Eye of the Raven

by Eliot Pattison

  The old Nipmuc sipped, then coughed, gritting his teeth against the pain. “Good,” he said after a moment. “Take her now and put her in a little circle of that ochre in a pool of moonlight. Someone should sit with her to say words of comfort. If I were able I would sit with her all night.”

  “We will do it together soon.”

  Conawago somehow managed a smile. “Sit with her, tell her the last of the Nipmucs lived with honor.” His good hand reached onto the straw to grip something else, the little fur amulet given him by Skanawati.

  “No. We will do it together,” Duncan repeated.

  Conawago coughed again, closing his eyes as if to gather his strength. “Might I ask one more favor?”

  Duncan, finding his tongue would not work, nodded.

  “Stay near the tree they pick,” Conawago said, his breathing labored now. “I would like to gaze on the face of a friend. Then return the little god to her cave. It was a fool’s errand.” He smiled weakly then slipped into unconsciousness.

  Duncan pointed Hadley to a bucket with a rag hanging on its side and began cleaning the old man’s wounds.

  “He . . . he speaks well,” Hadley ventured over Duncan’s shoulder.

  “I daresay he is the best-educated man in the fort. Conawago was brought up in Jesuit schools. He speaks English, French, and half a dozen native tongues. He knows more about healing than most doctors in Europe.” Punctuating his words was a rustling sound from one of the darkened chambers further down the corridor. No doubt there were rats in the shadows. He pulled the linen bandage roll from his belt and began wrapping the broken finger against the adjacent one.

  “He had his knife out, McCallum. Why did he have his knife out if he was trying to tend my cousin’s wounds?”

  Duncan did not reply at first, only searched the tail of Conawago’s shirt. After a moment he showed Hadley where a small strip had been sliced away. “To cut a bandage. He is innocent.”

  “That is for the court to decide.”

  “Court? You mean Major Latchford, the Indian hater, and a mob of Virginians in the payroll of the Burke family?” When Hadley did not reply Duncan gestured to Conawago’s shoulder. “Help me lean him against the wall, so he can drink more.”

  When they lifted the ladle to Conawago’s lips, his eyes fluttered open again. “Not me. You can do more for her,” he said weakly, extending a trembling hand toward the shadow.

  Duncan hesitated, glancing at Hadley, who shrugged. A muffled cry rose from the darkness.

  The two figures were in the deepest and darkest of the chambers, and they reacted to the light of the lantern by burying their faces in the tattered sacks left them as blankets.

  “We mean you no harm,” Duncan declared. Two wide, shining white eyes emerged from a blanket. The girl, in late adolescence, leaned over as if to protect the second figure, who lay under sackcloth, writhing. Duncan advanced slowly, his hands open before him, and knelt beside them. The figure in agony was a woman of perhaps thirty, her dark, handsome face contorted with as much fear as pain.

  Hadley groaned. The lantern fell from his fingers.

  “You know her?” Duncan asked as he grabbed the lantern.

  Now he saw that Hadley’s face too was gripped in fear. “She . . . they belong to Colonel Burke, back in Virginia.” He said nothing more.

  Duncan lifted the lantern closer to the two prisoners. Their skin was a light cocoa color, African hints in their features.

  “Damn the French for toying with lives the way they do,” Hadley murmured.

  “The French?” Duncan asked.

  “Rumors have spread like wildfire back home, from the Piedmont to the ports. Any slave who can make it to the French-controlled Ohio country will be granted their freedom and given land to work. A cheap way of blocking British plans.”

  The girl had clearly recognized the Virginian. Tears were streaming down her face. “Mama needs help, Mr. Hadley.”

  Duncan’s companion seemed about to bolt.

  “Please, Mr. Hadley,” the girl pleaded. “It’s the only reason the soldiers found us. Mama cried out from all the pain.”

  “Mokie . . . no,” Hadley answered, retreating a step.

  Duncan put a restraining hand on his arm. “I can’t do this alone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Fetch me clean blankets, even if you have to steal them from the major himself. The officers’ quarters may have their stove banked for the night. Boil some water.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Duncan threw back the sacks covering the woman. “Your uncle’s slave is about to have a baby.”

