Donner blinked, having not expected that question.
“Jeez, I dunno,” he said helplessly “Short dude, I think. White hair. Wore it long, like we all did.” He raked a hand through his knotted locks in illustration, brows furrowed in the search for memory.
“A rather … wide … forehead?” I knew I oughtn’t to prompt him, but couldn’t help myself, and drew both index fingers across my own brow in illustration.
He stared at me in confusion for a moment.
“Man, I don’t remember,” he said, shaking his head helplessly. “It was a long time ago. How would I remember something like that?”
I sighed.
“Well, tell me what happened, when you came through the stones.”
Donner licked his lips, blinking in the effort of recall. It wasn’t just native stupidity, I saw; he didn’t like thinking about it.
“Yeah. Well, there were five of us, like I said. Me, and Rob, and Jeremy and Atta. Oh, and Jojo. We came through on the island, and—”
“What island?” Brianna, Ian, and I all chorused together.
“Ocracoke,” he said, looking surprised. “It’s the northmost portal in the Bermuda Triangle group. We wanted to be as close as we could get to—”
“The Ber—” Brianna and I began, but broke off, looking at each other.
“You know where a number of these portals are?” I said, striving for calm.
“How many are there?” Brianna chimed in, not waiting for his answer.
The answer, in any event, was confused—no surprise there. Raymond had told them that there were many such places in the world, but that they tended to occur in groups. There was such a group in the Caribbean, another in the Northeast, near the Canadian border. Another in the Southwestern desert—Arizona, he thought, and down through Mexico. Northern Britain and the coast of France, as far as the tip of the Iberian peninsula. Probably more, but that’s all he’d mentioned.
Not all of the portals were marked with stone circles, though those in places where people had lived for a long time tended to be.
“Raymond said those were safer,” he said, shrugging. “I dunno why.”
The spot on Ocracoke hadn’t been bounded by a full circle of stones, though it was marked. Four stones, he said. One of them had marks on it Raymond said were African—maybe made by slaves.
“It’s kind of in the water,” he said, shrugging. “A little stream runs through it, I mean. Ray said he didn’t know about water, whether that made any difference, but he thought it might. But we didn’t know what kind of difference. You guys know?”
Brianna and I shook our heads, round-eyed as a pair of owls. Ian’s brow, already furrowed, drew further down at this, though. Had he heard something, during his time with Geillis Duncan?
The five of them—and Raymond—had driven as far as they could; the road that led down the Outer Banks was a poor one, which tended to wash away in storms, and they were obliged to leave the car several miles away from the spot, struggling through the scrub pines of the coastal forest and patches of unexpected quicksand. It was late fall—
“Samhain,” Brianna said softly, but softly enough that Donner was not distracted from the flow of his story.
Late fall, he said, and the weather was bad. It had been raining for days, and the footing was uncertain, slippery and boggy by turns. The wind was high, and the storm surge pounded the beaches; they could hear it, even in the secluded spot where the portal lay.
“We were all scared—maybe all but Rob—but it was way exciting, man,” he said, beginning to show a glimmer of enthusiasm. “The trees were just about layin’ down flat, and the sky, it was green. The wind was so bad, you could taste salt, all the time, because little bits of ocean were flying through the air, mixed with the rain. We were, like, soaked through to our choners.”
“Your what?” Ian said, frowning.
“Underpants—you know, drawers. Smallclothes,” Brianna said, flapping an impatient hand. “Go on.”
Once arrived at the place, Raymond had checked them all, to see that they carried the few necessities they might need—tinderboxes, tobacco, a little money of the time—and then given each one a wampum necklet, and a small leather pouch, which he said was an amulet of ceremonial herbs.
“Oh, you know about that,” he said, seeing the expression on my face. “What kind did you use?”
“I didn’t,” I said, not wanting him to wander from his story. “Go on. How did you plan to hit the right time?”
“Oh. Well.” He sighed, hunching on his stool. “We didn’t. Ray said it would be just about two hundred years, give or take a couple. It wasn’t like we could steer—that’s what I was hoping you guys would know. How to get to a specific time. ’Cuz, boy, I’d sure like to go back and get there before I got messed up with Ray and them.”
