Bone Rattler amoca-1

by Eliot Pattison

  Woolford frowned at him and glanced at the woman, who had taken up her German prayers again.

  “You said you discarded everything from the compass room.” A wisp of smoke drifted out of the bowl. It was tobacco. Woolford had given the woman some of his precious Virginia leaf to burn.

  “Everything but this,” the officer said. “It didn’t belong in the sea.”

  “What does it signify?”

  “The sign of a warrior, someone who has drawn blood from an enemy,” the ranger said in a near-whisper, his eyes on the dead man. He reached into the pouch at his belt and extracted a needle and thread, then bent over the old man’s head, pierced the flap of loose skin with his needle, and began sewing the scalp back in place. “People don’t understand the war. And it’s well they don’t. They think it will be won in palaces in Europe. They’re wrong. It will be won and lost at Indian campfires in New York and Pennsylvania. With so many of our troops needed in Europe, a handful of chiefs have our fate in their hands. And if everyone knew how precarious is the balance, the harbors would be mobbed with people fleeing for Europe. Make those chiefs upset with us, and the war is lost. The continent is lost.”

  Duncan stepped to the officer’s side and extended his hand.

  Woolford hesitated, then handed Duncan the needle. “I forgot. You are a doctor to the dead.”

  “Sarah mourned for this man like an old friend,” Duncan ventured. Another tattoo became evident as Duncan reconnected the skin, a three-quarters circle, centered on the ear, with slim red tapering lines radiating outward.

  Woolford seemed to consider the words a long time. “You heard her. He had shown her kindness years ago.”

  An enigma, Woolford had called her half an hour earlier. Not only was Sarah an enigma, but so, too, was every conversation about her. “She is like a child,” Duncan said. “Why are so many terrified of her? What has she done to them?”

  A long moment passed before Duncan realized the prayers had stopped.

  “That which we cannot understand, we try to take on faith,” the German woman whispered. “But where our faith is not wide enough, we turn to fear.”

  Duncan glanced at Woolford, who was nodding, his jaw clamped shut. It was all the answer he would receive. He finished sewing up the scalp, reconnecting the pieces of the tattoo over the ear. “A sun,” he concluded.

  “Mark of the dawn catchers,” Woolford explained. “An old rite, almost forgotten. You have to run from one dawn to the next, pausing only at certain sacred places.”

  “The badge of a pilgrim,” Duncan suggested, though he still could not connect the spiritual notions Woolford described with the savages he had seen earlier that day, or the terrifying tales of the heathens told elsewhere.

  Woolford settled onto one of the chairs by the body, turning away from Duncan as the woman took up her prayers again. Duncan watched a few minutes in silence, then stepped outside with one of the candles. He paced slowly around the barn, peering into dark places between the posts and beams, and found a lean-to built against the barn and filled with split firewood, then a second matching structure with a plank door on leather hinges. Inside he found a space perhaps twice the size of his cell on the ship, lined with slabs of bark and animal skins, a pallet of sackcloth and moss at one end. He knelt, extending the candle, and quickly found several drops of fresh blood on the earthen floor. Jacob had made it back to his home after all.

  The sparse chamber offered few clues about its inhabitant except for some small mottled feathers stuck into the bark, a long peg on which hung several bird skulls, and a worn pair of leather slippers hanging from one of the beams. As Duncan stretched the candle toward the roof, a silent figure stepped behind him.

  Duncan pointed to the blood on the floor. “Why would he come in here and not stay on his pallet, why go back outside?” he asked Woolford.

  The ranger knelt and examined the crimson drops before answering. “So he would die under the open sky.”

  “Why the skulls?”

  “Alive or dead, the birds of the forest are considered by the tribes to be messengers.”

  “Messengers?”

  “To the gods. They whisper in the gods’ ears, report back what they see.”

  What, Duncan asked himself, would the skulls at the bloody compass have reported? He knelt by the pallet and turned over a flat slab of bark lying beside it. Underneath, etched in the dirt, were two curving lines, parallel except where they connected at top and bottom. He had seen it before, drawn on the mast by Adam before he died. Duncan pried up the slab of bark on the wall at the head of the pallet, revealing perhaps forty more sets of curving lines drawn on the side of the barn with a charred stick. It was as if Jacob drew the symbols before he slept at night.

