“It was a list of men marked for death. Two of them are dead already. The other names you saw on the wall are probably the Judas slaves.”
Alice closed her eyes a moment, and when she opened them he saw moisture in them. “It has to do with the pig coming to life in my kitchen, doesn’t it?”
Duncan looked out over the river. “It has to do with a dying Mohawk grandmother and the stamp tax. It has to do with a lost god and committees of correspondence.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” Duncan admitted. “But if you wish I will tell what I know. Though I caution that it may sound like a legend out of a children’s storybook.”
“My children and I were always quite fond of old legends.” She motioned him to a flat ledge overlooking the little harbor in front of the manor house.
He spoke without interruption, of the dying Adanahoe, the theft of Blooddancer the Trickster, of the disappearance of runners and murders on the trail south, of the committees and the Kraken Club, even the little rebellion in the Conococheague Valley. At first she listened while gazing intently at Duncan, but when he described the death of the freed slave Atticus her eyes brimmed with moisture again and she stared into her folded hands with an anguished expression.
“Atticus was a house slave here,” she said, “a favorite of my husband’s. We let him buy his freedom and he was still working here to buy that of his wife and child. Gabriel hated him for that, and for always talking with Jaho and the other Indian slaves. Six months ago Gabriel sold his wife and child, and refused to say where they had gone. He banished Atticus from Galilee.”
“Are Hobart and Kincaid here now?” he asked after a moment.
“They left on the dawn tide, taking that little cutter. God help me, but I always pray they will drown in the bay.” She shrugged. “They always return in a few days.”
They walked on.
“He has a dog, old Jaho,” Duncan said. Increasingly he had a strange sense that the mysteries of Jahoska were as important as the mysteries that kept the runners at Galilee.
“I’m sorry?”
“Jahoska has a great water dog that stays in the swamp close to the shed where we sleep.”
Her gaze grew distant, and a small smile flickered on her face. “Jaho was always here, helping, teaching the young ones. He knew so much about growing things, about young plants and animals and humans. Some called him the forest wizard. The dogs were always with him, like kin. That painting of the dog by the stairway is of my husband as a boy. The retriever in it was Chuga. Always Chuga. When one died the biggest male of the next litter was always Chuga. My husband said Jaho’s people had started the name, long before we were born, as if it were always the same dog, just in a different body. We relied on Jaho so much in the early days but he always refused to be paid. When Gabriel and the soldiers came Chuga disappeared. I thought Gabriel had killed him. Jaho refused to take their orders and was banished to the slave quarters. He was close to Atticus. Sometimes there were reports that Atticus had been spotted, speaking with Jaho. Gabriel kept calling on those dreadful pharaohs of his to capture him.”
When they returned to the track along the river, Duncan extracted the square of silk Ononyot had taken from the mill. She grimaced as he unfolded it. “His flag,” she said, “that’s what the Commodore calls it, the insignia of his military empire.” Alice caught his eye. “Titus saw you discover the portrait of the Commodore. He said you were like to faint from the shock of it.”
“It was Ramsey’s indenture that took me from a Scottish prison to America.”
“Dear God! You are bound to that monster?”
“His daughter forced him to hand over the bond and his northern estate to her. I live with her at Edentown.”
Alice noticed his choice of words. “Live with her?” She paused and turned her face toward Duncan’s. “You didn’t say serve her.”
“I am bound to her. My body and my heart.” He looked across the wide river. “If Ramsey finds me he will destroy me. He has vowed more than once to kill me.”
“It is why you denied your name in front of Dr. Lloyd,” she observed, then her face darkened. “You must go, Duncan!” she urged. “The lieutenants ordered the servants to start scrubbing the house and lay the dance floor outside by the portico for the ball. In a week’s time they said. Run now. I can see that you are not pursued for a few hours.”
“I cannot. I came to help the others.”
“Then you are a fool, Duncan McCallum. After he arrives with more of his bullies you’ll have no chance.”
He kept walking. “Do you know the bay?” he asked when she caught up with him.
“Of course. When we were first married my husband and I sailed it for nearly a month in celebration.”
“To the south is the wide ocean. To the north is the Susquehanna. Is it navigable all the way to the river? I need a map of the entire Chesapeake,” he explained when she nodded. “Of the ports and towns. I want to understand where the lieutenants go.”
She asked no questions. “There is one in the library. I could copy it by hand.” A skein of geese flew overhead, low enough to hear their wings, and they paused until the birds glided onto the river.
“He bathes me,” she suddenly said.
“I’m sorry?”
She looked away as she spoke. “When he stays here. The first visit, after Ramsey proclaimed that he was the new owner, my maid was washing my back as I sat in a tub in my chamber. Suddenly he was there, ordering her away.” She paused, burying her face in her hands for a moment, then collected herself and continued, fixing her gaze on the geese now. “Every night he is here I must sit in a tub and he bathes me. Then he dresses me and makes me lie beside him in bed, in my nightgown. That’s all. Nothing else. He is not capable of more.”
They stood alone, in painful silence.
“He vowed to send me to die on his plantations in the Indies,” Duncan said at last.
Her head slowly came up. “Why ever would he do such a thing?”
“Because I thwarted his plans to make his own fiefdom in the north. Because I have the affection of his daughter, which she will never give to him.”
“Surely all children have occasional difficulties with their parents.”
“She was captured as a child and was raised by the Iroquois, a child of the forests. When she finally returned she would not conform to his notions of the dutiful daughter. He tried and failed to beat the wildness out of her. He tracked down and killed her Iroquois father. He made plans to send her to surgeons in London who said they could tame her by removing part of her brain.”
Once more tears welled in her eyes. “Surely you can’t stay, Duncan. Please don’t stay. You still have a chance . . .”
He gripped both her shoulders. “I will not tremble again before that monster.”
“But you heard Dr. Lloyd. He’s coming to the woods.”
Duncan hesitated. “The woods?”
“It’s what Ramsey calls this place sometimes, to mock it, because everything is so rustic here.”
Duncan gazed at her in confusion, then pulled out the little flag again. “The castle and the woods!” he exclaimed.
“I don’t understand.”
“Something a friend said. A riddle from Shakespeare. The men at Galilee will die when the castle comes to the woods. It meant when Ramsey finally arrives at Galilee.”
That night he huddled with Murdo and Webb over the letters Alice had provided.
“Hogsheads and firkins for September delivery,” Webb said in a puzzled tone as he read the first. “Nothing but an order to a cooper from one of the plantation owners in the House of Burgesses.”
“Mr. Dickinson sends congratulations on the betrothal of his niece,” Murdo read. “He will make mention to the governor.” Ross paused. “Dickinson is a member of the Philadelphia committee,” he explained. “But there is nothing secret here.”