They had, at Raymond’s direction, walked a pattern among the stones, chanting words. Donner had no idea what the words meant, nor even what the language was. At the conclusion of the pattern, though, they had walked single file toward the stone with African markings, passing carefully to the left of it.
“And, like—pow!” He smacked a fist into the palm of his other hand. “First guy in line—he’s gone, man! We were just freaked out. I mean, that’s what was s’posed to happen, but … gone,” he repeated, shaking his head. “Just … gone.”
Agog at this evidence of effectiveness, they had repeated the pattern and the chant, and at each repetition, the first man to pass the stone had vanished. Donner had been the fourth.
“Oh, God,” he said, going pale at the memory. “Oh, God, I never felt anything like that before and I hope I never do again.”
“The amulet—the pouch you had,” Brianna said, ignoring his pallor. Her own face was intense, blazing with interest. “What happened to that?”
“I dunno. I maybe dropped it, maybe it went someplace else. I passed out, and when I came to, it wasn’t with me.” The day was warm and close, but he began to shiver. “Jojo. He was with me. Only he was dead.”
That statement struck me like a knife blow, just under the ribs. Geillis Duncan’s notebooks had held lists of people found near stone circles—some alive, some dead. I hadn’t needed anything to tell me that the journey through the stones was a perilous passage—but this reminder made me feel weak in the knees, and I sat down on Jocasta’s tufted ottoman.
“The others,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Did they …”
He shook his head. He was still clammy and shivering, but sweat glazed his face; he looked very unwell.
“Never saw ’em again,” he said.
He didn’t know what had killed Jojo; didn’t pause to look, though he had a vague notion that there might have been burn marks on his shirt. Finding his friend dead, and none of the others nearby, he had stumbled off in a panic through scrub forest and salt marsh, collapsing after several hours of wandering, lying in the sand dunes among stiff grass all night. He had starved for three days, found and eaten a nest of turtle eggs, eventually made his way to the mainland on a stolen canoe, and thereafter had drifted haplessly, working here and there at menial jobs, seeking refuge in drink when he could afford it, falling into company with Hodgepile and his gang a year or so past.
The wampum necklets, he said, were to allow the conspirators to identify each other should they meet at some point—but he had never seen anybody else wearing one.
Brianna wasn’t paying attention to this rambling part of the story, though; she had jumped ahead.
“Do you think Otter-Tooth—Springer—screwed up your group by deliberately trying to go to a different time?”
He looked at her, mouth hanging open a little.
“I never thoughta that. He went first. He went first,” he repeated, in a wondering sort of way.
Brianna began to ask another question, but was interrupted by the sound of voices in the hall, coming toward the morning room. Donner was on his feet in an instant, eyes wide with alarm.
Before I could inquire exactly why he thought so, or who “him” was, the austere form of Ulysses appeared in the doorway.
“You,” he said to the cowering Donner, in awful tones. “Did I not tell you to begone, sirrah? How dare you to enter Mrs. Innes’s house and pester her relations?”
He stepped aside, then, with a nod to whomever stood beside him, and a small, round, cross-looking gentleman in a rumpled suit peered in.
“That’s him,” he said, pointing an accusatory finger. “That’s the blackguard what stole my purse at Jacobs’s ordinary this morning! Took it right out my pocket whilst I was eatin’ ham for breakfast!”
“It wasn’t me!” Donner made a poor attempt at a show of outrage, but guilt was written all over his face, and when Ulysses seized him by the scruff of the neck and unceremoniously rummaged his clothing, the purse was discovered, to the outspoken gratification of the owner.
“Thief!” he cried, shaking his fist. “I been a-following of you all the morning. Damn’ tick-bellied, louse-ridden, dog-eatin’ savage—oh, I do beg pardon, ladies,” he added, bowing to me and Brianna as an afterthought before resuming his denunciation of Donner.
