Bone Rattler amoca-1

by Eliot Pattison

  Woolford cursed under his breath, tossed the paper across the bar, and stepped into the dining chamber, sweeping little Virginia into his arms and taking to the dance floor at Sarah’s side. Duncan sat listening to the crackle of the logs in the huge stone fireplace, watching uneasily as Sergeant Fitch appeared outside the window and sat on the porch, studying the darkness. His gaze drifted toward the paper left by Woolford. The ranger had heard his request for Shakespeare after all. His quote for the New World was from Hamlet. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, Woolford had written, and eat of the fish that fed of that worm.

  The strains of the fiddle cut through the voices in the dining chamber, and several diners began clapping the beat of a new, livelier tune as tables were pushed back with Woolford’s encouragement and others joined in the dancing. Duncan stepped to the open door and stared out over the broad Hudson, lit by a quarter moon. The river was a divider of sorts, between civilization and the beginnings of something that was the opposite. Strangely, he remembered the scene set in the corner of Lord Ramsey’s portrait, the simple cabin with the dying man cradled by a woman. In his mind, the scene had become the central feature of the painting, as if the aristocrat were there just to give it context.

  His apprehension began to fade as the fire crackling behind him and the moonlit water glistening outside transported him to the evenings of his youth. Drifting into a fatigued reverie, he could almost hear the old songs that his uncles would play on fiddle and pipes.

  No. The sound was real. He turned toward the dining room. The clapping had stopped as a sad, stirring song played, then the fiddler sang without accompaniment. In disbelief Duncan stepped to the entrance of the dining chamber. Mo Ghile Mear, the song was called. Our Hero. Its words might have applied to the brave defeated heroes of any people. But anyone from the Highlands knew it was not a song about any hero, for it had been written to honor Bonnie Prince Charlie, the leader of Duncan’s father and the other Scottish rebels who had so valiantly stood at Culloden. As Duncan strode into the chamber, the red-haired fiddler began the next verse in the original Gaelic. After a moment, Duncan joined him in the Highland tongue as the two stared at each other with fire in their eyes. Duncan found his heart hammering. In Scotland they could have been arrested for such a display.

  The others in the room stared, some grinning, some with their eyes misting, until suddenly there were heavy footsteps behind him, and Duncan turned to see Woolford standing at his shoulder, fixing him with a smoldering gaze. The musician immediately raised the fiddle to his shoulder and began to play an energetic reel, walking among the tables, gesturing more dancers onto the floor.

  “You have no idea of the dangers you touch upon, McCallum,” Woolford warned. “I don’t know where you’re bound in the end, but you’ll not get there by walking backward.”

  “It’s just a simple song.”

  “Don’t take me for a fool. And don’t be so reckless with your own life. Or do you need ask which of the great lords you wish to serve, Ramsey or Calder?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Woolford eyes narrowed. “You think for a second that Calder would have released you if it did not serve him?”

  “I owe nothing to the army.”

  The officer shot him an impatient glare and pushed him back into the dark, unoccupied barroom. “The Romans wrote about how the legions would trap wolves that were preying on their camps,” he declared when they reached the shadows. “They would tie a goat out in the forest and lie in wait.”

  Duncan knitted his brow in confusion.

  “Calder can’t take a chance that Pike is wrong in believing Jamie and his Scots are aiding the French in a new campaign. He has to snatch Jamie or risk another season of defeats. And you, McCallum, are his goat.”

  The words fell heavier than the chains the army had put on Duncan. It seemed the fitting conclusion to his first day in America. The New World was a sham after all. The oppressors and aristocrats of the Old World had found their way across the Atlantic.

  “Of course,” Woolford added in a harsh voice, with an inclination of his head toward the Scottish bard, “if the wolves became wise to the ways of the Romans, they would just kill the goat before it could be used against them.”

  Duncan turned away, about to flee outside, more desperate than ever to find the old ferryman Jacob, whose message for the Ramsey tutor would finally put sense around the chaos of the day. But suddenly Sergeant Fitch was in front of them, leaning toward Woolford. The sergeant had his hand on his blade and was watching the night through the open door as he spoke to his captain.

