The Wolves of Andover

CHAPTER 21

THE HOUSE WAS darkening, the sky where the sun had set banded with the filtered, wavering red of calamitous fires. George Afton, his face reflected crookedly in the fractured glass of the common room window, looked out once more into the yard but saw no one approaching. He caught in his reflection the broad streaks of soot he had purposefully rubbed onto his cheeks, and the first downy growth of chin whiskers erupting, and thought he had succeeded in making himself appear older than he was.

He hunkered back close to the hearth, feeding the low flames carefully with small, dry pieces of wood, keeping the smoke through the chimney thin and unobtrusive. His job, he knew, was to wait, but the hours spent alone had eaten away at his spleen until his hands trembled on the grip of the pouring ladle, causing the molten lead within to spill. He had been filling bullet molds for hours and had a small pile of twenty or so musket balls cooled, ready to be trimmed.

He steadied his hands, carefully pouring the lead into the grooves in the molds, but the shadows were making it difficult to be exact. He replaced the ladle by the hearth, setting aside the mold blocks. Taking up a knife he began to trim the tits, the extruded tips of lead, from the group of already set balls, and thought about his hunger. The supply of meat and bread was almost gone and his stomach pinched painfully; he had had nothing to eat since that morning. He tried humming a bit of a song, a habit he had long had, to distract himself from discomfort. He was always singing or mumbling a tune, especially in times of danger or stress, and it brought no end of annoyance to his most recent employer.

He pulled his woolen cap farther down towards his ears, causing his hair to form a ragged fringe over his eyes, further obscuring his face. He thought longingly about sneaking a pinch of bread from the remaining hoard of food. The house where he tended the fire had been deserted by a family ravaged by the pox and there was not so much as a speck of flour left in the larder. There were no beds either, or quilts; the house was quite abandoned. But then, that was precisely why it had been chosen: an empty house hidden by dense trees and bracken; an intact roof and a working flue; but most important, within walking distance of the Welshman. Remembering to check the cooling molds, he turned towards the hearth and felt the rustling swell of a breeze at his back.

Wheeling around, he saw a dark form slipping into the room over the threshold. “Jesu!” he shrieked, losing his balance off his haunches onto the floor.

Brudloe stood at the open door, the door that had been greased by George himself into silence. “I fuckin’ told you to be alert, boy, didn’t I?” When he spoke, his parted lips showed the gap of the two top missing teeth, and he strode to the fire, slinging his flintlock against the wall. “Didn’t I tell you?”

George nodded and made more room for Brudloe at the fire. The man smelled of hibernating animals, George thought, the warm, half-rancid odors rolling off him in waves. Brudloe nodded for food, and relieved to have an excuse to move, George went to the oilskin and unwrapped the last of the supplies. He was glad he had suppressed his desire to take some of it; Brudloe would have known, and there would have been trouble.

Taking off his outer coat and wiping the dirt from his hands on his greased leggings, Brudloe tore off a piece of bread sideways into his mouth. His top lip had been split from the attack that took his teeth, and he had an odd habit of distractedly running the tip of his tongue through the opening like a water spaniel.

Brudloe had told George of the raid he had been compelled to join by his captors, a large tribe of Abenakis, against a hunting band of Iroquois. They had by stealth attacked during the hour before dawn, the skirmish lasting less than a quarter of an hour but bloody in the extreme. He had stabbed a young buck as he lay sleeping, but had missed the vital killing spot, and the warrior’s hands came up thrashing to gouge out Brudloe’s eyes. Brudloe’s hands closed around the Indian’s throat and squeezed with increasing fury, even when the man under him had picked up a rock, smashing Brudloe in the face repeatedly. He felt his teeth break away, swallowing his own blood and part of his lip, but he kept the pressure on until he felt the gristle of the man’s windpipe break apart and collapse under his hands.

After that raid, Brudloe had said, he was considered a sanoba, a “true man,” and was not watched over as a captive. Soon after, he made his escape, walking for weeks, from settlement to settlement, until he was taken in by French trappers and then carted southward back to Massachusetts by various tradesmen. He said he had been lucky not to have been shot or bludgeoned to death by the trappers as he had worn native clothing, his hair shorn to a topknot. Even now, with the war lock partially hacked off, his scalp looked exposed and mangy.

