Bone Rattler amoca-1

by Eliot Pattison

  When he awoke again, much later, his mind was clear of the fog brought by the fever. A dim light shone down the corridor of cells, from a lantern hung on a beam. A crock of water had been left inside his door, and he gulped it down before noticing that his wound had been bound with a strip of cloth tied around his ribs. By the door lay another piece of cloth, an extra bandage. Not a bandage as such, his fingers told him, but a linen handkerchief, something from the traveling kit of a gentleman. Inside its careful folds was a small metallic object. He held it up to the meager light seeping through the hatch, touched it to his tongue. It was a button, a silver button with flecks of dried blood.

  For the first time in a week he felt hunger, a ravenous, piercing hunger. As he lifted his britches from the peg, ready to pull them on, he explored the pockets, hoping to find something, a scrap of leather, even a chip of wood to chew. But then his fingers touched the hard, cold stone Adam had given him, and his appetite vanished. Beneath the stone was the medallion, which he examined for the first time, his fingers running over it in the dark. The storm was gone, the real world had returned, and he could no longer rely on demons or ghosts for explanations.

  He had never known Adam to take the medallion from his neck, but someone had taken it, only to leave it on the bloody compass two days after Adam’s death. He had sometimes glimpsed the colorful pattern on the leather circle inside Adam’s shirt, the shape of a black bird like a crow surrounded by red and yellow concentric rings, but he had always assumed the pattern was made of beads. Now he found they were not beads, but rows of flat strands-not glass, not reed, waxy-hard yet flexible. It was not of the Old World. He explored the bulge at the back with his fingers, surprised to discover that something small was sewn inside the soft leather. Without knowing why, he draped the amulet around his own neck and covered it with his shirt, then pulled on his britches. He sat, clutching the carved stone, squeezing it until his fingers hurt, hating it, irrationally blaming it for Adam’s death, then, as his senses surrendered to despair again, slowly pounding his fist against it. Finally, his strength and emotion spent, he leaned against the hull, listening in the dark to the rush of the water, sensing changes in its rhythms, wondering if somewhere in the sounds were the last words of Adam, spoken as he swam downward, leaving his unfinished earthly business in Duncan’s unready hands.

  He fell into a languid trance, the carved stone clutched to his chest, his ear to the wood, his thoughts tangled with images of Adam and Evering and the disturbing, unintelligible whispers he had heard, until suddenly he bolted upright, wide awake. “The buttons!” he cried, understanding the first meager piece of the puzzle.

  Voices rose in the distance. Kneeling at the hatch, he saw for the first time past the door, into an antechamber with a heavy table and a steep ladder stair that led to the upper decks. A shadow moved along the cells, pausing at each one, then dropping a small, hard crust of bread and a rotting apple into his own cell before disappearing, closing the outer door with the loud snap of a bolt. The voices, he realized as he ate, were those of inmates down the corridor, speaking to one another through their door holes, the meal having resurrected them. Duncan could not make out distinct words, only the hopeless tones in which they were spoken.

  “Are you there?” he whispered through his own tiny hatch after he had gulped down the food, suddenly yearning for any human company, even that of the madwoman. “What did you mean about the black wind?” What was her crime, he wondered, what awful thing had she done to deserve condemnation to the deadly tropical plantations? He had once heard of a woman sent away for killing her infant. “I was frightened of the storm, too,” he offered, his voice weakening, shamed at his desperation for a single word of acknowledgment. “Did you hear those words earlier? Like some dreadful spirit speaking through the hull. Have you heard it before?”

  But no reply came. Had he indeed imagined the words? Was he losing his mind?

  In the hours to come, he learned how the prisoners distinguished between night and day. Night was when the rats came.

  He woke to the rattle of iron. A figure stepped into his cell, pulling the door behind him, squatting with a dim, hooded candle lantern.

  “Brought ye a blanket,” the man whispered, handing Duncan a tattered wool sheet and another crock of water. “How be the ribs?”

  “Better, thanks to you, Mr. Lister,” Duncan said after he nearly drained the crock. “The ship?”

  “Captain wanted to make for Halifax for repairs. Reverend Arnold would have none of it. Foretopmast is gone. Prisoners on the pumps these past thirty hours. They had me clean the compass room.”