  “The messengers can carry words beyond. But the snake,” Woolford explained in a near-whisper, “is especially sacred, the bringer of dreams, the guide to the other world.” He cast a self-conscious glance toward Duncan. “I mean it is what they believe. The snake lies on the edge of this world and the next. You visit the other world, where the spirits live, the real world, through dreams. Dreams are sober business to the Indians. They will entirely change their lives based on one dream. In many tribes those who lead in battle may achieve great power. But the greatest power of all is reserved for those who can explain dreams.”

  “His shoes,” Duncan said, pointing to where the line of blood led, toward the hanging slippers.

  “Moccasins,” Woolford said, then stepped to the beam, where the red, still-moist trail led.

  “Why would he come inside to change his moccasins?” Duncan asked. He handed the candle to Woolford, then lifted them from the peg, probing them with his fingers. “Not to change them,” he corrected himself. “To leave something in them.” Duncan extracted two small pieces of paper. “Could he read?”

  “Passably well, though he never took to writing. For each one of us who trouble to speak their tongue, ten of the Iroquois speak a European language.” Woolford extended the candle toward the paper on Duncan’s palm, and uttered a small gasp as the words came into focus. Anna Rose, said the first line. First acorns, bloom of the asters, said the next. Duncan recalled the green acorns in the barnyard, and the flowers along the front of the house, which would have begun opening not many days earlier. It was a way of conveying a date to one who used only a natural calendar, a way to convey a message about the arrival of their ship.

  The second paper held an effort at only one word, written in a crude hand. Tshqa. The word and the stick-figure animal beside it-a bear, Duncan guessed-were surrounded on all sides by stick men bearing axes and bows. At the very bottom were two rows of what appeared to be ornamentations-lines of ovals, some filled in, some hollow.

  Woolford seemed to have stopped breathing. The sudden desolation on his face seemed to make him a smaller, older man.

  “What is it?” Duncan asked.

  Woolford offered no reply, only looked at the empty pallet, as if trying to see the man who had slept and dreamt there.

  “He had no ink,” Duncan observed.

  “What are you saying?”

  Duncan bent to retrieve a small feather from the pallet and held it close to the candle, showing the hue at the end of its shaft, then pushed the candle closer to the paper. “He drew this in his own blood.”

  Woolford closed his eyes a moment, then spoke the words Duncan struggled to avoid. “This is why he died,” the ranger said, “to bring this message.”

  Duncan stared at the earthen floor. Another man had died on the path of the Ramsey tutor. “Adam spoke of Tashgua,” he said after a long moment.

  “Impossible,” the ranger rejoined. “Why would he speak to you of such things?”

  “Not to me. To Evering, who wrote the name in his journal. At General Calder’s office, the army’s chart of Stony Run bears the same name.”

  Woolford paced along the wall of the lean-to. “Tashgua is an aged priest,” he said in a reluctant tone. “A shaman.
One of the fifty chiefs who govern the Iroquois nation, though unlike any of the others. They say he is from an unbroken line of shamans dating back centuries. They say he speaks languages no man alive understands. They say he is the one who connects them to the way things used to be, before the Europeans came, to the old spirits who always protected the tribes. A sage. A sorcerer. A prophet. Take your pick. Most hated by some in the tribes, most beloved by others. A small band of warriors protect him, including what’s left of Hendrick’s men. They call him guardian of the gods. Tashgua complains that his people are moving away from their ancient roots, that being a tool for either side in a European war will spell destruction for his people. But most in his tribe are more interested in muskets and brass kettles.” The ranger stared intensely at Duncan now, as if seeing something new in him.

  “Tashgua was there, wasn’t he?” Duncan ventured. “At Stony Run. He was the reason for the massacre.”

  Woolford stepped to the door, pausing to look back at Duncan. “In England, pretending to know more than you do is a national pastime. Here it can get you killed.”

  “How many have to die,” Duncan retorted, “before you tell me why the Ramsey Company is in such danger?”

  “The Ramsey Company?” Woolford asked in a bitter tone. “Look to yourself, McCallum.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “You said Jacob was attacked four or five hours ago. Fitch found his trail nearby, marked by drops of blood.”

