Webb paused and twisted to look about the company. “Was Devon captured then? Let me speak to the boy. I never meant to cause him trouble.”
“He was murdered, sir. The very night he spoke your name.”
The Virginia officer shook his head slowly from side to side, as if he might deny Duncan’s words. “The knaves! The king will not abide such treachery!”
“If the king is told treason is afoot he will abide very much indeed.”
“Treason! We simply engage in political discourse. Have they not heard of the Magna Carta? The liberty of Englishmen is protected!”
As Trent began herding them inside for the night Hughes extracted a piece of hickory from his pocket and tossed it to Webb. “They will question you about the runner marks and commissioners. They will not be polite,” he added.
They left the major staring at the deep bite marks on the wood.
As the men settled onto their pallets, Duncan helped Webb find a place to sleep. “This is a nightmare,” the major said. “Surely I will wake up in my featherbed in Louisa County and recall that I drank too much claret last night.”
Duncan grabbed his arm as he swayed again. “You have a bruised rib, cuts on your face, lash marks on your back, and a broken tooth. What more evidence do you need? You are a slave with the rest of us. We are dying day by day and you may be the best chance we have to leave this place alive.”
“Best chance?”
“You know who is in that manor house. You know the roads, by both water and land, and the way of the tobacco trade.”
They spoke no more until the door was locked behind them.
“We are on the Rappahannock, perhaps fifteen miles of deep channel from the Chesapeake.” Webb shrugged. “How does that help you? The navy is on maneuvers on the bay. You can’t throw an oyster shell without hitting a government ship. The river offers no escape.”
It was not the news Duncan wanted to hear. “Who is in the manor house?”
“It was built by the Dawson family. The elder Dawson was a kind Christian who ran his farm to help the needy and his nephew continued his good works.” Webb shrugged. “I have heard nothing of the family these two years and more.”
“The tobacco. Who sells the tobacco? We need to understand who controls this place.”
Webb paused, considering the question. “I suspect one of the companies seeking to take over the Oronoco market. The Rappahannock Company, I’d wager.”
“And who controls the company?”
Webb shrugged. “Their proprietors hide behind lawyers and clerks. There’s several such companies, given charters by the king. Shares change hands in London and Williamsburg.”
“The Krakens must control it,” Duncan suggested. “They must. This is their lair, where secret killers are dispatched to serve their masters and secret prisoners are punished.”
“It’s an old tale,” came a raspy voice behind them. Larkin had been listening. “An old seafarer spoke of the krakens when I served on coasters as a boy. Great beasts that would rise up from the darkness and rip apart men and ships with their tentacles. I said surely then we must sail closer to shore to avoid them and he said it didn’t matter, that a kraken moved like a ghost. It could creep right up a river and snatch one of us. And so it did,” the former sailor insisted. “Poor Devon said he that he alone survived the water route. The beast took offense. It stalked him and squeezed the life out of the poor lad.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The days became a blur of pain and toil. The crack of a cane and the bray of “sotweed!” grew as constant as the drone of flies. At night men collapsed onto the sleeping racks but in the small hours Duncan often heard them talking in their sleep to loved ones they might never see again. Friends whispered to each other of simple things, like picking apples with a son or kittens delivered on a hearth on a snowy night. Duncan, lying on his pallet in the dark, found himself spending more and more time thinking of Edentown, and the contentment he had known in the years since the war.
Sarah and Duncan were joined by a young Oneida girl, who skipped between them, holding their hands, as they approached the grove of maple trees. A spring sugar camp was always a joyous time for the tribes, but this camp was cause for special celebration. The Edentown settlement, newly enlarged under Sarah’s guidance, was busy with arrival of new craftsmen, new lambs, even two new Percheron foals in its pasture. The first year of the schoolhouse, which counted several tribal children among its students, would soon be celebrated with a picnic. Sarah had been moved beyond words when Adanahoe and four other Iroquois elders from Onondaga had arrived to share the bounty of their sugar orchards.
They stopped at a huge maple and Duncan helped the girl lift the birch-bark bucket from its tap, which she cradled in both arms to take back to the boiling kettles.
“We’ve done it, haven’t we?” Sarah said.
Duncan wasn’t certain of her meaning until he saw the contented way she watched the girl entering the joyful camp of natives and Europeans. We’ve made our oasis in the forest-she meant the sanctuary she had dreamed of. “You’ve done it,” he replied.
She took his hand. “I could never have done it without you, Duncan. You were my strength. You made me believe it was possible.” She squeezed his hand and seemed about to embrace him when Conawago, with an Iroquois toddler on his shoulder, called out for Duncan to come join an impromptu lacrosse game.
They did not find each other until long after sunset, when the kettle of venison and squash stewed in sap was empty, and everyone was exhausted from singing many rounds of harvest songs of the Iroquois, the Scots, and the Germans. Sarah had her sleeping blanket draped around her neck and from behind her she produced Duncan’s blanket. He had led her to a bed of moss at the edge of the camp and they were lying down when several of the Iroquois children ran up and laughingly wedged themselves between Sarah and Duncan. Sarah cast Duncan a disappointed smile, then began telling the children the English and Iroquois names for the constellations overhead. As the children quieted she reached out to hold his hand, but the children had stretched them far apart. Only their fingertips could connect, and they fell asleep like that, fingertip to fingertip.
On Sunday they were escorted to the river, where they joined the other slaves in the weekly bathing and clothes washing. The sinister pharaohs watched over them from the shore, aided by two guards in separate dinghies anchored along the mouth of the little cove where the slaves were allowed to bathe.
Some of the Africans had children who splashed naked in the water and threw balls of mud at one another. At first Duncan, stripped to his britches, stayed with Webb and several of the Judas slaves who just sat in shallow water to let the river soothe their ravaged backs. Soon he ventured into the deeper water, pretending to wash his own clothes but keeping his eye on the wharf. The cutter was moored along the long dock, guarded by a marine in a scarlet tunic. In the deeper water at the end of the wharf was a broad-beamed trading snow unloading the big hogshead barrels that would be used later in the season to ship the tobacco crop to market.
Set behind the wharf was the manor house, a structure of brick and white clapboard that was not at all elegant, but certainly spacious. It had obviously been built around a farmhouse now serving as the rear wing, probably where kitchens and servant quarters were located. A low white-pillared portico extended a hundred feet from the entrance toward the wharf, flanked by flowering lilacs. A blonde woman in a blue dress was cutting the flowers, handing them to an African woman with a basket on her arm.
“The fool’s asleep,” Murdo whispered at his side. “Too much ale on Saturday night I wager.”
Duncan followed his gaze toward the farthest dinghy, where indeed the solitary guard sat stiffly with a musket between his knees, his head braced on one hand. He studied his weary companions. Escape would be impossible if they had no will to do so. Broken men would never be able to summon the speed and courage needed for flight from the well-armed enforcers of Galilee, and the spirit they had briefly shown had flagged since the night they had burned the tax commission. Hope was steadily fading from their eyes. “How many do you think can swim?” he asked.