Crow Hollow Read online

  “I couldn’t possibly.”

  “’Twill be less suspicious than riding into Danforth’s Farms without any possessions. You do want to find your daughter, don’t you?”

  “Does that mean—?”

  “Will you hurry?”

  “But James, it’s stealing.”

  “It’s not theft—these people are dead. And we’re exposed out here. We don’t have time. So quit gnawing at it.”

  Reluctantly, she searched the ruins. She found a smock, two petticoats, a stay reinforced with rows of stitching that had been made for a woman with a figure similar to her own, and a green linen apron to wear over her petticoats. These she bundled and tied to the back of one of the horses. There was a pair of women’s boots of close to the right size, and she happily shed her wooden clogs and put them on. Searching through a broken chest, she found blank papers, ink, a pen, and blotter that had been protected from the elements wrapped in an oiled cloth. This cheered her.

  “What do you need with that?” James asked.

  “If there’s one thing I wished I’d had in captivity, it was pen and paper. I never knew if I’d be able to write my narrative or if my story would die with me.”

  “Thankfully, it didn’t.”

  “Now I’m in another fight for my life. I don’t want to die without telling people what happened.”

  “Put that out of your head,” James said firmly. “You’re not going to die.”

  Later, sitting on the perch of the carriage, out of sight of the road, Prudence tried again. “You read the missing chapter. Tell me what you think.”

  “I think it reads like the imagination of a terrified woman who has lost her child, was kidnapped by savages, and misremembers key details. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You sound like my sister and the reverend,” Prudence said bitterly. “And the printer in Boston too. He said the same thing.”

  James reached for her wrist as she turned. “Steady. I said that’s what it reads like. Taken in isolation.”

  “What do you mean, isolation?”

  “I read the rest of the book too. You have a clear eye for details, a sober way of reflecting. You were even sympathetic toward the men who had taken you captive.”

  “Some say I was too sympathetic.”

  “I’ve spent the last two months in close company with a Quaker Indian. In many ways he was a fool, hopelessly swept away in his religion. It got him killed in the end. Begging murderers to set down their arms instead of defending himself.” James shook his head. “But he was a fool in the same manner as any other man. Not a barbarian or a savage. So when I read an account that paints both sides as saints and sinners, clever one moment and stupid the next, kind to this person and brutal to that one, it makes the account more credible, not less.”

  “Then you do believe me.”

  “I don’t disbelieve you—we’ll leave it there.” He blew into his palms, then opened his overcoat and tucked his hands under his armpits. “You left your daughter with the Nipmuk. They promised to kill her if you didn’t return. You didn’t. So why isn’t the child dead?”

  “Squa Laka wanted me to believe it. She tied a cord around Mary’s neck and drew it tight.” Prudence dug her nails into her palms to block the images. “She tightened the cord until the babe could scarcely manage a whimper. ‘If you don’t return,’ she said, ‘I’ll draw it tight like this, until she dies.’ Laka was angry, frightened, it is true. But I do not think she had it in her to murder a child.”

  James considered this. “It does sound like Laka saved you from the Nipmuk men.”

  “She certainly did, yes. Some of them wanted to kill me. They were young and hot, and they believed they were going to die anyway. Why not kill as many English as they could before they fell? In a way they were right, in the end. The English put them all to death.”

  “You don’t name the young English officer. It was Samuel Knapp, wasn’t it?”

  “Why would you say that?” she asked, surprised.

  James took out the pages. “In the meeting where you translated, the sachem’s wife looked down on him, so he must have been short. If I remember right, you said earlier that Laka was about your height. You are five feet six, more or less.”

  “Yes, more or less.”

  He nodded. “So if you were looking down on a man, he would have to be at least two inches shorter than you. That would put him at five feet four, which is roughly Knapp’s height.”

  She marveled. “That’s right.”

  “Why didn’t you name him?”

