The Wrath of Angels (47 page)

In 1764, it was decided that the fort was to be abandoned, and its small garrison sent east. By then, the name Wolfe’s Folly had stuck: while the blame for the fort more properly lay with Mordant himself, it was Wolfe’s folly to have listened to him in the first place. It was said by some that Wolfe owed a substantial debt of money to Mordant, and was obliged to support his scheme; others took the view that Mordant was a fool, and Wolfe preferred to have him concentrating on his fort than interfering in more important matters of war. Whatever the reason for its construction, it brought no luck to either man, and had no impact on the outcome of the conflict.

The man entrusted with bringing word of the decision to close the fort and supervising its evacuation was a Lieutenant Buckingham, who traveled northwest in April 1764 accompanied by a platoon of infantrymen. They were still three days’ march from the fort when the first rumors began to reach them. They encountered a Quaker missionary named Benjamin Woolman, a distant relative of James Woolman of New Jersey, a leading figure in the burgeoning abolition movement. Benjamin Woolman had taken it upon himself to preach Christianity to the natives, and he was known to act as a conduit between the tribes and the British forces.

Woolman informed Buckingham that the garrison at Fort Mordant had carried out a punitive expedition against a small Abenaki village a week or so earlier, killing more than twenty natives, including, it was said, women and children. When Buckingham requested information about the reason for the slaughter, Woolman replied that he had no knowledge of why it was carried out. Such a small native group, scarcely more than a single extended family, could have posed little threat to the fort or its inhabitants, and, as far as Woolman was aware, there had been no particular tension between the soldiers and the natives. The Abenaki considered the fort’s construction to be an exercise in foolishness. More importantly, they tended to avoid the area of the forest in which it was located, terming it
majigek
, which Woolman translated as ‘wicked’. In fact, that was one of the reasons why Mordant had chosen that location for the fort’s construction. One of his sole redeeming qualities was his interest in the traditions of the native population, and he left behind him dozens of notebooks filled with jottings, essays, and sketches on the subject. The French were dependent upon their native guides, and if those guides were reluctant to enter certain areas of the woods, then a fort situated in such a place would enjoy relative immunity from attack. Thus it was that there could be no logical reason why the Abenaki should have been attacked by the British.

Woolman also said that, when he tried to seek further information about what had occurred, he was denied entry to Fort Mordant by its commander, Captain Holcroft, and he was now concerned for the officer’s mental state. He was also worried for the safety of Holcroft’s wife and daughter. Contrary to advice from all sources, Holcroft had insisted that his family join him when he took command of the fort. Woolman had been traveling east in the hope of communicating his worries to the appropriate authorities, and thus he agreed to accompany Lieutenant Buckingham and his men back to Fort Mordant.

They could see the buzzards hovering while they were still some distance away. When they reached the fort they found its gates open, and everyone inside dead. There were no signs of an Indian attack. Rather, it appeared that some dispute had arisen within the garrison, and the soldiers had fallen to fighting among themselves. Their uniforms were no longer regulation attire but had been accessorized with pieces of bone, both human and animal, and their faces were painted to resemble ferocious masks. Most had died from gunshot wounds, the rest at the point of a sword or a knife. Captain Holcroft’s wife was found in their quarters with her heart cut out. Of her husband and her daughter, there was no sign. A subsequent search of the surrounding forest revealed the remains of Captain Holcroft himself, and here, for the first time, there was found some indication of an Abenaki presence: Holcroft had been scalped, and his body mutilated and hanged from a tree.

While Buckingham’s men buried the dead, Buckingham and Woolman went in search of the Abenaki. Buckingham was reluctant to meet them without his men to protect him, for the Abenaki had fought on the side of the French, and the memory of their atrocities was still fresh in the minds of the British. Following the siege and subsequent massacre at Fort William Henry in 1757, the ranger commander Major Robert Rogers had found six hundred mostly British, scalps, decorating the Abenaki village of St Francis, and had destroyed it entirely in revenge. Relations with the Abenaki remained uneasy. Woolman assured Buckingham that, with him as a go-between, and with no demonstration of hostile intent, they would be safe. Buckingham grumbled that Holcroft’s violated remains gave him little comfort, and he considered the murder of the officer, for whatever reason, an act of war by the natives.

