The Constable's Tale (34 page)

The other big surprise was that Olaf McLeod had died. His summer cold had advanced to pneumonia, and he had crossed over without much fuss. It happened around the time Harry and Maddie had been locked in their cell in Quebec. He wondered how Maddie would react to the news or even when it would reach her. When he last saw her, she was at Point Lévis recovering from her wound under the supervision
of the Scottish soldier who had paused to admire her on the battlefield. This individual turned out to be the colonel of his regiment, a titled highlander, recently widowed, with a great pink harled castle in the Grampian Mountains. Which, Harry could see, might fit in well with a dream Maddie had shared with him the night before he left Canada: to return to Scotland and write a play based on her experiences. She had tentatively titled it
A Highland Girl’s Wild Adventures in America
.

DeSavoy had disappeared by the time Harry got back to Point Lévis. Ayerdale’s death was ascribed to combat after his body was found with multiple wounds. With him dead and deSavoy missing, Harry pondered what to do with the information that the man was a spy and a murderer. He had promised to keep these things secret. Maybe death had freed him from this obligation. But to expose Ayerdale would have required Harry to admit that he killed a person the world still believed to be a prominent American patriot. He had Maddie to vouch for Ayerdale’s guilt but otherwise not a jot of real evidence. He finally decided the effort, and the complications it might bring, were not worth whatever gratification he might gain from posthumously destroying Ayerdale’s reputation. Harry had better things to do with his time.

But what to do about Comet Elijah? How to save him from hanging if Ayerdale were not exposed?

As he discovered from a second letter from Toby that caught up with him before he left Canada, he need not have worried. The old Indian had made good his second attempt at escaping. People were still talking about it when Harry arrived back home, how Comet Elijah must have grown wings and flown away or crawled up twelve feet of warehouse wall like a fly, over the open top, then finally melted through one of the sealed bullet-glass windows to the outside. Tuscarora magic. But no one seemed much interested in trying to recapture him. All assumed he had fled the district and by now was beyond their reach.

Harry recalled that his original purpose in setting out to catch a killer was to save Comet Elijah’s life. As it turned out, he might as well not have bothered. Comet Elijah wound up rescuing himself. At least Harry had saved Maddie McLeod from a disastrous marriage. Who knows how that might have played out had Harry not gone to Canada. And maybe by not exposing Ayerdale, Harry had played a small role in helping the British cause against France.

He took comfort in these thoughts, though he would never get over his sorrow that his actions had led, though unintentionally, to the death of a gentle spirit.

Conversations on the streets and among the town commissioners had shifted to other matters, like who would take over as their new chief justice in Olaf McLeod’s stead. Governor Dobbs had approved the council’s nomination of an interim, a good Anglican property owner by the name of Hastings, and the town was now awaiting Dobbs’s pleasure as to a permanent replacement. The matter was somewhat complicated by the fact that Dobbs had finally made good on his threat to relocate to Wilmington. Though even farther south, it was closer to the ocean and its cooling breezes. New Bernians were beginning to despair that their town would ever again be the seat of government. The hopeful consensus was that eventually the old man would either retire or go keel over, maybe while pleasuring himself with his now fourteen-year-old wife, and the next governor could be persuaded to come back. There was even talk of offering to build a palace, something to match or even exceed the grand edifice at Williamsburg.

No one seemed to care much about Harry’s recent willful behavior, running off to chase the “true” killer of the Campbells when it seemed perfectly clear who that person was. As near as Harry could figure, he had not been replaced as constable of Craven County, even though he had not arrived back home in time for peacekeeping duties at the September Court of Quarterly Sessions. He received a notice from Hastings that Harry’s services would be needed for the upcoming meeting of the Superior Court.

*

One of Harry’s first stops after he got back to New Bern had been the parsonage of Christ Church, where he gave Reverend Reed a leather pouch. As the cleric was opening it, Harry explained that during a stopover in Philadelphia he had visited the parents of Noah Burke. At their parting, the senior Burke had given Harry all the money Harry had returned from what Noah had given him, plus a liberal contribution from Peter and Martha. To be invested and used, Peter requested, under the supervision of Reed and the vestry, to operate a free school for parentless children.