  “I knew there would be no point. Reverend Stone would neither believe it nor let it see print. He holds Knapp in great esteem. He’s even hinted that I should marry him, if Knapp would have me. Not that I’d be such a fool.”

  “No, I would say not. He sounds like a brute, and all too bloodthirsty.”

  “Those traits stood Knapp in good stead during the recent troubles. ’Tis not so easy to condemn a man for killing Indians in wartime. Such a man is hailed as a hero.”

  James thumbed through the pages. “How confident are you of your translation of the Nipmuk parley?”

  “Very. I spoke the language well by that time.”

  “So the sachem asks if the English have had enough killing, and Knapp says God will decide. Then the sachem asks if they will kill women and children. Knapp says yes, they will kill every man, woman, and child if the Indians don’t surrender. But of course surrender means enslavement in the Indies. The Nipmuk know this by now.”

  “That’s when I should have changed the translation from Nipmuk to English,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking quickly enough.” She shook her head slowly, darkening. “That failure haunts me.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The very words of the sachem were, ‘We killed Sir Benjamin. He begged us for mercy, but we showed him none. We shall kill you too, and all your men and horses. And this woman, and this woman’s child. Then we shall kill every English in the land, drive them into the sea.’”

  “I don’t understand that part,” James said. “The war was lost for them. Once they could no longer flee, they had no hope but surrender, slavery or no. So how would it help to taunt Knapp?”

  “That’s what I mean. The sachem wasn’t taunting, he was negotiating. That’s their manner—it was a figure of speech. Knapp didn’t seem to know—or pretended not to know—what the sachem meant.”

  James looked confused. “I am uncertain myself.”

  She turned it over, struggling to take the meaning in Nipmuk and translate it into English. Not only the meaning of the words themselves, but the very Nipmuk way of thinking. It was like taking water and explaining ice to one who has never been cold.

  “The sachem was asking the limits of the English warfare. ‘Haven’t you had enough killing? Has not the time come to make peace?’ But Knapp said no, we’ll keep killing until God tells us to stop. Then the sachem asked that if the fight continues, will the English at least spare the women and children? Knapp said no, we’ll kill everyone. Then the Nipmuk said, if you do that, we’ll kill this woman and her child, because they are in our power already. Then we’ll try to kill you and your men, and if that continues, we’ll fight until we’ve exterminated you or you have exterminated us. If you insist on a war of extermination, then we will make your cost very high.”

  “A shame that Knapp did not understand,” James said.

  “Or perhaps he did. He was not ignorant of the Nipmuk ways. Perhaps he refused a negotiated peace because he was well inclined to slaughter them all.”

  She hadn’t thought it so at the time. She had thought Knapp confused and afraid. But in the months that had passed since Crow Hollow, she had considered Knapp’s bloodthirsty nature at great length.

  James frowned and chewed on his lip. He glanced down at the pages. “You say there was a massacre, that the English behaved treacherously. Yet details are scant.”

  Prudence’s stomach tightened. “Yes.”
/>   “Tell me.”

  She closed her eyes, fought down the panic.

  A crow. An eyeball in its beak.

  The flocks of crows had been gathering all afternoon as the Nipmuk waited for the English to arrive. She took this as an evil omen, but the Nipmuk, who wore crow feathers in their hair, were not disturbed. Laka said the birds flocked to this hollow in the evenings so they could huddle together against their ancient enemy: the great horned owls who hunted them on the darkest nights. But later, when the crows fell cawing from the trees to feast upon the dead and the dying, Prudence thought that Laka had been wrong. The crows must have known, must have sensed the evil that would befall the Nipmuk, as if the devil himself had whispered it in their ears.

  “Prudence?” James said, his tone concerned.

  She opened her eyes. “I don’t think I can continue. Pray, forgive me, James.”

  He placed a hand on her wrist. “Faith, I know you can.”

  Prudence swallowed hard. “May God grant me strength.”

  She imagined that she was relaying a tale told her by another, not something she had endured herself. After a moment, her heart slowed its anxious pounding.

