Bone Rattler amoca-1

by Eliot Pattison

  The innkeeper set out and filled three heavy mugs. By the time Duncan reached the bar, Fitch had drained his and disappeared out the front door into the night. Duncan drank slowly, in silence, letting the cider dilute his anger as he pondered Woolford’s words and how Adam Munroe had secretly carried the newspaper story of Duncan’s trial. “The brother of such a notorious fugitive might offer a means of finding him,” he ventured at last. “Adam used his knowledge of how to find me to bargain his way into the Company.”

  Woolford replied with only a frown.

  “But how could Adam have known I was Jamie’s brother?”

  “That was what you might call private information.”

  Duncan’s mind raced. “You mean Adam knew Jamie?”

  “Their paths had crossed. I wasn’t sure of the truth about your connection to him until the moment I saw your face.”

  Duncan looked up at the ranger. “Meaning you also knew my brother.”

  Woolford drained his cup before answering. “We served a few weeks together.”

  Duncan considered the words a moment. “So you struck a bargain with Adam Munroe, and without a by your leave, you change my life forever.”

  “I seem to recall,” Woolford shot back, “that you were rotting away in some mildewed cell. And it was Arnold’s bargain to strike, not mine.”

  It was Duncan’s turn to drain his mug. “If I search my memory as you suggest,” he observed after a moment, “I didn’t tell the world about my brother. I told you, with Cameron ten feet away.”

  “Even the biggest of birds sometimes sings.”

  “The letter. I last saw the letter with Cameron.”

  “Cameron’s papers show he started life as a merchant. Perhaps for him everything is still about striking bargains.”

  Duncan glanced out the door to the porch, where Fitch had disappeared. “You were going to bring me to America and not tell the general or Pike? Why?” he demanded. “Your duty is to this man you call Calder.”

  “My duty,” Woolford said, as if correcting him, “is to bring peace to this land.” He fixed Duncan with a dangerous gaze, then lifted the pitcher again.

  Duncan gave up trying to break the strange cipher in which Woolford spoke. “My brother was no coward.”

  “I daresay he was a hero to his men,” Woolford turned to Duncan. “Pike did not convey the fullness of the story. Captain McCallum did not flee. He ordered his men to retreat and regroup. By that time the tripe-skulled fool who-” Woolford paused. “By then,” he said in a more judicious tone, “the esteemed commander of our troops, General Abercromby, had already sent a dozen companies into the French guns. A frontal charge against cannon and mortar, when every officer advised against it. We could have cut them off and starved them out. We could have brought in our own artillery in a few days time. But Abercromby was hungry for glory, desperate for a quick victory. At every turn of the battle, mistakes were made. After six hundred of our brave lads had fallen, your brother said it was no longer the bastards in front of them who were killing his men but the ones behind. He called back his soldiers, said he would no longer send more Scots to useless deaths. Pike may call it cowardice. Most just call it mutiny. If your brother had stopped there, the general would not have had the spine to bring charges.”

  “Scots?” Duncan asked in surprise, then remembered the kilted officer he had seen in New York.

  “The Forty-second Regiment,” Woolford said. “The Black Watch. It’s a Scottish troop, mostly Highlanders. The king permits them to wear kilts. For their bravery, they are even allowed a few pipers despite the laws against them at home.”

  Duncan turned away to gaze into the fire, struggling with a pang of guilt, a feeling that he had somehow wronged his brother. Until that morning at the army’s headquarters, while he had not entirely forgotten that the army had allowed a few Scottish troops to be formed, he had always assumed them to be lowlanders living in English ways. Duncan had never considered that his brother might have found a means to come back to the old ways. “Pike said he deserted,” Duncan recalled as he fixed the ranger with another suspicious stare.

  “He all but said your brother caused the defeat at Ticonderoga-a strained interpretation of events. Your brother ripped away the insignia from his coat and threw off his gorget, knowing he would be broken, then said he was going to collect the wounded. He had saved another hundred from death by his order to withdraw, then he and a few of those most loyal to him saved another score lying bleeding on the field. But on his last trip carrying the wounded to safety, the survivors say they saw him point to a surrounding hillside, then run into the trees with a dozen of his men. Another artillery barrage from the French prevented anyone from following.”

