Bone Rattler amoca-1

by Eliot Pattison

  Duncan stared at the page, not focusing on the words, then looked up at Woolford. “Why,” he asked the officer, “would Adam Munroe trade perfectly good buttons for a bloodstained pouch?”

  Woolford frowned. “Let’s put to rest one troubled soul at a time, shall we?”

  “You have not reclaimed your buttons,” Duncan pressed.

  “It seemed miserly,” Woolford replied in a brittle tone, “to interfere with a gift to a child.”

  The officer pushed the second letter across the table. “I keep reading it, trying to make sense of the words.”

  It was from Cameron, the senior keeper who always showed the most enthusiasm when flogging his fellow prisoners-a four-page letter addressed to D. Camshron, care of a priest in Strontian. It began Dear Doilidh, and what followed was a rambling narrative of the voyage, boasting of riches to come in the New World, then speaking of Evering’s death. We know why men get fetched in the night. The darker the secret a man hides, the quicker he kills. Woolford pointed to the closing passage, which read like a cryptic verse. Three times up for your new one, three times deiseal kirkside, it said, hot coal behind. Three times over flame, salt against sins. Three times over iron so the devils gnaw their own bones.

  “He speaks of salt, of devils and bones,” Woolford observed. “Black arts. And Cameron was in the colonies before.”

  Duncan read the words again and glanced at each man’s face. Each seemed to be nominating his own candidate for the noose. “Surely only a letter to a loved one.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  But Duncan did know, without a doubt. Lister was not the only one hiding something about his family. Doilidh was the Gaelic form of Dolly, just as the English translation for Camshron was Cameron. The words were about a newborn, but could only be understood by one from the Highlands. Deiseal meant sunwise in the old tongue-walking from east to west. A new mother on the first outing with her child was supposed to carry the baby up three steps to assure prosperity, then walk three times sunwise or clockwise around the kirk, the church, to avoid begin trapped by the spirits who craved newborns, tossing a hot coal behind to assure they were not following her. Passing the baby three times over flames was an old charm to protect a newborn, as was touching salt to a newborn’s mouth. And a secret, second baptism at the smithy’s forge, passing the infant over the iron anvil, was frowned on by the church but was a tradition steeped in time, from long before priests arrived in Scotland. It would deny the devils a chance to eat the newborn, making them chew their own bones instead. Cameron had left a pregnant woman, a wife or perhaps a sister, and wanted to be sure the offspring was blessed in all the traditions of the Highlands.

  Duncan eyed Woolford uncertainly. “I don’t know that,” he replied, then froze as terrible realization swept over him. He glanced at his companions again. Had they made the connection? Cameron spoke of a man fetched in the night. Frasier spoke of what the Company brought from Edinburgh. Arnold and Woolford had made but one trip to Edinburgh, to bring Duncan. And they had brought him onto the ship in the night.

  “Nothing here explains what happened in the compass room,” he observed, fighting to keep his voice level.

  “Evering himself made the ritual,” Arnold proclaimed. “He placed his own buckle there, stole into the gallery for salt and blood and the heart, even that horrible eye, which the cook says came from a shark they had boarded the day before. The claw must be from one of his own collections.”

  “Why would he do such a thing?” Duncan asked.

  “He was deranged. Delirious. His grief erupted anew. Perhaps he saw something that set off a powerful memory. He was sending a final message to his wife before he took his own life.”

  “He was murdered. Not a suicide,” Woolford reminded Arnold.

  “He planned to commit suicide, McCallum may take that as certain,” the vicar replied. “He was deeply troubled. I am unable to divulge the secrets of prayer, but suffice it to say we often knelt together. He must have gathered the objects in the compass room as one last expression of his anguish. Nothing more than the work of a highly literate man whose emotions overwhelmed his intellect. Bones means death. Two stacks of bones means two deaths. His and his wife’s. The buckle signifies himself, a token from his own person. The eye is the evil that had stared down at him since his wife’s passing. The claw symbolizes the agony he has felt, the feather his plan to join his wife in the ranks of angels. The heart is his own broken heart, the salt the earth that he is about to leave.” Arnold’s words, tentative at first, finished with a triumphant flourish. “Evering,” the vicar concluded in a superior tone, “was a romantic. The ritual at the compass proved it.”

