JUNE 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND

At dusk Ned shut up the hens in their little coop, a lean-to beside the house, led the cow and calf to their pen and closed the gate on them, brought the two sheep into their little enclosure beside the cows, and threw them a shared armful of hay. The river chuckled and lapped in the darkness and a great flock of wild pigeons flew over Ned’s head, going to their roost in the forest, thousands of them darkening the sky like a storm cloud.

He tied his dog on a long rope in his kennel between the front door and the animals, to warn of foxes in the night, or any other predator—the settlers did not know for sure what animals hid in the forest and might threaten their stock. The dog gave a low growl and Ned felt the warm ruff of fur at his neck as his hackles went up.

“What’s up, Red? Something out there?” Ned asked quietly.

Quickly, he stepped into the house and lifted his gun down from the hooks over the front door, tapped a small measure of black powder into the pan so that it was ready to fire. Ned had been an infantryman for Oliver Cromwell in the New Model Army; they had all despised the old-fashioned musket, which needed the musketeer to blow a lit fuse into fiery redness and hold it to the pan for the gun to fire. Ned had bought a new flintlock that sparked its own fire and was ready in a moment. Now he swung open his front door, held his gun before him, pointed towards the silent darkness of the fields, his dog poised beside him, and said quietly: “Who’s there?”

If it were any of the People of the Dawnlands or any of the Indian nations, he knew they need not answer; they could be at the back of the house, coming silently up the riverbank as he peered, blind as a mole, out of the front door. They could be on the roof and only the dog would sense them. But Ned had traded with many men and women, talked with them, broken bread, shared salt, and trusted that nobody would come against him without warning. “Who’s there?” he repeated.

The clatter of shoes on the track told him that it was white men. “Halt! Who goes there?” Ned shouted. “I’m armed.” He held the gun in his right hand and stretched his left hand to the dog’s stout leather collar, ready to let him off the chain.

“Pax quaeritur bello,” came the whisper.

Ned put up his gun and clipped the chain back on the dog. It was the motto of Oliver Cromwell: “Peace comes through war.”

“Come forward,” he said. “I’m alone.”

William Goffe and Edward Whalley stepped forwards out of the darkness and, without a word, Ned lowered the cock on the gun, pushed open his front door, and they all went inside.

“No spies?” was all he asked. “No one see you pass?”

The two men shook their heads.

“Did you come up the common way?”

“Round the long way: out east to the forest, and then back along the riverbank.”

Ned opened the door and listened intently. He heard his dog settling down, turning round and round in his kennel and lying down, the call of hunting owls, and the noises of the forest at nighttime, familiar to him now after many nights alone. Beyond his door the voice of the river chattered softly in the darkness, there was no splash of an oar. Any white man following the two exiles around the margins of the town would have brushed against shrubs and low swinging branches, disturbed roosting birds, broken twigs, scattered stones on the path under heavy boots. Only an Indian could move in silence through the grasslands, brush, and swamp. Ned closed the door and the shutters so that there was no crack for any spy.

“We won’t stay,” William said.

“You can…”

“No, we’re going to live off the land for the summer. We’re tired of battening on old comrades.”

“It’s not battening,” Ned objected. “It’s what any of us would do for the other.”

“Aye, I know,” William agreed. “But this season we can live off our own, in the open, like free men, not like hibernating mice.”

“Where’ll you go?” Ned asked. “Stay near, and I can bring you some blankets and ale and the like. There’s a Norwottuck village just upriver, I know them—they’d shelter you.”

“I wouldn’t feel safe among them,” Edward ruled. “We’re going south to the coast, near where we were before. Can you take us back there for the summer? And bring us back here for the winter?”

“Aye,” Ned said. “I’ll have to get someone to mind the ferry.”

“Won’t people ask where you’ve gone?” William queried.

“Some of them’ll probably guess,” Ned said. “But if the ferry’s manned and I tell everyone I’m going hunting and gathering herbs for a few days, nobody’ll say anything. I’ll come with you for a day’s march, and I’ll hand you on to a native guide who can show you the rest of the way.”

Edward and William exchanged a glance. “I haven’t come this far to be beheaded by a savage and have my scalp sent to England for the reward,” Edward said sourly.

“Nay, you’ll be safe enough with a guide. They’ve got nothing against those of us that live modest and farm a few acres. It’s the others that have turned them sour: them that can’t be satisfied with a hundred acres, them that foul the rivers, them that run hogs through the cornfields. They who insult them, and get them into debt and then say the debt must be paid in land. But they won’t hurt two men traveling in peace.”

Neither man looked wholly reassured. “But will they know there’s a reward on our heads?” Edward asked.

“They know everything! But they’d think it dishonorable to betray a guest for money,” Ned assured him. “But you—in return—” He broke off, trying to find the words to explain. “When you meet them—you have to treat them like equals,” he said awkwardly. “Not like servants. They’re proud—proud as a cavalier lord in their own way—they have their own ideas as to how things should be, they have their own masters and ministers. They have their own God and their own prayers. And more than anything, they hate to be disrespected.”

William clapped him on the back. “You’re a good man, Ned! You’ve a kind word for everyone, even savages. We’ll leave in the morning, yes?”

Ned nodded. “As soon as I’ve got someone to man my ferry. You can sleep in my bed,” he offered. “It’ll be a while before you have a bed again. I’ll roll up before the fire.”

Before he slept Ned took a sheet of rough paper and with his homemade quill pen and a little jar of ink made from crushed soot and an addled egg yolk, scratched a note for his sister, Alinor, and pinned it with one of his new shingle nails to his rough table, for anyone to find in case he did not come home from his hunting trip.