George realized he had been staring at Brudloe’s head when he felt the older man’s eyes on his own grime-covered face. Brudloe scrutinized him in a way that made George feel it prudent, while with his partner, not to close his eyes in true sleep without a witness. George turned away, continuing to trim the lead musket balls, and willed his pumping heart to slow. It was in Salem, three days before, that he had been placed in Brudloe’s hands as an accomplice to the murder of one man. The Royalist agent with whom Brudloe had stayed had given assurances that George was up for the task: a pack mule who worked on the cheap, and who would keep his mouth shut afterwards. But since then, Brudloe would often look at him as though reconfiguring a complicated, vexing puzzle.

George asked, “Did you see the Welshman?”

“I saw him,” Brudloe said. His upper lip parted obscenely and George realized with a jolt that the man, in fact, was smiling. “I watched him for hours. In and out of the barn like a fox in a hole. I could’ve shot him a dozen times over from where I perched. But he wasn’t alone.”

Brudloe tossed George the remainder of the bread and, getting up, walked to the window, his back to the room. He regarded the fast-fading light, scanning the yard like a sentry, and said, “Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow’s the day if I have to slit every throat in the house to do it.”

A wind, shearing up the trees in the yard, blew leaves over the open threshold. Slowly, almost thoughtfully, he kicked the door closed with the toe of one boot before sauntering back to the fire. He sat resting against the wall and, sliding the flintlock across the floor to George, said, “Clean it.”

George dropped one more round of lead into the bowl of the pouring ladle, placing it close to the coals to slowly melt. He reached for the flintlock, then inched himself farther away from his partner. He caught himself beginning to hum again and immediately swallowed the tune.

Brudloe laid one wrist over the other in his lap, ankles crossed, as if preparing for a long rest, and curled one side of his mouth upwards. “Ya know, I think I know that tune. It’s a sea-farin’ song, yeah? Tell me, Afton, how was your crossin’ over?” The open space in his gums gave the words an odd whistling sound.

“Wha’?” George asked, unsure of his meaning. He had been leaning into the hearth, gathering a taper to light a small lantern, and when the candle flared to life, he saw Brudloe’s eyes on him.

Brudloe lowered his chin. “Your crossin’. Your trip across the fuckin’ water.” He waited briefly for an answer, his head nodding as though in congenial conversation. “I know how you came to be here, in this shitting house. But how did you come to be in the fuckin’ colonies?”

“Same as you,” George said, taking out the ramrod from the barrel of the gun.

“ ‘Same as you,’ ” Brudloe mimicked. “No. Not the same as me. Not the fuckin’ same. What were you, in London, before you came here? Don’t tell me I’m wrong. I know the city garble when I hear it.”

“I manned ferries.”

“Manning ferries.” Brudloe’s voice took on a queer flat quality. “Ferries… fairies… fairies…” Suddenly he laughed and George flinched, gathering the flintlock closer to his chest.

Brudloe said, “I had a partner, a fuckin’ beast of a man. You know what happened to ’im?” He thrust out his lower jaw. “They burned ’im alive. The cunting rogues burned ’im alive, so don’t you say ‘same as you.’ ” Brudloe looked at him savagely for a moment more before George turned his head away, busying himself by taking from a small leather pouch the turnscrew, patches, and whisk to clean the gun.

“How old are we now, boy?” Brudloe asked. George’s hold on the gun tightened; he knew very well their contact in Salem had told Brudloe how old he was supposed to be.

“Sixteen,” George answered.

Brudloe shook his head slowly, his mouth curling into an ugly parody of a kiss. “Bonnie, bonnie lad, why do I doubt this to be so?” He suddenly leaned closer to George. “Tha’s all right, boy. I killed my first man at fourteen. You’re young for the job, but you’ll play.”