  “Salt is also used to purify,” Duncan suggested. “And metal, even in a buckle, can be used to fight demons.”

  Arnold gave an impatient, warning sound. “Not by any Christian.”

  “The church I knew as a boy,” Duncan continued, “kept one foot in the old ways.”

  “At last we get to the truth of it,” Arnold said in a smug voice. “I have explained why it had to be Evering who began the ritual. You have given us proof of the origin of the one who interrupted him. You shall record it so, McCallum. The killer committed his heinous deed, then rearranged the objects in a way that would have meaning only to an illiterate whose priests were little more than Druids.”

  Duncan fought down the bile that rose with Arnold’s words. But he had to concede one germ of truth in what Arnold said, that the ritual seemed to have been prepared by two very different people, from two different worlds. “If it was not Evering who completed the ritual,” he pressed, watching Woolford carefully, “then perhaps that part not made by the professor was meant to be read by a mortal.”

  “Meaning what?” asked the lieutenant.

  “Meaning perhaps you will accept that it was a message for someone on board.”

  Woolford buried his head in his hands. When he looked up, his jaw was set in grim determination, as if he were about to do battle. “Half,” he said. “Half the men.”

  Duncan did not miss the way Arnold’s knuckles whitened. “I’m sorry?”

  “You asked me how many had been in the New World before.”

  “Half would seem more than coincidence. It would take some effort to find so many who had both fallen out with the law and been in America.”

  “A credential much to be desired,” Arnold interjected. “We had several weeks to fill the Company ranks, time to be selective. Experience in the colonies told us they were strong, that they would require little time to adjust to the rigors of their new life.”

  Duncan had never known a man of the cloth who was an outright liar, but indeed had known many who chose to focus on pieces of the truth rather than the whole of it, when it served to make the point of their homilies. “The objects used that night,” he said. “I would like to see them. Perhaps a closer examination would-”

  Woolford raised a hand to cut Duncan off. “The crew was terrified of them. Mr. Lister and I wrapped everything in a canvas weighted with rocks from the ballast and tossed it over the stern.”

  Duncan stared at him in disbelief. “They would have told us more.” It was as if Woolford, too, was interested in only fragments of the truth.

  Woolford stroked the long scar on his neck again. It seemed to have become a nervous habit, one Duncan had not noticed before the storm. “Your pipe,” he said abruptly, remembering now the clay pipe Woolford had often carried during the voyage. “You are no longer smoking. It affects your nerves.”

  Woolford grimaced. “Someone stole my tobacco,” he admitted.

  “And burnt it in the compass room,” Duncan concluded. “I have never heard of such a ritual in the Old World,” he added after a moment.

  “There are other people,” the officer observed in a hesitant voice, “people who burn the leaf to attract spirits.”

  “What kind of people?” Duncan pressed. “Who prays to spirits with tobacco?”

  Ar
nold’s glance of warning was quick but obvious. Woolford looked away from the vicar, into the shadows. He seemed to struggle to get the words out. “The people of the forest.” Woolford’s haunted expression as he spoke toward the darkness caused Duncan to twist about to study the shadows. It seemed Woolford’s meaning was grasped first by something in his gut, turning it cold, sending an icy tentacle up his spine until it touched his brain. The savages. Woolford was speaking of the dreaded aborigines of the American woodlands.

  No one spoke for a long moment.

  “So tobacco was burned to gain the attention of Mrs. Evering in the next world,” Duncan suggested in a careful tone, feeling Arnold’s withering glance.

  “Most of the men partake of tobacco when they can,” Arnold interjected. “One of them stole it from the lieutenant, who was well known for having fine twists of Virginia leaf.” He paused, taking note, as Duncan already had, of the sudden melancholy that had overtaken Woolford. “Evering brought the brazier for warmth. The tobacco fell as the murderer struggled with him.”

