The Constable's Tale (17 page)

“Gentlemen,” Harry said with a bow. “Delighted to see you. Please, go ahead of Annie and me.”

“We are the delighted ones and surprised to see you here,” said Mackay. “You are most gracious, but, please, stay where you are. We are in no great hurry to get aboard.”

Though he could not remember its number, Harry recognized, like an old friend, the principle set forth in the Rules. The less privileged person offers the position of honor. The person of higher quality graciously declines. He congratulated himself on a transaction well conducted.

“Still on the trail of wrongdoers?” asked Nelson.

“You’ve heard of my travels?”

“People talk of little else at home,” said Mackay. “Maybe throughout the whole province. How you’re trying to help an Indian cheat the hangman. But, pray, what are you doing in Philadelphia? The last we heard, you were on your way to Williamsburg.” A friendly grin made dimples here and there on his puffy, sun-reddened face. “And here you’re boarding a ship for Boston.”

Harry kept his story short, as they were nearing the head of the queue. He said how his efforts to trace the ownership of a certain object from the Campbells’ house had led him to a Williamsburg storekeeper, who
had pointed him to another in Philadelphia, who had all but promised that yet another in Boston would be able to identify the owner and thus, in all likelihood, the murderer. As he was compressing these particulars into a few sentences, he realized how someone of a skeptical nature might accuse him of chasing a will-o’-the-wisp.

“Well, your sudden departure caused a stir,” said Nelson. “And still does. Every day that goes by with you not at your post, it seems, Judge McLeod takes greater personal affront.”

Nelson’s words fell on Harry’s ears like stone weights.

“What, exactly, has he said?”

“Oh, it’s not all that bad,” Mackay intervened. An act of kindness. “You know how that old man is. He’ll get over it.”

“Well, he has relieved Harry of his duties as a constable,” Nelson said. He seemed about to comment further but closed his mouth after getting a sharp look from Mackay.

“No permanent damage done, I’m certain,” said Mackay. “Olaf can reinstate you just as quickly as he suspended you. Young man, you have many admirers in Craven County, me among them. I hope you will do us the honor of joining us at the captain’s table for supper this evening.”

“The honor would be mine, gentlemen.”

The words sprang to Harry’s lips effortlessly, almost as if from another, better-bred person. More proof that some of the Rules had stuck. But his self-confidence had been dealt a blow. He feared that any further proper comportment might be a waste of effort. His downfall possibly was already assured.

*

It was big for a coasting vessel; Harry reckoned a hundred feet long. And it was handsome: decks freshly caulked, pine masts shiny as glass with built-up varnish, and topsides painted dark green from the waterline to the white-trimmed rails. The heady smell of tar and pitch, some of it conceivably from Harry’s trees, came off the vessel. A two-masted topsail
schooner, American built, Harry was informed by the crew member who helped winch Annie onto the lower deck stables. The whites of her eyes showed during the trip down in the harness, but once in her stall, with Harry giving her chunks of carrots, she seemed to shrug off the experience as just another one of life’s small annoyances.

Harry made sure she had fresh hay, then went off to find his bunk. It was sited down a companionway and through a dark passageway near the fo’c’sle. Though he had the cabin to himself, it was tiny, barely enough room to stand beside the wooden bin that held his bedding. The sleeping compartment appeared an inch or so shorter than Harry was tall. He would have to lie with his legs crooked. The single porthole was too small for a grown man to slip through in an emergency. He resolved to spend as much time on the top deck as possible.

The ship’s cook personally served supper in the officers’ dining cabin adjacent to the captain’s quarters. Harry learned that the commander was retired from the British Navy. The only other passenger privileged to join him and his three senior officers was an older man from Boston whose occupation, as far as Harry could gather, had to do with arranging contracts between businessmen in America and Britain.

“You must convey my commendations to the chef,” Mackay told the captain, whose name was Biggerstaff. They were doing away with tender slabs of roasted beef with stewed vegetables. The dish made Harry think of his imprisoned friend.

“This is as fine a meal as I’ve had in any of our best North Carolina taverns,” said Nelson.