*

The week before Christmas, Harry received a letter from the prime minister of England.

He knew something was afoot as soon as he entered town that morning on his way to du Plessis’s store to buy spices for a new syllabub recipe Talitha wanted to try out. People he saw on the streets stared and pointed at him as he rode past. The clerk at the store, which also served as the town’s post office, said there was something there for him, but he needed to get du Plessis to come over from his house and deliver it in person. Which he did with great formality, refusing to just hand the letter over but instead placing it on a silver tray for Harry to pick up with his own fingers.

The language was flowery and inked in an ornate style of script. It would take Harry several readings to fully understand everything. Even du Plessis, who read it out for all to hear, confessed that he had never seen a more impressive document. The signature was that of Thomas Pelham-Holles, First Duke of Newcastle, First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of Lords. It extolled Harry’s virtues as a loyal subject of the Crown and a British patriot in the finest ancient traditions of the realm. It thanked him for his “Courageous
& incalculably valuable Services to ye British Army in Canada during ye late War with France.” The letter did not go into specifics on this point. Despite the persistence of du Plessis and other citizens of New Bern who now crowded into the store, the best Harry would deliver up was that he had been on a secret undertaking for the government at Whitehall, one whose nature he still was not at liberty to discuss. An admiring murmur went around when they heard that. But no amount of pressing could persuade him to go further.

Du Plessis allowed him to leave with a free batch of spices.

*

Abel and Reuben were having ale with friends before the fireplace at Speight’s when Harry next saw them. Though only midafternoon, it was nearly dark outside owing to the early winter twilight and a thick cover of clouds that hinted at snow.

“Is that Constable Henry Woodyard at the door?” said Abel, squinting to see.

They shifted around their table to make room. The serving girl brought a wooden flagon topped with a mound of foam.

“I don’t know what your fine friends over at Cogdell’s are going to make of you coming in here,” said Reuben. “Have you forgot where you belong?”

“Wherever I want to drink a health to old friends, that’s where I belong,” said Harry. “I’ll still go to Cogdell’s, but if they don’t like me coming in here, too, it’s not my concern.”

This statement was met with a surprised silence.

“Well, that don’t seem to have stopped you from wanting to get rich,” said Reuben. “Or, should I say, richer. I heard you bought some more land.”

“A nice piece of acreage came up for sale on the north end of our place. The turpentine was good this year, so I was able to get hold of it. I already signed contracts to bring over three more indentures to
help me clear some space for planting. Might have to build another tobacco barn, too.”

“These new workers you’re getting, any coming over from Wales?” Abel asked with a mask of innocence. Knowing chuckles around the table.

“The best bargains these days are coming from up toward Scotland, the borderlands in the east, if you want to know.”

Reuben said, “I’m seeing more and more Africans working these fields, just like the big operators have up in Virginia. Seems like the easiest thing now is just buy them right off the ship and have done with it.”

“I will never own a man, no matter how much cheaper it might be. The idea makes me sick.”

Abel lifted his wooden cup and said, “Well, here’s to our old mate. Welcome home, Harry boy.”

*

Riding through his new holdings a few days later with a map, trying to figure out where the boundaries were, he caught a whiff of roasting chicken.

Comet Elijah was on his haunches at a makeshift spit. The carcasses of two small animals turning a nice golden brown before him. He was wearing woolen trousers, mismatched boots, a woman’s dirty pink overcoat, and a beaver hat.

“Come sit beside me, Harry,” he said without looking up. “I put on an extra bird for you.”

Harry hitched Annie to a tree. The mare was looking frayed. He wondered if she would last out the winter. He had chinked up cracks in the plank siding of the barn and banked the outside of the north wall with brush and dirt and whatever else he could find lying around to block out the wind. But the return from Canada, which involved long stretches aboard ships and two storms, had worn her out, and her old energy had not come back.

