Ursa appeared, carrying two loaves of bread, one of which he gave to Duncan before breaking off a piece of the other for his son.
“I could bring the ancient one back,” Ononyot offered. “We can hide him in the woods.”
Tanaqua’s eyes gleamed at the prospect. He had come so far, and suffered so much, to find the lost god.
“Not yet,” came a soft voice. “He is not finished with those men.”
The two Mohawks stared at Jahoska and hesitantly nodded.
“You call him Blooddancer,” the Susquehannock said, “but in my father’s lodge he was always just the old Trickster.” Jaho gave one of his wheezing laughs. “They think they captured him but they will find that it is they who have been captured.”
The next day the trickster struck in the manor house. Duncan had been called to check on Dr. Lloyd and was descending the stairs with Alice Dawson when screams erupted from the kitchen. Servants began running out the front door. When they reached the kitchen Titus and Polly were on the back porch, futilely trying to calm the kitchen staff.
Duncan followed their terrified gazes toward the heavy work table by the hearth where a pig was being prepared for roasting. Apples and onions had spilled onto the floor. As Alice tried to calm the servants Duncan approached the table. The pig was being readied for a huge roasting pan. A knife lay by its belly where someone had started dressing it. The dead pig’s black eyes seemed to stare at Duncan. One of the frightened servants at the window yelled for Duncan to run. Then the pig arched its back and rolled toward Duncan.
The maids screamed, and Duncan shot backward. He halted halfway across the chamber, realizing that expectant eyes watched from the doorway. “Duncan, please . . .” Alice Dawson said, though whether in warning or encouragement he was not sure.
The pig was writhing now, as if trying to rise on its truncated limbs. Duncan took a deep breath and advanced on the table, clamping the pig down with one hand and grabbing the knife with the other. The writhing started again as he cut, until a gluttonous lump with two eyes appeared, followed by a long serpentine body that slid out onto the table.
Duncan grabbed the creature behind the head. It was a river eel. His discovery did little to quiet the onlookers. A maid squealed in fear as the creature squirmed in his grip, another spat what sounded like an African curse.
“It’s true!” Polly cried.
Titus appeared, extending a bucket of water, and Duncan dropped the eel into it. Alone of the house staff the tall Ashanti was undisturbed.
Polly took a few cautious steps into the kitchen.
“What’s true?” Duncan asked her.
“That red god, he’s terrible angry,” the cook declared. “He don’t like his people enslaved. They’re the blood of the forest.”
The next morning a small buggy made a slow circuit of the fields as they worked. Titus drove the single-horse rig, while Alice Dawson, holding a parasol, studied the slaves. She directed Titus to stop repeatedly, and was so obvious about staring at them that Trent snapped out for the stablemen to avert their eyes from the mistress of the manor.
That afternoon Duncan was summoned back to the house. At first, fighting a terrible foreboding ever since seeing Ramsey’s portrait, he ignored Trent’s calls to him, and even turned his back on him, but finally the overseer impatiently tapped his baton on Duncan’s shoulder.
They did not speak while Duncan washed at the water barrel, but as they walked up the perimeter road Duncan kept pace beside Trent instead of dutifully following. Duncan watched a group of Africans digging holes in the knoll at the base of the fields, then noticed how the overseer’s gaze kept returning to the masts visible above the riverbank.
“Were you a bay sailor then,” he asked Trent, “or did you get out on blue water?”
Trent paused, and for a moment Duncan saw a faraway look in the overseer’s eyes. “The Florida islands up to the Delaware Bay, all those waters were my home, lad. Farther north to Georges Bank when we had letters of marque to take French ships in the last war.”
“A privateer then.”
“That was the pretty word for it. Pound a ship and take her cargo and you were a hero back then. But do the same thing without the letters of marque and suddenly you’re an outlaw.”
Duncan puzzled out his words. “You were caught raiding British vessels and you didn’t swing for it?”
“They’re rare short of bay pilots. The navy made me sign a paper swearing off the wild life and agreeing to pilot His Majesty’s ships.”
“But here you are.”
“The Commodore liked the way I handled myself. Seconded for his navy, he calls it. Said if I proved myself he would double my pay.”
“Prove yourself by tormenting prisoners?”
“By taking his orders without question.”
They walked on. “I miss the water,” Duncan observed. “For years I was never away from it. My grandfather would sail into the teeth of a gale, howling with laughter. At first I was terrified. But later I learned to feel the joy of it.”
The words brought a strange silence. “Sometimes when the wind is right,” Trent finally said, “you can smell the salt from here.”
Titus waited with a clean shirt in his little room off the kitchen. Duncan stood unresisting as the butler helped him change into it, then spun about at a gasp from a darkened doorway, which he had taken to be a closet. He leapt into the shadows and pulled back the woman who had flattened herself against the corridor wall.
Alice twisted out of his grasp and, pale and trembling, lowered herself onto a stool. “I am so ashamed,” she said, looking at the floor. “It’s only that Nancy said every man in the Judas stable received regular beatings. I didn’t credit it. But look at you. A doctor, and your back lies in ruin.”
“After the first ten or fifteen strokes the tips of the leathers dig into the flesh. Gabriel has little rivets set in his whip that claw away the tissue. You would be amazed at the gutters they can dig into a man’s flesh.”
She stared at the brand on his arm then looked up with anguish in her eyes. “I insisted on being shown your stable. You live worse even than the Africans. What have you done, Mr. McCallum, to deserve such torment?”
“Carry broken dice and ask the wrong questions,” he shot back, then regretted his glibness. “The men in the stable resist the stamp tax. And deliver messages for those who do so in Boston and Philadelphia and Williamsburg.”
His words seemed to genuinely confuse her. “Who does not speak ill of that dismal tax?” She shook her head. “The officers from the mill say you are all traitors and deserters who practiced vile crimes and would commit more if allowed to escape.”
“One of those demons stands before you.” She glanced up uneasily then quickly looked away. “The Commodore,” Duncan continued, “is a man who trades in lies like other men trade in Oronoco leaf.” Duncan pushed his arm into the sleeve held by Titus, then saw how she stared at him now, with a new, and intense, curiosity. “We are men who chafe against the yoke, and help those with more power discuss the nature of government.”
She stood and straightened her dress. “I don’t understand. Discuss? You make it sound as though our duties to government are negotiable. The government is the government. You may as well argue against breathing or the color of the sky.”
“Is the Commodore the government then?” His question seemed to strangely wound her. She turned and he spoke to her back as he finished buttoning his shirt. “Is this truly the government that ambushes and mutilates men in the forest, who detains us and treats us so, who threatens imminent death without so much as a trial?”