After riding for three hours, during which time Buckingham believed they were always under the eyes, and potentially the knives, of the Abenaki, they were met by a heavily armed party of natives, who quickly surrounded the two men. The leader gave his name as Tomah, or Thomas. He wore a cross at his neck, and had been baptized into the Catholic faith by French missionaries, accepting Thomas as his baptismal name. Buckingham was not sure what troubled him more: that he was surrounded by Abenaki, or surrounded by Catholics. Nevertheless, he and Tomah sat down together, and, with Woolman acting as translator, the Abenaki told them of what had transpired at the fort.

Most of what was said did not pass into the official record. Buckingham’s report on what came to be termed ‘the incident at Fort Mordant’ stated only that a dispute of unknown origin arose there, possibly fueled by alcohol, which led to the deaths of the entire garrison, including its commander, Captain Holcroft, and his wife. The role played by the Abenaki in Holcroft’s murder became clear only when Woolman’s private diary was discovered after his death, but Woolman also glossed over much of what was disclosed by Tomah, apparently by mutual agreement with Buckingham. Neverthelesss, the contents of Woolman’s diary went some way toward explaining why Buckingham allowed the killing of a fellow officer by the Abenaki to go both unreported and unpunished. Buckingham was a professional soldier, and he understood that, sometimes, a lie was preferable to a truth that might tarnish the reputation of his beloved army.

Woolman’s diary revealed a few pertinent details. The first was that Holcroft had been discovered by the Abenaki while apparently hunting his own daughter, but despite the Abenaki’s own efforts, and a further search by Buckingham and his men, the girl was never found. Second, the Catholic Abenaki told Woolman they had set out to kill the inhabitants of the fort in reprisal for the earlier slaughter. The small band of warriors who had been willing to overcome their fear of the territory were all Catholic converts, although they were additionally armed with totems of their tribe. They arrived at the fort to find that the soldiers had done the job for them, and had to be content with taking their revenge on Holcroft alone, whom Tomah described by using the same word that Woolman had used when Buckingham first met him:
majigek
.

Finally, according to Woolman, the Abenaki claimed that, before he died, Holcroft came to his senses, and begged his tormentors for forgiveness for what he had done. Woolman admitted that he had trouble understanding Tomah’s description of Holcroft’s final words, and was forced to clarify them in halting French, to little avail. Holcroft, it seemed, had railed in English, of which Tomah knew little; in French, of which Tomah knew slightly more; and in some mishmash of Passamaquoddy and Abenaki that Holcroft had picked up during his postings in the region, for like Mordant himself he was known to be a scholar of languages, and a civilized man.

As Woolman understood it, Holcroft claimed to have committed the slaughter of the Abenaki on the orders of the
tsesuna
, the Raven God who pecked at his window. He also termed him the
apockoli
, the Upsidedown God who spoke to him from behind his shaving mirror, and who sometimes called to him from the depths of the forest, his voice bubbling up from deep beneath the earth. It was this same entity, this demon, who had infected his men with madness, and turned them upon one another.

Holcroft had used another word too in connection with him before the Abenaki set to torturing him: it was
ktahkomikey
, a word that referred to wasps, particularly a certain species that nested in the ground.

Holcroft had died screaming of the God of Wasps.

O
utside the Cronin home, I rested The
Gazetteer
against the steering wheel while I tried to figure out the journey taken by Harlan Vetters and Paul Scollay on the day they found the plane. Marielle Vetters had told me that her father believed he and his friend had tracked the deer for four hours or more, traveling northwest or north-northwest for the most part, as best they could tell. There was a logging road that ran north from Falls End. It was the one Phineas had used on his illegal bear-hunting trip, and it seemed the most likely route for Vetters and Scollay to have taken as well. It veered northeast after ten miles, as though the road had been specifically designed to discourage anyone from venturing farther northwest: where the road altered direction was probably the closest point to Fort Mordant. From there, we’d move into the forest on foot. I had considered the possibility of using ATVs, but they were cumbersome to transport, and also noisy, and we were not the only ones looking for that plane. The sound of four ATVs moving through the woods might well be enough to get us killed.

