Bone Rattler amoca-1

by Eliot Pattison

  “She had no right,” the woman muttered as if Sarah were not six feet in front of her. The only one of her company not subdued by Sarah’s strange actions was the tallest of the oarsmen, a lanky youth who advanced on her with anger in his eyes, a hand uplifted as though to strike her. His foray was cut off as a furious figure materialized on his back, a small fist pounding his shoulder, a thin arm ensnaring his neck. In an instant Duncan and Crispin were beside the pair, Duncan trying to pull the boy away, Crispin restraining the ferryman, who seemed ready to pound the boy with a fist.

  “Jonathan Ramsey!” Sarah’s voice cracked like a whip, stilling both her brother and the young oarsman, who suddenly seemed frightened.

  “I never meant. .” the oarsman sputtered. “Dear Jesus, I wouldn’t have. . ” His face dropped. “Only we was going to roast it for Sunday dinner.”

  The coachman hurried to the ferryman’s side and stuffed a coin in the man’s palm, which revived his spirits sufficiently for him to turn and begin barking orders to his crew. A moment later, the vessel ready, he turned and gestured toward it. The four boys each had one of the sweeps in their hands. “My wife be pleased to make tea for them that’s waitin’,” he added, with an uncertain glance toward Sarah.

  Crispin leaned toward Duncan’s ear. “You’ll have to take the wagon across yourself.”

  Duncan was about to protest when he saw the worried way the big man studied Sarah. “Of course,” he said, then stepped to the first team and guided them onto the vessel.

  “You took three wagons across, loaded with men?” he inquired as the ferry glided away from the bank.

  “Aye,” the ferryman replied. “Each poor soul looking more scared than the one before. Lord Ramsey’s folly, they’re calling that Company of his.”

  “And later,” Duncan ventured, “a rider, a thin man with a dispatch case?”

  “Hawkins.” The man pronounced the name like an epithet. “Hell-bent, he was, clutching that case like it was gold. Mounted his horse and leapt off before we was proper docked. Ramseys,” the ferryman spat in a crestfallen voice as they pulled into the river. “The day be more than full of Ramseys and their flocks. A punishing crew, eh?” He studied the shallow waves a moment, then barked out an order. Two of the youths began fitting a spar into a hole in the deck, onto which a small, much-patched sail was rigged.

  “I am but recently employed,” Duncan replied, reluctant to admit that he had been in the New World less than twelve hours. “It seems a rigid household,” he offered.

  “The musket!” the ferryman suddenly shouted, and began frantically yelling for his wife to toss the weapon to him. When she refused, glancing toward Sarah, the man turned, crestfallen, and studied the western shore with worried eyes.

  “What frightens you so?” Duncan asked.

  “The savages, boy. They want to kill you.”

  Not for the first time that day, Duncan’s mouth went suddenly dry. “Me?”

  “You. Me. All of us. Neighbor of ours packed up to take free land in the west. Indians wouldn’t have it. Burnt his cabin. Gave him to the squaws. They took three days to kill him, with pointed sticks and such.”

  “But there are settlements on the western shore. Edentown.”

  “You don’t know them tribes. They appear quick as spit and are gone just as fast. This very morning there was an attack in the city itself. An arrow right into a man’s heart, blood everywhere, the savages casting a spell so’s no one sees them.”

  Duncan opened his mouth to correct the ferryman, but no words came out. But for a few inches of wood the man would have been speaking the truth.

  The ferryman busied himself with the sail for several minutes, returned to Duncan’s side in front of the team, then frowned, studying the sky, and reset the sail. “Used to be, I had a hand who could read the wind like words on a page.” The farther they moved from shore, the more relaxed the man became. “Y’er Ramseys cost me my best mate ever. Worked for me for nigh twenty years. One bad crossing and he’s under the tyrant’s thumb.”

  “Lord Ramsey took one of your men?” Duncan stroked the nose of one of the big grey horses.

  “Jacob the Fish, we called him. He never spoke much, but we fed and clothed him, and he returned an honest labor. He could catch fish by calling them with squeaks and grunts-the damnedest thing.”

