, will the English at least spare the women and children? Knapp said no, we’ll kill everyone. Then the Nipmuk said, if you do that, we’ll kill this woman and her child, because they are in our power already. Then we’ll try to kill you and your men, and if that continues, we’ll fight until we’ve exterminated you or you have exterminated us. If you insist on a war of extermination, then we will make your cost very high.”

“A shame that Knapp did not understand,” James said.

“Or perhaps he did. He was not ignorant of the Nipmuk ways. Perhaps he refused a negotiated peace because he was well inclined to slaughter them all.”

She hadn’t thought it so at the time. She had thought Knapp confused and afraid. But in the months that had passed since Crow Hollow, she had considered Knapp’s bloodthirsty nature at great length.

James frowned and chewed on his lip. He glanced down at the pages. “You say there was a massacre, that the English behaved treacherously. Yet details are scant.”

Prudence’s stomach tightened. “Yes.”

“Tell me.”

She closed her eyes, fought down the panic.

A crow. An eyeball in its beak.

The flocks of crows had been gathering all afternoon as the Nipmuk waited for the English to arrive. She took this as an evil omen, but the Nipmuk, who wore crow feathers in their hair, were not disturbed. Laka said the birds flocked to this hollow in the evenings so they could huddle together against their ancient enemy: the great horned owls who hunted them on the darkest nights. But later, when the crows fell cawing from the trees to feast upon the dead and the dying, Prudence thought that Laka had been wrong. The crows must have known, must have sensed the evil that would befall the Nipmuk, as if the devil himself had whispered it in their ears.

“Prudence?” James said, his tone concerned.