  “We were unarmed. The Nipmuk, I mean. They had no weapons. The sachem didn’t know that the English wouldn’t follow the rules of parley that both sides had kept throughout the war. The war was won for the English. They no longer needed to.

  “Knapp was furious the sachem wouldn’t submit,” she continued. “Both sides had put down their weapons for the parley, but Knapp lifted his hand and a dozen men with swords came rushing out of the woods. The Indians had watchers to guard against treachery, but they were fewer in number, plus thin and weak from weeks of forced march.”

  Again, she had to stop as the memories came boiling to the surface. This time James remained quiet until she had recovered.

  “Crow Hollow has no outlet, and soon Knapp had the Nipmuk backed against the hill. There were eleven Indian warriors, including the sachem and two of his sons. A few tried to fight, but most threw themselves to the ground and begged for mercy.” Prudence swallowed hard. She could taste bile. “Knapp showed none.”

  “The sachem’s wife must have escaped.” James thumbed through the pages. “You mention her again when you lied to Knapp at the village.”

  “Aye, Laka slipped away while the English were giving battle to the warriors. Knapp raged when he discovered she had escaped. They tracked her to the village. That was no battle, either.

  “The sachem was dead, and most of his warriors as well. I screamed at the English to stop, cried for the Nipmuk to run, to save themselves. There was little resistance. Old women were shot in the back. Young children had their heads bashed in. Before that, I’d never seen anything as cruel and brutal as the Indian attack on Winton, or the way they’d tortured the surviving men. But this was worse.”

  “Yet they call themselves Christians,” James said.

  “There are no Christians in war.” Prudence blurted the words before she could reconsider. Horrified, she put her hand over her mouth. “Pray, pardon me. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Go on.”

  “I was so weak and sick that I could scarcely stand as they laid out the bodies of the dead and made me look at them. Knapp was looking for Laka—he had stood beside her in Crow Hollow, but could not identify her now. That’s because she wasn’t there.”

  “And that’s when you spoke false?” James asked.

  Prudence felt the memories pressing in again. The horror of staring at those bodies, looking through them, terrified that she would see her daughter among the dead. She had swooned, and Knapp ordered her dragged to her feet. Then someone cried they had found Laka.

  One of the Indian traitors, a Praying Indian, had identified a woman as the sachem’s wife, but it wasn’t Squa Laka, it was her sister. Prudence didn’t correct his mistake.

  “There had been ninety-seven of us in the band. There were only eighty-four bodies here and in the hollow. Thirteen had escaped. One was Squa Laka and one was my daughter.”

  “But it says here that you told Knapp they’d killed every Indian. And you also told him your daughter had died three weeks earlier and the Indians had let you bury her.”

  “I spoke false. I couldn’t bear any more killing.”

  “But your daughter, wouldn’t you want the English to search for her?”

  Prudence shook her head, anguished, unsure how to explain. Her thoughts had been so fevered. She had been so afraid.

  “Please, I’m trying to understand.”

  “Can’t you see? The only hope for my daughter was that the remaining Nipmuk escape—if not, I was convinced the Indians would kill her before they fell. It is their way with prisoners. So I lied. How I wrote it here is how it really happened. You must believe me.”

  He studied her face. “Are you all right? You look ill.”

  “I can’t let it go. I feel as though I’m still there. A sound, a smell will spark my memories, like fire on dry tinder. Then suddenly I’m back in Winton. People burning in their homes. Women, children, screaming. The Indians have tied my husband up and are cutting off his fingers, his nose, his ears, while he screams for help—”

  “Good Lord,” James said.

  “And the massacre . . . the crows.”

  “The crows?”

  “They came down from the trees . . .” She couldn’t finish, could scarcely breathe, could only bury her face in her hands.

  “Prudie,” he said, gently taking her hands down from her face. “You are strong enough to finish it.”