  Duncan froze a moment and looked up. The old fishspeaker will know, Evering had recorded. Show him the medallion. “How many ferries might someone bound for Edentown take?” he asked.

  “Naught but this, if ye seek the quickest road to Edentown.”

  The words had been Adam’s, and he had known for certain that Evering would eventually meet the man he called the fishspeaker. “Where is he, this Jacob?” Duncan asked, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice.

  “That be what I was saying. Lord Ramsey came through a month ago and arrested him, declaring him an enemy of England. When I said he was an enemy of no one, Ramsey asked if I should be arrested for harboring an enemy. I asked by what authority, and he raised a hand to strike me, then after a moment just said I should consider him a magistrate of the king. When we got him across, he dropped the fee in my palm and as quickly snatched it away, saying it be my fine. Ramsey must have crossed twenty times in the last five years, seen Old Jacob every time and never said a word.”

  Duncan clenched his jaw, trying to hide his disappointment. He touched the medallion under his shirt. “Then surely something was different that day,” he suggested, suddenly sensing that there was nothing more important than finding this man Jacob and showing him Adam’s amulet.

  “I’ve thought on that, many a night I have thought on that. A farming family with children was taking passage. That trapper Hawkins was with Ramsey.”

  “Jacob must have given offense somehow.”

  “Not at all. He knew to stay away from Ramsey, just showed the children what he could do with the fish, like he did with all the children who cross, telling them to learn to see the beauty beneath the surface of the world. Never spoke much, but sometimes he had words about the natural world that made him sound like a preacher man.” The ferryman scratched his beard. “He almost fell in that day. Was leaning too far over the edge to point out a great sturgeon. I caught him, but he went in head first, nigh to his waist. He came up spurting and laughing. The children laughed-everyone laughed but Ramsey and Hawkins. He took off his shirt and wrung it out.” The ferryman shrugged. “When we reached the shore Ramsey ordered the local militia captain to seize him.”

  The two men fell into a deep silence as the wind began tugging at the sail and the little ferry surged forward. The fear and foreboding that had seized Duncan began to subside as he surveyed the rugged landscape, replaced by an unexpected thrill of freedom. He found himself looking for the escaped duck. A warm breeze blew, carrying the scent of fresh-cut hay. Fish jumped. A skein of geese flew over the broad, wild river.

  “This is the real earth circling about.” The words leapt from his tongue without forethought, the haunting words of Flora, who lingered at the edge of his consciousness. He glanced awkwardly at his companion, but the man seemed strangely moved by Duncan’s declaration.

  The ferryman stared at Duncan, then nodded, rubbing his grizzled jaw, and turned his own gaze over the water. “On the wind it walks,” the boatman said in a sober tone.

  “I’m sorry?” Duncan asked.

  “On the wind it walks, come to restore the beauty,” the man added, then turned away as one of the youths called him to the tiller. As Duncan gazed after him in wonder, a solitary duck flew over the ferry, so low he could hear the whistle of its wings.

  The inn on the far side of the river proved to be a tidy, spacious Dutch farmhouse with asters blooming along its long, wide front porch, and a whitewashed plank by its door proclaiming in black letters The Stag’s Head Inn under the image of a bounding deer. Several outbuildings of stone and white planks flanked the inn, with a broad oak giving shade to the barnyard. A fre
shly killed pig hung from one of its limbs, and a small live one rooted among the green acorns on the ground. He glanced at the retreating ferry returning to the opposite shore, then looked back at the sign. Evering had never been there, but had secretly recorded the inn’s name. Duncan was on the path meant for the murdered Ramsey tutor, with a killer stalking him, and the only way to save Lister was to stay on the path, facing the murderer to come.

  The innkeeper, a sturdy ruddy-faced Dutchman with a German wife, jovially assisted Duncan with the team, leading them to a water trough carved from a single long slab of stone, its edge worn from long use. The New World, Duncan had begun to realize, was not as new as he had imagined. He probed his memory, reminding himself that the Dutch had settled the lower reaches of the Hudson more than a century before.

