Tanaqua spun about, knife in his hand, facing the shadows at the rear of the building. Duncan too heard the noise now, a strange sawing sound from the darkness. He lifted the candle and inched forward, discovering more shelves and a ladder leaning in a corner. They paused, confused, until they heard the sound again, coming from under their feet. Tanaqua pointed to a large cast-iron ring in the floor, then to a bar with a handle and a hook that, when tried, fit into the ring. The Mohawk snagged the ring and heaved up, pulling away a square section of the floor. A fetid odor of unwashed human, fish, candle smoke, ink, and rum rose up from the darkness.
They slid the ladder into the hole and descended into a storeroom. On a narrow rope bed, beside an upturned crate holding an extinguished candle, a book, and a jar of rum, lay a snoring man. Long black hair was slicked over his bald crown. His hands were stained with ink. They had found the missing printer.
Duncan lifted Prindle into a sitting position, but when he released him he dropped back onto his pillow, senseless. The smell of rum was heavy on his breath.
“Prindle!” Duncan said, as loudly as he dared, then gestured for Tanaqua to help lift him to his feet. “Prindle, we are getting you out of here.”
The drunken man’s eyes fluttered open. “Ohhhh, aye. Well met,” he slurred in a high-pitched voice, then his head sank toward his shoulder.
“Prindle!” Duncan pressed, then lifted the printer’s chin. “Do you know a man named Bowen, Jeremiah Bowen?”
“Bowen, Bowen. Got to be a’going,” Prindle chuckled.
“Where is he, man? Where is Bowen?”
“Buried like a mole,” Prindle replied with a big smile. “But no more prisoners, prithee ’cause I’m fresh out of cellars.”
They located the outside cellar door at the side of the house, shielded by rhododendron bushes, but to Duncan’s dismay it was secured with a heavy padlock. “The door inside the kitchen!” he urged Tanaqua, well aware that they could be discovered by the soldiers at any moment. They had left the inebriated printer in his underground cell but did not know if their light in the print shop had been seen. “There was a stairway down to the-” He froze as he realized the tribesman beside him was not Tanaqua or any of their Iroquois companions.
There was anger in the man’s eyes, but also curiosity. He ignored Duncan’s greeting in the Haudensaunee tongue, and just stared over Duncan’s shoulder. Tanaqua appeared beside him. “Seneca,” Tanaqua declared with a tentative tone. Although part of the Iroquois League, many of the Senecas, the westernmost of the confederated tribes, had fought against the Mohawks in the war with the French and had often been the most bloodthirsty of those raiding settlers in the recent native uprising.
“Not another step,” the Seneca stated, his voice raw with warning. “Go now and we will not draw blood.” A war ax was in his hand.
Tanaqua inched closer but kept his open hands held out. “Brother, this is not your fight.”
“Some in our village starved to death last winter,” the Seneca said. “This is how we feed our families when the next snows come.” The man was as big as Tanaqua. His grip on his ax tightened. “We do not care whose blood we take if it saves our families.”
“And who,” Tanaqua asked him, “will protect your families when the Great Council hears what you have done?”
“The Council is a circle of aging bears who have lost their teeth. Bricklin promised us flour and salted beef.”
Duncan sensed the tension in Tanaqua. The Mohawk was struggling not to react to the insult. “It is not only the Great Council you need to fear,” Tanaqua said. “There are others, in this world and the next, who will learn how you helped kill the Blooddancer.”
The fight seemed to drain from the Seneca’s face. His hand went to the totem pouch on his neck. “Do not say such things! The Blooddancer is safe in Onondaga.”
“No,” Duncan said. “He was stolen by the men you protect. Stolen to break the Mohawks who stand with us.”
“You do not know of such things!” the Seneca spat. “You are not of the Haudensaunee!”
“We have tracked the captured god,” Tanaqua stated. “He was in Virginia, just days ago. These men stole him. They would torture him and cut the chain that binds our people.”
The Seneca glanced up at the window of the small third story of the house, then fingered his ax. “Not possible. I would know.”
Tanaqua was done arguing. He abruptly raised his forearm, letting the moonlight catch its tattoo, evidence of his sacred trust. “I am the keeper of the secrets of Dekanawidah!” he recited in a furious whisper. He seemed to grow taller, more formidable, as he spoke, edging closer to the Seneca. “I am the shadowkeeper! I am the blade of the ancient spirits! Defy the spirits and the gate to the next world will be forever closed to you!”
The Seneca’s jaw dropped open as he recognized the words of an Iroquois spirit warrior. His face clouded, his eyes widened. He backed away, all sign of resistance gone, then spun about and disappeared into the shadows.
In the corner of the kitchen Duncan opened the narrow door and climbed down. As they descended they saw light flickering on the stone flags and heard a quick metallic rattle. Tanaqua and Duncan exchanged a knowing glance. It was a sound they had heard often at Galilee.
A stooped, lugubrious-looking man sat on a stool in a corner of the cellar set apart from the barrels and crocks used for food storage by sheets suspended on ropes. From an iron ring in the stone wall a chain ran to the manacle around the man’s ankle. A well-appointed bed, a nightstand stacked with books, and a commode with a pitcher, basin, and pot suggested he was not being altogether deprived.
Along one side of his linen-walled chamber was a long table bearing two bright whale oil lamps, with papers, paint pots, and brushes scattered across it. An easel had a muslin cloth tossed over it. The artist glanced nervously up at them, then back down at the floor.
“Mr. Bowen? Jeremiah Bowen?” Duncan winced at his fearful expression when he looked up again. “The miller of Galilee?”
“Miller no more,” the man replied in a forlorn tone.
“Yes, well,” Duncan said awkwardly. “I must confess we had to burn your mill.”
Bowen cocked his head at them for a moment then shrugged. “Navy’s loss, not mine. They requisitioned it. That was the word they used. Requisitioned in the name of the king. One lieutenant gave me a note saying they owed me seventy pounds sterling for it. The other gave me a note saying I owed them seventy pounds for not killing me. They had a great laugh over it, then fed both papers to the candle flame.”
“Your work is most authentic,” Duncan observed as he looked over the papers on the table. “I saw your replica of the Virginia charter.”
“I describe it as the school of authentic painting,” Bowen answered.
Several letters sat in a row as if awaiting inspection, each appearing to be in a very different hand. One was signed by Benjamin Franklin, one by Samuel Adams, one by William Johnson. Pinned to the sheet above the table were lists, notes, even ledger pages in different hands, but each with identifying names written in block letters at the bottom. They were the samples being collected by Kincaid’s bounty hunters, the actual writings that provided the basis for the forgeries. Benjamin Franklin, said the first. As he pulled it down he saw the bloodstain along the top. There is treachery in Virginia, it said. Hold all messages in Pennsylvania. Webb sent word. Let no one venture south. It was signed simply Franklin.
A chill ran down Duncan’s spine. It could only be the message taken from Ralston when he had been tortured and killed on the Susquehanna.
He examined more of the papers on the wall. Patrick Henry, he read, then James Otis, Samuel Adams, John Dickinson, Peyton Randolph, and half a dozen more. They were samples of actual handwriting. He paused as he studied the last letter in the row, then pulled it from the wall and stuffed it in his waistcoat before picking up the letter on the table bearing William Johnson’s signature. It was an invitation to a French general to send troops up the Ohio Valley, and a description of the weaknesses of the British outposts, with an authentic-looking signature by Johnson. He remembered the list he had retrieved from the mill. Johnson would die for trunnel nails and teapots.