Original Death (20 page)

Duncan closed his eyes a moment, knowing Johnson had just answered the question that had been haunting him. “It is where Conawago is going.”

The words seemed to stab at Johnson. He sighed and lowered his pipe then stepped closer to the river. He raised his hand with what seemed great effort and released the little feather into the wind and watched it fly into the darkening sky before turning back to Duncan. “The half-king seeks its location so he can go there. He knows it lies near an abandoned Iroquois village, but there are dozens of those.”

Duncan's throat went very dry. “If the half-king finds it and discovers Conawago there . . .”

“The half-king will just see him as another Indian in European clothes. He reviles such men, says they are abominations, the means by which the poison that is killing the tribes spreads. He is said to have roasted one alive last month.”

“How would you know this?”

“I may have been born in County Meath, but I have become more Mohawk than Irish.”

“This is no time to speak in riddles, sir.”

“I have couriers who keep me connected with the Council at Onondaga Castle. The Council has ways of knowing all that happens in their lands. I have never seen the sachems of the Council more disturbed.
The half-king seeks to force them into an alliance with him. He says the old spirits are angry at them, that if they do not join, the spirits will abandon them. Without the spirits he says the Iroquois will become hollow men and will be destroyed alongside their British friends.”

“Conawago thinks there has been a break in the path to the other side. He believes he has ways to patch such rifts,” Duncan offered uncertainly.

“The half-king,” Johnson said, “the Revelator. It is how he rallies so many of the lesser tribes, how he believes he will subjugate the Iroquois. He himself will cross over and fix the rift. When he finds the most ancient of shrines, he says he will have the power to vanquish the renegade European spirits. The tribes can then follow him into a glorious world of his making.”

Duncan had a hard time speaking. “This place. Conawago has kept its location a secret all these years.”

“The Nipmucs were the monks of the woodland tribes. The Nipmuc elders always knew.”

“The raiders at Bethel Church tortured a Nipmuc elder.”

Johnson's eyes went wide. “A Nipmuc lived at Bethel Church?”

“He lived out of sight, with an English name. Conawago and I arrived to meet him, but he had been killed just hours before. He had sent a message to Conawago.
This is how we first die
, it said.”

Johnson seemed to stagger. He put a hand on a tree to steady himself. “My God. He was talking about the end of time for the tribes. When they lose the spirits on the other side, they will wither and die. The Nipmuc at Bethel Church was tortured for the location of the Lightning Lodge. Now the half-king knows where it is. The Council already sent some of its best warriors to protect it, Kass's brother and father among them. It is the Council's last desperate chance. But he will be unforgiving of any who interfere with him.”

Duncan's mouth was dry as sand. “You're saying Conawago . . .”

“You know damned well what I am saying. Conawago and the half-king are racing to the same place, and when the half-king arrives he will shred Conawago's flesh from his bones.”

DUNCAN DID NOT know how long he sat gazing in anguish across the rolling landscape.
Run
, a voice inside shouted.
Save Conawago
. But he suspected having a European at his side would make things no better for the old Nipmuc.

When he looked back, Johnson was gone. Kass was standing there, as if she had been patiently waiting for him.

“There is someone from the war,” she announced. The role of demure hostess at Molly Brant's side seemed be wearing on her. Her hair was loose. She had pinned a piece of sweetfern to her bodice, in the fashion of maids Duncan had seen in the Iroquois towns. Hanging from her neck was no longer her beaded necklace but a small pouch for the amulet of her protective spirit.

“You have a brother and father in the war,” Duncan observed.

Kass nodded. “They have been given a sacred duty, yes. The Council is used to solving its problems with words, but words will not be enough this time.”

She gestured him to follow her.

As they reached the blockhouse on the hill above the compound, Duncan hesitated. Two stern warriors stood guard at the door, and he now saw the iron bars on the windows of the squat building. The building was as much a prison as a defensive post.

Kass sensed his discomfort. With a small silent motion, she clapped a hand over her heart and then extended it, opening her palm toward him, in a sign that he could trust her. “Please,” was all she said. Duncan followed her inside, to the base of a steep ladder stair that led to the upper floor. She gestured upward and backed away. He climbed the steps warily, realizing how little he really knew of William Johnson. If Johnson truly answered to the commanders in Albany, he could be walking into a trap. Officers in Albany still wanted to hang him. He scanned the candlelit chamber at floor level when his head cleared the opening. Along each wall was a cot, with a table and chairs at the center. A man slept on the farthest cot. He ascended and approached the cot cautiously.

As a board creaked under Duncan's foot, the sleeping man sprang to life, rolling off the bed and dropping into a fighting crouch.

“Sagatchie!” Duncan gasped.

The Mohawk ranger appeared to have come from a battlefield. His face was bruised, one cheek swollen, his hair matted from a wound bleeding on his crown. As he straightened, holding his belly, he was almost too weak to stand. He stepped to the table and dropped into one of the chairs.

When Duncan hastened to examine Sagatchie, the ranger held up a restraining hand. “A few blows, no more. No bullets touched me,” he said, and he touched his amulet as if in explanation.

“But why are you a prisoner?”

His question brought a bitter grin to the Mohawk's face. “The guards do not keep me in, McCallum. They are to keep others out.”

A dozen questions leapt to Duncan's mind. The Mohawk had been at Bethel Church the last time Duncan had seen him. He was supposed to be on patrol along the lakes, where the murderers had escaped. But his questions died on his tongue when Sagatchie spoke again.

“Hawley will seek you out,” the Mohawk declared. “Beware of every shadow.”

Duncan lowered himself into a chair. “He attacked me this very evening. Molly Brant persuaded him to leave.” He hesitated. “How would you know that? You were one of his men,” he said a moment later, as if answering his own question.

