THERE WAS AN OLD PLANK BRIDGE OVER THE DAM AT THE HEAD OF the tide above the New Milford settlement, and Peter thought it would be worn out before half the rabble of Liberty Men were across it. They were a strange company, like celebrants on Mummer’s Day, which Peter had heard tell of from long-memoried folk at Sheepscott Great Pond. Their costumes were preposterous and bizarre; there were men whose masks bristled with bear-claws for teeth, or who wore wolf heads with antlers. The Indians looked like no Indian Peter had ever seen, but were cut out in outlandish headdresses and daubed with charcoal and ocher. Most of the men were armed with muskets and squirrel guns. They had lost their identities as well as their faces, and Peter understood on some unspoken level that any outrage they committed would be recalled by them as belonging only to the masks they hid beneath.
Disguise might hide a man from himself as well as the world, and Peter carried his own mask perhaps in the form of Captain Clayden’s clothes. His father’s hat and coat he had turned into a thin roll and looped with the length of borrowed rope over one shoulder.
Nathan Barrow had endeavored to attach Peter to his own group of men, but Manasseh Cutts drove off such proposals with something less than diplomacy, and the threat of something more than the toe of his boot. They were benefited by several imprecations from the lay preacher, till Barrow was encouraged to retreat to his own company by several who were less moderate than old Manasseh.
The journey to Wiscasset commenced in the forest’s shadow, west of the Sheepscott, and soon they entered the woods where the trails were narrow and less traveled than those along the river. The company was mostly afoot and even Manasseh’s men were largely in disguise so that Peter felt strange to look so much like himself. The aspect of those about him grew more unearthly with evening’s approach. Torches lit the paths. The men sang at intervals, their rough-made songs brewed from ancient melodies and bittered with discontent; but then they would fall silent and the forest would be filled with the tramp of their feet–a disorganized sound–and the snap-and-stumble presence of humans among the trees. Peter was ever conscious of the ranks of men ahead and behind him, and found himself falling under the warlike spell of their numbers and purpose.
Rum and ale had been brought with them–some carried their own libations, while one group of men had forded horses across the upper river to pull a cart and barrels with them.
Night came on suddenly among the pine and fir. The moon had yet to rise; the torchlight rose almost to the tops of trees. The company had been moving two hours or more through the woods–Manasseh’s men, along with Peter, being in the middle of the line–when Peter caught sight of a rider who was knocked from his horse in the dark by a low lying branch.
The horseman managed to clutch on to his reins, and he scrambled for his hat and to his feet as someone with a torch halted to lend a hand. The rider cast a glance in Peter’s direction once the hat had been replaced, and Peter recognized Elspeth Gray. From there, she walked her horse, till some jolly fellow offered to ride it for her. The young woman gave out a low grunt, tugged the horse away from the man and swung onto its back, which caused some laughter.
Elspeth may have thought she had come dangerously close to discovery, for she eased her horse to the other side of the path where Peter walked. He did not give her much regard, and was in fact doing his best to ignore his concern for her. Spitefully, it seemed, visions of the young woman in her nightclothes with the lantern light shining in her hair crowded other thoughts from his mind.
There was little chance of the company meeting anyone on this trail, but they did pass some farms along the way and it was clear from the dying lights in the tiny windows of the houses that they had been heard. On one hillside they caught a glimpse of lights beside the river and realized they were passing Sheepscott Village.
The main road wandered some, avoiding difficult climbs or steep descents when it could. It circled a tall hill, which maneuver Peter was only conscious of because of the eminence to their right and the stars wheeling above them. Word came back through the line that Nathan Barrow had taken his men off the main trail and struck westward, where they would cordon off the landward approaches to Wiscasset. Peter was glad to have them go, but Manasseh seemed to think that Barrow was capable of mischief once he separated himself from the main body of men and Mr. Pelligue’s command.
Almost a mile above Wiscasset the woods began to thin away, till the head of the company halted and they gathered atop a low ridge to consider the open fields and the port town lying in neat rows along the shore. The moon had risen over the opposite hill, its reflection fractured in the river currents. This was a landing of some significance and several vessels of various sizes and descriptions shadowed the water with their hulls.
Peter was not alone in his curiosity and wonder; there were others in the company who had never seen the town, or anything like it–younger men, who had been born and raised in the back-country. Most had not seen anything like it for a long while. The surrounding fields were clear of stumps; the center of the settlement was populated with fine houses and one or two official buildings, and in the moonlight, even the ruder constructions along the outskirts looked neat and orderly. The wind was in the northwest, but a salt tang permeated the air even so far from the water; it left Peter with an odd melancholy, which emotion brought his mind to Nora Tillage and he wondered how she fared since the parson and he had left Clayden Farm. He looked over his shoulder for Elspeth, and thought he could pick her out, astride her horse, some distance behind the crowd.
“It looks quiet enough,” said Crispin Moss. Few in the troop, including those disposed to trust Zachariah Leach, had entirely left off the idea that the saddle-parson had raised an alarm against them.
“Is that a tavern down there?” asked Manasseh. From his crouch he pointed toward an imposing building near the northern margin of town. Smoke roiled from the chimneys atop the house, and lights burned in its windows, but Peter knew that the horses tethered outside the building were the source of the woodsman’s concern.
“There’s your alarm raised,” said someone, and the effect of this thought ran through the company like the rumble of a dull and distant storm.