  By the time Duncan emerged from the guardhouse the eastern trees were mottled with gray light. His heart sank as he saw men running to the officers’ quarters, and he dropped onto a split log bench, too exhausted to worry about the verbal and probably physical flagellation he was about to receive for breaking into the jail and interfering with the prisoners. Yet he was not merely overcome with fatigue. For the moment he was seized also by an odd flush of satisfaction. He had delivered a healthy infant boy. The woman herself, Becca by name, had been more experienced than either Duncan or Hadley, but Duncan had played the role of the midwife.

  He had an unexpected longing to write a letter to Sarah Ramsey in the New York colony, who had claimed his heart the year before, to tell of delivering his first baby. Then an officer appeared at a fast, hopping pace, buttoning his gaiters as he moved out of the officer’s quarters, spitting invective at the soldier who trotted in front of him. Duncan looked into his hands, stained from the night’s work, collecting himself, bracing himself. But suddenly more invective rose from the outer gate, still lit by lanterns. A chorus of new angry voices erupted from outside the walls.

  “My God, McCallum,” came a weary voice behind him. “I never . . .” Hadley failed to complete the sentence as he dropped onto the bench beside him. “Becca said her son is named Penn. When I was leaving the old Indian called out.”

  Duncan, only half listening, was watching the officer at the gate. Then the words registered. “Conawago is awake?”

  “He asked to see the little boy, to hold him. Mokie brought him, and he whispered in the boy’s ear, an Indian prayer, I think, and told her he would have a long and rewarding life.”

  Duncan kept watching the gate, slowly realizing that the sudden activity marked the unexpected, early arrival of the treaty delegation. “A prayer?” he asked, turning to Hadley.

  “Thanking the gods. He said it was a very good omen, that a young one arrives when the old depart, that the spirits were saying they are ready to welcome him today.”

  “Tell me, McCallum,” Latchford demanded, “who is the commanding officer responsible for the rangers in this theater of war?”

  Duncan fought to steady himself. He had been at the well, washing his hands, when Latchford’s men had dragged him into the major’s office. “Captain Woolford is the only name I need to know.”

  An icy grin grew on Latchford’s face. “What is the monthly pay for one of the king’s rangers?”

  Duncan stared silently at the officer.

  The amusement in the major’s eyes fanned into a smoldering anger. “What is the official kit issued to a ranger?”

  “The rangers, sir, are irregulars. Some serve as the need arises.”

  “You have the stench of a fugitive. I should clamp you in irons right now, McCallum,” the officer snapped, then gestured to a piece of folded foolscap on his desk beside one of the brown envelopes used for army business. “I have already drafted a letter to Philadelphia seeking the truth about you. If I decide you have stolen that badge I will hang you forthwith. I could write the order this morning. A double hanging would be excellent for discipline. We have enough damned Scots in the infantry. We don’t need more skulking about the wilderness.”

  Duncan lifted his gaze from the letter. He could ill afford to have inquiries about him raised with senior officers. He returned the major’s s
tare, the fog in his head beginning to lift as he recognized the note of invitation in Latchford’s voice. “What is it you want, Major?”

  “This matter must be settled today, immediately.”

  “The treaty convoy has been arriving since dawn,” Duncan noted. “It’s a day early.”

  “It is but the vanguard. The delegates are hours behind. The Virginians have declared that if justice is not served out today they will take the prisoner back to Virginia for punishment. I will not tell my general I lost thirty good wilderness fighters over some aged savage who should have been in his grave years ago.”

  More importantly, Duncan decided, Latchford could not jeopardize the treaty by conducting a murder trial in front of the treaty dignitaries. “He is innocent.”

  “There is not a damned Indian on this continent who is innocent. He will hang. Your work in the infirmary was . . . acceptable. You have proven yourself an educated man. What I need from you now is the evidence collected, in a neat package I can send to Philadelphia to explain our actions. I have no time to both attend to the delegation and write the report that is required. I need a summary of the evidence that will be read and filed away without raising further questions. If you need to visit the murder scene I will provide an escort. We can afford no distractions in the work of the king.”

