The Constable's Tale (8 page)

He slapped the burlap sack he was carrying down on a chair. “Coriander,” he said. “I’ve found a wild stand of it up toward Sandy Creek.”

After exchanging greetings, Harry told him the news about the murders. Natty made a frown. “The Campbells was good folks,” he said, tearing apart some of the good-smelling leaves from the bag with his fingers and letting the bits fall into the stew. “I’m sorry to hear about this.”

“Natty, I’ve seen Comet Elijah. He’s come back. He has a camp a couple miles from here.”

“I knew we’d not seen the last of him. How did he look?”

“Old. And smaller than I remember. But not too bad for a man that age.” Harry decided not to mention the part about Comet Elijah’s
ótkwareh
.

“Well, he can stay here anytime he likes.”

“Mother might not care for him being so close by. I’ve already invited him to board with us.”

“We don’t want to upset Talitha. But there are a few things she’s got no say in.”

“Also, Maddie McLeod is back in New Bern.”

“Go on. This must be the time for homecomings.”

Noah threw Harry a questioning look. Harry said he would explain about Maddie later. Natty said, more or less to Noah, “I swan, I don’t know which one I like better, this Harry or that boy who used to court those pretty ladies and set taverns afire.”

“I saw Maddie yesterday.”

“I wouldn’t mind laying these old eyes on that one again myself.”

“You’ll have to hurry. She’s leaving again tomorrow to get married.”

Natty smacked his hands together. “Glad to hear it. And who might the fortunate bucko be? Anybody I know?”

“I doubt it. He’s from Virginia. His name is Ayerdale.”

These words had a surprising effect on Natty. His eyes went large and it looked like he stopped breathing.

“Do you know him?”

“I’ve heard the name.” He seemed to recover himself. Got up from his chair and walked over to the hearth. “I reckon we better have some of this mess before it all boils away.”

“Smells good,” said Noah. “What’s in it?”

“Pig brains,” said Harry. “Natty’s famous throughout Craven County for his pig-brain stew.”

“I threw in some tongue and heart and a little liver, just to make it interesting.”

Before they could put a ladle into it, someone rapped at the door. It was Maddie.

*

The fairy princess from the night before was gone. In her place was a woman in men’s riding clothes, hair down and tied back with a ribbon, and a sober eye. She and Harry stood for a long moment, neither speaking, eyes locked.

Natty called out, “Is that Maddie? Come on in, girl, we was just about to eat.”

Maddie nodded in his direction and said, “I need to talk to Harry. Maybe another time.”

In the grayness of an increasingly dank afternoon, Maddie looked older than in the amber light of candles. Tiny lines stretched out from the corners of her eyes and around her mouth.

“I looked for you at your house, but your wife said you might be over here. Congratulations, Harry. She is beautiful. Very well-spoken for a servant.”

“I suspect the whole thing was Mother’s idea.”

He made a quick version of the events, feeling a fresh stab of guilt at the end, realizing how much his tale of unintended romance sounded like an excuse.

“Well, you could hardly have been expected to remain faithful to me. I was off exploring Europe, having a fine time. And, Harry, I confess I was not always faithful to you.”

“Ten years is a long spell.”

They walked as they talked. Maddie speaking evenly, matter-of-factly, as if addressing a onetime business partner, not a lost darling.

“The purpose of my visit is simple. In light of our history together, I feel you may have questions that need answering. We need to resolve
our situation so we can get on with our lives. We need not have secrets between us, nor lingering mysteries. That, Harry, is the best way.”

“Suits me,” he said.

She talked of how she finished her education in Edinburgh, and then Olaf agreed for her to stay in Europe, tour the Continent, with her mother as chaperone. A not-uncommon thing among those of her age and class, she explained. As it turned out, it lasted seven years. Her mother died of a fever about halfway through, and she was on her own. But whenever she ran low on money, the judge would send another note of credit to wherever she was. Venice, Avignon, Brescia. All the fashionable places.

“It makes me feel bad now to think of how much of his money I spent. But I guess it meant little to one as wealthy as my grandfather.”

“I tried not to think about you,” Harry said. “But I couldn’t help wondering where you were, what you were doing.”

