Bone Rattler amoca-1

by Eliot Pattison

  Woolford looked as if he had bitten into something sour. He leaned on a crate, setting the lantern beside him. “My preference in playing to a stalemate is to sweep the board and start anew. Shall we inspect the work that precedes us?” he said, aiming a thumb at a nearby trunk. The lock, Duncan saw, had already been forced, as had those of several others nearby, all bearing an ornate R, the Ramsey mark.

  “What did you do to Adam last week?”

  “I deeply regret to say I did nothing.”

  “What is so important about the Ramsey tutor to you, just a soldier with no ties to the Company?”

  Woolford ignored the question, probed the contents of the trunk before him.

  “Then why,” Duncan pressed, “did Adam Munroe consider it such a catastrophe that we are going to the New York frontier?”

  Woolford paused, stared into the shadows of the trunk. He seemed strangely wounded by the question. “The wilderness works in many different ways on men’s souls.”

  “Many different kinds of fear, you mean.”

  Wooford slowly lifted his head, fixing Duncan with a sober stare. “You have no notion, McCallum, how right you are.”

  Duncan leaned forward to glimpse inside the trunk. With a chill he recognized the contents. Long bags of canvas, with laces at the top. The ever-efficient managers of the Ramsey Company had packed an entire trunk of burial shrouds.

  “A ghostwalker,” Duncan said as he gazed at the shrouds. “Does it mean one fixed on suicide?”

  Woolford gripped the iron bar in both hands. “Not a word easily explained.” His tone turned oddly melancholy. “The opposite of suicide perhaps. In America the dead can walk again.”

  “You took custody of Adam in the courts. You knew his record. Why did he kill himself?”

  Woolford stared at the bar, twisting his hands, twisting his face, speaking toward the shadows. “Adam Munroe was the only one who was not arrested. He told Arnold that if he needed to be arrested to join the Company, he would gladly assault me and every soldier in Argyll.”

  “Impossible. He would not willingly give himself to slavery.”

  “I suspect you and I did not know him as well as we thought.”

  Duncan saw something in Woolford’s eyes that frightened him, and for a moment the officer gripped the bar like a weapon again, but then he exhaled heavily, tossed it into the darkness, and moved down the line of forced trunks. Duncan followed a step behind. The first three contained fine clothes, which appeared disheveled but undamaged. The next, marked Hand Implements, held a top layer of blankets. But under the blankets at the top were at least two score bayonets, of a style for plugging into the barrels of heavy muskets, then hand axes and heavy knives nearly the size of swords. The next trunk held heavy woolen waistcoats, red with long sleeves-some with blue facing, others with buff. Though tattered from long use, they would still have had years of service left in them had not someone poured tar over them, soaking through the fabric.

  “You brought these from a barracks?” Duncan asked.

  “Not I. But all were made under the king’s warrant. They were uniform coats, made for the army.

  “But none is new.”

  “I daresay most are twenty years old and more. Quartermasters sometimes sell old equipment to pay for new. I know of a theater in Chelsea,” Woolford observed, “that regularly buys trunks of it, for playacting.” He paused and with a rueful grin tipped back his flask again. “My father’s country estate had a huge courtyard. He called it his Roman amphitheater. We held plays there, great pageants where we praised kings and celebrated the ascendancy of England as the queen of civilization.”

  A second son, Duncan realized. Woolford had an aristocratic father and only a junior post. It could only mean he was unable to inherit. Woolford’s voice grew distant. “‘This sceptered isle, this precious stone set in the silver sea,’” he offered, irony thick in his words. “Shakespeare was my favorite. ‘Conscience,’” he recited, now in a stage voice, “‘is but a word that cowards use to keep the strong in awe.’”

  “‘Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it,’” Duncan countered. “‘He died as one that had been studied in his death. To throw away the dearest thing he owned.’”

  “MacBeth.”

  “A Scottish king, on a Scottish death. Why did Adam insist on being on this ship?” Duncan pressed. “What did you do to drive him to his death?”

