Eye of the Raven amoca-2

by Eliot Pattison

  Duncan forced himself up, staggered to the window, and collapsed under it to hold the paper in the pool of light, understanding the point of her parting words. The widow had been in Ramsey's library. Conawago had spoken to her, and she had found the pigpen code. Duncan frantically patted at his waist, then crawled to search the piles of tattered blankets at the end of the cot.

  His pouch with his notes of the codes from the trees, along with everything else he had had in his possession, was gone. But the signs on the first tree were burned into his memory. With his finger he drew in the dust on the floor the signs as he had seen them, beginning with the empty open-topped box, then an open-sided right angle tilted so its angle pointed to the center of the preceding box, ending with a complete, but empty square. His hand trembled as he consulted Conawago's chart. The first symbol was a B, the next a U. He quickly transcribed each letter, staring in confusion at the result. BURKE. The killer had simply recorded the name of his victim on the tree. It made no sense.

  He closed his eyes against a tremor of pain and found the fingers of one hand twitching uncontrollably, his frustration now adding to his weakness. This is how his life would end, in Ramsey's cellar, more and more of his body twitching, convulsing, as he lost control of it. Each day more of his brain would be burned away. He had bet his freedom, his very life, on finding the truth, yet each piece of the puzzle was more useless than the one before.

  He closed his eyes, adrift in despair, visited by a vision of the faces of those who had died on his prison ship. In the waking nightmare the dead came to life, each bloodless face turned to him in ridicule, pointing skeleton fingers at the paper in his hand.

  Four paces to the far wall, four paces back. Duncan's hours were divided into journeys from one end of his cell to the other as he struggled to restore the power of his limbs. At first it was all he could do to stagger from one wall to the other, his knees and ankles protesting every move, his toes still tingling with a strange heat. He exercised thirty minutes by the clock of the State House visible through his window, then rested for ten, eating the stale bread and cheese left by the Benevolent Society, building such an appetite that he even emptied the bowl of thin gruel shoved through his hatch twice a day.

  He tried to force from his mind his destiny as Ramsey's slave, recalling long discussions in the night with Conawago about war parties facing impossible odds against enemy tribes, how the warriors were taught to push away all fear, all thought of defeat, all thought of the morrow, to simply hold in their hearts the proud deeds of their forebears and the power of their gods. It was, he knew, little different from the training of the Highland clans, who had fought so many impossible foes through the centuries.

  He often glanced at Mrs. Bythe's chart of letters and paused in his travail long enough to write more signs. He could not trust his memory of the other signs on the trees, so instead he encoded in the dust by the window the names of the dead. Cooper. Bythe. Burke. Townsend. Duncan leaned on the windowsill, facing out, watching the prisoners exercise in the small yard below, watching the spiraling smoke of a hundred chimneys. If he pressed close to the bars he could see masts above rooftops, remembering there were ships half a mile away that would take on an able-bodied crewman without question, ships that could take him to the Scottish settlements in the Carolinas, to New York, to Holland, where he had friends, to Ireland, where many Highlanders had fled after the purges. He lost himself again in imaginings of a different life, of how in the night he would slip out of the cell and over the wall, then sail away from all his cares. But when night came his despair bore down on him again, the black thing pressing like a heavy weight on his heart. He fought it by recollecting conversations he had had with Conawago.

  His injured fingers kept curling up, and he considered, with the eye of the medical student, how the flow of electrical fluid affected even the smallest of muscles. Unwinding their linen bandage, he winced at the sight of the raw, oozing patches where his skin had been burned away, then pushed the fingers straight against the sill and watched them curl up again as if of their own volition.

  He did not know how long he was being watched, but slowly the hairs on his neck began to rise. He limped back to his cot and sat, waiting. Moments later he heard the grating of the metal in the lock, and the door swung open. Marston limped into the chamber, leaning on a cane. The scientist stared at the turnkey, who frowned but stepped back into the doorway and closed the door.

  Marston hurried to the door and closed the hatch. "You must not let them see you walking about."

