Pinpoints of light exploded in Duncan’s eyes.
“You could be valuable to us, McCallum. Or you could be just another doomed Judas slave.”
The sting of the first blow had not subsided before Kincaid struck him again. “What other commissions do you have? What commissioners do you know of?”
“James,” Hobart whispered. “We have no instructions.”
“What,” Kincaid demanded, “are the names on the stolen commissions? Who are the revenue agents you have hidden from us?”
Duncan pushed down his pain to study the man. He had expected them to press for details of the runner network. Why would the marine lieutenant want to know about names on commissions?
When Duncan did not reply, Kincaid frowned, stepped back, and bent to the ear of the smaller man, who left the building. “Damned Welshman, forever forgetting things,” Kincaid said to Duncan in a conversational tone.
Hobart loomed closer now. A new tool had materialized in his hand. Duncan recalled that the narrow blade was called a stiletto, a treacherous Italian instrument. Hobart languidly dragged the blade along Duncan’s exposed arm, scraping away hair, then very carefully inserted the cold steel into Duncan’s nostril. “When,” he asked in a casual tone, “is the world’s end?” As he twisted the blade Duncan desperately bent his head back. Hobart laughed and withdrew the stiletto. Blood dripped onto Duncan’s lip. “Or should we just speak of your end?”
“It was you!” Duncan spat back. “You were with Francis Johnson in Albany!” Hobart hesitated. Kincaid kicked away the stool.
Duncan’s shoulders erupted in agony as they took the full weight of his body. He stretched, desperately trying to reach the brick floor with his toes. “And you went from there to Onondaga,” he gasped.
Kincaid answered with a punch to his belly, setting Duncan swinging backward, then punched him again when his body swung closer to him. “William Johnson’s son is . . .” his words came in gasps as they took turns punching him, “is a spy for the Krakens.”
Kincaid paused, letting Duncan swing back without a punch, then gave one of his frigid grins. “William Johnson will be killed by trunnel nails and teapots,” he declared. “So why should I care, you interfering weasel!” He hit Duncan on the return.
The swinging became faster, and the punches kept pace. Duncan closed his eyes, clenching his jaw, until suddenly he realized they had stopped. He opened his eyes to see that the Welshman had returned, and was standing on the stool beside Duncan. “They never told you, did they?” Duncan said.
“Told us?” Hobart asked.
“About the curse. That mask you stole. It is very old, like the things left by the Druids in England. You know about Druid relics. They terrify people. I recall a story about a man who stole some from a museum. Within months he and his family were all dead. Where is it?” Neither Duncan nor Tanaqua had given voice to the fear he knew they shared, that the mask had been destroyed.
Kincaid cocked his head a moment, then shrugged. “Five thousand acres of Ohio bottomland if you will sing our song. When will they come to the world’s end?”
“I tend to prefer mountains,” Duncan replied.
Kincaid seemed pleased. Hobart gave a nod.
The pain seared through Duncan’s body like a bolt of lightning.
The Welshman was fastidious about his job, steadying Duncan’s forearm in one hand as he pressed the red-hot iron into Duncan’s flesh with the other. The smell of singed hair and seared flesh filled the little chamber. Kincaid offered Hobart more snuff and they watched in amusement as the short man pressed the iron deeper into his arm.
When he finished, the Welshman carefully poured water over the raw S-shaped brand burnt into Duncan’s forearm, then with a businesslike air tucked the iron under his arm, stowed the stool in the shadows, and left the building.
Hobart reached up with his blade and sliced through the cord binding Duncan, who collapsed onto the bricks.
“S for slave,” Kincaid crowed. “S for spy. S for stamps.”
“S,” added Hobart, “for the simpleton who gives up his life for fools with quills.”
“The committees write for freedom,” Duncan said with a cracking voice.
“Wilkes and corpses,” Hobart cracked as they turned to the door, laughing with Kincaid.
Duncan lay on the floor, his body wracked with dry heaves but then growing much stiller as he stared at the knotted cord tied to his shoulder, lying in front of him on the bricks.
He had a dreamlike sensation of being carried in a barrow and heaved onto a sleeping platform, then finally jerked awake as a cold cloth was draped over his forehead. He opened his eyes to see Tanaqua and Webb.
“Winters let us forego lunch,” Webb explained. “We thank you for the opportunity since it looked like some slop refused by the pigs.” The major propped him up as Tanaqua handed Duncan a mug of the willow brew. As Duncan downed it he deftly reached to Tanaqua’s belt, lifting away the twine he had taken from the dead man on the river. As he stretched the knotted twine between his hands both men went very still. Webb glanced at the door as if to make sure it was closed.
“Red Jacob had one of these,” Duncan said to the Mohawk. “Just a string, I thought, the kind a forest traveler might keep for any number of tasks. But then the dead man on the Susquehanna had one. I thought he had used his last strength to preserve his enameled box but the box was just a way to anchor the string, wasn’t it? That’s why you took it, not for the box but for the string. It was a message from Philadelphia.”
Tanaqua did not disagree.
“Duncan,” Webb began, “it’s better that you don’t-”
“Don’t know what I am going to die for?” he snapped. “They kept asking about the world’s end. I thought it was a macabre joke, a reminder that we are meant to die. But it’s a place, isn’t it? When at the world’s end, they want to know. They wanted me to name commissioners and reveal the time at the world’s end.”
“It’s the secret they covet most of all,” Webb confessed. “No more than a handful know. They await word in Williamsburg.”
“It’s in Lancaster,” Tanaqua said. “Captain Woolford and I ate a venison pie there once.”
“An inn? The World’s End is an inn?”
“It was a very good pie,” the Mohawk added.
Webb sat beside Duncan and Tanaqua slipped away to a window, keeping watch.
“There’s going to be a congress, Duncan,” Webb explained. “The men on the committees are going to meet, gathering members of colonial governments, before the end of the year. They will seek resolutions to bind the colonies against the stamp tax. If it happens the Krakens know it means London is losing control of the colonies. They are furiously trying to stop it. Even postal carriers are being stopped and searched by government agents. Without correspondence the congress will never happen.”
“But surely they can’t prevent a public gathering of prominent men.”
Webb nodded agreement. “So long as the planning is done in secret. At a meeting among the leaders of the committees.”
“At an inn called World’s End,” Duncan concluded. “But they learned of the inn weeks ago,” he added after a moment. “I saw a rebus letter that used symbols for it, written to Peter Rohrbach by a young doctor in Philadelphia.”
“Rush?” Webb asked. “Benjamin Rush?”
As Duncan nodded Webb sighed. “Rush is well-intentioned but is so naive. He was sworn to secrecy but he knew Rohrbach already had the secret. But the date is still well guarded, kept in the hands of the Iroquois, using their system. Sir William and Captain Woolford insisted on it. They had gone to Johnson Hall to receive the date and carry it down through the network.”
My God, Duncan thought, so simple, so open, and, in the hands of the illiterate natives who were so casually dismissed by the British, so ingenious.
Tanaqua stepped closer. “It is a way we have used for more years than can be counted,” the Mohawk said. “A date is the simplest of things, especially if we use the English calendar, which most English think we don’t understand. My father, he could send a whole story of a battle on a string of sinew, telling of who had won, how many prisoners were taken, how many dead of which tribes.”