“I’ll confess I was curious about you as well. Mail from friends in New Bern caught up with me now and then, and I was much amazed to hear you had come under Grandfather’s tutelage.”

“I am in his debt for everything he’s done for me. And continues to do.”

She talked more about her adventures. She had befriended people whose names she seemed to think Harry should recognize, though he could not imagine why. Politicians, poets, diplomats, novelists, essayists. She had written some herself—poems, satires, even a play—under pen names. They were mostly circulated among friends, except for letters to newspaper editors touching on political issues.

She moved on to the subject of lovers as if she thought this might be something Harry would want to know about, which he did not. A middle-aged banker in Rome. A youthful artist in Geneva. A dark-skinned man in Marseilles who helped unload the ship she had arrived on from Venice. In Padua, a beautiful and intense young Spaniard then visiting the courts and literary circles of Europe. A man, she implied, whose appetites did not stop at women.

Harry had nothing comparable to tell. He offered a few details about life with his mother and Natty, realizing how boring his adventures
sounded. Thinking that matters involving money might impress her, he said how, two years previous, his family had made a fateful financial choice. In response to falling prices they had cut back on the amount of tobacco they were raising and were now shipping much more timber, tar, pitch, and turpentine. Gifts of the seemingly unending legions of pine trees on their property.

“Well, I don’t want to prolong this any more than necessary,” Maddie said when he started talking about forest products. “I just thought we should speak before we go our separate ways. It felt like unfinished business.”

“You already said that.”

“Yes. I wanted us to be clear about where we stand. So we can make the clean break I believe would be best for both of us. You seem happy. I hope you wish the same for me.”

“Do you love him?”

Maddie stopped and turned to face him. “Richard? Of course I love him. Why would you think otherwise?”

“I’m sorry, I had no right to ask. I’m sure he has everything you want in a husband. You should be happy together.”

“I have to go now.” She resumed her pace. “Olaf is expecting me for supper. And I have to get ready to leave for Williamsburg. Richard has business to look after there before we leave for Canada.”

“We?”

“I’m going with him. We’re taking a schooner in the morning, so we don’t have to go anywhere near that awful swamp. What’s its name?”

“The Great Dismal.”

“Yes. A good word for it.”

They walked back to the railing where Maddie had fastened her horse.

“I . . .” he began, before he really knew what he wanted to say.

“I’ve already forgotten about you, Harry,” she interrupted. “Let’s leave it that way.”

CHAPTER 8

40: Strive not with your Superiers in argument, but always Submit your Judgment to others with Modesty.

—R
ULES OF
C
IVILITY

“AS OF YESTERDAY I’D NEVER SPOKEN TO AN INDIAN,” NOAH SAID AS
he and Harry rode out the next morning to fetch Comet Elijah. “Now I’m to be living with one. How exciting.” From his way of speaking, Harry could not decide whether he was really excited or just making fun.

Their plan was to have him settled into the barn in time for Harry, Noah, and Toby to proceed into New Bern for the Campbells’ memorial service, which had been set for two o’clock.

“An old man like that has no business staying out in the open,” Harry said as they continued along. “He’ll be fine in the barn until we can figure out something else. I’m sure you’ll be glad, too, when you can make other arrangements.”

“Actually I’m growing rather fond of the cows. We’ve had some interesting conversations.”

They almost missed Comet Elijah’s camp in the thin morning light filtering through the pine tops. All that was left of the longhouse was a scattering of tree limbs and loose bark.

“It appears he decided to seek other accommodations,” said Noah.

“I don’t think so,” said Harry, poking through the shapeless heap that was Comet Elijah’s belongings. At the bottom was the cooking pot. Lying next to it, a trade ax. This was nothing more than a simple tool: brute, unornamented steel built for hard use. Chopping wood and dispatching small animals. Age and wear had darkened both the metal head and the handle. Harry tested its heft. Flipped it in the air one revolution, catching the wood as it came around. Showing off a little for Noah. The ax had a familiar feel. Harry allowed himself to think it could have been the very one Comet Elijah had used to teach him the customs and methods of the tomahawk.

