The Scent of Death (33 page)

Something white moved among the branches, a foot or two above the ground. An animal? A spy? A trick of the light? I stared at the spot for another five minutes or so, straining my eyes to catch the slightest movement.

But there was nothing. The evening was still. Even the branches were motionless.

Not five minutes later, Wintour came out with a small bundle in his hand. When he rejoined me, we wasted no time but set out directly for the pond where we had found Mehitabel.

By the time it was dark, we had reached the ravine below Mount George. The moon had risen, and although its light was often obscured by wisps of cloud, it helped us find our way. After three or four miles we stopped to rest and to make a belated supper. Mrs Tippet had given Wintour a portion of our own cheese and biscuits.

‘We cast our bread upon the waters,’ I said, ‘and now we’re rejoiced to receive even a quarter of it in return.’

Our benefactress had contrived to change one of the guineas we had given her, which allowed her to provide us with some food of her own as well. There were a few slices of bacon, not in the first blush of youth, a sort of hard bread made of maize, and three cold potatoes. We rationed what we had. We might find little more to eat between here and King’s Bridge.

‘You were in and out of the Tippets’ house like a fox in a chicken coop,’ I said.

‘I could not in all conscience stay. Poor woman. She was cowed before but this evening she was terrified.’

‘Why the alteration?’

‘A detachment of militia called on her this afternoon. Their colonel was a man called Varden – he’s a Presbyterian deacon in the village. I remember him from before the war, a weaselly, snivelling rogue who quotes Scripture as he cheats you.’

‘What was he after?’

‘Us. They knew we were in the neighbourhood. Mrs Tippet swore she did not betray us. But now she fears every shadow and bitterly repents having changed that guinea.’

‘They knew that “we” were here – what does “we” mean?’

‘Four treacherous Tories, they said – myself by name, for of course old Varden was aware Mrs Tippet was acquainted with me, you as an English spy in the pay of General Clinton, and our servants – a negro slave, they said, and a damned lobster out of uniform.’

‘Their intelligence was precise.’ I removed a shred of bacon from between my teeth. ‘Perhaps we have a spy somewhere.’

‘She gathered that Piercefield and his men ran into a party of Continental dragoons after we left them. Half of them were killed but the rest are talking in the hope of saving their dirty skins. It’s a cursed piece of luck for us.’

‘Luck?’ I said. ‘Is that what it was?’

We said nothing for a moment. What had Continental regulars been doing so near King’s Bridge? It was unusual, as I knew from my conversations with Major Marryot, though not impossible.

‘The riders we saw on the drive – might they have been the dragoons, or at least some of them?’ I asked. ‘In which case it must have been Varden and his militia who attacked us at the farm.’

We considered this in silence. I wondered whether the curious fact that our attackers had been invisible to us had struck Wintour as it had myself. We had heard them and seen their fatal handiwork. But we had not actually seen them.

His mind moved to another subject. ‘Perhaps it’s as well we lost the horses. We can go where horses can’t.’

‘But it will take much longer to get back to King’s Bridge.’ I did not attempt to disguise my distaste at the prospect of such a long and difficult walk. ‘And they will hunt us like—’

‘Hush.’ Wintour laid his hand on my arm. ‘What’s that?’

‘What?’

‘Hush. Listen.’

Now I heard it too. This wooded landscape was full of sounds, which carried easily in the dark. We had grown accustomed to the repertoire of the night, from the chattering of leaves to the lumbering movements of large animals.

But this sound was different. Though it was so faint it must come from some distance away, it was clear that it was not one sound but a series. There was a regularity about the series and a sense of purpose. It sounded like slow, stealthy footsteps.

That was when I told Wintour about the movement I might have seen in the bushes near the Tippets’ hut. Or the trick of the light.

Whatever it was. Whoever it was.

There was no more rest for us that night. We made our way along the course of the river. By the time we reached the deserted cabin where we had passed the previous night, it was well after dawn.

We did not stop there. Instead we walked on two or three miles to the south, playing our old trick of using streams in the hope of confusing the scent we left behind. Insects plagued us but at least the itches they caused were temporary distractions from our wretched plight.