  “Our Indian, sir,” Fitch announced in a low, urgent voice. “Dead in the summer kitchen.”

  Chapter Six

  Woolford darted out the front door. Duncan ran into the dining chamber, frantically looking for the children among the small crowd of dancers. He found Crispin in a chair in the corner, each of the small children on a knee, each sleeping on a broad shoulder. Sarah was nowhere to be seen. Crispin himself was leaning against the wall, his eyelids heavy until Duncan conveyed Fitch’s news.

  The butler shot up, clutching the children to his shoulders. “She’s gone!” he gasped. “Went into the kitchen several minutes ago.”

  Duncan lifted Jonathan into his own arms and followed Crispin through the throng into the adjoining kitchen. The chamber was empty except for a sturdy girl swabbing dishes in a wooden tub. Fitch and Woolford had not chosen to spread the alarm, Duncan realized, though the proprietor and his wife had also vanished.

  They searched the other downstairs chambers of the inn to no avail, then carried the children to the upstairs bedroom where their traveling trunks awaited. The two men laid the children side by side under a coverlet. “One of us must stay,” Duncan observed, looking out the window at the moonlit grounds. Someone moved along the edge of the forest with a torch.

  Crispin said nothing but lifted a ladder-back chair from the peg where it hung on the wall, set it sideways by the window, where he could survey both the barnyard and the door, and then sat.

  Moments later Duncan stood at the front door, working to contain the unnatural fear that had seized him. The savages were indeed outside, and Fitch had found one dead. He lifted a splint of wood from the stack by the door, raising it like a weapon, then stepped into the shadows, studying the farm buildings in the moonlight. He selected a squat structure with a broad chimney, thirty feet from the rear door of the inn, connected to it by worn stone flags. It seemed empty as he approached; then he saw that its walls held no windows. When he opened the iron latch there was shuffling inside, and as he stepped into the candle-lit chamber he found Woolford standing against the wall, hand on the hilt of his knife.

  The ranger captain gave a silent grimace but did not interfere as Duncan approached the heavy plank table in front of the huge, cold fireplace. The proprietor stood on the opposite side of the table, one arm around his wife, who cried on his shoulder. A younger woman sat on a stool, a blanket draped over her head, which was bowed so low the shadow of the blanket hid her face.

  He had expected a certain satisfaction at seeing one of the savages laid out for burial, had painted in his mind’s eye one of the fearful creatures he had seen at the army headquarters humbled by death. But he found no satisfaction, no sense of retribution, only a deepening confusion.

  The wrinkles on the man’s countenance and the spots on his hands told Duncan that he had been of considerable age, though intertwined in his black shoulder-length locks were but a few strands of grey. He was dressed in the simple homespun clothes of a working man, his trousers worn and frequently patched, though torn and muddy at the knees. A small leather pouch hung from his neck, a larger one from his belt. The man still had a hint of color in his face, Duncan saw. He had been dead less than an hour.

  As Woolford replaced a guttering candle on the mantel, Duncan noticed a discoloration on the dead man’s left cheek. Not a bruise, he saw on closer inspection, but a tatto
o. An image of a spotted fish had been intricately inked into the skin. The tattoo gave a strange power to the man’s still countenance, and Duncan stared at it as he rounded the table, stared at it until out of the corner of his eye he saw the ravaged flesh on the opposite side of the man’s head. A deep, ragged gash ran from his temple along the side of his skull, ending behind his ear. His scalp hung loose.

  Duncan found his medical training asserting itself. “This wound didn’t kill him, at least not right away,” he said after a hasty examination. “It was made four or five hours ago. He was beaten on the head and ribs. His eyes are dilated. A bad concussion to the brain.” On the man’s right side, his shirt clung to the skin, and its long, wet stain ran down the side of his trousers. Duncan lifted the tail of the shirt and studied the discolored flesh below the man’s ribs-a treacherous stab wound, though it showed no signs of being lethal in itself. “He could have lived had he but stayed still.”

