Shadowbrook (75 page)

“Sixteen percent,” Quent admitted with a grin. “Now, sir, I suggest you send for your brother Oliver. I’d like his signature on our agreement as well.”

“Oliver’s up in the country. At his house in Bloomingdale. It will take the better part of two hours to—”

“Oliver’s drinking at the Sign of the Black Horse over on William Street, sir. Not ten minutes from here.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was trained by the Potawatomi. All braves are taught to scout out the battlefield before they attack.”

De Lancey swallowed the bile that filled his mouth. Fourteen percent. Less than what he’d hoped for, and by Hale’s own admission, less than he could have had. But it was a good deal better than nothing. He rang for a footman and sent him to summon Oliver. “All as you arranged it, Mr. Hale,” the governor said softly. “But may I ask, having taken care of my brother, what you plan to do about your own?”

“Nothing. There is no need. For the time being John will run the Patent as he always has.”
John must die. For the Patent to be safe, John must die.

De Lancey raised his eyebrows. “He’s nearly run it into the ground so far. What use to me and Oliver is fourteen percent of nothing?”

“Not even John will fail to make profit in the present circumstances, Governor.”

De Lancey looked again at the papers from London. Both men heard the clatter of the front door knocker, then Bede Devrey’s hearty tones saying that His Excellency had sent for him. “We shall soon find out, I expect,” De Lancey said as he rose to greet his new guest.

Quent nodded. He had won—the joy of that made his pulse race and heated his blood—but a battle only, not the war.
John must die.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1759
ALBANY

The tobacco smoke was as thick as ever; the noise, if anything, louder. It had been two years since Quent had been in the Sign of the Nag’s head, but little had changed. The chalkboard on the tavern wall still offered the day’s selection of food—the oysters were a shilling a dozen, outrageous—and the air was heavy with the yeasty scent of ale and the honey of rum.

As for old man Groesbeck, he looked younger. Must be the amount of brass he was taking in now that Albany was full of redcoats and militia. He stood not far from the front door, tapping a new keg. The bung gave at the third whack, and the foamy brew erupted into the pail below. Good beer, the smell and the color attested to it. Those patrons near enough to observe sent up a cheer. Groesbeck plugged the hole with a pewter spigot. Landlord’s duty done, he made way for one of the barmaids.

He’d spotted the Red Bear as soon as he came in. Now he made his way through the throng. “Good evening to you, Quent. It’s been a long time.”

“Too long, Peter. I’m parched.”

The landlord turned and shouted, and one of the mugs of new beer was passed forward. Quent offered a penny, but Groesbeck waved it aside. “No, no, not after so much time we are not seeing you. Besides,” he added with a grin that showed his missing teeth, “tuppence I’m charging these days.”

“Yes, and I see the oysters have doubled in price as well. Business must be very good.”

Groesbeck’s grin widened. “Many customers, ja. The Yorkers and the redcoats, they all come. Sometimes the officers, even.”

Give it a few months, old man, and you’ll have so much custom you’ll surely think you’ve died and gone to landlord’s heaven. “What about the old customers, then? Do they continue to drink here?”

“Why not? We still give them the best food, and drinks to full measure. No water in the punch, neither.”

“Ah, that must be the attraction for the canny Scot, then. Have you seen him lately?”

Groesbeck cocked his head and looked up at Quent. “The one who used to live by the Widow Krieger? With one seeing only?” He clapped a hand over his left eye.

“That’s the one.”

“Why you want to know about him?”

“We had some business together last time I was here. Interrupted a conversation you and I were having, as I recall.”

“
Ja, ja.
I remember. He’s dead, that one. Happened up at your place. Some kind of quarrel with your brother.”

He’d found out what he wanted to know, how the death of Hamish Stewart was interpreted locally, and he need not pretend to mourn for a man he barely knew. “My brother’s not hard to argue with.”

Groesbeck’s look darkened. “Not so bad when it’s another man, a fair fight. With a woman, even a—”

“What woman?”