  “I must see the professor’s quarters,” Duncan finally stated. He dared not openly express interest in Evering’s journal.

  “The captain gave his orders,” Arnold said. “You’ll not be leaving the cell deck.”

  “I must see the other letters at least.”

  “Equally impossible,” Arnold said. “You will not be permitted to tamper with the royal mails.”

  Duncan gazed at the letters in front of him. “Then surely you will return these to the mails.”

  “They have become evidence.”

  “There is but one killer. Even were it one of these men, the other is innocent.” He searched Arnold’s unyielding face. “Bring me paper and ink. I shall transcribe them. You can witness them as true copies. Surely,” he entreated, “we will not punish the innocent. When will word reach their loved ones again? A child needs his buttons.”

  Arnold cast a disappointed glance at Duncan. “Innocent, Mr. McCallum?” he asked, as if unfamiliar with the term.

  Woolford rose. “I shall make it so,” the officer said, and hurried up the ladder.

  Arnold paced around the table. “Paper and ink will provide an opportunity to commence your report,” he observed. “Lord Ramsey is fastidious about records. He will desire a quick conclusion, but a complete written account. Flavor it with your science. The army will soon know of a killing in the Company,” he added, with a glance toward the gangway where Woolford had disappeared. “Lord Ramsey will not desire a military inquiry to be opened.”

  “It could be useful to one writing such a report, Reverend,” Duncan pointed out, “to know why the military would be interested.”

  Arnold considered the question for a long moment. “The Ramsey Company and the army share many of the same goals, but we are oceans apart in how to achieve them.” The vicar gazed toward the cells. “Your report. It shall point out the sins committed along the way, with the truth shining like the light of the Almighty at its conclusion.”

  “You make it sound as if I am writing a sermon,” Duncan replied. “And you forget I have been locked in a cell,” he added.

  “Your isolation but heightens your objectivity. You will record a simple and tragic tale. Evering was possessed by the demon of grief, compelling him to the unnatural act in the compass room. His lapse of faith gave the killer an opportunity. Amen.”

  Arnold was indeed interested in a sermon. “Perhaps,” Duncan suggested with a solemn air, “there should be lightning. Evering could have been struck by a bolt that burned away his reason.”

  “Excellent,” Arnold said, in the voice he used in the pulpit. “Poetic. A call from God. Worthy of the Ramsey scholar. You encourage me, McCallum.”

  “Then a mermaid rose up and killed him.”

  Arnold sighed, then answered by pushing open the door to the cell corridor. The smell of unwashed men and women, of mildew and human excrement, wafted into their chamber, mingled with the sound of weeping. The vicar paused, as if for effect, then approached the table again. “The killer will hang, whatever reason for the crime. Perhaps one of them stole something of value from Evering. His gold watch is missing. Linking the killing to a robbery would offer a strong moral lesson,” he suggested. “The Company will witness the punishment after we arrive at Edentown. A perfect ceremony for setting the proper tone of the prisoners’ new life. The path of righteousness,” he added in a suddenly contemplative tone, “can be as slender as a thread. Do your work correctly, and there will be no need to raise the specter of sedition.”

  Suddenly Woolford was back in the pool of light cast by the lanterns, with a writing box holding paper, ink, and a quill. As Duncan arranged them on the table, Arnold climbed back up the ladder. Woolford paused at the dark corridor of cells, then ascended the ladder, leaving Duncan alone, staring at the white empty paper. He paced about the table, considering the threat against Scots in Arnold’s parting words, fighting to dam up the unnatural fear that had surged through him when Woolford had mentioned the savages of the forest. British papers frequently reported on the cannibalism, the compulsive violence, the unquenchable blood thirst of the American natives. Animals in human form, they were often called.