  “He made it back, crawling,” the innkeeper explained. “We found him lying on a ledge out back, gazing at the stars, a stone’s throw from the barn. He always slept in the barn when the ferry stayed overnight.”

  Duncan’s tongue seemed to grow impossibly heavy as he saw the forlorn way the Dutchman and his wife looked at the man, and glanced back at the fish on the cheek. He started, “He’s not. . he can’t be. .” and tried no more. There was no need to ask the question that rang like an alarm in his mind. The man was Jacob the Fish. The one man in all the world who could explain the mysteries surrounding the Company was an Indian, and that Indian was dead. Not the one man, he chided himself, the next man. First there had been Adam, then Evering. At each step along his path, the man who could best explain the violent mystery surrounding the Ramsey Company had been killed.

  The woman in the blanket looked up, tears streaming down her face. It was Sarah.

  “You said he was going into the mountains.” A strange remorse entered Woolford’s voice as he spoke to the Dutchman. “You said he was safe.” Duncan glanced at the ranger in confusion. Woolford was famous for killing Indians; his job was to destroy Indians. But there had been at least one, he recalled, who had been a friend of Woolford, whose name had sounded like a king of Europe.

  “He was. I told him never to come back, at risk of his life,” the innkeeper replied grimly. “But he had no family except us these past few years, the ferryman’s clan and ourselves. He was here before any of us came. About the last of his tribe. He helped my father build the house here more than sixty years ago. He was always here, as long as anyone can remember. He belonged to the land here, and to the river. He was part of the land. The first name of the river, the Indian name, came from his tribe.”

  “Then my father came through.” Sarah’s voice was steady, and she spoke to the dead man’s face. “When I was a little girl, every time we came across, he would carry me on his shoulders. He would catch fish for us, lure them into his hands to show us their beautiful colors.” She reached out and squeezed the dead man’s hand. “I thought he was a wizard of some kind, but my father said he was just a filthy red Indian and told me to keep away. He secretly made a doll for me out of cornhusks.”

  “Why now?” Duncan heard himself say. “Why did he come back when he was safe in the mountains?” He understood nothing of what he saw, certainly not the respectful way Sarah treated the dead Indian. This was not a savage like those he had encountered at the army offices, or like the bloodthirsty creatures Crispin spoke of. This was just an old man with a sad, wise face. The last of his tribe. Duncan had known other wise old men who wandered the Highlands, the last of their tribes.

  Woolford lifted the pouch at the dead man’s belt, loosened the thong that bound it, and looked inside. “Empty,” he announced, then turned it upside down, over his palm. A small, solitary purple bead fell out. As he gazed at it the officer’s face tightened. After a long moment he sighed, then futilely searched the trousers pockets. When he reached the small pouch at Old Jacob’s neck, bound with a strip of white fur, Woolford did not open it, only arranged it neatly over the dead man’s heart.

  “I sent militiamen into the forest,” the innkeeper reported.

  “They will find nothing,” Woolford said.

  “How could he have received that terrible gash?” Duncan asked. “It is no bullet wound. It is like that given by a sword.”

  “The work of the war,” Woolford said.

  “But what-” Duncan struggled to understand. Who were the militia looking for? Indians were the enemy, but this one was an honored friend. Then he reminded himself again that Indians fought on both sides of the war, and raiding parties had been reported. “What Indians use swords?”

  “Someone tried to lift his hair,” the innkeeper muttered.

  Duncan looked around the room in confusion.

  “Someone,” Woolford explained in a barely tolerant tone, “expressed an interest in his scalp. He fought back.”

  Duncan suddenly felt very cold. “Surely you are mistaken,” he whispered.

  “Mein Goot.” The innkeeper’s German wife cast him a peeved glance. “How long have you been in the colonies, junge?” she asked in a harsh tone.

  Duncan and Sarah exchanged a quick glance. “Long enough to know it’s Europeans who get scalped,” he replied.

  “You know nothing,” the woman declared, and began washing the dried blood from the old Indian’s face.