  “Then he could have been killed.”

  “He was glimpsed a week later in the forest, with a handful of Highlanders who had been listed as missing. When a patrol followed, they were ambushed at night. Every man was knocked unconscious and woke up tied to a tree, having never glimpsed their attackers. But not one soldier was seriously harmed. On each of their packs was a small bone. Some said it was forest phantoms who’d attacked the patrol.”

  “Where would he go?”

  “People say he is in Canada. Nova Scotia perhaps,” Woolford said, referring to the colony that had adopted the Latin name meaning New Scotland. “Or in France. Pike has sent letters to every garrison commander in the army, especially in Europe, every commander in the fleets. He insists your brother has betrayed us and is helping plan the next French campaign.”

  “Why is Pike so rabid about him?”

  “Pike was a senior aide to General Abercromby that day. A victory would have guaranteed him a colonelship. Instead he is assigned to duties behind the front with no hope of promotion.”

  “What kind of duties, pray tell, provide for chaining a man to a chair and whipping his face?”

  “Gathering information for planning.” Woolford looked up with a sardonic grin. “They call themselves Military Intelligence, to keep us from using the true description. Now he thinks he will rewrite the battle by proving your brother was in league with the French that day.”

  There was movement at the outer door, and Sergeant Fitch appeared, nodding at Woolford, then hastened to the bar as the innkeeper refilled his mug. Where had the sergeant gone, Duncan asked himself, remembering the warnings he had received that day. The savages could be anywhere.

  “I need to find Jacob the Fish,” Woolford said to the innkeeper. “Tonight.”

  Duncan slowly turned toward the officer, not sure he had heard correctly.

  “He was arrested, Lieutenant,” the Dutchman replied.

  “Captain, if you please,” Sergeant Fitch interjected. “He’s got hisself anointed.”

  “Promoted since this morning?” Duncan asked, suddenly suspicious again.

  “Since three months ago, apparently,” Woolford replied. “But word did not catch up until I landed.”

  Duncan studied Woolford as the officer pressed the innkeeper about the missing Jacob, realizing how little he understood about the man. He did not trust Woolford, but did not hate him as he once had. Woolford was not simply another brandy-swilling bluestocking prig who had purchased a commission and passed his time carousing in garrison towns. He was a brandy-swilling bluestocking who willingly entered the dark hell of the wilderness so he could confront the savages, risking a horrible death again and again-and who, just as strangely, seemed more committed to finding peace than to obeying his own senior officers. But why, in the middle of the war that was so important to him, had he sailed to England? And why, once there, had he decided to accompany, even assist, the pious Reverend Arnold and the Ramsey Company?

  Woolford leaned toward the innkeeper. “I must speak with Old Jacob.”

  “Gone, sir,” came the reply. Duncan heard the Dutchman say, “He had been planning to leave, told me he had business with old friends. He won’t be back. In the mountains, I daresay, building a hut for winter. He wa
s no threat.”

  “Damn you, old man, I know he was no threat.” Woolford’s mouth twisted in frustration. He gazed outside, into the night, for a long moment, before turning back to the Dutchman. “Then I must know what he said when he was leaving. What happened that day?”

  “Lord Ramsey,” came the innkeeper’s hesitant reply.

  Woolford’s knuckles whitened as he wrapped his fingers around his mug. “Where exactly in the mountains?”

  “I cannot say for sure. North and west, I daresay. He won’t be found unless he wants to be.”

  Woolford closed his eyes a moment, then cast a pointed glance at Fitch, who quickly reached for his own mug, as if suddenly in great need of the potent liquor.

  They drank in silence, stabbing with wooden splints at the slices of hot sausage volunteered by the proprietor. Duncan became aware of a soft, lyrical sound from the dining chamber, gradually growing in volume, that he recognized as the strains of a violin. As patrons in the room lifted chairs, turning them in the direction of the music, Sarah came into sight, standing against the wall, flanked by her siblings. Beside them on a window seat rested Crispin, alternately watching the night and the Ramsey children.