Brianna glanced at me, eyebrows raised, but I shrugged. There was no way of preserving Donner from the righteous wrath of his victim, even had I really wanted to. At the gentleman’s behest, Ulysses summoned a pair of grooms and a set of manacles—the sight of which made Brianna grow somewhat pale—and Donner was marched off, protesting that he hadn’t done it, he’d been framed, wasn’t him, he was a friend of the ladies, really, man, ask ’em! … to be conveyed to the gaol in Cross Creek.
There was a deep silence in the wake of his removal. At last, Ian shook his head as though trying to rid himself of flies, and putting down the palette knife at last, picked up the sketching block, where Brianna had made Donner try to draw the pattern he said the men had walked. A hopeless scrawl of circles and squiggles, it looked like one of Jemmy’s drawings.
“What kind of name is Weddigo?” Ian asked, putting it down.
Brianna had been clutching her pencil so tightly that her knuckles were white. She unfolded her hand and put it down, and I saw that her hands were shaking slightly.
“Wendigo,” she said. “It’s an Ojibway cannibal spirit that lives in the wood. It howls in storms and eats people.”
Ian gave her a long look.
“Nice fellow,” he said.
“Wasn’t he, just.” I felt more than a little shaken myself. Apart from the shock of Donner’s appearance and revelations, and then his arrest, small jolts of memory—vivid images of my first meeting with him—kept shooting uncontrollably through my mind, despite my efforts to shut them out. I could taste blood in my mouth, and the stink of unwashed men drowned the scent of flowers from the terrace.
“I suppose it’s what one would call a nom de guerre,” I said, with an attempt at nonchalance. “He can’t have been christened that, surely.”
“Are you all right, Mama?” Bree was frowning at me. “Shall I get something? A glass of water?”
“Whisky,” Ian and I said in unison, and I laughed, despite the shakiness. By the time it arrived, I was in command of myself again.
“What do you think will happen to him, Ulysses?” I asked, as he held the tray for me. The butler’s stolidly handsome face showed nothing beyond a mild distaste for the recent visitor; I saw him frown at the scumbled bits of dirt that Donner’s shoes had left on the parquet floor.
“I suppose they will hang him,” he said. “Mr. Townsend—that was the gentleman’s name—had ten pound in the purse he stole.” More than enough to merit hanging. The eighteenth century took a dim view of thievery; as little as a pound could incur a capital sentence.
“Good,” said Ian, with obvious approval.
I felt a small lurch of the stomach. I disliked Donner, distrusted him, and to be honest, really didn’t feel that his death would be a great loss to humanity, by and large. But he was a fellow traveler; did that impose any obligation on our part to help him? More importantly, perhaps—did he have any more information that he hadn’t told us yet?
“Mr. Townsend has gone to Campbelton,” the butler added, offering the tray to Ian. “To ask Mr. Farquard to attend to the case promptly, as he is bound for Halifax, and wishes to give his witness at once.” Farquard Campbell was a justice of the peace—and likely the only thing approaching a judge within the county, since the Circuit Court had ceased to operate.
“They won’t hang him before tomorrow, though, I don’t suppose,” Brianna said. She didn’t normally drink whisky, but had taken a glass now; the encounter had shaken her, too. I saw she had turned the ring around upon her finger, rubbing the big ruby absentmindedly with her thumb.
“No,” said Ian, looking at her suspiciously. “Ye dinna mean to—” He glanced at me. “No!” he said in horror at the indecision he saw on my face. “Yon fellow’s a thief and a blackguard, and if ye didna see him burning and killing wi’ your own eyes, Auntie, ye ken well enough he did it. For God’s sake, let them hang him and have done!”
“Well …” I said, wavering. The sound of footsteps and voices in the hall saved me answering. Jamie and Duncan had been in Cross Creek; now they were back. I felt an overwhelming flood of relief at sight of Jamie, who loomed up in the doorway, sunburned and ruddy, dusty from riding.
“Hang who?” he inquired cheerfully.
Jamie’s opinion was the same as Ian’s; let them hang Donner, and good riddance. He was reluctantly persuaded that either Brianna or I must talk to the man at least once more, though, to be sure there was nothing further he could tell us.
“I’ll speak to the gaoler,” he said without enthusiasm. “Mind, though”—he pointed a monitory finger at me—“neither of ye is to go anywhere near the man, save Ian or I am with ye.”