  “I still don’t-”

  “It was someone in the Company, someone you told about Old Jacob.”

  “No!” Duncan protested, then with a terrible stab of guilt understood Woolford’s words. The Ramsey tutor was meant to meet the Mahican, who would explain everything. Duncan had spoken of the fishspeaker when in the bilges with McGregor and his men, which would have been as good as telling the entire Company. Jacob had come back from his safe exile to meet the Ramsey tutor, and he had died for it.

  “Damned your eyes, McCallum, I will know what Evering told you!” Woolford growled, suddenly full of wrath.

  “Can’t you see, Captain?” Duncan said in a tormented voice. “Evering was killed to prevent him from passing his secrets on.” Duncan knelt by the pallet as though in prayer, as if to beg the old Indian for forgiveness. Now Jacob had died for the same reason.

  When he looked up, Woolford was gone.

  He sat very still, overcome with grief for a moment, as he began to accept the truth. Jacob may have known he was on a path where death lurked, but it had been Duncan who had sealed his fate. He lifted the stone bear from his pocket, comparing it to the animal in the drawing Jacob had left. As he bent toward the light, the bear dropped from his palm, rolling on the dirt floor to settle beside another large piece of bark leaning against the wall. Let the old one take you where she needs to go. With a cautious, tentative finger he lifted it, then jerked backward with a twitch of fear. Drawn on the smooth back of the bark were scores of snakes, at least a hundred. Jacob may have belonged to the adjoining land. But he had also belonged to the world of the spirits.

  Duncan studied the message in blood again before stuffing the two papers into his pocket, desperate to understand. Was this truly the message Jacob had died for, the message Evering had expected? The lines of ovals were not decorative, he decided, but part of the message. The first of the two rows had six short lines preceding its row of six ovals-two filled in, then one hollow, then two filled in and one hollow again. The second row had four short lines, then eight ovals-two solid, two hollow, then the pattern repeated. His gaze drifted back to the bear drawing, a man and a bear surrounded by men who seemed to want them dead. It could have been an image of Duncan and his stone.

  Angry shouts from the barnyard woke Duncan at dawn. He leaned out the open window to see Captain Woolford berating the proprietor as Fitch led a saddled horse out of the barn. Duncan quickly dressed and found Crispin standing on the porch, gazing forlornly toward the river. The ferry was approaching, a single horse and rider its only tenants.

  “She’s gone,” Crispin announced in a dismal tone.

  Duncan’s heart leapt into his throat. “Sarah?”

  “The innkeeper found her saddling one of the coach horses before dawn.” Woolford explained as Duncan reached him. “She promised him Crispin would pay him double the value of the saddle, then galloped down the road.”

  “Alone?” Duncan gasped, and gazed toward the shadowed trail that led west.

  Woolford checked the saddle girth of his horse, then conferred briefly with Fitch, gesturing toward the ferry. Fitch bolted inside, returning with a scrap of paper on which Woolford hastily scrawled a note, handing the paper to Crispin as he swung onto the horse. “You must take the children to their father,” he said. “The sergeant will stay with you to Edentown.”

  “Where is she bound?” Duncan asked no one in particular as Woolford took his rifle from Fitch, pressed his heels to the flanks of his mount, and galloped down the narrow road. “Why would she go alone?”

  “The body is gone,” the innkeeper announced, as if in answer.

  “The girls in the kitchen,” his wife declared, “told her of the Indians in the harbor. She must be wild with fear.”

  “The ferry,” Fitch muttered.

  Crispin made a rumbling sound in his throat. “Let us take a hearty breakfast,” he said with a glance toward the river. “It shall be an arduous hour ahead.”

  Duncan studied the ferry again and finally recognized the tall, lean figure in black.

  Reverend Arnold was dark and brooding as he strode into the tavern. He surveyed the dining chamber in silence, then seemed to relax as he saw the trunks of Sarah and her siblings stacked by the door, where Crispin had conspicuously left them. He called for the proprietor to have the dirt brushed from his coat, then joined the two men at their table.

  “Servants of the Ramsey house may not,” Arnold declared in a simmering tone, “simply decide to load the family into wagons and relocate. You had no permission to leave New York.”