“What do you think, lad?” asked Manasseh. “There must be twenty or thirty horse down there.”
“It’s Captain McQuigg and his militia,” said Peter, even as the thought came to him. “They were leaving for Wiscasset two days ago, before the parson and I ever came to New Milford.” They were a hundred yards from the horses, with only moonlight to illuminate the scene before them, but Peter could almost place the broad-shouldered mount of Martha Clayden’s admirer Edward Kavanagh.
The company retreated into the forest behind, and as Manasseh mustered his men together, Mr. Pelligue rode up among them–a gray old man, hardened by his years in the wilderness–and he dismounted and threw his reins to someone. He hunkered down beside his chief men, including Manasseh Cutts, and considered the horses below.
“Peter says that Captain McQuigg gathered a troop together days ago,” said Manasseh, before the question could be asked.
“I know the man,” said Mr. Pelligue.
“What will they do?” wondered another fellow. “Will they come out and shoot at us?”
“I would lay wager they’re not carrying hoes and shovels,” said Mr. Pelligue.
“Well,” said the man, “I don’t want to be shot, and I’m not very anxious to shoot at them.”
Mr. Pelligue looked over his shoulder at the company behind him. “We won’t, if we can help it,” he whispered, and Peter wished the whole body of men could hear this, though more as directive than comfort.
“What house is that?” asked someone.
“It’s the Whittier,” said the old man, and when the fellow frowned, Mr. Pelligue added, “Some know it as the Three Sisters, after the elms out front of it.” Mr. Pelligue turned to Peter and said, “You saw McQuigg at Captain Clayden’s?”
“I met him there,” said Peter.
“You’re dressed for it,” said Manasseh, which was not meant unkindly. An odd expression crossed his face when he said it, though. “There were others there, you said.”
“There was an Edward Kavanagh, a Mr. Flye and a Mr. Short-well . . .”
“Kavanagh,” said Mr. Pelligue. “He’s a big man–knocked down the two Mulligan brothers last harvest fair at Newcasde.”
“They’ll be down there as well,” said Manasseh.
Peter considered the horses outside the Whittier Tavern.
“Did you make a good impression, lad?” asked Mr. Pelligue.
“I don’t think I made any impression at all.”
“That will do, as long as they remember where they met you.”
“Mr. Kavanagh, perhaps . . .”
“Will you do it, then?”
“Go down there?”
“Set them off course,” said Mr. Pelligue. “Up the river road to New Milford, if you must.”
“What if he raises the alarm?” asked someone, meaning Peter, but Mr. Pelligue paid the man no heed.
Peter set his jaw and gave the fellow a hard stare. “What will I tell them?” he asked.
“What you will. But you must have a horse. No, not that beast of mine. There must be a creature that better suits your clothes.”
“The fellow who was knocked from his horse,” said Manasseh, almost as to himself. “I see him over there.” Before Peter could say nay to any of it, Crispin Moss had gone off to collar the man and take his mount.
“What will I tell them?” asked Peter again.
“You’re only there to warn them,” said Mr. Pelligue. “Tell them a troop is coming, but don’t make it so big as it will frighten any of them away or encourage them to raise the town.”
“We just want them to head north and out of sight,” said Manasseh.
Peter was thinking that after this adventure he would never be able to set foot in Captain Clayden’s home again; and he had hoped to remain unseen and unchallenged. The uncertainty might have showed upon his face, for Mr. Pelligue said to Manasseh Cutts, “Do you trust the lad?”
“As I trust Parson Leach, and as I don’t trust Barrow.”
This seemed enough for Mr. Pelligue and he did not pursue the subject. Peter was unoffended by the question, coming from the old man, and thought it only sensible, couched in such simple terms.
“I might have mistaken that fellow for a woman,” said Crispin Moss, when Peter and Manasseh met him below the woods. “If I didn’t know better,” he added. Manasseh had given him an odd look, and out of shock Peter had himself looked astonished by the idea. Crispin glanced back at Elspeth, who managed to look angry though she was some distance away and her face was in shadow; Crispin was uncertain yet what to think of the small figure at the edge of the company. “He didn’t want to give up his horse, but he didn’t hit me very hard.” He passed the makeshift bridle to Peter.
“Who told folks about my climbing out from under that buck you shot?” wondered Peter suddenly.
“That was me,” said Crispin, a little abashedly. “Did it cause you any difficulty?”
“Well the story hasn’t gotten any less strange, and the buck hasn’t gotten any smaller in the telling.”
“It’s too good a story to let go, lad,” said Manasseh, then falling to more immediate concerns he said, “Just send them north. But don’t, for Heaven’s sake, get dragged along with them.”
That was an awful thought, and Peter did not linger over it as he led the horse along the wooded ridge above the road. At one point he hurried down the slope opposite the river and traveled a creek for some yards before cutting right again and making for the trail.
He followed moonlight through the skeletal branches and the underbrush, leading the horse till they broke onto the hall-like aspect of the road, north of town.
He stood for some time, gazing up the dim path in the direction from which they had come. He could quite easily take Elspeth’s horse back to New Milford, gain Beam at the pasture above the Star and Sturgeon and never be seen again outside Sheepscott Great Pond. He considered the other direction and Wiscasset and the conflict he would enter therein. It was not at all what his mother had sent him for. If there were this many people between here and home, how many were there on the way to Boston, or on the way to the prairies of which Parson Leach had spoken? He was both daunted and compelled to consider it.