At last tiredness made me beg that we stop for a while.

‘God be thanked,’ Wintour said with unusual piety. ‘I made myself swear an oath that I would only stop when you did.’

We spent that day, a Sunday, on a low hillock looking towards the west. The grey gleam of the Hudson was visible in the distance. We settled in a cleft between two rocks. We snatched a mouthful of food and then fell into the deep sleep of complete exhaustion.

I woke with a start. At first I did not know where I was. Then, equally abruptly, the memory of the last few days flooded back into my mind. I sat up and looked wildly about me.

Wintour was still sleeping, his hat over his face, snoring gently. A fly made a slow circuit of his head and settled to feed on his filthy collar.

The world was silent apart from the cries of seagulls and the softer conversations of lesser birds. To judge by the sun, it was long past midday, perhaps three or four o’clock in the afternoon. Though we had lain in the shade, it was uncomfortably warm. My leg muscles ached. I was very thirsty. Above all – and this may seem strange but it is the truth and I must record it – I felt profoundly glad to be alive: so much so that for an instant I was intoxicated with joy.

Sobriety returned almost at once with a sense of the danger we were in. I rose as quietly as I could and scratched myself, desperate for relief from the stings and bites I had acquired in the night. There was a stream nearby. I went over to it and drank deeply. I washed my face and hands. By degrees I felt more myself again.

Wintour was stirring when I returned. After we had broken our fast, there was nothing to occupy us till nightfall. We had determined that it would be safer to wait here until we could trust in the concealment offered by the dark.

We spent the day between those rocks. At one point we heard dogs barking in the distance and prepared for flight. But the barking diminished and at last stopped altogether.

‘What are we to do?’ Wintour said, for he hated to be idle; I believe that was why he drank so much during periods of inactivity.

‘Well, Jack – this is the perfect opportunity.’

‘For what, pray?’

‘For you to tell me about your box of curiosities.’

His eyes dropped to the satchel by his side. He had lain on it as he slept and kept the strap across his body. He rubbed the buckle between finger and thumb.

‘And about the gold,’ I said. ‘For that’s the reason we’re here. That’s the reason you made such a to-do about coming to Mount George in the first place.’

I did not say the words that really mattered but Wintour heard them in my tone, which had a sharp, impatient edge to it. He flinched as though I had hit him.

At last he raised his head. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I know. And that’s the reason Grantford and Abraham are dead. Pray do not look at me like that, Edward. I’m wretched enough already.’

I did not know what to say. Grantford had come for my sake. His death lay on my conscience too.

‘Old Froude,’ Wintour said slowly. ‘I never liked him above half, you know. And Bella hated him. He blighted everything he touched. I almost fancy he still does – I’ve half a mind to throw away this damned bag.’

But he stroked the leather as he spoke, quite unconscious of what he was doing, and I knew he would not.

‘That piece of ore you showed me,’ I said. ‘You said it was gold. Is there more of it?’

‘I found two other fragments.’

‘I mean, is there a source for it? Where did it come from?’

He massaged his head as if the questions had made it ache. ‘Froude discovered a vein of it on some land he owned. It could be worked, he said, and he believed there was a fortune to be extracted if one went about it the right way.’

‘Where? Near Mount George?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s miles away. Froude had parcels of land here, there and everywhere. But it’s behind the enemy lines now.’

‘Then what had you to gain by coming here? And how did you know about the gold in the first place?’

‘You should have been a lawyer,’ Wintour said. ‘My father could not do this better.’

I did not apologize but pressed him harder instead. ‘You were looking for the box of curiosities. You knew about that from the first. You expected to find it in what had been Mr Froude’s laboratory. And you knew it would contain those pieces of ore. Either Mr Froude told you or your wife did.’

‘Bella knows nothing,’ Wintour said in a rush. ‘Froude would not have trusted her with something like this. He took me aside just before I went to join my regiment in seventy-six. That’s when he told me about the gold. As times were so troubled, he said, I should know about the mine in case something happened to him. I should know where to look.’

‘He must have trusted you,’ I said.