  "Sorry?"

  "The best reason we have to keep you here is your medical condition. The jailer will not release you until you are healed. Ramsey is under the impression he has no need to hurry the paperwork for your transfer to his compound. I have food from Mrs. Bythe." Duncan saw now he carried a basket, which he placed by the stool. "And a message, from the physician who looked in on Skanawati. The chief wants you to know that he could not see the faces of those who attacked you. But he believes two were turnkeys, and a third man was giving them orders from the shadows."

  "I must beg your forgiveness," Duncan said. "You were caught in Ramsey's trap for me."

  Marston raised a dismissive hand. "We have survived. It was an illuminating experience to be on the other side of the jars. Illuminating," he repeated with a shallow laugh at his pun.

  "Perhaps you could use less severe charges in the future."

  Marston flushed. "I have already decided that the larger jars will no longer leave my premises."

  "Your equipment is lost. I regret having dragged you into my problems."

  "As I recollect it was I who sought you out that night," Marston said. "I have already written to Dr. Franklin. He will relish the exciting news from stale old Philadelphia. And the Benevolent Society has agreed to bear the cost of replacements."

  Duncan could not help but grin at the scientist's good will. "I fear I have another request. Might you roll up your left sleeve?"

  "Pardon?"

  "Your sleeve. In the. . in the confusion I thought I saw a mark. Like a bolt of lightning."

  Marston grimaced, but began rolling up the cuff of the linen shirt he wore under his sleeveless waistcoat. "Our badge." He exposed his upper arm, extending the mark with what Duncan took to be pride.

  It was a scar, a raised red scar in the shape of a jagged streak of lightning.

  "This is identical to one I saw on the arm of Captain Burke when I examined his body."

  "There are perhaps twenty of us in the Leyden Society. Natural philosophers interested in the advancement of the study of electrical fluids. Several of us," he added, "helped Dr. Franklin with his kites and lightning rods. We meet on the full moon and often send a kite up in a storm."

  Duncan's mind raced. "How could Captain Burke of Virginia be a member?"

  "He studied here. His father discouraged him, wanted him home, said his academics would be useless in running their estates. Once, when he was visiting, his father had him forcibly removed from one of our meetings. I think that's why he came back and joined us, an act of defiance."

  "Came back when?"

  "Last month Burke entertained us with that very story at our meeting. He was supposed to pick up maps in Baltimore and rendezvous with his troops at Fort Ligonier, supposed to take a boat from the James up the Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore. Instead he found a captain going up the Delaware Bay to Philadelphia, where better maps were available in any event."

  "He came back to join your Leyden Society?"

  Marston grinned awkwardly. "He came back to set the foundations for his new life, as he said to us. There was a party, where he drank and told us of his plans, perhaps more than he intended. His father also did not know he had a mistress here, did not know he had secretly accumulated enough money to buy a house in the city. He was a man of refined tastes, sent to boarding school in London as a boy, and after was never comfortable with the Virginia country life." He gazed down at his scar. "Joining the Soc
iety was his official welcome to Philadelphia. We have a little ceremony with a molded brass plate strapped to the arm through which we send a strong charge of electrical fluid. When we remove the plate the skin has been excited enough to produce the scar."

  Duncan looked at his own bandages. "It would be painful."

  "There is brandy involved."

  "Where did he get such a large amount of money?"

  "I don't know. It wasn't just the cost of a house. He was steadily buying shares in a merchant company, with the intention of supplying the frontier, was making regular payments to the owner."

  "But you said he did not like the rough life."

  "He was to stay in Philadelphia. He had some partner who was going to handle the frontier. There was final paperwork he had to sign here, based on the funds he already paid."

  "But the money," Duncan pressed, "where would new payments come from if not from his family?" He considered Marston's words again. "Are you suggesting he was being paid by someone in Philadelphia?"

  Marston shrugged. "A gentleman does not ask about such things."

  Duncan turned and braced himself on the window again, gazing out over the busy city. "So Burke left from here to join his men," he mused out loud.