  “It’s where you found that button? The thing jammed in the heart?”

  “Aye. A cold, angry deed. A map was engraved on it, finely worked. A lord’s jewelry. Whoever stole it likely realized he best not be found with such a thing on this boat.” He extracted a piece of salt pork from his pocket and extended it toward Duncan. “Christ on the cross!” he exclaimed. “Y’er hands!”

  Duncan held his fingers in front of the dim light. Blood oozed from a dozen small, swollen bites. “The wound on my side was still bleeding. The rats wanted to feed.” He pointed to two dead rodents, lying where he had slammed them against the wall.

  The keeper uttered a low groan. “Close the hatch after meals are delivered,” Lister instructed as he bent and tossed the dead things into the passage. “At night, block the bottom of the door.” He glanced nervously back toward the door. Lister was not, Duncan recalled, one of the keepers authorized to be on the cell deck.

  “Surely I need not bear another night of this,” Duncan protested. “Let them confine me to the prison hold. I did nothing to-”

  The old mate leaned forward, his raised hand cutting Duncan off. “The captain was like a madman. Kicked away the one trying to revive ye after they hauled ye up, tried to heave ye back over the rail. Reverend Arnold took him aside. Ye would have thought ye were a Ramsey firstborn the way he carried on, not a Ramsey slave. When they finished speaking, two sailors carried ye down here, the captain shouting that he would haul ye by the heels for sharkbait. He’s brought charges against ye. Two counts of escape on the day of the storm. Deliberate sabotage of the ship. He says fer that one he has the right to try ye and hang ye from a yardarm. Arnold had ye put in here as much to save ye as to punish ye, lad. Show y’erself to the captain and he’s liable to drive a spike through y’er neck. There’s bartering goin’ on as we speak.”

  “Bartering?”

  “The captain drew up a bill of damages alongside his charges. He demands payment from the Ramsey Company. The Reverend counters, claims it was the negligence of the ship’s crew that nigh caused us to be lost, that with the crew at their stations Professor Evering would n’er been lost, that the captain owes him for loss of the Company tutor.”

  Duncan twisted his hands together, staring at the filthy straw at his feet. “Who decides the outcome?”

  “All I know is that ye be the prize. The mate says if the captain wins, he’s goin’ to tie ye into a shroud with ballast rocks and drop ye over the stern.”

  For a long moment there was no sound but the murmuring of the sea. “Was there a proper funeral for her at least?” Duncan asked in a hollow tone.

  Surprise creased Lister’s brow. “Ye don’t remember? Ye brought her up, lad!” the old keeper declared, wonder in his voice. “We thought ye were gone for certain, what with a half second to tie that knot and the captain’s bullet in ye. A chance in a thousand. She was mostly drowned. When they carried you away, I saw Reverend Arnold working on her, pushing her belly, but then I was needed aloft and saw no more.”

  Duncan’s head shot up. “She lives?”

  “There’s been no burial.”

  The news brought an unexpected rush of emotion. The angel had fallen and he had plucked her from the sea.

  “But who. .?”

  “The invalid from the front cabins.” Lister leaned close to Duncan, whispering now. “I’ve seen her
before, I’d swear it. Last autumn. I was on an eastbound merchantman, full of timber for Liverpool. She was a passenger. I’d not forget that face, so young and graceful yet so old. Like all the beauty had been burnt out of her. Stayed in her cabin nigh all the time. Traveled with a Greek gentleman.”

  “Greek?”

  “Put me in mind of the sponge divers I’d seen in the Aegean. Dark, silent. Learned. Genteel enough. Walked the deck all hours of the night. Drew diagrams of constellations, pictures of the great fishes. Had me teach him sailors’ knots. Carved me a little wolf, ’cause I’d said I had a dog like one as a boy. Socrates Moon, he was named.”

  “Who was she?”

  “A princess, he said. A princess in exile, in danger somehow, so her name could not be spoken.”

  “You make it sound a fairy tale.”

  “Not my words, but his.”

  Duncan rose and put his hand on Lister’s shoulder as the old mate turned to leave. “The day before Adam died,” he said. “Someone’s chest was broken into. The captain accused me of theft.”

