“Murdo!”
The call was from Sinclair, who was pointing to the end of their quarters. Sometime in the night the outlines of two buildings had been sketched there in charcoal. A school and a barn. They were the runner signs for the Conococheague and Edentown stations. The drawings were no more than five feet off the ground. He looked back in alarm to the slope where the horse had disappeared. It would be the height that Analie could reach.
Trent’s split cane whip slashed the air over Murdo’s head. “Sotweed!” the overseer barked.
The water cart, tended by Kuwali and his mother, was finally approaching when a cloud of dust appeared behind it. Several mounted figures were hurrying out of the compound, followed by a column of marines marching at double time. Duncan, and all the Iroquois, took several steps toward the stable as they saw Lieutenant Kincaid, Gabriel, and several overseers dismount by their quarters. Two of them ran inside and dragged out a limp figure.
“Jaho!” Tanaqua cried.
Duncan dropped his hoe and stepped deliberately toward the stable, ignoring the cane on his shoulder. He heard Trent curse and turned to see that half the company had done likewise. Winters had lowered his own staff to join the procession. Kincaid, spotting them, quickly dispatched marines, who ran to form a line, bayonets fixed, between the slaves and the stable yard. The Welsh sergeant in command of the squad cocked his musket and extended it from his waist. Duncan held out his arms and the men behind him stopped, twenty paces from the marines.
Kincaid ordered the overseers to release the old Susquehannock, who barely had the strength to stand. He raised a riding crop and slashed repeatedly at Jahoska’s face, pummeling the old man so severely Gabriel stepped forward as if to intervene, only to have Kincaid turn on him, slapping the superintendent himself with the crop. In that instant of distraction Jahoska darted with unexpected energy past the marines who were facing down the Judas slaves, closing half the gap toward Duncan and his companions before collapsing. Winters dashed past Duncan to help, but Jahoska shook off his proffered hand then stared pointedly at Duncan as if to be certain he had his attention before dropping to his knees. To Duncan’s bewilderment, he clasped his hands and lifted his head toward the sky in a Christian prayer. Then he staggered to his feet, walked a few more steps, ignoring the running boots behind him, and lifted his hands again, with a finger of each hand extended over his head, one pointing upright and the other at an angle along the side of his head.
As Kincaid and Gabriel reached the old man Winters stepped between them and Jahoska, earning a shrill epithet from Gabriel and a slash of Kincaid’s crop on his cheek before a marine pulled Winters away. Gabriel pounded Jaho on the back with his fist, knocking him to the ground, but the old man managed to roll away. Duncan inched closer as the lieutenant approached Jaho, then halted, once more in confusion. Kincaid had stopped as well, staring at the Susquehannock. Jaho was back on his knees now, holding an uprooted tobacco plant out to the officer.
“Dottering old imbecile!” the marine officer spat, then leapt forward to knock away the tobacco and shove Jahoska to the ground. He angrily seized Gabriel’s baton and had lifted it for a blow when a shape hurtled past Duncan, toppling two marines. Tanaqua was on Kincaid before the stunned officer could react. Tanaqua landed two vicious blows to Kincaid’s jaw before the lieutenant began fighting back. The two rolled in a cloud of dust and fists, then marines swarmed over the Mohawk. One instantly reeled backward with blood gushing from a broken nose, another staggered back, crying out in pain, with two fingers hanging at a disjointed angle. Finally the Welsh sergeant’s musket butt slammed down into the tangle of bodies and the soldiers pulled the stunned Mohawk away.
An overseer began blowing on his tin horn. His heart hammering, Duncan watched as Jahoska and Tanaqua were dragged to the stable yard and tied to the whipping posts. Gabriel’s pharaoh riders galloped up and, with the marines, quickly herded the Judas slaves into a line around the logs that bordered the yard. They were to witness the punishment.
Kincaid retrieved Gabriel’s baton and as he waited for the prisoners to be assembled he starting slamming its iron ball into one of the logs with furious, repetitive blows. His eyes were wild, his blows landing with such fury they were shredding the wood. Finally, the prisoners made ready, he twirled the club over Jahoska’s head and swung down, stopping the treacherous ball inches above the old man’s skull. “I will have satisfaction!” he shouted to the assembled slaves. “Give me the names of commissioners or these men die!”
Tanaqua, tied to the post beside Jahoska, looked up, exchanging a confused glance with Duncan. Kincaid’s desperation was not about Hobart’s death; it was about the name of the tax collectors whose commissions had been intercepted. Duncan looked back at the manor. Ramsey was coming, and Kincaid had not completed his mission. The lieutenant had to preserve the runners for hanging, but Jaho was not a runner.
“I will have the names! I will have them now!” Kincaid pulled away the leather covering of Gabriel’s rivet-headed tails and cracked them against Jahoska’s back. As he aimed the whip a second time a voice called out.
“Jonathan Bork, Esquire, Caroline County.” It was Hughes.
Kincaid’s lips curled in an icy smile and he pointed to his Welsh sergeant, who pulled out a paper and lead and started writing. He lifted the lash again.
“Josiah Randolph, Spotsylvania County,” shouted another man, causing the lieutenant to pause again. The names were well known to those who had carried the messages. They had not given them up under torture but they would do so to save the gentle old Susquehannock.
Jahoska loudly interrupted, with a sharp speech in the tongue of his fathers that had the sound of rebuke. Suddenly he switched to English. “My name is Jahoska, born of the beaver clan of the Susquehannocks, masters of the mother river!” he shouted to the sky. “Men once quaked at the name of my tribe. I hunted wood buffalo when I had seen only nine winters, killed my first Catawba at fourteen, and the next year slayed the bear whose skull shielded my head in battle!” He spoke with an odd cadence, as if reciting a poem. “I saw the great Penn under the elm at Shackamixon and traveled the salt waters all the way to the great Spanish forts. In the year of the fire comet I rode on the back of a sturgeon as long as a canoe!”
Tanaqua stiffened. It was a death song. The soldiers, seeing how all the Iroquois had tensed as if to leap, leveled their muskets at them.
“Zebediah Sturgis of Accomac,” shouted another Virginia ranger, as if trying to drown out Jahoska.
But the aged warrior continued, calling out the names of battles and brothers who fell in them, twisting in his bindings as he did so. Suddenly an arm came free. Kincaid snarled and was about to strike down the old man’s hand when he froze. Jahoska was extending the quillwork medallion that had adorned Hobart’s neck.
The lieutenant trembled with rage. “By God! It was you who killed him!”
The lieutenant was deaf now to the names that were frantically shouted by the prisoners. He stepped back and viciously applied the whip. “You killed an officer of His Majesty’s marines!” he shrieked. “You worthless old fool!”
It was no tribal shout that rose now from Jahoska as the steel tips began to shred his back. “Se mo laoch, mo ghile mear,” he called in a tight, cracking voice. Murdo turned to Duncan. The old Indian was speaking Gaelic, singing the defiant anthem that he had heard so often in the stable, the battle hymn of the Highlanders who had befriended and protected him. This was his war and he had to be allowed to fight it, the old warrior was saying to the young warriors. One Scot, then another, took up the song as the old man’s skin was flayed. Jahoska sang ever louder as if to block out his pain, his words faltering as the lashes struck, then renewing, though always with fading strength. Tears filled Duncan’s eyes, and he saw that half the men wept as they sang.