Though in a cheerful state of mind, the Indian was not helpful when it came to satisfying Harry’s curiosity about how he broke out of jail. “That kind of thing calls for special knowledge that you don’t just pick up anywhere,” he said. “Maybe someday you’ll be ready to have it but not just yet. You might hurt yourself. I’ll see if I can teach you later on, if you’re still interested.” After a reflective pause, he added, “If I don’t die first.”

“You’ve been talking about dying for a good while now,” Harry said. “The idea doesn’t seem to bother you.”

Comet Elijah lifted the sticks from the fire and put the chickens on two tin plates he got from a knapsack. It was a handsome outfit that looked like something one of the better-heeled members of the militia might bring on muster day. Harry let pass an itch to know how he came to have it.

“I’ve died many times, always come back. I thought I told you that before. Pretty soon you learn not to make a big to-do about such things.”

He got out a tin flask and two cups and poured out a pinkish brown liquid that smelled like old apple brandy. Harry put away his reluctance, gulped his down, and accepted Comet Elijah’s insistence on another.

They talked some more while they ate and drank. Harry told him about Canada, giving an especially detailed description of his fight in the cornfield. The whole time feeling he was just confirming what Comet Elijah already knew. When they were finished they got onto their feet and stamped out the fire.

“You know, you should really leave the Pamlico,” said Harry. “They’re not making any effort to find you now, but that could change. And if somebody happened to catch up with you in these woods . . .”

Comet Elijah interrupted. “I’ve already decided to go away. I have people in the south, where the Spanish are.”

“Florida?”

He nodded. “They stay warm the whole winter long down there. To tell the truth, I’m tired of cold weather.”

“Well, it’s a good idea to leave here. I’m the only one who knows who really killed the Campbells.”

Comet Elijah had been adjusting himself, arranging the kit he had loaded onto his back. Eyes moving here and there over the ground, looking for stray property. Now he stopped and looked at Harry.

“And how do you know that?”

The question startled Harry. Maybe he had wounded the old warrior’s pride by seeming to suggest he was no longer able to hurt anybody.

“Since you asked, I’ll tell you. But it is something you must swear never to repeat.”

“That’s fine.”

“No, you must swear to me. Because if this got out, it could complicate my life very badly.”

“I swear I won’t tell anybody, even if they torture me.”

The thought came to Harry that if Comet Elijah was so good at poking through peoples’ minds, he should know about his finding the medallion and the nautical chart of Pamlico Sound on the floor under the crib. His thoughts went back to that first gleam of gold. How he had got up from the table, gone down on all fours to look. The medallion of the Freemasons, sitting atop the chart of Pamlico Sound. Stacked so neatly. Harry recalled now that he had wondered if someone had placed them there, instead of their having skittered across the floor haphazardly. He had puzzled over this but only momentarily in his haste to have a better look at the objects. After that, things had moved so fast he had forgotten about this little piece of the puzzle that did not quite fit. This small nattering voice, so quiet that it had been all but drowned out. Only now he realized it never really had gone away.

“I guess I never told you about the monster,” Comet Elijah said.

“What monster?”

“The one I had a fight with. I thought I told you already. The truth is, it’s getting harder to remember what I said in the last few minutes, much less days or weeks ago. But that’s not important now.” He looked up at the sun through the filter of pine tops. It was beginning its long downward slide in the southwestern sky. “Anyway, it’s getting late.”

Harry put a hand on Comet Elijah’s arm as he turned to leave.

“Tell me about the monster.”

The Indian got fussy, tried to shake him off. Said he needed to get started so he could find a place of shelter before nightfall. He could discuss the monster episode later on, if Harry was still interested.

Harry kept his hold. Half coaxing, half demanding. He needed to hear it right now.

They sat down again. Comet Elijah seemed to warm to the subject as he talked. Maybe a little flattered by Harry’s interest. He made hand gestures, furnished descriptive details, filled in color and the illusion of movement as a painter does to make a canvas come alive.