“What do you think he’d do?” Brianna was ruffled, annoyed at his tone. “He’s about half my size, for heaven’s sake!”
“And a rattlesnake is smaller yet,” her father replied. “Ye wouldna walk into a room with one of those, only because ye outweigh him, I hope?”
Ian snickered at that, and Brianna gave him an elbow, hard in the ribs.
“Anyway,” Jamie said, ignoring them, “I’ve a bit of news. And a letter from Roger Mac,” he said. He pulled it out of his shirt, smiling at Bree. “If ye’re no too distracted to read it?”
She lit up like a candle and grabbed it. Ian made a teasing snatch at it, and she slapped his hand away, laughing, and ran out of the room to read it in privacy.
“What sort of news?” I asked. Ulysses had left the tray and decanter; I poured a tot into my empty glass and gave it to Jamie.
“Someone’s seen Manfred McGillivray,” he replied. “Slàinte.” He drained the glass, looking contented.
“Oh, aye? Where?” Ian looked less than pleased at this news. For myself, I was thrilled.
“In a brothel, where else?”
Unfortunately, his informant had not been able to supply the exact location of said brothel—having likely been too drunk at the time to know precisely where he was, as Jamie cynically observed—but had been reasonably sure that it was in Cross Creek or Campbelton. Also unfortunately, the sighting was several weeks old. Manfred might well have moved on.
“It’s a start, though,” I said, hopeful. Penicillin was effective, even against more advanced cases of syphilis, and I had some brewing in the winter kitchen, even now. “I’ll go with you, when you go to the gaol. Then after we’ve spoken with Donner, we can go look for the brothel.”
Jamie’s look of contentment lessened appreciably.
“What? Why?”
“I dinna think Manfred would be still there, Auntie,” Ian said, patently amused. “I doubt he’d have the money, for one thing.”
“Oh, ha ha,” I said. “He might have said where he was staying, mightn’t he? Besides, I want to know whether he was sho
wing any symptoms.” In my own time, it might be ten, twenty, or even thirty years after the appearance of the initial chancre before further syphilitic symptoms developed; in this time, though, syphilis was a much more fulminant disease—a victim could die within a year of infection. And Manfred had been gone for more than three months; God knew how long since he had first contracted the infection.
Jamie looked distinctly unenthused about the idea of searching for brothels; Ian seemed rather more interested.
“I’ll help look,” he volunteered. “Fergus can come, too; he kens a great deal about whores—they’d likely talk to him.”
“Fergus? Fergus is here?”
“He is,” Jamie said. “That was the other bit of news. He’s payin’ his respects to my aunt at the moment.”
“Why is he here, though?”
“Well, ye heard the talk at the barbecue, aye? About Mr. Simms, the printer, and his troubles? It seems they’ve got worse, and he thinks of selling up, before someone burns his shop to the ground and him in it. It struck me that perhaps it would suit Fergus and Marsali, better than the farming. So I sent word for him to come down, and maybe have a word wi’ Simms.”
“That’s a brilliant idea!” I said. “Only … what would Fergus use for money to buy it?”
Jamie coughed and looked evasive.
“Aye, well. I imagine some sort of bargain might be struck. Particularly if Simms is anxious to sell up.”
“All right,” I said, resigned. “I don’t suppose I want to know the gory details. But Ian—” I turned to him, fixing him with a beady eye. “Far be it from me to offer you moral advice. But you are not—repeat, not—to be questioning whores in any deeply personal manner. Do I make myself clear?”
“Auntie!” he said, pretending shock. “The idea!” But a broad grin spread across his tattooed face.
56
TAR AND FEATHERS
In the event, I let Jamie go alone to the gaol to make arrangements for seeing Donner. He had assured me that this would be simpler without my presence, and I had several errands in Cross Creek. Besides the usual salt, sugar, pins, and other household goods needing replenishment, I urgently needed more cinchona bark for Lizzie. The gallberry ointment worked to treat malarial attacks, but was not nearly so effective as Jesuit bark in preventing them.
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