  Woolford stared at his engraved flask a moment, then raised it with a salute to Duncan and drained it. “‘Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself,’” he offered. He closed the trunk and then silently gestured Duncan forward, into the shadows. They walked past another canvas partition until they reached the thick, curving planks of the hull, where the sound of the coursing sea was unusually loud through the wood.

  “I discovered it the day after Adam’s death,” the officer declared as he pulled away a small crate from the hull and extended his lantern.

  An unnatural fear gripped Duncan. He steadied himself on the crate as he stared at a ten-inch-wide hole chipped into the hull beside one of the heavy support timbers. Someone was trying to sink the ship. “How thick-” he began.

  “The hull planks are eight inches, if the ship’s carpenter’s to be believed. By my calculation less than an inch separates us from the brine.”

  “Are you saying Adam did this?”

  “So I assumed. But when I came back again after he died, I found fresh chips on the deck.”

  “You did not tell the captain?”

  “The captain has no imagination. He is like an artilleryman, all about hasty aim and loud explosions. He would rail about the Scots, then steer the ship for Halifax.”

  Duncan knelt, studying the size of the chips. The hole was immediately to the left of the large timber, hidden in its shadow. It would have been hard to spot on a casual inspection, as would have been the bayonet he pulled from behind the nearest trunk. “Surely you should tell the ship’s carpenter,” he enjoined.

  “And scare away the culprit?” Woolford said. “Officially no one knows about this.” He pushed the trunk against the hole.

  “Officially?”

  “In the army we have official files which go to the public, to the king. The unofficial ones have more texture, more interesting details.”

  “Like the truth.”

  “Usually enough material for any number of truths. Rather like Shakespeare.”

  “Like the letters we opened.”

  Woolford gestured him back toward the ladder. “I thought you reacted quite evenly. Splendid performance.” He turned, and a cool grin returned to his face as he saw Duncan’s bewildered expression. “Surely you understood Frasier’s letter even if Reverend Arnold did not.”

  “Frasier has a troubled spirit.”

  “Frasier,” Woolford declared, “has told the Company that they have a spy from the army within their ranks. Be grateful for your cell. Be grateful for the protection of Reverend Arnold. The other prisoners and the captain have similar intentions for you. But there is a big difference. The captain wants to throw you to the sharks. The men in the Company would prefer to find an ax and do it piece by piece as you watch.”

  Duncan, suddenly very weak, leaned against the hatch as he watched Woolford’s lantern moving upward, a dying star on a bleak night. In the Highlands, one who openly stood at the side of the English might be an enemy, but at least one with whom honest battle could be done. But a secret turncoat was the lowest form of life, best dealt with by a blade in the spine on a foggy night. Duncan was the rot Frasier meant to slice away.

  He found his way to the candlelit table in a daze and stared at the flame, trying to calm himself before returning to his work. He had transcribed one letter when he became aware of a presence behind him.

  A thickset man stepped from the shadows. “I have these,” Cameron said, extending a folded scrap of sailcloth. “The vicar asked me to clean the professor’s shoes, to help brush his
clothes, get the body ready.”

  Duncan laid the cloth on the table and opened it. It contained glass, small shards of green glass.

  “When I went back for his shoes, these pieces were on his cabin floor. Should have thrown them over. But I shoved them in a corner under his bed.”

  Duncan pushed at the shards with the end of his quill. They matched those he had seen embedded in Evering’s knee. The larger pieces were slightly curved. “What was it, Cameron?”

  “A man in cheer may take a shot of whiskey and smash the glass,” the keeper suggested.

  “Too small for a dram cup. More like a vial,” Duncan said, and suddenly realized exactly what the shards were from. It had been a dosing cup, one of the small columns used for administering medicines to the sick. He lifted the biggest shard to his nose. It offered a faintly acrid scent. “Was the professor ill?”

  “Never a sign of it.”

  But there had been someone ill, Duncan realized. The woman who had jumped off the ship.

  Duncan studied the big man. During their long voyage Cameron had shown nothing but contempt for Duncan. “Why do you tell me this?”