  “Ye ship with dogs, everyone gets fleas,” Lister declared with a sigh. The Ramsey Company included several slipfasts and pocketmen in its ranks. Possessions of the sailors, even officers, had sometimes appeared on the prison deck, always prompting a flurry of barter and, sometimes, betting.

  “But a new horde of trinkets appeared that day,” Duncan explained. “Sewing needles. A flint striker. A horn drinking cup. Musket flints. Wooden buttons.” Adam had never had wooden buttons until the day before he died.

  “His honor the lobsterback.”

  “Lieutenant Woolford?”

  Lister leaned closer, as if unwilling for even a rat to hear. “After we recovered from the storm, he turned out every man in the Company, with the captain’s best bullies at his side, searched the prisoners, then searched every hammock. He cursed the lot of them, demanded the return of his property. He had a club in his hand and fire in his eyes. Even Cameron was scared,” he added, referring to the short-tempered, barrel-chested man who led the keepers. “He said Woolford knows the ways of the heathens, who can inflict pain we have never dreamt of. He struck those who resisted, clipped young Frasier just for asking questions. A trunk in his cabin was broken into.”

  “What did he recover?”

  “A bullet mold. A steel ax head. The horn cup. Things for America. He went through Adam’s kit, twice. Seemed fair kicked about when he finished.”

  “You mean he did not find what he sought?”

  “Most of his property he recovered, ’cause he said none be punished if they surrendered it then and there. But I’d say what he wanted most of all he didn’t find. I’d say he was confirming to himself that Munroe took it with him.”

  “Took with him?”

  “We all saw it. All of us near the bow that day. Woolford. Arnold. Cameron. When Adam was on the maintop after scratching those marks, he raised his hand. Something small was in it, something black. Put me in mind of a lump of coal. But t’ain’t a piece of coal that worries our soldier,” Lister said and reached for the door. “A black bag of jewels perhaps. The instant Woolford saw Adam swing off the mainmast, he began running to reach him.”

  It was true, Duncan recalled. Woolford had arrived at his shoulder, gasping, as Adam had disappeared into the water. When Duncan turned, the lieutenant had looked like he had been kicked by a bull. He fought the temptation to touch the black stone in his pocket.

  “What questions?” Duncan asked. “What was Frasier seeking?” The young Scot, barely out of his teens, was from a remote Highland family, raised by a maiden aunt after his parents had been taken. One of the Company’s many poorly kept secrets was the fact that his aunt had paid for him to be made a trusty keeper.

  “About the Company recruitment. Why was Woolford at every court session? Saying that if the Company was just a scheme for pressing men into the army, he’d as soon stayed in jail. Quick as you can say Jack Pudding, the bastard was on the boy, throttling him. Took three of us to pull him away. Woolford was drunk. Sober as churches all voyage, and now he carries a flask.”

  “Is it so, what Frasier said?”

  “Near as we can tell. I spoke with the boy. He says he canvassed every man, and every one recalls Woolford in his courtroom, though most thought nothing of it, since the army sometimes recruits from the courts itself. Says that to the army, men like us be like lambs kept for mutton. He says,” Lister added hesitantly, “that English terriers are rightly sent to the kennels of the murderers.”

  Duncan chilled as he heard the words. “There is only one of the Company sent to the cells,” he whispered. Adam had kept Duncan connected to the men of the Company, more than a few of whom spoke resentfully of Duncan’s English upbringing. “I had nothing to do with what happened.”

  “He says favors ain’t granted for free.”

  “Favors? Imprisonment in this rathole?”

  “Frasier’s half sick with hate and fear. He’s been tossing salt in dark corners, speaking old words, words I ain’t heard since I was a wee bairn. Reverend Arnold is assembling the Company twice a day for readings of the Bible. He says the only thing they need fear when men take their own lives is too great a distance from God.