“We take full advantage of fresh victuals when in port,” said Biggerstaff. He spoke through nearly clenched teeth, a habit Harry had come to associate with certain English aristocrats on the relatively rare occasions that any passed through New Bern. A slight slur indicated he had been sipping from the table’s decanter of claret ahead of his guests’ arrival. “We shall reprovision again in Boston, but the fresh cuts will run out well before we reach Louisbourg.”

“You are going on to Canada?” asked Nelson.

“We will be delivering foodstuffs and munitions to Wolfe’s army at Quebec. They seem to have got bogged down there and are running short on supplies.” Biggerstaff turned abruptly to Harry and said, “Won’t you come with us, young man? The general could use every available patriot to defeat Montcalm.”

“I would go if I was free to,” Harry said. “But I have a wife and plantation in North Carolina that need me back as soon as possible.” He added as an afterthought, “The pitch and turpentine I make this fall will be worth far more to the British Navy than whatever little service I could do for General Wolfe.” He felt his face flush, realizing how deceitful he was being. He had every intention of selling that year’s output of naval stores directly to Yankee captains for their own dispositions, without coming to the attention of the Crown’s customs collectors.

“Our young friend is on an important mission,” said Mackay, wiping greasy fingers on his napkin. “He is trying to discover who murdered a Carolina plantation family.”

“Indeed?” said Biggerstaff. “Were they friends of yours?”

“Yes.”

“Harry is the king’s constable in Craven County. Or at least he was,” Nelson began. Before he could finish the thought, Harry said, “I’m taking a short holiday while I try to discover the killer.”

“And you’ve come here all the way from North Carolina to do this?” said the captain. “Extraordinary. I had no idea constables in this land involved themselves in such matters. In my country, a constable’s duties are fairly limited.”

“As they are here. The truth is, the judge I work for does not approve of what I’m doing.”

“The victims of this crime must have been very good friends for you to go to such lengths,” said another officer.

“There is more to it than friendship or even revenge. An old friend of my family has been falsely accused of the murders. I fear he will be hung if I fail.”

Nelson said, “The one they’ve arrested is an old Indian who helped raise Harry when Harry’s father failed to return from the siege of Cartagena.”

“Cartagena, you say?” Biggerstaff’s eyebrows went up. “God rest your father’s soul for his service to Admiral Vernon. I was there as well. First officer aboard the
Shrewsbury
. It was an awful time. We had fifty men killed and wounded by Spanish cannon. But even more died of disease.”

“Your Indian friend is not well, I am sorry to report,” Mackay said to Harry. “I understand he is barely eating enough to sustain life, and his trial is still a long ways off.”

“The horse bettors are making odds he’ll never last until October,” said Nelson.

“If I am successful, he will be a free man by then. I intend to bring the real killer up before Judge McLeod in shackles.”

“I like you very much, Harry,” said Mackay, “the way you have turned your life ‘round in such a wholesome direction. I wish you success in saving your friend.”

They all lifted their glasses to that.

*

Woozy from wine and the brandy served afterward, Harry made his way back to his cabin. He had weighed spending the night on deck but was tired and drunk enough now to think he would have no trouble sleeping below.

It was black as pitch in the passageway. The ship’s steward had supplied a lit candle in a tin holder, along with strict instructions not to try to read by its light while in his bunk. There had been a recent outbreak of ship fires caused by people dozing off with candles still burning. He heeded this advice and then, keeping his clothes on for a quick exit if needed, climbed over the wooden plank that formed the inboard side of his bunk. The partition was high enough to prevent him from spilling onto the floor while on a port tack, but this added to his sense of confinement. Blessedly, the warmth of the day had abated and a light breeze was making its way through the porthole.

As his thoughts began to drift, they took on physical shapes. It seemed he could see Toby. She was sitting before a candle, hunched over their eating table, a stack of ledgers to one side, trying to make sense of the plantation’s affairs. Sounding the depth of the financial pit she feared they were in. This involved judging relative values. A basket of apples lent, an apple pie due in return. Loan of an ox to fill out a stump removal team for a week in exchange for a bearskin winter coat. Each of these dealings written out in Harry’s messy but, for the most part, legible hand—legible to him, at least.

