brief; this second man embraced him, held on to him for such a length of
time silently-that Charles found it necessary to disengage him.
He was taken to a toolshed at the side of the house, where everything he
had requested was laid out on the long narrow table that butted the
wall, a sink at midpoint. Besides the overhead light, there was a
goosenecked lamp, whose bright illumination could be directed at a small
area. Charles was amused to see that along with these requirements was
a bowl of fresh fruit and a huge pewter tankard filled with ice.
A messiah had returned.
And now the archive case was open. He stared down at the severed end,
the metal edges still glowing with dying orange, then
yellow-lingering-soon to be black again.
Inside he could see the brown folds of a document rollthe usual
encasement for folded papers, each sheet against the imperceptibly moist
surface of the enveloping shield.
In the earth a living vault. Precise for a thousand years.
Walter Piersall had buried a rock for many ages in the event his own
overlooked it. He was a professional.
As a physician might with a difficult birth, Charles reached in and
pulled the priceless child from its womb. He unraveled the document and
began reading.
Acquaba.
The tribe of Acquaba.
Walter Piersall had gone back into the Jamaican archives and found the
brief allusion in the records pertaining to the Maroon Wars.
On January 2, 1739, a descendant of the Coromanteen tribal chieftains,
one Acquaba, led his followers into the mountains. The tribe of Acquaba
would not be a party to the Cudioe treaty with the British, insofar as
said treaty called upon the Africans to recapture slaves for the white
garrisons….
There was the name of an obscure army officer who had supplied the
information to His Majesty’s Recorder in Spanish Town, the colony’s
capital.
Middlejohn, Robt. Maj. W.L Reg. 641.
What made the name of “Middlejohn, Robt.” significant was Piersall’s
discovery of the following.
His Majesty’s Recorder. Spanish Town. February 9, 1739. [Documents.
recalled. Middlejohn. W L Reg. 641.] And …
His Majesty’s Recorder. Spanish Town. April 20, 1739.
[Documents. recalled. R. M. W. I. Reg. 641.] Robert Middlejohn.
Major. West Indian Regiment 641, in the Year of Our Lord 1739, had been
significant to someone.
Who?
Why?
It took Walter Piersall weeks at the Institute to find the next clue. A
second name.
But not in the eighteenth century; instead, 144 years later, in the year
1883.
Fowler, Jeremy. Clerk. Foreign Service.
One Jeremy Fowler had removed several documents from the archives in the
new capital of Kingston on the instructions of her Majesty’s Foreign
Office, June 7, 1883.
Victoria Regina.
The colonial documents in question were labeled simply “Middlejohn
papers.” 1739.
Walter Piersall speculated. Was it possible that the Middlejohn papers
continued to speak of the Tribe of Acquaba, as the first document had
done? Was the retention of that first document in the archives an
oversight? An omission committed by one Jeremy Fowler on June 7, 1883?
Piersall had flown to London and used his academic credentials to gain
access to the Foreign Office’s West Indian records. Since he was
dealing in matters of research over a hundred years old, F.O. had no
objections. The archivists were most helpful.
And there were no transferred documents from Kingston in the year 1883.
Jeremy Fowler, clerk of the Foreign Service, had stolen the Middlejohn
papers!
If there was a related answer, Walter Piersall now had two specifics to
go on: the name Fowler and the year 1883 in the colony of Jamaica.
Since he was in London, he traced the descendants of Jeremy Fowler. It
was not a difficult task.
The Fowlers-sons and uncles-were proprietors of their own brokerage
house on the London Exchange. The patriarch was Gordon Fowler, Esquire,
great-great-grandson of Jeremy Fowler, clerk, Foreign Service, colony of
Jamaica.
Walter Piersall interviewed old Fowler on the premise that he was
researching the last two decades of Victoria’s rule in Jamaica; the
Fowler name was prominent. Flattered, the old gentleman gave him access
to all papers, albums, and documents relative to Jeremy Fowler.
These materials told a not unfamiliar story of the times, a young man of
“middle breeding” entering the Colonial Service, spending a number of
years in a distant outpost, only to return to England far richer than
when he left.