  “I watch the post box for the Company, log in the letters, give them to the ship’s clerk. That bastard Woolford, he took a letter of mine. The men in the hold know what is happening. We know when we get to the colonies one of us is to be hanged.” Cameron stepped closer, reaching into his pocket to extract a folded paper. “But there be another letter I haven’t shown them.”

  With a wrench of his heart Duncan saw it was his own letter, in which he had cursed the king and all things English. The dollop of candle wax he had used to seal it was broken. “Everyone knows ye were free that morning Evering’s body was found.”

  “I was the one who discovered him,” Duncan pointed out.

  “Just the kind of clever trick a killer with a gentleman’s education might use, to divert attention.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  Cameron feigned a look of disappointment. “Let’s not waste our time, McCallum. You and I both know all they want is a nice story for one of Reverend Arnold’s sermons, then a proper hanging to make certain the men heed their new master. So you keep my name out of it and I’ll keep yours out.” Cameron waved the letter before Duncan’s face, then returned it to his pocket. “Do we have an understanding?”

  “It’s only a letter.”

  Cameron seemed pleased with Duncan’s resistance. “There was another piece of paper, a fragment which Mr. Lister took. Only he don’t know I saw it first. I might write out a statement, all legal-like, attesting to what I saw. All about the professor’s appointment with McCallum at the hour of his death.”

  Duncan buried his head in his hands a moment before looking up and nodding.

  “But I have questions to be answered, Cameron.”

  The keeper shrugged. “I wish it over as much as ye.”

  “You were in charge of the prisoners scrubbing the forward deck the day before Adam died.”

  “Aye. Frasier and myself.”

  “Someone on that work party picked the lock on Lieutenant Woolford’s chest.”

  Cameron’s body seemed to tense. “Why would you say such a thing?”

  “I saw some of your gleanings when they first appeared. Some were still wet. Because someone had placed them in a wash bucket to hide them. The trunk had foodstuffs from England. Cones of sugar that could be slipped into a pocket. An irresistible temptation to some.”

  The keeper’s face clouded. “Young Frasier has a terrible sweet tooth.”

  “Young Frasier,” Duncan agreed, “was sucking on a piece of sugar an hour later. And you were suddenly brimming over with trinkets for wagering. It was you who started the betting contests that day. Reverend Arnold would be disappointed to learn his keepers were involved in the thefts on the ship.”

  The keeper’s face hardened. His hand went to the letter, as if to remind Duncan.

  “Why then? Why force the trunk on the day Woolford announced the Company’s destination? Like you said,” Duncan added when Cameron did not reply, “we have a bargain, you and I.”

  “Wasn’t my idea. I just helped the lad. Frasier allowed how he couldn’t do it without help.”

  Help indeed, Duncan told himself. Frasier not only could not have achieved such a clever theft alone, he could not have conjured up the idea of seeking out the trunk packed with Woolford’s deliveries for America. “You were there before. In America. What was it like?”

  For a moment the big man seemed to shrink. “It was a fine farm, in the north of Pennsylvania, the Wyoming Valley they call it. But I still have nightmares. They killed my wife and two young children in front of me, left me for dead when the militia came running.” He turned his head and lifted the locks that hung over the side of his face, revealing a knot of scar tissue at his hairline.

  “And that is why you came to be Reverend Arnold’s top keeper?”

  “I was one of the first on board. I asked for prayers. The vicar heard my story and took pity. I know the way of things in America.”

  The way of things in America, Duncan decided, was already ripping the Company apart. He studied the shards on the table. “Evering had a good black waistcoat and a gold watch. Where are they?”

  “Stolen, like the chart pinned over his bunk.”

  “What kind of chart?”

  “I used to see it when I cleaned his cabin. Calculations and such. Things a tutor might be planning for his wee pupils, I suspect.”

  “What else was in the professor’s chamber?”

  “Usual things. Books. Clothing. A locked trunk. Boxes of things.”

  “What things exactly?”

  “He had collections. Bits of nature. He was a natural philosopher.”