The landlord jerked his head to the back of the taproom. “Annie the whore. She was a friend of the one-eye. She’s here tonight. First time in three weeks.”

Quent nodded his thanks for the information and the beer and began making his way toward the rear. A path was instantly cleared for him. A few people nodded or murmured a greeting or slapped his arm in welcome, mostly locals who had known him since he was a boy. The rest kept a respectful distance.

Annie Crotchett sat in her usual place in the rear of the taproom, near the door to the yard. Her right eye was swollen shut; her left was blacked, but usable. She saw Quentin Hale making his way toward her and waved away the two Yorkers who had been keeping her company. “Go on about yer business, lads. Annie’s got a special caller. Another Hale, as I live and breathe. The famous one.”

Quent nodded to the Yorkers as they left, and straddled one of the stools they’d left vacant. “Good evening to you, Mistress Crotchett.”

“It’s Annie I’m called. Even by the likes of you, Quentin Hale.”

Her face and neck were marked with bruises just beginning to fade to a sickly yellow. “Very well. What happened to you, Annie?”

“What do you think? Your bloody brother came at me with a fireplace poker. Nearly killed me he did. Good as killed me.” Gingerly she shifted her backside around on the bench and hiked up the skirt of her frock; both feet in their striped, knitted stockings were at odd angles to her legs. “Broke both me ankles, your poxed brother did. Won’t walk never again, the quack says. Ain’t no use hoping, ’cause it ain’t gonna help. Wouldn’t be here tonight except old Harry over
there carried me. How am I supposed to earn my living if I can’t stand up or walk out to the yard? Much less hold myself up long enough to let a man—” She broke off, trembling with misery, putting her hand over the little pile of coins, mostly coppers and wooden pennies, that had been accumulating in front of her as each of her former customers stopped by to wish her well and make a small contribution in memory of good times past.

Sweet Christ. “You know it was John Hale who did this?”

“Of course I bloody know it was John Hale. Been a regular customer since I can’t remember when, your poxed brother. Wish to God I’d never seen him, but a fat lot of good that does me now.”

“Why, Annie? Why did he turn on you now?”

Two fat tears escaped from her swollen eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “Said I told. Said it was my fault Hamish knew—”

“Hamish Stewart?”

She nodded, but didn’t look at him when she whined, “I told John I didn’t know nothing to tell Hamish, but he didn’t believe me. How could I know when or why ‘bout business happens down to New York City? Ain’t never been nowhere but Albany. Never.” F Quent knew she was lying. John must have known as well. Still, to beat a woman until she was crippled… . “You know Stewart’s dead, don’t you?”

More tears. “‘Course I knows that. Your poxed brother killed him. Hamish was a good man. He never—”

The man who gave a little boy a dirk and showed him how to use it was good enough once. But Stewart had finished up a covetous bastard who sold his soul to land hunger. Quent dug into his pocket and came up with a handful of coins, a golden guinea among them. He spent little when he earned and managed to put nearly everything aside, but his last paying job had been a brief stint as a scout in the Ohio Country a year past. The money he put on the table in front of Annie was pretty much all he had left. Nonetheless he said, “There will be more. You have my word you won’t starve.”

If that was true, Annie thought, if she could give up fucking for money and eat anyway, Christ Jesus it was worth it. Worth everything.

Outside the Albany palisade, in the woods that bordered the north road, the three-note call of the loon echoed softly twice, then a third time. Cormac appeared from the shadows of a stand of spruce.

“Nekané,”
Quent said. Little brother.

“Sizé.”
Elder brother. Corm pressed his palm to Quent’s.
“Ahaw nikan.”
My spirit greets you.

“Bozho nikan.”
And mine, you.

“Took you long enough to get here,” Corm said. “I’ve been in these woods every night for almost a week.”

“Your note said ten o’clock, before the Telling of Arriving Dark. It’s still Last Fruit far as I know.”

