Bone Rattler (24 page)

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 tattoo. 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.

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.