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.”

CHAPTER 22

Transcript of General Court Session, Town of Billerica 23rd day of the 10th month, 1673

Presided by: General Daniel Gookin, Magistrate of Concord, Carlisle, Bedford, Wilmington, and Billerica


Formerly in Dispute, Now Resolved: 3 Acres land, promontory lying southerly to Treble Cove on the Concord River, bounded by Billerica Great Common Field to the North, Concord River to the West, Fox Brook Road to the East, and Main Street to the South, sufficiently bounded by Marked Trees and Pillars of Stone.

By Jonathan Danforth, Surveyor


It is jointly agreed between Daniel Taylor, of Billerica, and Asa Rogers, late of Salem, that the aforementioned Daniel Taylor shall make sale of designated land, becoming Seller, giving assurances that the three acres shall be granted to aforementioned Asa Rogers, becoming Buyer, with full rights of ownership, and that such Seller does hereby, fully, clearly, and absolutely give up his whole interest, right, and title to land; and that subsequent to affixing his signature and transference of settled price, Asa Rogers can make sale of and dispose of land as he sees fit for his person, his assigns, and estate.