  When he finally lifted the quill, Duncan did not begin with the transcription of the letters, but with a list of names, sixteen names in a column, including his great-uncle, his father, and his grandfather. The name of every chieftain of Clan McCallum for the past four hundred years, names that had been burned into his memory as a young boy, an unbroken chain of names he and his grandfather had often shouted into the wind as they had sailed and rowed among the Hebrides. Angus McCallum, was the earliest, then Ian McCallum, Lame Rob, Alastair, Crooked James, and Blind William. When he was done he ripped away the long column and wrapped the paper strip around Adam’s amulet, close against his skin; then he pulled the silver button from his pocket, examining it for the first time in direct light. It was intricately worked on the top, and though its dome had been smashed inward, the violence had not obliterated what was obviously, as Lister had reported, a map. The surface of the button had held a tiny rendering in relief of eastern America and Europe, exquisitely worked in silver.

  The ship’s beams creaked in the silence, and the table slightly canted as the vessel heeled in the wind. Duncan glanced toward the ladder and paused as something pawed at his memory. Woolford. Duncan had grown accustomed to the sounds made as those leaving the cell deck climbed toward the top decks, the creaking of certain ladder boards, the progressive opening and closing of hatches. Woolford’s egress had not been followed by the same sounds. Duncan rose and warily approached the ladder.

  He climbed one step at a time, pausing at each to listen, finally gaining the next deck, a series of cargo holds packed with crates, barrels, and trunks. His heart pounding, knowing if he were caught he would pay with skin and flesh, he pushed on the hatch door leading to the first bay. The door swung open on its iron pintels without a sound.

  The second bay was separated from the first not with a door but with a hanging sailcloth, which he silently brushed aside. Thirty feet in front of him, Woolford moved along the stacks of crates and trunks with a hooded lantern, in his hand one of the iron bars used to pry up the lids. As Duncan watched, the officer paused, drank from a flask he pulled from a pocket, then opened a crate and began sifting through the contents.

  Duncan inched forward, suddenly desperate to see at least the label on the crate, watching for variations in the blackness that might mean a hiding place. He had found it, a gap between two crates, when a quick, furry creature leapt onto his shoulder. The rat’s transit across his back was silent, but not the creature’s jump onto a stack of kegs, where it slipped, its claws scratching at the wood as it sought purchase on the round sides.

  Woolford spun about, lantern in one hand, iron bar in the other, raised for throwing. “At this distance I can put this into your spleen before you make it to cover,” he declared in a low, lethal voice.<
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  “As a military art, I thought spear throwing went out with the Crusades.” Duncan fought to keep his voice level.

  “You’d be quite astonished at the arts of the modern American officer,” Woolford growled, and lifted the pointed bar higher.

  “I prefer you do it, here and now, Lieutenant, if you will not permit me to find the truth about the killings.”

  “Killing. There was but one murder.”

  “That’s your dilemma, Lieutenant. You and I both know I cannot find the truth about Evering without finding the truth about Adam Munroe. You might have an interest in Evering’s killer, but you cannot abide anyone knowing your secret about Adam.”

  “Do you have any notion what the captain is going to do to you?”

  Duncan did not doubt Woolford was capable of killing him. But it was time to test Adam’s words. Before the army used him it was going to protect him. He advanced, his hands held out at his sides. “We can stand here for half an hour, Lieutenant,” he said when the pool of light reached his face, “as you recount all the ways you and the captain can end my life in unimaginable misery. I’ll consider the point taken, provided you accept that when you take me before the captain and Reverend Arnold I will raise a dozen possibilities as to why you were creeping about searching boxes”-he glanced at the now-visible label-“holding the private belongings of the Ramsey family.”

  Woolford lowered his makeshift weapon. “Inventory,” he muttered. “With so many thieves on board, we must watch every possession.”

  “Fine. Let us go explain that. If you prefer I will go alone.”

  “And receive a few dozen lashes for leaving the cell deck?”

  “I will savor every stroke if your true colors be exposed.”

  “Are all Scots as self-destructive, McCallum, as you and Munroe?”

  “Consider it a study in what men do when the king lances the bubble of their hope.”