- The roadway between Yorktown and Williamsburg, Friday, 28 March 1755

By midmorning, the mist had lifted. The sky remained pale and the road steamed where the sunlight reached it. The road stretched around a bend into the woods. Pike’s horse moved its ears forward. Faint voices carried from beyond a bend: men calling numbers, the clinking of metal, and the cracks of branches cut under tension.

Pike pulled on the horse’s reins and slowed the chair.

As they slowly approached, a survey party occupied the road ahead. One man stood beside a compass mounted upon a staff. Two others worked the Gunter’s Chain through the undergrowth at the road’s edge. The Gunter’s Chain was usually a long iron chain composed of 100 individual iron links connected by small rings. A fourth man carried thin wooden marking pins that allowed them to move the chain back and forth without losing an accurate measure. Their horses had been tied beneath pines in the distance, and an axe rested against a tree whose bark bore several fresh cuts in the bark.

The surveyor was a narrow man in a plain dark coat. He wore no wig, and his brown hair was tied severely behind him. A few stray hairs that had loosened fluttered in the light breeze. His face possessed the stillness of a person who disliked wasted motion. He looked up as the chair approached.

Pike stopped without being instructed. “How long?” he called.

“As long as the line is required,” the surveyor replied.

Pike muttered something Julian did not hear.

One chain carrier stood near the compass. The other moved forward through the brush until the iron chain stretched between them. The chain consisted of many linked lengths with handles at either end.

The surveyor looked at the compass, which had small metal lengths sticking up with tiny slits in them. The surveyor lined the slits up with a whiteish colored ranging rod sticking up a ways in the distance, along the line of chains. Julian could understand how they could survey vast tracks of land, but lacked the knowledge of how many chain links equaled a foot.

When the chain became taut, the distant chain carrier leaned down to place a pin, which was near the chair. Julian watched the man’s hand. The pin entered the ground several inches beyond the end of the chain. The carrier stood.

The surveyor looked directly at the pin. Then he lowered his eyes to the field book held open in his left hand and recorded the measurement. Julian waited for a correction. None came.

“He has placed your mark beyond the end of the chain,” Julian said. The distant carrier looked toward the surveyor. The surveyor closed his field book around one finger. “Did you address me or my man, sir?”

“I addressed an error, not your man,” pointed out Julian.

“Then you should take care, if it is any of your business,” scowled the surveyor.

Julian glanced at the chain. It crossed part of the road and disappeared into weeds on either side. The iron links were black with use. “A measurement extending beyond its instrument belongs to anyone expected to believe the measurement.”

Pike exhaled through his nose.

The surveyor regarded Julian more carefully. “You have newly arrived, then?” asked the surveyor.

“Is it so apparent?” asked Julian.

“Because your coat is clean,” snubbed the surveyor.

Julian looked at the mud already stippling the lower skirts of his jacket. “Relatively.” A faint sound came from the trees to the north. Not laughter exactly, but something near it.

A black man stood beside a bay horse just beyond the survey party. He was broad-shouldered, plainly dressed, and several years older than Julian. A rope’s coil hung from his saddle. His gaze moved from the misplaced pin to Julian and then to the surveyor. Unlike the workers, he did not appear to belong to the party.

The surveyor’s expression tightened. “Bell,” he said, “have you business here?”

“Only the road, Mr. Pym.” The man’s voice was measured and unhurried.

“Then use it,” snarled Mr. Pym.

“I had intended to. But alas, you have stretched iron across it,” retorted Bell.

Pike leaned toward Julian and spoke under his breath. “Cyrus Bell,” he informed Julian.

“Should I know him?” asked Julian.

“Depends on what you need carried, crossed, tracked, measured, or remembered,” whispered Pike. Bell heard Pike speaking. His eyes shifted briefly toward Pike, but revealed no offense.

The surveyor, Mr. Pym, opened his field book again. “The ground falls unevenly,” he told Julian. “A chain measured across Virginia soil does not lie as it would upon an English lawn.”

“Distance suffers from nationality?” poked Julian.

“Practical men allow for terrain.” Mr. Pym looked slightly annoyed by this young upstart questioning his business practices.

“By adding to it?” jabbed Julian.

Mr. Pym’s chain carriers stared studiously elsewhere. Mr. Pym’s face reddened slightly. He seemed as if he wanted to scream at this outsider.

Bell rested one hand upon his saddle. “A chain is generally most useful when it remains one length,” he said.

Mr. Pym looked at him. “You were not hired for an opinion.”

“No, I was not,” said Bell.

“Then your opinion has no owner, Bell” snarled Pym.

Bell’s expression did not alter. “That does not make the matter untrue.” For a moment, no one moved. Mr. Pym’s face was red hot and looked like he was going to rage.

Julian sensed a dispute older than his arrival and larger than the pin in the soil. Pym’s hand remained on the field book. Bell stood at ease, but his horse had turned one ear toward him, awaiting a command.

Pike broke the silence. “Might we pass?”

Mr. Pym gestured to his carriers; the chain slackened. One man lifted it from the road while the other retrieved the pin beyond the chain - and placed it in a leather pouch. The error disappeared without correction.

Pike started the horse. As the chair passed, Julian looked down at the field book. He caught only a few marks: a bearing, the number of chains, and what might have been the name ‘Rooke’ written near the top of the page.

Mr. Pym closed the book. “Mr. Harcourt,” he said in a tone of warning.

Pike’s reins tightened. Julian turned. He had not given his name.