The message written on the strip of bark had been pressed into Quent’s hand as he came out of the governor’s mansion the night he got back the deeds to Shadowbrook. The Indian who gave it to him had what looked like blue Mohawk tattoos on both cheeks, but he’d whispered
“Nikan, Kwashko”
as he brushed past. A Potawatomi greeting using Quent’s sacred Potawatomi name. “That was Lashi’s boy wasn’t it? Bishkek’s grandson.”

“Yes, Pondise. The Mohawk thing was his idea. He said he thought it would be better to look like a snake among their allies.”

“New York City people can’t tell one Indian from another. And they’re terrified of them all. Bede was with me when Pondise appeared.” Quent chuckled at the memory. “The old boy nearly fainted. I tried to find Pondise again later. Couldn’t do it.”

It was Corm’s turn to laugh. “That’s because you’re becoming white through and through. Look at you. How long since you’ve had on buckskins?”

“Too damn long,” Quent admitted. “Nearly five months, I reckon. Not very sensible to go around London looking like a woodsman.” As if he needed to apologize to Corm. “You have to fit in.”

Not here in Albany. Quent knew he could have changed before he left the city, or on the boat coming up here. The only reason he hadn’t was because he didn’t want to.

“Tell me about Pitt,” Corm said.

“We’ve got everything we wanted. Everything, Corm. The French don’t know it yet, but they’re finished. The
Anishinabeg
will have Canada.” The thrill of it rose up in him the way it had back in London when he realized that Pitt had been convinced. “The Indian way and the
Cmokmanuk
way; they’re going to survive side by side. We’ll learn from each other.” Quent was suddenly conscious of being in the open, on a well-traveled road. He looked around. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”

Corm led the way deeper into the woods to a spot he’d already scouted. The night was unseasonably mild, but the place he’d chosen was in the lee of a boulder taller than either of them, protected from any wind that might rise. The ground was cushioned by a deep layer of blue-green spruce needles. Corm sat, leaning against the face of the huge stone, watching Quent, knowing he had to let him take his own time and tell the story in his own way.

Quent opened the canvas bag that had accompanied him on the journey from
America to England and back again. His long gun came out first. Then his buckskins. “Let me change, then we’ll talk,”

There’s a war inside him, Corm thought. Always, has been, in some ways. But now he’s being sucked into the world of men who wear city clothes, men of power. White men.

“I feel like I’m back in my own skin,” Quent said when the breeches and the velvet coat were packed away.

“They’re both your skins,” Corm said. “Almost as much as they’re both mine.”

“Maybe,” Quent agreed, but he didn’t want to talk about such things; there was too much else to tell. “I’ll start with Pitt. I was in London nearly two months before I got to see him. I—Christ Almighty, Corm, what a place London is. You can’t credit the numbers of people, or how they look, or the goods in the shops, or the traffic in the streets. There are so many carriages you can’t count the number on even one stretch of road, any stretch of road. And the women … They’re something, Corm. Remarkable.”

“You thinking of going back there? Settling there, maybe?”

“In London?”

“Yes.”

“Of course not. I want to tell you what it was like, because I went and you didn’t, but … I’m an American, Corm. The time I spent in London only made that more clear. The English and us, there’s a difference. Besides, this is my home. I could never go so far from Shadowbrook.”

“You were going to tell me about Pitt,” Corm reminded him.

“Yes. As I said it was more than eight weeks before he saw me, and just as well, as it turned out. It gave me a chance to find out how things stood. Seems Pitt’s been in and out of favor for years. He takes the part of the next king, the Prince of Wales, more often than that of the prince’s father. George II has no choice in that, by the way. Eldest son’s the next king. Always.”

“I know.” Miss Lorene’s history lessons, no telling when they suddenly came in handy.

“Thing is, there’s bad blood between George and his son. And Pitt, he’s close to Wales, which makes the king detest him more. All the same, he’s finally given Pitt complete charge of the conduct of the war. Had to. The people demanded it.”