  “You mean you can’t afford to have a killing disrupt the treaty negotiations.”

  Latchford’s eyes flared. “With the right report we can avoid a lengthy trial. And I will refrain from pressing those uncomfortable questions about you.” He lifted the envelope and pointedly tapped its corner on his desk.

  “The evidence does not say Conawago is the killer.”

  “You misunderstand. I require the medical expertise you demonstrated to me. I know you secretly examined the body. A vivid description of the wounds. A seasoning of Latin. Wounds made by a tomahawk, a knife, a club. I will officially connect them to the prisoner in my judicial findings. You say the condemned was trained by Jesuits. Obviously a French sympathizer. No one will begrudge us for dispatching another enemy of the king. You were an eyewitness. Perhaps you are ready to reconsider what you saw. Give me the report I need and you will be back in your forsaken wilderness by nightfall.”

  “I will not help to hang him.”

  Latchford made a gesture at the sentry. “Then I will place you in a cell where you can watch the old fool twist on his rope. After which you can rot for a few weeks until I write the report describing how you impersonated a ranger. It will give me time to build you a proper gibbet. Help me hang your Indian,” the major spat, “or I will hang you.”

  Chapter Three

  DUNCAN HAD NEVER truly walked in a forest before until he had walked with Conawago. The old Nipmuc had first taught him how to listen and smell, how to see things he had never seen before, how to move without disturbing the forest floor, but only after subjecting him to long hours of cleansing rituals. The grime of the European world had to be scoured from his skin, washed from his ears and nose, Conawago had insisted. The winter before, they had spent days on a remote mountain building an elaborate sweat lodge, then alternated between the lodge and a pool of icy water as the old Indian murmured to the spirits, staying up for hours each night to watch stars and meteors. Finally Conawago had stood at the edge of a high cliff and shouted up to the sky that this Scot from across the sea was ready for the gods to take notice of him.

  The magic of those hours would dwell in Duncan’s heart forever, and he embraced it again as he approached the murder scene, trying to clear his mind of the fear he felt for the old Nipmuc who lay, bleeding and broken, in Latchford’s jail.

  The earth around the scene of the murder had been pressed down with the shoes and moccasins of so many men it was impossible to make sense of the tracks. Duncan paused repeatedly, raising his hand for Van Grut and McGregor to halt as he studied the forest before them, straining to re-create in his mind’s eye the scene as he and Conawago had found it. As McGregor took up a position as sentinel, Duncan showed Van Grut where the body had leaned against the big beech tree and pointed out the patch of darkened soil where Winston Burke’s lifeblood had drained. The large nail that had pinned his hand was still in the tree, stained with blood its entire length.

  “Suppose you are the murderer,” Duncan said to Van Grut after pacing along the front of the tree, reconstructing the crime. He paused, considering the intense worry in the Dutchman’s face. He had not hesitated when Van Grut had volunteered to join him, welcoming the pair of scientifically trained eyes, but now the Dutchman seemed to be having second thoughts. “You stupefy Burke with a blow of your hand ax to the head then drive the nail through his left hand to pin him to the tree before slashing the leg.”

  The Dutchman knelt and studied the spike. “Why a nail?”

  It was a question Duncan had asked himself during the ride from the fort. Nails were precious commodities on the frontier, where structures were typically joined with wooden pegs, not iron. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “A sharpened peg would have worked, even a heavy locust thorn. Indians don’t use nails.”

  “They steal from our forge all the time,” McGregor corrected him, “use ’em to tip their battle axes, or for trade. Good as money back in their towns, I hear.”

  Duncan acknowledged the truth of the words with a grimace, then eased the nail out with the edge of his tomahawk, reminding himself that there were many across the sea who would use the metal as a talisman to ward off evil. But here the nail had done the work of the devil. Or had Burke been the devil to be fended off?

  The head had an unusual crosshatch design. “Does your forge make this design on its nails?”