Brudloe abruptly stood and went for the water skin, drinking sparingly. George let out a breath, cradling the flintlock over his knees. Returning the rod to the shaft, he unscrewed the back plate, and carefully setting aside the frisson, he ran the whisk over the vent and trigger, removing the oily black powder.

Brudloe stretched out on a quilt near the fire, propping his head up on the balled-up greatcoat. He was silent for a few minutes, but when George shifted his gaze to the supine man, he saw the light of the coals reflecting dully off Brudloe’s eyes.

“The cap,” Brudloe said, pointing to George’s head. “You’re always wearin’ it and it’s a bloody inferno in here.”

“I always wear it,” George muttered.

“Take it off.”

George slipped off his cap, but kept his head well down, his face in shadows. Brudloe had barely so much as looked at him for days, but now George felt the man’s eyes studying the top of his head.

“I know that song you was hummin’. I heard it before. Just don’t know where.” There was silence for a few breaths, and Brudloe mused, “It’s this place that’s got me frigged. No proper streets, no proper towns. No lands’ end to the west. Just trees and rocks and more trees again. It works on a man. Grinds him down to dross. Too much space. Too much light…” His voice trailed away, and when George snuck a look, Brudloe’s eyes were closed. Soon he heard a slack-jawed breathing, a gentle, wet snoring sound coming from the sleeping man’s mouth, the two halves of Brudloe’s split lip quivering in tandem with each exhalation. George only ever felt safe when his partner slept, and even then he kept a close watch.

When he was a boy his father, or so he guessed him to be, as the man sometimes shared a cot with his mother, kept a baiting cur. The animal was small for fighting but with a large head. Wrapped tightly with muscle, all taut sinew and straining ligaments, he was banded over with the scars of endless fights in cellars and baiting pits. He was mostly silent, never barking, giving no warning of any kind before striking, and George, only five at the time, mistook the dog’s quiet ways for a gentle temperament. Within moments George had had part of his lower leg torn away from the bone, the bulk of the calf muscle stripped, hanging loose like a stranded cod. It took two men to beat the dog away, and, beyond the pain, George recalled the disconnected feeling of looking at the gaping wound and remembering that moments before the attack the dog had been licking his hand. He would have bled to death if not for the ministrations of his father, who was greatly practiced, and sure-handed, in sewing up dogs for the ring. The muscle on his leg grew back whole, leaving only long scars and a lasting mistrust for quiet, self-contained dogs.

George only partially reassembled the firing mechanism, so that it would not discharge, and then he set the gun gently against the wall. The coals had begun a low pulsing, making deep shadows in the room, and Brudloe’s breathing was steady and rhythmic. Careful not to rattle the handle, George picked up the lantern and stood, walking noiselessly to the window. He raised the lantern higher, pressing his face against the glass, looking for some sign of movement in the yard. His job, his true job, was only just beginning. And though he had spent days with Brudloe, cleaning his weapons, cooking his food, watching his back, he had had to wait until now for Brudloe to fall deeply asleep.

His breath fogged around the smoked windowpane, the lantern swaying gently aloft in his hand, and he caught a sylphlike reflection in the glass, like the beating of wings behind his shoulder.

The sudden impact smashed George’s head against the windowpane, breaking the glass jaggedly in the casing, and Brudloe pushed his full weight onto George’s back, grinding his forehead onto the emergent shards. Brudloe’s other arm came around George’s neck and he knew, without actually feeling the blade, that he had a knife to his throat. He could hear Brudloe’s quiet breathing and felt the movement of the man’s head as he scanned for intruders approaching the house.

“Who’s the lantern for?” Brudloe whispered, his lips pressed against George’s ear.

When George didn’t answer right away, Brudloe pushed his head more forcefully into the lattice of broken glass, cutting the flesh above his eyes. George dropped the lantern, guttering the candle, the room suddenly darker than the ambient light outside. Brudloe grabbed him around the arm, flinging him hard to the ground, the back of his head striking the floor with a muffled thud. A momentary blankness of vision that was greater than the lack of lantern light made George think he had shards of glass in his eyes. He winced under the bony weight of Brudloe’s knees over his outflung arms, and when his vision cleared from the fall, he could see, through a wash of blood from his forehead, Brudloe’s face over his own. He felt the cold press of a knife sliding into one nostril, and a pressure, just great enough to stretch the skin, made him want to lie very still.