I was so lost in the map, as though I were already deep in those woods, that the ringing of my phone came as an unwelcome distraction, and I didn’t even glance at the number before I picked it up. It was only when I had pressed the green button that I thought again of the message I had left on Marielle Vetters’ answering machine, and the possibility that the police might have listened to it, but by then it was too late.

Thankfully, it was only Epstein on the other end. He was calling from Toronto. I could hear traffic in the background, and then Epstein’s words were overcome by the roar of a jet.

‘You’ll have to repeat that,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t hear you.’

This time, I heard him clearly.

‘I said, “I know who was the passenger on that plane.”’

Wildon’s widow remembered Epstein. They had met once before, she said, at an event to raise funds for the collection of DNA from Holocaust survivors so that the separated members of families might be reunited, and anonymous remains identified, an initiative that eventually became part of the DNA Shoah Project. It was the first time that Wildon and Epstein had come face to face, although each knew of the other’s work. Eleanor Wildon recalled the two men shaking hands, and that was the last she saw of her husband for the rest of the evening. Epstein, too, remembered that night, but he had forgotten entirely that Wildon’s wife had been present, so pleased was he to meet a kindred spirit.

They were sitting in the drawing room of her apartment, which took up the entire top floor of an expensive condominium in Yorkville. A pair of Andrew Wyeth paintings hung at either side of the marble fireplace: beautiful, tender studies of autumn leaves from his late period. Epstein wondered if, as their lives came to a close, all artists found themselves drawn to images of fall and winter.

Two teacups sat on the table between them. Mrs Wildon had brewed it herself. She lived here alone. She was not a particularly beautiful woman, nor had she ever been. Her features were plain at first glance, her face unremarkable. Had he not been distracted by her husband at their earlier meeting, Epstein would still barely have noted her presence, if he had noted it at all. Even here, in her own home, she seemed to blend into the furniture, the wallpaper, the drapes. The pattern on her dress echoed the textures and colors of the fabrics, rendering a chameleon quality to her. It was only later, when he had already left her, that Epstein understood this was a woman who was hiding herself.

‘He thought very highly of you,’ said Mrs Wildon. ‘He came back that evening more animated than I’d seen him in years. I thought it was all foolishness, his stories about angels, his fascination with the End Times. It wasn’t harmless, because it was too odd for that, but I tolerated it. All men have their eccentricities, don’t they? Women too, I suppose, but men’s are more ingrained: it’s something to do with their boyishness, I think. They hold onto the enthusiasm of childhood.’

She didn’t sound as though she thought this was a good thing.

‘It got worse after he met you, though,’ she said. ‘I think you fueled his fire.’

Epstein drank his tea. The accusation was clear, but he did not look away, or express sorrow. If this woman wanted someone to blame for what had happened to her children, perhaps her husband too, then he would accept that role as long as she told him what she knew.

‘What was he looking for, Mrs Wildon?’

‘Proof,’ she said. ‘Proof of the existence of life beyond this one. Proof that there was an evil beyond human greed and selfishness. Proof that he was right, because he always wanted to be right about everything.’

‘But there was a moral component to his work too, was there not?’

She laughed, and as her laughter faded it left a sneer on her face. Epstein realized that he disliked Eleanor Wildon, and he did not know why. He suspected that she was a shallow woman, and he allowed his eyes to take in his surroundings once more, seeking evidence in the furniture and paintings and ornaments to confirm his opinion. Then he saw the small framed photograph of two young girls on a shelf of Lladró porcelain, and was ashamed of himself.

‘A moral component?’ said Mrs Wildon. The sneer held for a second or two before melting, and when she spoke again she was walking in other rooms, living another life, and her voice came from somewhere far away. ‘Yes, I suppose there was. He was making connections between killings and disappearances. He spoke to retired policemen, hired private investigators, visited grieving relatives. When good people died in unusual circumstances, or vanished and were never seen again, he would try to find out all that he could about them, and about their lives. Most were just what they appeared to be: accidents, domestic situations that tipped over into violence, or just the misfortune of meeting the wrong person at the wrong time and suffering for it. But some . . .’