  Crispin assumed a meek, apologetic expression. “Miss Ramsey explained that she had turned eighteen and that made her old enough to decide family business in the absence of her father,” he explained in a flat voice, as if reading a script. “She said she had urgent messages for her father, and instructed me to take her and the children. She said you had meetings with the army that could not be disturbed.” He glanced at Duncan. “She said she would not be so disrespectful to you and her father as to leave their new tutor behind.”

  The announcement seemed to confuse Arnold. “This shall be discussed with Lord Ramsey,” he said after a moment’s reflection, though his voice held more resentment than anger now. The vicar sighed, glanced back at the trunks, and pulled out a chair as the innkeeper’s wife set a third cup and saucer on the table. Crispin started to rise but was motioned back into his chair by a weary wave of Arnold’s hand. The vicar reached for the pot of tea and drank deeply before turning to Duncan. “I protested most vigorously your treatment by Major Pike. They had no right to restrain a member of our household.”

  Duncan offered the grateful nod he knew Arnold expected, then ate quickly and hurried out the rear door to the summer kitchen. The chamber was indeed empty, with no sign left of the dead man but a few cones from the cedar boughs and the stubs of the candles used in the vigil. He found the proprietor in the barnyard, speaking with Sergeant Fitch, who was wiping down Reverend Arnold’s horse. “Jacob’s body,” Duncan said, “you must have seen what happened to it.”

  “I collapsed onto my pallet at midnight,” the Dutchman replied. “Perhaps Fitch saw. He and the captain never slept in their beds.”

  Arnold appeared on the porch, calling the innkeeper, who muttered under his breath and trotted to the clergyman as Duncan stepped deeper into the shadows. A moment after Arnold followed the innkeeper into the building, his voice was raised in shrill outrage. The vicar’s anger upon discovering that Sarah was missing built like a
tempest. Scullery girls spilled out of the rear door, the proprietor’s wife out the front. Crispin finally emerged onto the porch, Arnold at his side, gesturing toward the barn. As the vicar’s commands for his horse to be saddled echoed into the yard, Fitch appeared, calmly explaining that the mare was now needed to pull the coach since Sarah had taken one of the team.

  “Which of the Ramsey vehicles shall we leave behind?” the sergeant asked when Arnold protested. “The grand coach or the wagon with the family belongings?” Arnold answered with a scowl, then accepted from Fitch the note written by Woolford, which the vicar read, frowning, and stuffed into his pocket.

  It was but the work of a few minutes for Duncan to steal away as the others readied the teams, entering through the empty kitchen into the silent barroom. On a shelf under the bar he quickly found the journal used by the innkeeper and scanned the column of names and payments made in the last ten days. Three nights earlier, before the Anna Rose had docked, Socrates Moon had stayed at the inn. The mysterious Greek who had accompanied Sarah to England-Adam’s secret correspondent-had crossed their path. Duncan studied the ornate handwriting, the odd way the double O’s in the signature overlapped, then with a shiver of excitement compared them to the writing on the first message from Jacob’s moccasin. The double O’s were identical. Socrates Moon had left the note for the old Mahican.

  A horse neighed outside. Duncan quickly scanned the rest of the ledger. Two nights before, a day after Moon, another man had stayed at the inn, as if he had been following Moon-a man Duncan knew had next gone on to the Ramsey house in New York town, to collect a dispatch case from Arnold. He had signed one scribbled name, without a Christian prefix. Hawkins.

  It was nearly noon of the fifth day of travel when they reached the first of the neat, cleared fields that marked Edentown, the Ramsey estate. Duncan had passed much of the time walking with the sergeant and Crispin, learning about the rugged geography they traversed and about the New World generally. They named for him unfamiliar trees like sugar maple, sassafras, hackberry, butternut, tulip poplar, and hickory, and sketched crude maps of the region with sticks in the earth as they sat at campfires. Their little caravan passed through small crossroads villages, where mills were often being constructed, past old houses of stone and newer ones of logs, where children in ragtag clothes peered shyly at the grand coach as it rolled by. Crispin pointed out birds that were unknown to Duncan and spoke of the native animals, like the porcupine whose elastic quills covered the medallion the butler had seen hanging from Duncan’s neck.