Brudloe’s face came closer. “Who were you signalin’?”

George began to shake his head no and the pressure from the knife increased. Brudloe’s hand, in the gentlest of motions, flicked downwards, and a hot spray of blood flowed into his nose flooding backwards, down into his throat. He opened his mouth, gasping in pain, and the knife’s flat surface slipped in between his lips, over his tongue. Brudloe reached up with his other hand, and tousled his hair in an almost friendly way. “You crossed over on the Dutchman’s ship with me, ain’t that right, Georgie?” he said. “It came to me while I was sleepin’. I remembered yer song after all. You was supposed to be washed overboard, along with Baker. Whatever happened to Baker, do you suppose?”

The blade turned sideways creasing the middle of his tongue and the taste of salted copper sprang into George’s mouth. Brudloe leaned lower still, his eyes vaguely interested in the small trench he had carved in George’s mouth. He said, “Manning ferries, was it? You was an eel boy, weren’t ya, Georgie? A mud-divin’, coal-eatin’ little bastard. I’m damned if I know how ye got off that ship, or how you ended up in Salem, but I’m bettin’ it was the Dutchman, Koogin. I learned a few things from Baker about how to pull secrets from a man. He could skin a man’s ballsack off with a pair of pliers the way I’d peel a boiled plum.” He pressed his lips again to Georgie’s ear. “He always said that the best way to get a man to talk is t’ be patient. But I don’t have the time.”

Brudloe quickly put the knife between his teeth and hauled Georgie onto his stomach, punching him in the kidneys when he kicked out with his legs. Brudloe grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head backwards until Georgie thought his back would break.

“Now, then, who is coming?” Brudloe gave another brutal yank backwards when he saw Georgie’s hand reaching out for the hearth, towards the pouring ladle filled with the melted lead.

Georgie, the skin stretched tightly over his throat, gagged on the blood coursing down his gullet; “D-d-d-d—” was all he could manage.

Brudloe’s jutting chin rested over one of Georgie’s straining shoulders, and he asked, softly, distinctly, “Who… is… coming?”

“D-d-d-d—” Georgie squeezed out. There was no air left in his lungs to speak, and he could feel his awareness begin to fragment and break away, like a reflection of himself in water, fractured by a dropping stone. He thought he had wanted to say “Death,” but he was already forgetting. A slip of wind brushed his thighs, and he wondered if his back had indeed broken, the sensation of cold a prologue to misaligned limbs.

An explosive blow from behind knocked his head forward onto the floorboards, cutting a gash in his chin, and he lay dazed for the fullness of seconds before he realized there was no more agonizing pressure against his back. He heard the grunting and scuffling of bodies, but he lay moaning, his back useless in spasm.

Gurgling, animal sounds came from behind him, somewhere closer to the door, and soon he heard the thudding sound of a falling weight. He turned his head slowly, letting himself fall onto his back, and saw the darkened shape of a tall man framed by the doorway, signaling outwards towards the yard with a swinging lantern, newly lit. The breeze he had felt on his backside, he suddenly realized, had been the door opening silently. Georgie saw Brudloe lying on the floor, an oozing curtain darker than shadows spreading beneath him.

The tall man turned and quickly walked to Georgie, kneeling over him, strong teeth yellow in the lantern light. “Three nights now, boy. I thought the man would never sleep.”

Georgie could hear the creak of a wagon pulling close to the house, and he staggered to his feet, stepping over the body of Brudloe and through the door. The wagon had pulled to a stop, the driver holding a torch aloft to better see.

“Blessed Christ,” the man said to Georgie. Climbing from the wagon he handed the boy a cloth for his face and briefly examined the cuts. Pulling an ax and a canvas sack from under the driving board, he jerked a thumb over his shoulder for Georgie to climb into the wagon, and the man walked into the house.