  The Dutchman brought Duncan a pewter mug of strong applejack, then pointed out the stable where he could unhitch and feed the horses.

  “What became of the old man named Jacob who was arrested last month?” Duncan inquired as they walked to the barn. “Is there a jail? I’d value a word with him.”

  The Dutchman only frowned, then fidgeted with the knife on his belt and glanced toward the forest.

  “Do you fear a raid?” Duncan asked.

  The innkeeper glanced into the shadows. “Don’t speak of such things,” he said, “bad for business. Most of us keep dories hidden away, filled with supplies. If the alarm is raised, we will flee. No hope in fighting.” He pulled the bridle from one of the big grays, then fixed Duncan with a sober gaze. “Had to fill those Company guards with drink to halt their wagging tongues this afternoon. Scared the girls in the kitchen half to death with all their talk about Indians in New York harbor.”

  “But the war is north of here.”

  The Dutchman shrugged. “The French move faster than our army, stealthy as their Indians. They have small raiding parties roaming the lands west of the Hudson, all the way to Pennsylvania. Homesteaders west of here are being scalped every week, their killers disappearing like phantoms. If the French triumph over our army, every house north of the city will be burned. And if they take the Hudson, they take the continent. The only thing that keeps the French from my door is the fact that the Iroquois tribes don’t support them, and the French raiders have to come through Iroquois country. This war, it’s all about the Iroquois. Biggest mistake the Frenchies made was recruiting all those Hurons and Abenakis first, without considering how they were traditional enemies of the Iroquois. If they had had the sense to court the Iroquois, we’d all be dead by now. Even so, most of the Iroquois stay out of the fight, other than the Mohawk and a few Seneca.”

  Duncan’s mug stopped in midair. “Seneca?”

  “One of the six tribes of the Iroquois federation. The western-most. You got to be careful with those Seneca. Too many married into the French.”

  It had been one more thing he had not understood about Evering’s cryptic message, because he had not understood the New World. Impossibly, Evering had not been referring to the ancient Roman but to one of the Indian tribes, when, just as impossibly, he had described an obscure American battle despite having never set foot in the colonies. “The ferryman seemed confused about why Old Jacob was arrested,” Duncan observed.

  The Dutchman shot a glance over his shoulder as if to see who was listening. “Old Jacob is just a hermit. His people are almost all dead. Goes for days without speaking. But always smiling. He would carve little wooden creatures for the children. Every time an animal was born here, he would come and say a prayer over it. The great lord left him in the custody of the local militia. Old Jacob was dispatched by their captain.”

  “Killed?” Duncan asked in sudden alarm.

  “Sent into the mountains where he can trap and call fish in the lakes the rest of his days. Lord Ramsey didn’t know that Jacob the Fish had once saved the captain’s daughter from drowning, or that folks around here thought of him as an old uncle to all the little ones.” The man looked at Duncan with a twinkle in his eye. “This isn’t the old country. Great lords may know they are gods in the Old World. But here we know they are not.”

  Spoken in the Old World, Duncan told himself, the words would have been sedition.

  The Dutchman waved toward an ox-drawn cart bearing a man and half a dozen children that approached on the road along the river’s western shore. As the innkeeper jogged toward the cart, the man at the cart called to him with a single word in greeting. Captain.

  Duncan settled onto a small stack of hay along the stable wall and drained the mug as he watched the ferry, now a speck near the far side of the Hudson. As he studied the evening sky, his thoughts returned to Jamie. There were places like Holland where Scottish fugitives congregated, helping one another. But no matter where he fled, Pike would eventually find him, Duncan knew. And once again Duncan would likely learn about the death of another family member, the last of them, by reading it in a newspaper. Damn the army, damn the meddling Woolford. At least he would not have to see the officer again.

  Duncan yawned, threw his arm over his eyes, and fell into a deep slumber, broken by a vision of a witch holding his grandfather over a cliff. “Black snake wind!” she cackled toward the sea, as if calling in a storm.