  “What Shakespeare do you have, Captain,” Duncan asked after a moment, “for a tutor to an old family come to a New World?”

  When Woolford did not respond, he noticed the intense way the officer stared at Sarah.

  “You spent much of your voyage with Miss Ramsey,” Duncan observed.

  “Not exactly with her. She was sleeping most of the time, like she was in a coma. I would take my turn watching her. Sometimes I would read aloud, though she seldom gave sign of hearing.”

  “I would have thought her father would have wanted a doctor to escort her. Instead she had you and the vicar.”

  Woolford’s gaze was full of challenge but Duncan did not look away. “The Reverend received instructions from a great physician in London before embarking.”

  “It was he who prescribed the laudanum?”

  Woolford stared into his cup. “I took no pleasure in assisting with that. She was judged mentally unfit for a voyage. We had no choice. The doctor said otherwise we would have to tie her to her bed. Mix it with tea, he said, every cup of tea, so soon she would not notice the bitter taste.”

  It was Duncan’s turn to gaze into his mug, so as not to reveal the flash of discovery in his eyes. Before he died, Evering had been making tea for Sarah and had smashed the dosing vial. Before he died, Duncan realized, Evering had been reviving her. They must have sat in the night, speaking secretly, just as Adam and Evering had done. He had been wrong to think the disasters on the ship had started with the opening of Woolford’s trunk. There had been another event, perhaps just as important. Sarah Ramsey had awakened.

  Duncan fixed the officer with a sober gaze. “You lied to Adam Munroe about the destination of the Company, about it going to a Ramsey plantation in the south. What else?”

  “That,” Woolford said with a sigh, “was the only lie that was necessary. You would think it a small thing.”

  “But you knew it wasn’t. Not for him. Not for you. For his sake, you owe me the truth. I had thought the key to Evering’s death lay in the connection between Adam and the professor. But perhaps that is not the connection that was important. How did Adam Munroe know Sarah?”

  “They lived in worlds apart.”

  “You mean one in chains, one chained by opium.”

  “I mean no one would ever expect such two to be acquainted. The Pennsylvania dirt farmer and the silk-gowned heiress.”

  The truth, in the hands of a man like Woolford, was not necessarily a helpful thing. “I take it they met in the New World. Why were they both on the Anna Rose?” But Duncan needed no answer, not after considering what he had learned about Adam. Adam had been on board because of Sarah Ramsey, had been so desperate to sail on the prison ship with Sarah that he had threatened to assault soldiers, and had ultimately bought his passage with news about Duncan.

  The scars on Woolford’s neck blanched again as he clenched his jaw. “No one,” he said slowly, “expected Sarah to stir from her cabin.”

  “No one,” Duncan shot back, “expected Evering to become a channel between them.”

  “No one expected the Anna Rose to become a death ship,” Woolford countered. Sarah abruptly rose, pulling Jonathan onto the dance floor, swinging his arm in time to the unseen fiddle. “She only survived because of you,” he added after a moment. “That water was certain death. In England people would say it puts her forever in your debt.”

  “And here?”

  The ranger shrugged. “I know Indians who would say it makes you forever responsible for her. That because you interfered with the spirits’ plans for her, there is no spirit to watch over her now.”

  “Were they lovers?”

  “Of course not. She is. . ” Woolford struggled for words, then gave up. “Adam was married.”

  “Impossible. He would have told me.” Duncan’s mind swirled. Pursuing Adam, even in death, was like chasing a ship in a changing wind.

  “In my experience, McCallum, the secrets of the heart are always the most difficult to put into words. I met his bride. A wild but gentle beauty. You would never find two who adored each other more.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “They were driven apart,” Woolford said in a tight voice.

  “If it was not passion that drove Sarah to Adam in Argyll, then what? Her family is here.”

  The ranger offered only a small, ironic frown, as if to say Duncan had answered his own question.

  “Did you know Evering wrote about her in his journal?”