  "Is that important?"

  "Very." Duncan eyed Marston carefully, trying to judge just how far to trust him, then realized he had little choice. "Can you speak with the Benevolent Society again? Can you find Hadley?"

  "Yes, on both counts."

  Duncan began explaining what he needed.

  The Benevolent Society arrived in force that afternoon, announcing a spring cleaning of the musty cells. Duncan watched as the jailer argued about the abrupt appearance of a dozen workers but saw his resistance fade before three Quakers matrons, including Mrs. Bythe, as they chided him. One went so far as to wave her Scripture at him.

  He was in his cot when they came for him. Mrs. Bythe guided two large men who had fashioned a carrying stretcher out of a blanket and two long poles. Duncan feigned unconsciousness, kept his eyes closed as they carried him out and down the stairs, did not open them until he was set upon a pallet in a corner of the yard. Moments later two turnkeys appeared with a confused but compliant Skanawati. They argued only a moment before remitting custody of the Iroquois to Mrs. Bythe, who resolved their doubt with a coin pressed into each man's palm and a reassurance that they could watch their prisoner from the doorway. The Quakers, Duncan had decided, were as resourceful as they were devout.

  The workers, most dressed in black or gray, many with broadrimmed hats pulled low on their heads, began hauling soiled pallets and chamber pots out of the cells to the opposite corner. Two benches were arranged at right angles to the walls by Duncan and Skanawati, forming a small square by a cart of fresh straw that obscured them from the gate. The three women sat and began stuffing new pallets with straw as they sang a hymn. Skanawati, regarding the Quakers uncomfortably, had taken a step as if to retreat when one of the men in gray touched his arm and pushed his hat back.

  "We give thanks you made it through the forest." It was Conawago.

  The Iroquois slowly nodded, following Conawago's example as the old Nipmuc sat cross-legged on the ground beside Duncan.

  Other workers gathered nearby with tubs of water and lye soap to wash the chamber pots, and more settled on the benches as if for a prayer meeting, further assuring their little assembly would have no unwanted onlookers. Duncan suddenly realized he knew all the new arrivals as they lifted their wide hats. Hadley, Marston, even Mokie, Becca, and her infant, Penn, were there. Duncan pushed back the thought that it was probably the last time he would see any of them and focused instead on the urgent need to draw the truth out. He leaned forward, handed Conawago the slip with Mrs. Bythe's chart of the code, then began to explain what he had learned.

  They listened as he recounted how the killer had left codes that the fleeing slaves would carry, how the evidence had been contrived to cast suspicion on the Iroquois, how the codes were known to a small number of intellectuals in Philadelphia, how Captain Burke had joined his men on false pretenses, after secretly attending to his new life in Philadelphia.

  "But why would the killer need to record the names of his own victims?" Hadley asked. He pulled a scrap of paper and a writing lead from his pocket, taking notes on his knee. He was keeping his own chronicle of the evidence.

  "Because he was being paid for each one. Piecework. Because he was moving around unpredictably and could not report back in person each time he struck. Because Burke and his secret partner were obligated to make ongoing payments for their new business. And it was too dangerous to send a written message. So the escaping slaves carried the coded messages to Shamokin, where they would be received by the merchant Waller, who corresponded with a Philadelphia bank."

  He ended by explaining how the raiders had taken Burke's body.

  "But that was an act of war," Mrs. Bythe observed.

  "That's what we were supposed to think," Duncan agreed. "Just as the first Skanawati, the one who died last winter, was supposed to think Townsend was dealing with French Indians. But they weren't French Indians. Some may have been Hurons, may have even traveled sometimes with Huron raiders, but they were outlaws working for the killer, who could not afford to have the body returned, since the scar would prove that Burke had recently been in Philadelphia."

  "Even so … " Hadley began.

  "Your cousin had signed a contract to buy a house here."

  "Impossible!" Hadley rejoined. "He had been promised a large tract of the western lands. He had no funds to buy a house."