  A shadow fell over him and he shot upright, looking into Crispin’s broad countenance. The sun was gone, its last rays streaking through the trees of the dense forest beyond the inn. A group of men sat on the porch, holding mugs out as the innkeeper filled them from a pitcher.

  “You made a hasty crossing,” Duncan observed as he rose and began helping Crispin with the horses of the second team.

  “Two riders arrived. We all helped with the sweeps,” Crispin said, a hint of foreboding in his voice. “Miss Sarah had one of her spells. Jonathan sat with her in the coach, singing to her. She’s better now, with the children inside taking supper.”

  “And we’ll be at Edentown tomorrow?”

  “Three or four days at least. Depends on the roads. Depends on the rivers. Depends on the war.” Crispin sketched a rough map in the dirt, explaining how they would be skirting the highest of the Catskill Mountains to a point beyond, to a land drained by the headwaters of mighty rivers called the Delaware and Susquehanna, after the names of two native tribes.

  By the time they finished with the animals, the first stars were blinking in a deep purple sky and the men on the porch had retreated into the front chamber that was used as the inn’s public room, lit with candles arrayed on an iron wheel suspended from a ceiling beam. The innkeeper stood behind a long wooden bar cabinet filling more mugs, glancing frequently into the adjoining room where his wife sang out instructions in German to several girls serving hot meals.

  Duncan and Crispin lingered in the open doorway for several minutes, enjoying the fine spring evening. Then, as most of the room’s occupants began filing toward dining tables, Crispin excused himself to join Sarah and the children in the dining room. Duncan, fighting a powerful thirst, stepped toward the innkeeper. The only two men left in the room leaned against the bar-a compact man with shaggy, graying hair and a much taller, younger one, both dressed in identical long, dark green waistcoats over brown britches tucked into high brown stockings. The attire had the appearance of a uniform, though like none Duncan had ever seen. Hanging from the leather belt each man wore over his jacket were a large knife and a cartridge pouch.

  Though the men kept their backs to him as Duncan approached, the moment the taller of the two spoke, Duncan froze. With a burst of speed he reached the man’s side, spun him about, and slammed a fist into his jaw.

  Lieutenant Woolford staggered backward, landing in a sprawl by the fireplace. Duncan did not wait for him to rise, launching himself through the air to land on the officer. But as he raised his fist again, a blade materialized at his neck, its edge pricking his throat, strong fingers seizing the locks at the back of Duncan’s head.

  “Excuse my manners,” Woolford said in a steady voice, not moving. “You have not been int
roduced to Sergeant Fitch. His appearance of age has fooled many men no longer breathing today. He is the very best at what he does.” As his assailant relaxed his grip, Duncan twisted to meet the gaze of Woolford’s sinewy companion. A treacherous grin split the man’s grizzled, leathery face.

  Woolford rubbed his jaw as he stood, then surveyed the room. The innkeeper was studiously ignoring them. “If you had done that with a roomful of witnesses, McCallum, I would have been forced to arrest you.”

  “Again,” Duncan shot back.

  Woolford frowned, then shrugged as if conceding a point and rubbed his jaw again. “I deserved this one perhaps. Just the one, mind.”

  Fitch offered an amused snort and belted his knife.

  “You stole my private correspondence to my brother,” Duncan growled. “You had me dragged through the streets in chains.”

  “If you search your dim memory, McCallum, you will find that you yourself were the cause of your trouble. You may recall how you told the world about your connection to the infamous Captain McCallum of the Forty-second. You gave me no choice but to send official word. I know nothing about your letter. And as for the arrest, that was an order from Major Pike. If I had not gone to the house, there would have been only his bullies to fetch you. For many in the army, your brother is more reviled than the French.”

  Duncan’s anger began to ebb. “I never knew about Jamie,” he said in a hollow voice.

  “No,” Woolford agreed. “That was clear to me on the ship, and clear to General Calder when you saw that broadside. Pike wronged you.” He studied the wound on Duncan’s cheek, which had broken open again and was weeping blood. “For that I am-I am sorry,” he said, seeming surprised at his own words. “And I shall buy us all a round of that excellent applejack,” he hastened with more cheer. “I am fair parched from our journey.”