  “You mean like bones. And feathers.”

  Cameron nodded.

  “Do you ever see the sick woman?”

  “Only that day she tried to fly. She stays abed. Food goes in on trays. They watch her close as a newborn.”

  “Who watches?”

  “The vicar. The lieutenant. The captain’s wife sometimes. The professor did, before.”

  “Tell me something about the savages, Cameron. Do they have witches?”

  The question seemed to shake the big Scot. He looked into the shadows before answering. “Aye. Terrible demon men, and women too, who can take the shape of animals. Fly like a bird. Swim like a fish. Wizards. Shamans, they call them.”

  “And these witches, these shamans who can fly out over oceans, do they use rituals with blood and bone?”

  Cameron’s eyes flared for a moment, but as he gazed into the shadows his anger changed to worry.

  Duncan lifted a quill to continue his work. “You’ll need to lock me back in my cell in an hour, Cameron. Meanwhile, ask the ship’s carpenter if he is missing a hammer. And bring the log of Company letters submitted for the mails.”

  When the keeper returned, Duncan handed him the bundle of folded papers to convey to Arnold and quickly scanned the mail log. There were two lists of letters, labeled Eastbound and Westbound, with the names of the passing ships that had slowed to retrieve them. The few westbound letters included half a dozen addressed to William Ramsey, Esq., all from Arnold. Adam Munroe had written two letters addressed to an inn in New York town, both to the same man, a name that Duncan stared at in confusion. Socrates Moon. The mysterious Greek who had gone to England with their suicidal passenger six months earlier.

  But most curious of all was another, also addressed to Socrates Moon, entered for the mails the day after Adam’s death. It had no return name, only the words Tutor, Ramsey Company.

  As the keeper escorted Duncan to his cell, he produced the stub of a candle, lit it, and handed it to Duncan. “Carpenter lost his best hammer,” Cameron reported as he locked the cell door. “Was in the hold with the timber stores, but when he went for repairs after the storm it was gone.”

  “Tell me this, Mr. Cameron, in your log do you re
cord the names exactly as written on the letters?”

  “Aye. ’Tis an official thing.”

  A dark foreboding seized Duncan. Evering had sent a letter to the mysterious Greek but identified himself only as the tutor, as if it would mean something to the man, as if this Socrates Moon expected something of the tutor, whether it be Evering or his successor.

  “I must have the letter sent by Evering,” he said through the hatch. “Above all, I must have that letter.”

  “Gone. Posted on a passing fishing schooner these three days past.”

  Duncan’s heart sank. He dropped to the floor as Cameron’s steps receded in the darkness. After several minutes he extracted his list of ancestors and stared at it, whispering the names, until the little hatch on his door was pulled open and a large tin of steaming liquid passed through. Tea, sweetened with honey. He whispered his thanks and sat back in a corner with the mug just as the candle sputtered out. In the darkness that followed he found himself wishing for Flora’s chants, which had grown strangely comforting to him. But she had been silent for hours, and the sounds Duncan heard most often from her cell were those of weeping. He tried to pass the time thinking of happier days as a youth in the Highlands and the Hebrides, but always his thoughts returned to Adam’s haunting legacy and Evering’s dead, questioning eyes, to the bloody compass and the fateful hour when the sea had closed around him. His foreboding was so real, so intense, he could taste it, like some salty, bitter thing in his mouth. Duncan had sought a final escape in the black water, had become certain the storm would be his ending. Everything had changed in the span of a quarter hour, when Lister had given him a reason to live, and Duncan had gone into the sea for a different reason.

  But his life had indeed ended that day, Duncan began to realize. The man the storm had given back was not the same man who had gone into the water. He had fancied for a few hours that he might become the clan chief Lister wanted him to be, that he could indeed protect the Scots on board. But the Company had made him something else, something worse than a prisoner, something no clan chief could ever be. He had become an informer, a servant, a pawn to an English lord. Arnold and Woolford had given a terrible truth to Frasier’s suspicions. Was Arnold truly so clever to understand he had found the perfect way to break Duncan?