“It’s not the first thing you turn to when you need a weapon,” Comet Elijah had told him when Harry first had showed curiosity. He could not have been much more than eleven. “In fact, it’s the last thing you go for. You shoot first. Musket and pistol, in that order, or whichever is closest at hand. Then, if they’re still coming on, use your spear if you have one. You want to take care of them before they get in too close. Only when they’re right on top of you do you draw out your small blades.”

Comet Elijah spent several years teaching him the surprisingly large number of offensive and defensive maneuvers possible with the ax alone and in combination with a long knife, the other object a woodsman always carried with him. He began with the foot stances available for use depending on the kind of threat posed. “Your legs
are your fighting platform,” he told Harry. “You have to have a good way of standing, firm and balanced, the basic one with your feet about shoulder-length apart, one foot some little ahead and the one behind turned out, just so.” Then came the different ways of carrying the blades, whether both on the left or right side or one on each side, or both or just one of them in the small of the back, out of sight. Each spot had its advantages and disadvantages depending on a person’s amount of skill and inclinations. The overriding idea was to get them in hand with the proper grip, and into action quickly, once the need became evident. Young Harry took in these mysteries eagerly. They were parts of the grown-up world that Comet Elijah and Natty lived in, not the tiresomely prettified world, as he thought of it then, of the Judge McLeods and the Reverend Reeds and the vestrymen and storekeepers of New Bern. Harry felt he was being brought into a secret society, a priesthood of the forest whose rites were as intricate as any Masonic ones he could imagine.

After Harry mastered the preliminaries, Comet Elijah began teaching him the various presentations to the enemy. High guard. Low guard. Middle guard. And the angles of attack. Eight in all, going around an imaginary circle with your opponent’s head at the center. The thrust. The cut. The hammer blow with the back end of the ax. Special uses of the handle, fine points about how it can be employed. How, in the middle of a fight, to change your grip to best suit the way the contest was going. Methods of engaging an enemy who was close to you and one farther out. Dealing with multiple attackers. Each movement distinct, at once simple and brutal, savage in purpose, yet as graceful in its own way as a dance step. Each little piece to be practiced endlessly, both singly and along with others in different sequences. The possible combinations seemed without number.

On the first morning of this advanced instruction, Comet Elijah put on a demonstration of how the two blades could be used together against an enemy or several coming from different directions. Just to give Harry a look at the whole, he explained, before delving into the
parts. Harry had to sit on a rock in a clearing and make an oath to not get up until the exhibition was finished. Comet Elijah walked a safe distance away and turned back to face him. He was standing erect but relaxed in a glow of morning sun slanting through the trees. Knife and tomahawk hanging together on his right side. No holster, the instruments just wedged in between his belt and his waist. As simple as could be. Eyes downcast, breathing easy. Seeming to draw into himself. In the next instant he was an instrument of destruction. A prolonged, flowing blur of motion, blades rising and falling, spinning, going in many directions at once, or so it seemed. Polished steel caught sunlight, which flashed bright splinters into Harry’s eyes. Comet Elijah the man all but disappeared, replaced by a whirling, glittering, nearly blinding orb, making Harry want to swear he had magically grown extra arms. It seemed a fair guess that anything that came too close at that moment would be annihilated. Shredded into raw, quivering pieces.

“Comet Elijah wouldn’t have left this behind,” said Harry. “Not if he left this place on his own.”

“Scroggins?”

Harry considered the possibility.

“I guess we ought to go see him, make sure he didn’t by some accident do harm to Comet Elijah.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Noah. “Blinn.”

“What am I thinking about Blinn?”

“He said yesterday he was going to tell the sheriff about finding the Indian. Carruthers thinks the murders were committed by an Indian.”

“Carruthers couldn’t possibly believe the old man we saw yesterday could have killed the Campbells.”

“Maybe not. But you heard the talk at the table yesterday. News of the murders wasn’t even a day old and already the town was in a tumult. If they could arrest somebody, wouldn’t that calm people down, take pressure off? I’ve heard that Carruthers is up for reappointment as sheriff. Maybe he wants to have this matter settled. The others, too.”