Mr. Pym’s face remained composed. “Virginia may disappoint you,” he continued. “It is larger than the rules brought here to govern it.”

Julian looked from the field book to the man holding it. “Rules are seldom troubled by size, Mr. Pym. Only by the men who find them… inconvenient.” Pike drove on.

Cyrus Bell remained at the roadside. As they passed him, he gave Julian neither greeting nor warning. His gaze rested instead upon the survey pin that had disappearing into the carrier’s pouch.

A quarter mile later, Pike said, “You ought not antagonize Silas Pym. He is not a temperate man.”

“I merely observed a misplaced marker,” explained Julian.

“Men have been shot for observing less,” frowned Pike.

“Then the colony’s ammunition problem has been overstated,” joked Julian.

Pike did not smile. “Mr. Pym surveys for Colonel Rooke, and is most dangerous.”

Julian looked back, but the bend of the road had hidden the party. “Does everyone in the Colony work for Colonel Rooke?”

“Not everyone,” said Pike.

“Only those I meet?” asked Julian.

“Give it time,” Pike responded lightly.

The road worsened as the day advanced. At one low place, water filled the wheel ruts deeply enough that Pike guided the horse onto the shoulder. The right wheel sank at once. The chair tilted.

Julian caught the edge with one hand and his dispatch box with the other. Pike cursed the road, the horse, the wheel, and a former Royal governor whose responsibility for the event was not immediately apparent. They climbed down. The wheel had settled near its hub in reddish mud. Pike pushed from behind, while Julian pulled at the shaft. The horse objected to every proposed solution.

After several useless attempts, hoofbeats approached from the east. Cyrus Bell rode into view. He stopped. Pike wiped mud onto his coat. “The road is soft,” scoffed Pike.

Bell looked at the buried wheel. “So, it has informed you.”

He dismounted and handed Pike his reins. Without asking permission, he took a short-handled shovel from behind his saddle and cut away the mud in front of the wheel. He then placed a flat section of split timber beneath it and tied his rope from the chair’s axle to his own horse’s saddle.

Julian assisted, though Pike repeatedly advised him not to ruin his lovely coat.

The two horses pulled together. The chair lurched free with a sucking sound that nearly drew Julian’s boot from his foot. Bell untied the rope. Julian reached for his purse.

Bell saw the movement. “Keep it, you owe me nothing.”

“You have saved us considerable labor,” said Julian.

“I saved the horse’s health,” replied Bell matter-of-factly.

“The horse has no purse with which to pay,” said Julian.

“Which is likely why he still has friends.” Pike turned away, concealing either a cough or amusement.

Julian let his hand fall. “Then accept my thanks, please.”

Bell studied him for a moment. “’Thanks’ cost less than money.”

“Usually,” laughed Julian to himself.

“And are often worth the price.” Bell returned the shovel and rope to his saddle.

Julian glanced eastward, where the survey party remained out of sight. “Was the pin misplaced deliberately, Mr. Bell?”

Bell put one foot in the stirrup. “A gentleman ought to take care with questions that contain their preferred answer.”

“That is a remarkably indirect response.”

“It may be the only kind that gets a man home.” Bell mounted. “Your uncle asked straighter questions.” Bell added, “Near the end.”

Julian’s attention sharpened. “You knew Thomas?”

“I knew what he wanted measured,” said Bell.

“What was that?” asked Julian.

Bell gathered his reins. “The difference between the land men own and the land their papers claimed.” Before Julian could ask another question, Bell turned his horse westward.

“You are going to Williamsburg?” Julian called.

“For now,” said Bell.

“Then perhaps we shall speak again,” hoped Julian.

Bell looked back once. “That will depend upon what you ask.” He rode ahead, passing from sunlight into the shadow of the trees.

Pike watched him go. “Bell knows every creek between the two rivers.”

“And every boundary?” asked Julian.

“He knows where men say they are,” clarified Pike.

“That was not what I asked,” said Julian.

“No,” Pike said. “It seldom is,” said Pike.

They resumed the journey. Julian’s coat was no longer clean. He found that he minded that fact less than he thought he would have expected.

Shortly after noon, Pike stopped near a small ordinary where they ate bread, cold meat, and something introduced as cheese - which possessing the consistency of softened wax. The common room also held three other travelers, a merchant’s clerk, and a militia officer speaking loudly about General Braddock.

The officer claimed that the British regulars would sweep the French from the Ohio Territory countryside before summer. One traveler disagreed and said “No army could move cannon through the western forests.” The merchant’s clerk said “Powder, wagons, and provisions would matter more than courage.”

Pike ate without joining the argument. Julian listened intently.

In England, the colonies had been described as ‘possessions. In the ordinary, they sounded like men standing in a darkened room, uncertain how far the walls extended and increasingly convinced that someone beyond them intended violence.

A folded newspaper lay on the table. The masthead read The Virginia Gazette. Beneath it were foreign reports, commercial notices, official announcements, advertisements for imported goods, property, services, and people.

One advertisement described an indentured servant who had departed before completing his term. Another offered a reward for the capture of an enslaved man who had escaped from a plantation. A third announced the services of a music teacher newly arrived in Williamsburg. Julian read the page twice.

The colony presented itself in print as a collection of things lost, things sold, things owed, and people whose movement required explanation. Pike tapped the table. “If you mean to bring that along, pay the keeper.”

Julian folded the Gazette. “Is information not freely circulated here?”

“Not by printers,” said Pike.

Julian left coin enough for the paper and food.

Next Chapter: Chapter 3: Arrival In Williamsburg