  McGregor studied it and shook his head.

  Other pieces of metal had figured in the death, Duncan reminded himself as he dropped the nail into his belt pouch beside the lump of copper from Burke’s mouth. The nail. The gear. The copper. None had been required for the killing. The murderer had been acting on some broader stage. But to what purpose? he asked himself. The objects would have had meaning for someone. Which meant they were intended to convey a message from the killer.

  Burke had been scouting, his cousin had insisted. Duncan found the explanation hard to believe, but certainly Burke had been alone and had left his camp before dawn. He reconstructed the scene in his mind’s eye once more. Burke’s britches and stockings had not shown the heavy dew damp of hard travel through the undergrowth, meaning he had arrived from the Forbes Road, no more than thirty minutes ahead of his men. There had been no fresh tracks on the trail or Conawago and Duncan would have noticed them. Burke had turned off the road up the Warriors Path and gone to the massive beech tree that marked the trail, as if seeking it out.

  He looked back at the Dutchman. Van Grut’s face was clouding with worry.

  Duncan had not forgotten the words first spoken by Latchford. Why this particular Virginian, why this particular day? The major had left out another important question. “Why this particular tree?” Duncan asked.

  “It is a grand specimen, huge.” The Dutchman eyed the road as if suddenly thinking of bolting. McGregor stepped closer to him.

  “I’ve seen larger,” Duncan replied as he studied the forest, slowly stepping around the tree, examining now the worn earth and the long shadow that snaked off into the forest. The Warriors Path had been used for centuries by tribesmen traveling to the south and west. He recalled how in their own journey Conawago had led Duncan off it to follow the Forbes Road, which ran near at several points. But none of those other intersections had such a tree. He looked up at the back of it, the north side, and froze.

  Over Duncan’s head were rows of carved symbols, starting with a line of stick figures and shapes such as Duncan had seen on message belts used by the Iroquois. But here the figures had been carved into the silver bark instead of woven with purple and white beads. The figures of Indians carrying tomahawks were a warning sign. The trail wasn’t called the Warriors Path for nothing. Below t
he signs was another sign, carved not so long before, and not by Indian hands. It was an I and a V, a Roman numeral four. Around the side, to the east, were more signs, five recently carved geometric shapes, squares and right angles, some with small pieces of bark taken out of their centers like dots, not always in the same location on the shape. The first seemed to be a U, squared at the bottom, the next a right angle, tilted so it aimed at the center of the U, the third a right angle with its corner at the left top, a dot tucked into the corner.

  He spied curled pieces of bark beneath the signs and knelt, lifting one, bending it, smelling it. The pieces were fresh, not yet dried out, excised no more than a day before. Someone had carved the signs after Burke had been killed, perhaps as it happened. The valuable buttons had not all been cut from Burke’s shirt, but the symbols had been carefully carved, as if they were more important than the silver.

  He turned to see Van Grut on a log, pulling a journal from the linen bag that never seemed to leave his shoulder, then extracting a writing lead from inside his waistcoat.

  “You knew about this tree,” Duncan said to the Dutchman.

  It was not a question.

  Van Grut seemed strangely shamed. “I suspected. I was not certain,” he said, his tone one of apology.

  Duncan approached the Dutchman. “You were paying off debts at the fort,” he said in an accusing tone. “Burke’s purse was empty.”

  The color drained from Van Grut’s face. “Surely you don’t—”

  “In all this broad wilderness, you knew something about one particular tree.”

  Van Grut once more looked longingly toward the road.

  Duncan demanded, “Why this tree? Why these marks?”

  “It’s not just one tree,” Van Grut said. “There are others.”

  “Others?”

  The Dutchman turned with a stubborn gaze then sighed, opened his journal, and began leafing through it. As Duncan watched he paged through detailed drawings of Indians, birds, and mammals, stopping at a sketch of a large tree. It seemed to be the one in front of them, until Van Grut pointed to the legend he had recorded underneath. Boundary Marker No. III. Duncan read on. 1 mile SE Forbes Road, 4 miles W. Ligonier. Monongahela Land Co.