Maddie had been right to turn her back on this kind of a life. Harry’s house was perfectly comfortable, as far as he was concerned. It even had some of the finery that enhanced the lives of wealthier residents of Craven County. But these graceful touches were mere tastes of the full measures of luxury that cushioned the daily existence of the better sorts, made the snags and pitfalls of their lives more tolerable. Harry tried to imagine the elegant Maddie spending the rest of her days in such a house as his. Visiting and receiving visits from neighbors whose manners of dress and conversation gravitated toward the simple side of things; their practical talk of the turnings of seasons, plantings and harvests, livestock, babies, elderly parents and their bodily ailments. Art and literature, politics, new discoveries in nature; such topics as would interest Maddie rarely came up at Sunday dinners with his mother and Natty, with his shark’s-tooth necklaces and irregular bathing habits. Natty’s idea of entertaining conversation had to do with the old days in the swamps of Albemarle country, tales of alligators and supernaturally large mosquitoes and summer nights spent among sand dunes and their whistling grasses, on the lookout for wayward ships.

He did not realize he was asleep until he was roused by a crashing noise. It was a single, sudden violence, like something large and heavy falling against the door of his cabin.

After taking a stunned moment to come fully awake, Harry clawed his way out of the cramped bed. He half expected the door to be splintered apart. But in the darkness it seemed solid to the touch.

Carefully undoing the bolt, he opened the door a crack. It was even darker in the passageway than the cabin. Opening it a smidge further, he focused every bit of wakefulness into his ears but could detect nothing outside of the ordinary creaks and groans of a ship at sea. Whoever or whatever had caused the disturbance either was gone or lurked in the inky stillness. Waiting for Harry.

He closed and rebolted the door. Felt among his belongings until he found his knife and ax. But what then? If someone had tried to get in and found the door too substantial, what would it gain Harry to go outside and confront the threat, if such it was? Maybe someone had simply tripped and fallen, then continued on his way. Somebody big.

Returning to his bunk, he wedged his blades between the mattress and the side partition, sharp sides down. He disliked feeling trapped inside this small space, but another review of his position convinced him to stay.

After what seemed a long time, he relaxed enough to recall another dream that had come to him earlier that night. It must have been triggered by the smoky smells the ship gave off. Martin was tending a tar kiln. It was night. Hot black soup oozed off a pile of smoldering pine logs and into a graded trench, pooling in an earthen basin at its lower end. In the torchlight another servant ladled the result into steel pots to boil down for pitch.

As he felt himself slipping away again, the dream took on an aspect of reality. Toby was there. She was in distress. Running away from something in the house. Running in bare feet, as if having been roused from bed. Heading toward the pit. Martin was looking away at something in the distance. Unaware or, even more frightening, unconcerned about whatever was wrong with Toby. Harry felt powerless to intervene, his muscles turned to lead. He tried to shout a warning cry for help, but his throat was paralyzed. He was strangling in his own panic.

He bolted upright.

Except for a faint glow of stars coming through the porthole, it was still dark. He had no idea what hour it was. But he knew he would not be able to fall sleep a third time that night, and he could not bear to stay in the bunk.

Tucking his blades into his belt, he unbolted the door. Stepped into the passageway, into the drenching blackness. How often Comet Elijah had lectured him about using all his senses, including the hidden ones. He did so now, inching along, one shuffling step at a time, at each step pausing like a coonhound to sample the air.

Finally, a pale light ahead. Maintaining his deliberate pace, he gained the companionway and crept up the stairs. Blades at the ready.

A fog had wrapped itself around the ship. It was so dense that neither bow nor stern was visible. The air seemed lifeless, but a whisper of water along the hull indicated they were moving. Going in the same direction of whatever wind there was, making the illusion of no wind at all. Sailing in the same direction as the drifting cloud that enclosed them.

A rustle of clothing from behind made him instinctively dodge, almost but not quite avoiding the blow. He spun around, willfully ignoring the pain filling his right shoulder.