  He’d called her Prudie. That was more intimate even than her Christian name. She was so shaken that she almost fell against his shoulder and asked him to hold her. She struggled to regain her composure.

  “The crows were eating the dead,” she said. “I can see them, hear their calls, the tearing sound of beaks ripping at flesh. It seems so real, it’s as if I’m still there. Even the smell of blood. I can scarcely explain, but it is real.”

  “I’ve heard of this before,” James said. “Men who have survived bombardment in a castle, or lived through a horrific battle. Sometimes they can’t escape their memories. It’s a living nightmare.”

  “Early on, I’d wake at night, screaming, drenched in sweat. My sister thought I was possessed of an evil spirit, or under the spell of a witch. Only I wasn’t, it was the war. Later, when I wrote my account, Anne wouldn’t believe me when I said my daughter was still alive. She thought it was my fevered imagination. She spoke to the reverend, the printer. They stripped it from my account before publication.”

  James looked thoughtfully at the pages in his hand. “Who else has read this?”

  “Only my sister and her husband, plus the printer when I tried to get him to include it anyway. And now you.”

  “You didn’t show it to Knapp?”

  “Bless me, no! I detest the man—I’d as soon never speak to him again in my life. Why?”

  “I have an idea. Or the beginnings of one.”

  “Tell me,” she urged.

  “Let’s get these horses back on the road. I don’t want to stop in Danforth’s Farms. It’s too close. What’s the next town?”

  “If we cut back toward the highway, Marlborough. It’s another five miles, more or less. There’s an inn.”

  “Good. We’ll stay there.”

  They left the coach itself hidden behind the ruins of the farmhouse. James and Prudence rode two of the highwaymen’s horses and led the last, together with Robert Woory’s team, who seemed relieved to be free of the burden they’d dragged all night and half the morning.

  Prudence didn’t have a pair of stirrup stockings to cover her to her waist, as proper women wore when they rode. The pistol tucked into her apron made her feel even less ladylike.

  She rode next to James, wondering how long she could wait before pushing him about her daughter. He seemed lost in his own thoughts, his brow furrowed, his gaze distant.

&nbs
p; His suspicions had fallen on Samuel Knapp, that much was certain.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Not long after they had set out again, James cast a glance at Prudence. She met his gaze eagerly, clearly bursting with questions. Within five minutes of regaining the highway, he was ready to share his conclusions, but instead he made her wait. He was enjoying watching her squirm with curiosity, and he wanted to think about her for a moment, if for no other reason than to get his mind off the murder of Peter Church.

  Prudence Cotton was becoming one of the most interesting women he’d ever known. She had a sharp mind and a flare of independence. And determined as the devil himself. She’d forced her way into the coach, helped him bluff his way past the gates in Boston, and then calmly shot a man in the back.

  Yet at the same time she was sensitive and vulnerable. When telling about Crow Hollow, she’d been on the verge of tears most of the way through.

  Be easy on her. You only know the half of what she’s suffered.

  That wasn’t the point. The point was that the pain and need in her eyes made him want to take her in his arms. Comfort her. And yes, if he were to admit to his less-than-noble desires—call them lusts, to be absolutely clear—he wanted to do more than comfort.

  He wanted to release her raven hair from that silly head rail, wanted to free her breasts from her waistcoat and stay, wanted to get her out of her apron and petticoats. Well, maybe when they got somewhere warm.

  “I can’t stand it anymore,” Prudence blurted. “What are you thinking about? You have to tell me.”

  “I’m thinking about what you said,” he lied. “About speaking Nipmuk. Who else knows?”

  She looked confused. “Everybody. It’s in the book.”

  “Aye, but in a subtle way. I’d been under the impression you spoke a few words, maybe a phrase or two. It’s only clear in the missing chapter that you can understand actual conversations.”

  “I don’t talk much about the language. Every town, every congregation, has people who lost family. When people question me, it’s only to confirm their own beliefs about the war.”