  Woolford’s brow knitted. “What journal? Where is it?” he demanded.

  “At the house in New York,” Duncan said. “Why would he write about Stony Run? What happened at Stony Run? How could he know?”

  Woolford seemed to shudder. He turned to gaze out the darkened window. “It’s a place in the forest nearly a hundred miles north of Edentown. There was a council of Iroquois tribes led by a great priest, a powerful shaman. Something happened when the shaman met the other chiefs. Many died. At headquarters they listed it as a battle. But I believe there were no enemy there.” Woolford grew very still. When he spoke again it was in a near-whisper. “Sergeant Fitch and I arrived a few hours later. It was no battle. It was a series of murders, a massacre first of friendly Indians, then of my rangers when they followed the killers.” Woolford turned away to stare at the crackling fire.

  “God’s breath!” Duncan gasped as realization flooded over him. “You’re trying to find the murderers.”

  The ranger kept his gaze on the flames. “They were good men. Each one like a brother to me.” He could not conceal the pain in his eyes when he looked up at Duncan. “Evering couldn’t have known about Stony Run,” he said. “It was not something the army wished to publicize.”

  “He knew,” Duncan said, “because he spoke with Adam.”

  The ranger lowered his head into his hands a moment. “Guilt can often loosen a man’s tongue. Sad cases, Munroe and Evering. If it is possible to die of confusion, then perhaps they died of the same cause.” Woolford poured himself another applejack and drained it in one gulp.

  “And where does King Hendrick fit into the tragedy you are scripting?” Duncan asked. “Evering connected him to Stony Run.”

  “An old Mohawk chief. Teyonhehkwen was his tribal name. Visited England nearly fifty years ago, when they labeled him a king to ease his introductions in court. One of our strongest allies. Died fighting the French in ’fifty-five at Lake George. Over eighty years old. He stood up with bullets flying around him, shouted out, ‘Who wants to live forever,’ and charged a line of French infantry with a war club.”

  “You speak of him as of a friend.”

  “I am proud to name him so. If he had been a soldier, he’d have been in the Black Watch. If he had been a king of old, he would have been a pillar of chivalry
.”

  “Evering wrote of him, yet he’s been dead these four years.”

  “He had a band of zealous warriors, mostly related to him by blood, who still fight in his name. Good men, brave men, who perform rituals to keep pure, like knights of old. Half were killed at Stony Run without their weapons at hand. Hendrick was tossing in his grave that day.”

  The pieces of this puzzle were not fitting together, but at least they were coming into better focus. Duncan fell into a deep silence, working over each fragment again in his mind. He found himself looking out the window into the darkness. He had not forgotten Adam’s warning about the army. His resentment of Woolford, built over weeks at sea, lingered like a bitter taste in his throat. He poured himself another drink. “They took Lister for the murder,” he said. “They beat him within an inch of his life.”

  The ranger offered a grim nod. “Arnold made sure I knew. For now your friend is safer than any man in the Company, I daresay. The guards know they must preserve him,” Woolford declared in a sober voice. “He is to be the star of Ramsey’s first pageant of justice.”

  The words tore at Duncan’s heart. Somewhere ahead, along a frontier road, Lister lay beaten and bound in the night, probably convinced that Duncan had abandoned him.

  Eventually he became aware that they were both watching Sarah. She had begun a waltz with her little brother, whose face shone bright as a candle.

  “Do you have intentions with respect to Miss Ramsey?” Duncan asked.

  The question made his companion wince again and break his gaze from Sarah. “In my life I have known a handful of women who had the power to disturb my sleep. I will admit to you she is one of them. But she is different. It is not the beauty of Sarah Ramsey that disturbs my rest, it is the enigma.”

  They watched in silence for several minutes. Woolford stepped behind the bar a moment, found a writing lead and a scrap of paper and quickly scrawled something, then leaned on the bar and gazed into the dining room again. Several dancers began staring at Sarah, and pointed at her. They began to separate, leaving a wide space around her as if she held some kind of contagion. She kept dancing, her smile more strained. It would be impossible for her not to sense that the others were shunning her.