  “He died a warrior’s death,” Woolford said, then moved to help the innkeeper straighten a blanket over the corpse.

  Duncan placed a hand on Woolford’s arm, stopping him. “I must understand better what happened.” He pushed back the blanket and lifted the tail of Old Jacob’s shirt.

  “No!” the ranger protested, grabbing his hand. “Some respect-”

  “The last time Ramseys came through, he was arrested. This time,” Duncan said in a perplexed tone, “he died.” Woolford slowly relaxed his grip. “There were two things different the day he crossed the river with Lord Ramsey,” he continued, opening the buttons. “An extra traveler, a trapper, and an accidental dunking.” Duncan quickly explained what the ferryman had told him. Woolford stepped back as Sarah silently helped Duncan unbutton the dead man’s shirt, exposing the old Indian’s chest. It bore another tattoo, unlike any Duncan had ever seen-a large, expertly rendered image of a spreading tree over his heart, encircled by small animals. A wolf at the bottom, in the most prominent position. A squirrel. A hare. Something that looked like a hedgehog, and others Duncan did not recognize.

  No one made a sound, except for Woolford, who gave a deep sigh and settled onto a stool.

  “What does it signify?” Duncan asked.

  “The wolf is a clan mark,” Woolford said. “I told you about King Hendrick. The wolf was his mark, the mark of his clan, given when a youth becomes a warrior. Hendrick and Jacob had the same Mohawk grandmother, and when his parents were killed, Jacob spent most of his boyhood with Hendrick’s people. When Hendrick went to Europe, Jacob decided to honor the dying tribe of his parents and took up their ways, the Mahican ways.”

  Duncan pointed to the tree on the dead man’s chest. “The rest of it?”

  “Among Hendrick’s people the sign of the tree is very rare. Perhaps five men alive today bear such an image over their heart. A powerful emblem. If it was used in an organized church, it might be the mark of a cardinal, one of great spiritual power. The animals would have been earned later, one at a time, badges of honor.”

  “My father would never recognize such things,” Sarah said in a hollow, puzzled voice.

  The Dutchman gave the answer, pronouncing the name like a curse. “Hawkins.”

  The air went dead for a moment.

  Woolford grimly buttoned up the shirt. When he had finished, he placed one of the Indian’s hands under the little neck pouch, the second hand on top. He produced a leather strap from his pocket and tied the hands tightly together. When he finished, he looked up at Duncan. “You say he was attacked four or five
hours ago?” When Duncan nodded, the ranger turned to the innkeeper. “When did the Company leave here?”

  “Six, maybe seven hours ago.”

  The door opened and two of the innkeeper’s boys appeared, each carrying an armful of cedar boughs, which their parents began arranging around the body. Sarah, scrubbing the tears from her cheeks, stepped outside, toward the house. A moment later Fitch appeared at the door, and Woolford joined him, moving silently into the night. The boys left, backing away from the corpse, then one returned moments later carrying a large Bible closed with leather latches. Their mother arranged a stool at the head of the table, with two candles at her side, and began softly reading in German. Duncan also retreated, but not outside, only to a corner, into the dark behind the door, where he leaned against the cold stone wall. He was bone tired but strangely transfixed by the scene. The reason the old Mahican had come to the inn was so important, it had been worth dying for. Another thought, uninvited, overtook him as he stared at the dead man. Jacob must have been in his eighties, been born in the seventh decade of the prior century. Which made him roughly the same age as his grandfather. His grandfather, too, had once called a fish and ridden on its back.

  Duncan stared at the body in weary confusion. It was some time later when he realized he was stroking the stone bear in his pocket.

  He was about to leave when someone entered and stepped to the side of the dead Indian. Duncan pushed himself back against the wall. Woolford had returned. As Duncan watched, the ranger handed the woman something, then pulled from his jacket a large feather, streaked in two places with vermilion, and set it under Old Jacob’s hands, alongside the little leather bundle.

  The woman took the object Woolford had given her, held it over a candle flame for a moment, then dropped it into a bowl.

  “I’ve seen that feather before,” Duncan declared as he stepped out of the shadows.