Wintour laughed. ‘He had no one else to confide in. He had more enemies than friends. Indeed, I never heard he had any friends. Even so, he would not tell me much, he did not trust me that far. But he showed me his box – it was full of rocks and specimens of minerals, all labelled in Latin – he was always picking up pieces here and pieces there. Did you know he was of some note as a mineralogist? A few of the pieces in the box were gold and he had them coated to disguise the metal beneath.’

‘If you’ve never been to the place where the mine is, how will you find it?’

‘In the bottom of the box, his cabinet-maker had made a concealed compartment. The box was designed to be carried, you see – Froude meant to take it with him if he left Mount George. That’s where he put the deeds to the land and instructions about where to find the vein.’ Wintour smiled, baring yellowing, wolfish teeth. ‘Nothing obvious, you understand – he always was a deep, subtle man. Even if someone found the papers they would not tell him much.’ The smile broadened, and I saw that in his way Jack was teasing me, which was perhaps a mark of affection. ‘Froude said I must ask a salamander for help.’

‘A salamander?’ I stared at him. ‘Is this a jest?’

‘If it is, it’s none of mine. A salamander. That’s what he said, and he told me the way to put the question.’ Wintour laughed at my confusion. ‘I shall explain all with a demonstration when we get back to New York.’

I nodded towards the satchel. ‘You have the papers there?’

‘Yes, they are what matter … But Edward, I … I shall make all right as far as I can, you know. My father and mother will grow old with every luxury about them. And Bella – why, she may have whatever she wants now.’ He swallowed. ‘And if Grantford leaves a widow or a mother, I shall settle a pension on them directly. I cannot call to mind if we own Abraham’s mother – I believe Josiah is related to him somehow, but he’s too old to be his father, is he not? – in all events, if there’s a mother, I’ll give her her freedom and set her up in a little shop or something. And as for you, who knows what we may be able to achieve? Wealth means influence and in the long run influence brings a man whatever he desires.’

Wintour ran on in this vein, building castles in the air, for several minutes. The lure of gold had robbed him of his common sense. It seemed not to occur to him that if his gold mine was behind enemy lines there was no chance of his profiting by it until after the war; and even then, since the war’s outcome was uncertain, it might not be possible.

I said nothing. The sun shone down on us from a hard, blue sky. A trickle of sweat ran down my neck. I closed my eyes and listened to the rustle of the stream and the incomprehensible chatter of the birds.

Gold
. Suddenly I recalled Pickett’s body in Canvas Town twelve months earlier. The lure of gold could also lead a man to murder, his own or somebody else’s.

Jack Wintour’s dreams floated past me and drifted away in the void. At last he ran out of things to say and promises to make.

I slept. I dreamed of salamanders. They were biting me and making me itch infernally.

We left our refuge when it was almost dark. We were rested but very hungry. My spirits were low. We faced a hard and dangerous future. I believed our expedition had been betrayed, perhaps before we had even left New York. As time passed, the shadow of what had happened at Mount George seemed to increase rather than diminish.

It took us more than three days to accomplish a journey that we should have been able to achieve in one. The days and nights blurred into one another. It was with difficulty that we kept track of the passage of time. We were never free from the fear of pursuit behind us and an ambush ahead.

We walked mostly by twilight and in the dark. I do not know the route we followed for our only map was in Wintour’s head. The terrain was wild, hilly and inhospitable. We passed the second day on a rocky outcrop in the middle of a fetid swamp. Once we were obliged to burrow deep into a haystack to conceal ourselves from a large body of cavalry. Later, as we were scrambling down a precipitous hill, there was a storm. Heavy rain added to the sum total of our miseries. On another occasion, just before dawn, we nearly stumbled into a line of sentries guarding an encampment of militia.

Our lack of provisions was a constant difficulty. It forced us to forage for food, which meant in plain language that we were obliged to steal. We dared not approach anyone and offer to pay for fear they might report us.

Foraging was dangerous and time-consuming. It required stealth and the utmost caution. But it was worth it. We took part of a ham from an unguarded farmhouse. We plucked cabbages from a negro family’s patch beside their cabin and ate it uncooked. We stole the bread and cider that a cowherd had put aside for his dinner.