She stiffened, and silently led him to the stairs.
Dr. Lloyd was much recovered, or at least in a more comfortable stage of the terrible malarial cycle. The naval surgeon, draped with a blanket, was asleep in a rocking chair by the open window. He revived as Duncan lifted his wrist for a pulse.
“I am grateful for your efforts, sir,” the officer said. “I am loathe to prescribe the tincture to my sailors for fear of habituation but laudanum was the right measure for my extremity. I had a blessed rest and when I awoke the fever had passed. I should return to my ship but Mrs. Dawson makes me too comfortable. I am indebted, McCallum.”
Duncan hesitated and glanced at Alice. “McLaren. My name is McLaren. An easy mistake.” The woman cocked her head at him but said nothing.
Lloyd sighed. “My wits are yet dulled, sir. McLaren. Of course. You have the air of a man from the north. I myself had the honor of cruising up the St. Lawrence at the end of the late hostilities with France.”
“I was there at the fall of Montreal,” Duncan replied and, as Alice excused herself, the two men embarked on a quarter hour’s conversation about the northern campaign that had won the war for Britain.
“I trust you will be supplied with Peruvian bark soon,” Duncan said at last.
“Three days, maybe four” Lloyd offered. “The Commodore will bring fresh supplies.” The genteel doctor paused as he saw the cloud on Duncan’s features. “I beg your pardon. I said something to offend you. Most unintended.”
Duncan stood and backed away, making a half bow. The manor house was beginning to feel like more of a prison than the stable. “I must go. I am pleased to have played a small part in your recovery, though I daresay that Mrs. Dawson deserves most of the credit.”
“I was hoping to have you dine with me on board the Ardent. Roasted duck. I might be able to discover a passable claret in the hold.”
Duncan offered a grateful nod. “I am honored, sir.” He glanced up at Alice, who had appeared in the doorway. “But my time is otherwise committed,” he stated, and, making a bow, left the room.
She followed him down the stairs. “What is it, Duncan? Have we offended you somehow?”
They had reached Titus’s room before he replied. “You give no offense,” he said. She turned her back to him as he stripped off the linen shirt. “My business here is done.”
“Then tell me why you prefer the slave quarters to my home.”
“Because I am a slave of the Judas stable, Mrs. Dawson.”
He was prepared for her anger, her rejection, but not for the pain in her deep eyes. “Walk with me at least,” she said, motioning him outside. “I am late for a daily appointment. And you well know my name is Alice.”
Trent rose from a chair on the back porch as they stepped outside, but she waved him away. “The prisoner is in my care, Mr. Trent,” she declared in a tone that brooked no protest, then led Duncan around the house onto the track that followed the river bank. She soon turned onto a steeper walkway that had once been carefully laid with brick, though its weeds and heaves showed it had fallen into disuse.
They paused at an overgrown terrace where Alice picked a handful of blossoms. “My husband was so proud of this garden. He had plans to expand it, and had written to a horticulturalist for boxwood to create a maze for the children to enjoy. Galilee was a happy place, Mr.-Duncan, though you would not credit it now.” She led him back onto the path as she spoke. “He was a devout Christian, and when he was left this estate by his great-uncle he continued with his uncle’s plan for a work farm, where debtors came for wholesome labor while they worked off their debt. On Sundays we would have an open-air church service on that little knoll in the field. Sometimes traveling troupes would stop and perform entertainments. My husband kept open accounts for all to see and gave out shares of the harvest. I still get letters from debtors who were able to renew their lives because of their time here. It heartens me, to at least know there are others with happy memories of this place.” She gazed at a little clearing at the top of the hill then paused as if to collect herself, and sank her face into the blossoms before marching forward.
It was a small graveyard, with fragrant peonies and flowering shrubs enclosing three sides, sheltering half a dozen graves.
As she arranged her flowers at two gravestones Duncan examined the others. Henry Dawson, born in 1694, died 1756, must have been the great-uncle who had founded the estate. Buried beside him were his wife and infant son, dead the same day in 1741. Two other stones, without birth years, were for Magali and Tsonai, with the smaller English names Jemma Kitchen and Quiet Sam underneath. It was extraordinary to have house servants buried with the manor family. The next stone simply said Elijah Dawson, with no dates. The stones where she arranged flowers were for Elizabeth and Jeremiah Dawson, ages four and seven, dead the same month. Duncan plucked two peony blooms and laid them by the stones.
“My babies,” Alice Dawson said. “They waved goodbye to their father with me at the dock. He never knew they died. They never knew he died.”
“But you said his body was never recovered.”
“He’s dead. I have felt it all these many months.” She wiped the dampness from her eyes, then rose to pull weeds from her husband’s marker. “And it’s God’s blessing that he never saw what Galilee has become.” She gazed down at the compound, where Trent could be seen still sitting on the porch, then grabbed his forearm and pulled him through the bushes to the crest of the hill, and pointed down the other side at the mill.
“There are two lieutenants of marines there, Mr. Hobart and Mr. Kincaid. They were quartered in the manor house but I ejected them after they took too many liberties with the housemaids. The girl Lila, their housekeeper, visits us most mornings. Sometimes I go down there to bring the soldiers fresh bread. We make conversation. The officers insist their work is secret but speaking with a widow bringing food can do no harm, surely, nor can letting her help clean their office.”
Duncan heard the invitation in her voice and stepped closer.
“Their secrets involve records and documents and testimony obtained by coercion. They go back and forth from the Ardent to the mill, arranging maps and letters. Some of the letters are from London. They boast about how Lord Grenville has taken particular notice of them.”
“Maps of what?”
“New York colony. Pennsylvania. I remember thinking how odd, that they would need such maps in Virginia. They placed marks on the maps, along what looks like roads or trails. Strange symbols are arranged along the routes, like something the Indians would use. A deer. A bird. A tree. And I saw big crosses marked at five places. Johnson Hall, somewhere called Edentown, then Shamokin, Conococheague, and Townsend’s Store. They have lists of names pinned to the wall. Some with checkmarks beside them, and four with little Xs beside them.”
She reached up a sleeve and produced several papers. “Here. Take them. I only had a moment alone in the room they use as an office. I grabbed these from a table two days ago, though I don’t really know why. It’s just that they are evil men, and I am sick of Galilee being used for evil.” She shrugged. “The papers make no sense to me. The lieutenants deal with mounds of correspondence. The Commodore writes to Lord Amherst in London. Hobart and Kincaid are always receiving letters and other papers, and paying coin to those who bring them in. Not postmen, more like bounty hunters and sneak thieves.”
Duncan put the papers inside his shirt and studied her. “Four names with X marks,” he repeated. “Patrick Woolford, Red Jacob, Peter Rohrbach, and Patrick Henry.”
“How could you possibly know?” she asked.
“My God, Alice, it was you! You sent the warning.”
“I didn’t know the significance, but those Xs filled me with foreboding. Hobart and Kincaid spoke so hatefully about Dr. Franklin, so I wrote a message to his house in Philadelphia and concealed it in a letter to a friend in Philadelphia, asking her to deliver it.”