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.

Asa Rogers, as Buyer, hereby agrees to make said purchase for Four Pounds Sterling upon execution of this Document.

Witness my hand the day and year above

Written, together with Buyer and Seller

Gen. D. Gookin

Daniel Taylor

Asa Rogers

Copied by Town Clerk: Tho. Adams


Post Script to Mr. James Davids, New Haven, Connecticut:


Dear friend James,

Forgive these hasty scratchings as I have much withal to concern me: meetings of the governor and General Council and, more important I believe to the immediate welfare of these wilderness settlements, the visitation of Indian villages. There has been of late much unease regarding relations between the colonists and the natives, and I have endeavored to begin a work which I hope to publish for the benefit of peace: “The Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indian.”

More to the point of this missive, I have sent the above copy of a court transcript for your enlightenment as it concerns the carter Daniel Taylor, also your agent in the surrounds of Boston. Goodman Taylor solicited me to help settle a land dispute between Asa Rogers and a hired man, one Thomas Morgan, a rumored regicide.

It will please you to know that Morgan is popularly believed to have been executed by bounty men, his head struck from his body (the head of which I, being responsible in part for His Majesty’s Will and Charters in the colonies, have myself witnessed). This disjointed head, I must add, is most decidedly small for such a reputedly large man, the forehead cross-hatched with a multitude of scars. The skull is to be conveyed back to England on the ship The Swallow with a captain of our very close acquaintance, Captain Koogin, for the satisfaction of the Crown. On the shipping barrel will be writ, no doubt by some wayward scoundrel: “Here lies the head of Thomas Morgan, regicide; to which state every head of state must someday find.” His Majesty will want to know, through endless correspondences, I am certain, how we, the colonists, hold in regard the Royal Court to make such rustic jokes and bite our thumbs at Consequence and Ceremony.

Once Thomas Morgan had proven to be officially dead, and therefore unable to make a claim upon the Taylor land—a cunning well-ordered spot on the Concord—Asa Rogers stepped forward most vigorously to claim it for his mill (bringing poignantly to mind that “the mills of the gods grind slow, but exceeding fine”). Rogers paid in full, and hurriedly, for his plot of land. He, upon some reflection, has taken my word as a magistrate that Thomas Morgan is gone from this earth. The more so after describing to him, in most painstaking detail, the attendant hackings, burnings, and dismemberments by Indians that may take place upon a settler without the protection of the militia, under my command.

To more felicitous duties. I had, upon completion of the sale of land, the satisfaction of officiating in the marriage of one Thomas Carrier of Billerica to a Martha Allen, late of Andover, and cousin to the wife of Goodman Taylor. As they stood, still and solemn before me, making their vows—he as exceptionally tall a man as I have ever seen, and she wearing a fine green-gray cloak—they brought to my mind stone carvings I had seen in a great abbey in London. There, resting in a shadowed, forgotten nave, were likenesses of some long-absent king and queen, both alike in dignity, their brows crimped in imponderable thoughts. And though their eyes were closed, their heads inclined together, speaking to the onlooker, “We have endured.”

Goodman Taylor was witness to the ceremony and discreetly presented the bride afterwards a fine down quilt, such as is rarely seen in the colonies. In a peculiar aside, I overheard him say quietly to her that there was, within, an accounting book, a red one, if such extravagances can be believed.

“Keep it well, cousin,” he told her, “until such time as it can be brought forward to illuminate a world more equal to its subject.”

The couple being poor, and they being of remarkable fortitude for work, I have offered them, along with Carrier’s man, John Levistone, a good plot of land from my own holdings, in return for some period of labor and a gold coin given to Goodwife Carrier by her father.