  "He had a mistress here. He was never going to live on that tract. In fact his actions show that he had great confidence that the Virginians would never perfect their title to that tract. He did not know the depths of the evil he swam in. The money offered to him here allowed him to make a new life. He cared little if it meant helping to prevent the Virginia land titles being perfected for he did not intend to return to Virginia. He recruited Townsend, gave him a promise that his work would be published. He helped with the runaway slaves. But he knew too much. And he drank too much. Perhaps those behind the killings had intended to eliminate him all along. After all, for the rest of his life his knowledge would be a threat to them."

  "But who would ever recognize such a scar?" Mrs. Bythe said. "There's only a small number of educated men in Philadelphia who would know the significance of this lightning bolt."

  "Exactly," Duncan replied. The Quakers stared at him as his meaning sank in.

  "But Mokie," Hadley put in after a moment, "surely they have nothing to fear from Mokie." The Virginian glanced at the girl, walking along the wall with her infant brother in her arms.

  "Mokie knows something more," Duncan suggested, "information she probably doesn't think important. But something the killers fear. Keep her close."

  Skanawati watched the clouds as Duncan spoke, seeming not to listen until Hadley leaned forward. "We have found a lawyer. He will write a formal opinion that Skanawati's confession is not valid."

  "But it was given before so many witnesses," Duncan said with an uncertain glance at the Iroquois chief.

  "The lawyer says that what is recited before a military tribunal at Fort Ligonier may not be used in a provincial court. The tribunal was convened by the commander of the fort. That Magistrate Brindle sat at his bench does not change the point of law."

  "Surely," Duncan said, "the Virginia negotiators will never tolerate this. They must be placated for the treaty to succeed."

  Conawago fixed Duncan with a pointed gaze. "Our Virginian friend and I have found a political solution."

  Hadley leaned closer to Duncan. "Each of the three partiesVirginia, Pennsylvania, and the Iroquois-must obtain something of value from the treaty. The Virginians wanted the western tract, the Iroquois want their supplies, Pennsylvania wants security on the western frontier."

  "Exactly. The Virginians will never give up on hanging Skanawati unless
they get their land."

  "There is, in fact, another condolence as important to them, something even more important to the citizens of Virginia. Wives and children."

  "I'm sorry?"

  "Conawago has spoken with the Iroquois chiefs. They calculate over two hundred Virginia prisoners are among the western tribes. Their return will be offered up. The treaty negotiators from Virginia would be tarred and feathered if they ever took land over the return of loved ones. The Iroquois will get their supplies, the Virginians will get the returned prisoners."

  "And Pennsylvania?"

  "Penn's colony will get the western fortresses it needs to secure the borders."

  Duncan spoke loudly, slowly, to be sure Skanawati understood. "You are saying the treaty could be accomplished without any land being ceded by the tribes, without the Virginians taking the land they claim now, without a hanging?"

  "All treaties involve compromise. Yes."

  Skanawati slowly moved his gaze toward Duncan.

  "You can go home to move your village," Duncan said to the Onondaga.

  "The Virginians demand that the chief be held until the treaty is signed. For security."

  "Then he needs to be removed from the hole he is kept in," Duncan insisted. "I will exchange cells with him."

  Hadley and Conawago shared an uneasy glance. "The final negotiations are not to be held in Philadelphia," the Virginian declared. "The tribes are uneasy here, mindful of how many Indians who linger here die of European disease. Some Indians are already gone. And the city fathers are uncomfortable with so many Indians camped at the city edge. There are complaints. Last night there was a march of citizens to the State House demanding their removal. Lord Ramsey met with the governor."

  "I don't understand."

  "The negotiations are moving north, to the border of Iroquoia, to the town of the Moravians on the Lehigh River. The treaty is to be concluded at Bethlehem, the chief released there when it is signed."

  Duncan finally grasped why his friends were not more cheerful in relating their news. With the treaty delegation moving north he would be in Ramsey's hands. He would be denied the final act of the great drama. "The Moravians are more welcoming to the tribes than any others," he said neutrally.