  “That’s what they would have us think,” Lister continued after glancing out the door again. “A herd of weaklings already being culled out by the wilderness, that’s what Cameron says.” Lister looked up into Duncan’s eyes. “But ye and I know ’tweren’t weakness that killed Adam Munroe. That last night when he sat by the door, I fetched him a cup of tea. He looked so low, I thought he were building a fever. He stared into the steaming mug, not speaking for a long time, then suddenly he looks up and starts firing questions, waiting for nary an answer. Asked me if I had ever thought about what God looked like. Asked if I’d ever been married. Asked if the navy were as heartless as the army. Said he had done terrible wrongs to people without knowing it. I asked if he had gotten into some rum.

  “He said the Company would be used to set the price for changing the world. A tear rolled down his cheek, and he said his friend Duncan was about to fall into a black pit. He said the army was going to chew you up and spit out your bones.”

  Duncan drew in a shuddering breath. “I’ve nothing to do with the army.”

  “Perhaps,” Lister suggested, “if we were to believe young Frasier, we all have something to do with it.”

  Duncan drank from the crock again. “It’s because of what Adam said that you came up the mast for me.”

  “Cameron always gives me the late watch, in the small hours. Mostly I sit at the hatch, thinking about those inside, listening to their songs and the things they cry out in their sleep. All I knew was that I’m weary of seeing what happens to the fresh blood of the clans.”

  “The bruise on your face, Mr. Lister, how did you come by it?”

  “It be nothing, an accident.”

  “No. Someone hit you.”

  The old sailor went silent for a long moment. “The day after Adam died, I asked about him, asked Cameron. He struck me with nary a word. Then told me to keep me nose pointed straight ahead.”

  “What exactly did you ask about Adam?”

  “Who brought him on board. Did Adam come with Evering.”

  “But Adam was just another prisoner.”

  Lister pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, a remnant from a news journal, folded very small, compressed as if it had been flattened by an iron. “This was in Evering’s cabin, pushed into a crack in a beam. It’s from a paper in Argyll, where Adam came from. And ye remember how Adam carried things, paper things, small things?”

  “In his shoe,” Duncan recalled as he accepted the paper. “Folded into his shoe.” Duncan had once thought Adam kept papers there for warmth, like some of the other men. But then Duncan had seen him reading them, when Adam thought himself alone. Duncan bent to the light and instantly his breath caught. It was an account of the trial of Duncan and his uncle. “Why
would Adam have. .?” he muttered when he could speak again. “Why give it to Evering?” But he knew neither he nor Lister had answers, only more questions.

  Lister pulled another slip of paper from inside his shirt. “And there was this, inside Evering’s waistcoat when I was helping clean the body.”

  Duncan took the slip as Lister pushed the lantern closer. McCallum, it said, 6 bells first watch. He looked up at Lister. “He wanted to meet me before dawn. It must have been for the next day, a message to give me at the morning slops.” But Lister’s pointed gaze meant the keeper understood the conclusion everyone else would reach, that Evering had met Duncan the day he died, at the likely hour he had died.

  Lister pulled the slip away from Duncan. “Can’t have this on y’er person, lad,” he warned. As he turned to leave, Duncan touched his shoulder.

  “What you said on the mast, about the McCallum clan chief.”

  “About ye, lad.”

  “No. That’s what I mean. I know you meant well. But I was wrong to pretend about such a solemn thing. I am no clan chief. I can never be. You spoke of all those who came before. I can do them no honor.”

  “What would be wrong, lad, would be to pretend their world still exists. There be the rub of it.”

  “The rub?”

  “Ye’ll never have their world. But ye’ll always have their name.”

  The words hung in the air a long time.

  “Sometimes, at the edge of sleep,” the old mate said as he turned to the door, “I hear pipes and smell the heather. I used to help me father bring the long-haired cattle from the hills.” Lister’s voice suddenly grew hoarse. “He would raise me onto the back of a shaggy cow and walk beside me singing.”

  For a moment Duncan’s heart rose so far up in his throat he could not speak. “In prison,” he said at last, “they left me in a solitary stone cell without light, for nearly two months. I thought I would lose my mind. I survived by picking a day of my youth and reconstructing what I might have done, for every hour of it, from the moment my mother roused me from the blankets. Festival days. Days with my grandfather. Sometimes it’s summer, with a blue sky and a fair wind, and I am sailing, with seals all around.” He put his hand on Lister’s arm.