Sufficiently rich to be able to buy heavily into the Exchange during the
last decade of the nineteenth century.
A propitious time; the source of the current Fowler wealth.
One part of the answer.
Jeremy Fowler had made his connection in the Colonial Service.
Walter Piersall had returned to Jamaica to look for the second part.
He studied, day by day, week by week, the recorded history of Jamaica
for the year 1883. It was laborious.
And then he found it. May 25, 1883.
A disappearance that was not given much attention insofar as small
groups of Englishmen-hunting parties were constantly getting lost in the
Blue Mountains and tropic jungles, usually to be found by scouting
parties of blacks led by other Englishmen.
As this lone man had been found.
Her Majesty’s Recorder, Jeremy Fowler.
Not a clerk, but the official Crown Recorder.
Which was why his absence justified the space in the papers. The Crown
Recorder was not insignificant. Not landed gentry, of course, but a
person of substance.
The ancient newspaper accounts were short, imprecise, and strange.
A Mr. Fowler had last been observed in his government office on the
evening of May 25, a Saturday. He did not return on Monday and was not
seen for the rest of the workweek. Nor had his quarters been slept in.
Six days later, Mr. Fowler turned up in the garrison of Fleetcourse,
south of the impenetrable Cock Pit, escorted by several Maroon
“Negroes.” He had gone on horseback …
alone … for a Sunday ride. His horse had bolted him; he had gotten
lost and wandered for days until found by the Maroons.
It was illogical. In those years, Walter Piersall knew, men did not
ride alone into such territories. And if one did, a man who was
sufficiently intelligent to be Her Majesty’s Recorder would certainly
know enough to take a left angle from the sun and reach the south coast
in a matter of hours, at best a day.
And one week later Jeremy Fowler stole the Middlejohn papers from the
archives. The documents concerning a sect led by a Coromanteen
chieftain named Acquaba … that had disappeared into the mountains 144
years before.
And six months later he left the Foreign-Colonial-Service and returned
to England a very, very wealthy man.
He had discovered the Tribe of Acquaba.
It was the only logical answer. And if that were so, there was a
second, logical speculation: Was the Tribe of Acquaba … the Halidon?
Piersall was convinced it was. He needed only current proof.
Proof that there was substance to the whispers of the incredibly wealthy
sect high in the Cock Pit mountains. An isolated community that sent
its members out into the world, into Kingston, to exert influence.
Piersall tested five men in the Kingston government, all in positions of
trust, all with obscure backgrounds. Did any of them belong to the
Halidon?
He went to each, telling each that he alone was the recipient of his
startling information: the Tribe of Acquaba.
The Halidon.
Three of the five were fascinated but bewildered. They did not
understand.
Two of the five disappeared.
Disappeared in the sense of being removed from Kingston. Piersall was
told one man had retired suddenly to an island in the Martinique chain.
The other was transferred out of Jamaica to a remote post.
Piersall had his current proof.
The Halidon was the Tribe of the Acquaba.
It existed.
If he needed further confirmation, final proof, the growing harassment
against him was it. The harassment now included the selected rifling
and theft of his files and untraceable university inquiries into his
current academic studies. Someone beyond the Kingston government was
concentrating on him. The acts were not those of concerned bureaucrats.
The Tribe of Acquaba … Halidon.
What was left was to reach the leaders. A staggeringly difficult thing
to do. For throughout the Cock Pit there were scores of insulated sects
who kept to themselves; most of them poverty-stricken, scraping an
existence off the land.
The Halidon would not proclaim its self-sufficiency; which one was it?
The anthropologist returned once again to the volumes of African
minutiae, specifically seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury Coromanteen.
The key had to be there.
Piersall had found the key; he had not footnoted its source.
Each tribe, each offshoot of a tribe, had a single sound applicable to
it only. A whistle, a slap, a word. This symbol was known only within
the highest tribal councils, understood by only a few, who communicated
it to their out-tribal counterparts.
The symbol, the sound, the word … was ‘Halidon.” Its meaning.