The Mohawk shook his head. “I was a guide. A watcher.”

“A watcher?” Duncan asked. “Watching for what, exactly?” Duncan saw Sagatchie's stony expression and knew the ranger was a man who kept many secrets. “Watching him come for me?” he asked bitterly.

“I told you,” came a weary voice from behind Duncan. Patrick Woolford stood on the stairs, mud on his sleeves and grime on his face. “I was sending my best man to help you.” The ranger captain turned on the stairs, motioning to someone below. One of the guards followed him up, carrying a body on his shoulder, which he lowered onto the floor.

Sergeant Hawley would stalk Duncan no more.

Duncan found no sign of a wound on the sergeant until he rolled him over. The oozing gash in his back was over his heart. Duncan looked up at Sagatchie and Woolford.

“Rangers don't stab other rangers in the back, Duncan,” Woolford said, sensing the suspicion in his gaze. “Not even one who deserves it.” He seemed about to explain further when he saw Sagatchie's injuries and darted to the table.

The questions all came from Woolford now, in the Iroquois tongue, and so fast Duncan could not follow. After a few minutes of hushed exchange between the two rangers, Woolford looked up.

“Who else knows you came this way?” Woolford asked Duncan.

“No one.”

“Sagatchie is known in some circles as one who performs dangerous assignments for me, assignments in the shadows of the war. He was following Hawley because we suspected Hawley meant to do you harm. And with luck he might have taken us to the half-king's messengers.”

“Messengers?”

“I have had men patrolling trying to discover how the half-king communicates with the French. If we can cut off his line of communication, we will cripple his plans for alliance.”

“But surely that is impossible. They could be anywhere in thousands of miles of wilderness.”

“Difficult, but not impossible.” Woolford dipped a finger in a mug of water on the table and hastily drew an irregular oval. “This is the great lake, Ontario.” He traced a dotted line of moisture inside the top of he oval and continued, “There is a water route along the northern shore that is used by the Jesuits and French trappers. The Jesuits rule it with an iron hand and surely would not condone an alliance with tribes who butcher women and children. The half-king would keep his distance from that path. No canoes would ever dare the waters in the center of the lake. And the half-king would not move openly through the heart of the Iroquois

country south of the lake. That leaves the southern shore and a corridor of perhaps twenty miles south of it. My men have been watching there these past weeks.”

“It was just Sagatchie's bad luck that he met raiders on the river,” Duncan surmised.

Woolford settled into one of the chairs. “Not raiders. Deserters. He found your signs at the old spirit lodge by the river. Someone had been lying in a narrow gully by that mound with that prisoner post. He went down in it to investigate, and when he climbed out they jumped him, began beating him. When he broke away they shot at him.”

Duncan shrugged. “Deserters are desperate men.”

“These were a special kind of deserters. Very savvy about the workings of the army, and the rangers. Sagatchie says they all had bare legs.”

“Highlanders?”

“There is no better cover for murder then war. It's always happened. A hated officer is found with a bullet in the back of his head. Who's to say it wasn't an accident, or that he turned to rally his men and was hit by the enemy? The general asked me to look for patterns. The Highland units were thrown together quickly, sometimes with only a few weeks' training before shipping out from Scotland. That meant a number of the key administrative billets were not necessarily Highlanders. I found five suspicious deaths among the Highland troops. Four were Englishmen. One of those was a quartermaster, another a provost who arranged guards for the paywagons. General Calder and I were watching some of the Scots. There was talk of secret meetings with French agents in the forest. That's why Sagatchie was with Hawley's patrol at Bethel Church.”

“Hawley wasn't Scottish.”

“Hawley's company reported to General Amherst, in the North. And Hawley was on patrol with two of the four English officers when they were murdered.”

Duncan hesitated. “You mean Hawley was a suspect.”

“He was a man of expensive habits, known for immoderate gambling
and wenching whenever he came to town. Last month he came into a lot of money, which he spread in taverns all along the Hudson. We were more interested in finding a way to negotiate with him, to let him trade information for his life. General Calder and I were about to have that discussion with him when he slipped out of Albany.”

Duncan spoke slowly, weighing Woolford's words. “Hawley wasn't working for Calder, but for Calder's commander. And someone betrayed your plans.”

Woolford shrugged. “Hawley's dead and Sagatchie's nearly killed. There's rot in the regiments and men are dying of it. Funny thing about these recent deserters. Deserters in the Scottish regiments always leave their paychits behind in some conspicuous way, like a matter of honor, a renunciation of the king. And they always go south, to the Scottish settlements in the Carolinas. But not these. They are keeping their paychits and going west. We are desperate to learn why.”

Duncan did not like the pointed way Woolford gazed at him.

“You are a Highland outlaw, McCallum.”

Duncan's heart sagged. “Do not ask me to act against the clans.” He stared into his folded hands. “Go win the war in Canada and we can be done with this.”

“Would that it were so simple,” came a new voice. William Johnson was climbing the stairs. “The fight we worry about is not in Canada. We win all the battles but are on the verge of losing the war in the forests between here and Montreal.” The colonel scowled at Hawley's body then called for the guards to take it away. When they were gone, he scraped at the bloodstain on the floor with his boot. “The body will disappear,” he assured Woolford, then he paced around the table, silently studying the three men who sat there. “I will ask no questions except why would a ranger reporting to General Amherst be secretly stalking my guests?” His gaze lingered on Duncan. “Without General Calder or me knowing about it? A few French raiders roaming our lands, that's just war. But for Amherst to disrupt my Molly's festivities, that is downright rude.”