Georgie crawled onto the wagon bed and lay on his quivering back, panting, his knees drawn up towards his chest. He let his matted eyes track the constellations in the sky, grateful he still had sight, and thought about the Rat on the Dutchman’s ship, the mute cabin boy who had rescued him from Brudloe and the others, who had fed and comforted him, pointing out to him with a sure and steady finger the constellations of the Bear, the Hunter, St. George’s Dragon. The Rat had cried voiceless, inconsolable tears when Georgie left the ship at Boston, but Captain Koogin understood that the young landsman would never make a good seaman.

He could feel his tongue beginning to swell, the pain in his mouth now greater than his other wounds. He parted his lips to better breathe, spitting out blood from the back of his throat, and wondered if he himself would ever be able to speak again.

It was Koogin who had taken him overland from Boston to the home of a man named General Gookin. The captain had told Georgie by way of introduction, “This, boy, is my brother.” He regarded Georgie’s surprised face and then, in the sandy soil at their feet, etched the name “Koogin.” Rubbing out the k and the g with his fingers, he transposed the letters, turning Koogin into Gookin. Standing, he erased the name with the sole of his shoe and said solemnly in parting, “I am no more a Dutchman than you are, lad. And I am not a pirate, though some would have me so. My ship serves the general, my brother, and you could do no better than apprenticing yourself to him.”

It was the general who had enlisted Georgie and Robert Russell, along with a network of spies, to the scheme of ridding the colonies of the assassins come to kill the man who had dared to take the head of a king, or so Georgie had been told.

Georgie Afton, named for the eight Georges before him, a fourteen-year-old eel boy from London sold into slavery to murderers, was one of the only remaining colony men alive who knew the face of Brudloe, and one of the few who had the mettle to put himself in harm’s way for the general’s sake. He had been changed greatly in the few months since being abducted from England, but he believed it was only Brudloe’s fixed obsession with killing the Welshman that had bought him time before being discovered. He had often thought on this moment: Brudloe’s blood running freely in the dirt.

Georgie heard the thunking sounds of an ax chopping against a soft target, and Robert Russell and the wagon driver soon walked out with the ax and the sack, now filled. They climbed onto the driving seat, and a dry rushing sound, followed by a growing light within the house, caught Georgie’s attention. The three of them watched the flames growing in strength, consuming the dry, untended wood with startling speed.

The wagon driver clucked at the reins, and Robert, tipping his head towards his companion on the driving board, said, “Georgie, greet your close neighbor, Goodman Daniel Taylor.”

Daniel winked at him and said, “Welcome to the brotherhood.”

Gingerly, Georgie propped himself up on his elbows, watching the growing conflagration, gray smoke pouring from the windows and door. The house was small and it would not last long, but its very compactness serviced the flames into a yellow-white wall of wavering phosphorescing light, and he could feel the pulsing heat even at a distance.

A dark shape emerged from the blankness of the yard like a partial eclipse, floating in front of the burning house, and resolved itself into the shape of a man. Shaken, Georgie saw that the man’s height was greater than the topmost frame of the door, and he palmed his eyes, brushing away the clotted blood at his lashes, thinking his perspective was muddled by distance and injury. The man turned his back to the flames, and the punishing heat, and stood watching the departing wagon.

Georgie raised himself onto his knees, and uttered thickly, “Sweet Jesu.”

Robert turned to look and quickly signaled for Daniel to halt the wagon. He reached for the sack, the bottom dripping with bloody matter, and climbed from the wagon, loping at a fast clip back towards the house. Georgie could clearly see Robert’s form, distorted by waves of heat and smoke, coming to stand in front of the giant, and he watched as he pulled from the sack Brudloe’s grimacing, seeping head. Robert held the head aloft like an offering, and the two men regarded for a moment the remnant with its backlit features, open-mouthed and fixed, and the giant then turned and disappeared into the woods.

Georgie gazed over his shoulder, staring at Daniel with the slack-jawed, trembling look of the battlefield injured, his eyes questioning.

Daniel gently wrapped his greatcoat around the boy’s shivering frame and held his shoulders with a fatherly steadying grip. Gesturing to Robert, standing alone in front of the already diminishing fire, he said, “He’s paying a debt, boy.”