Bone Rattler (31 page)

L
ORD RAMSEY SENT FOR HIM before noon the next day. “I have read your report,” the patron announced from his desk chair. Duncan’s papers lay under one jeweled hand. “You confuse me, McCallum. What was it you did not understand about your task? In my experience, Reverend Arnold expresses himself more than adequately.” Arnold stood behind Ramsey, arms folded across his sleeveless waistcoat.

Duncan returned the vicar’s smoldering gaze, then addressed Ramsey. “I gave you precisely what you need, sir. A way out, a means to avoid scandal while also avoiding the harm to the Company that would come from condemning an innocent man.”

Ramsey frowned and waved the papers in front of him. “You say it is a pattern, that the same forces are at work in the deaths of Evering and some old savage, that it is connected to the battle at Stony Run. You offer a detailed scientific review of Evering’s corpse, but you decline to adopt the vicar’s view of the puzzle in the compass room. I fail to see how this restores the balance in the Company.” The patron’s gaze drifted out the window to the settlement’s newest structure, a threadbare tent, and he frowned again.

In the early morning new travelers, unwelcome to Ramsey, had arrived. A tall, gray-bearded man had stopped Duncan, asking for Reverend Arnold. After five minutes of conversation, he had
introduced himself as Reverend Zettlemeyer, a Moravian missionary who had brought in survivors of raids on a dozen homesteads. Ramsey had offered them the tent, which he had ordered to be erected at the far side of the fields. With the battered settlers had come half a dozen red-coated soldiers, fresh from New York, who to Ramsey had been even less welcome than the settlers.

“The ritual at the compass,” Duncan explained, “was capable of many interpretations. The Reverend saw it as the work of a London professor, but the Reverend himself is the product of a proper English education, like Evering. He gave,” Duncan said, struggling for words, acutely aware that if pushed too far they would shut him out and decree their own solution, “the proper interpretation for a learned and moral man.” Arnold appeared confused for a moment, then offered an uncertain nod. “But what if the killer had not been blessed with such a refined education?” The ritual, he had begun to realize, hung over Arnold and Ramsey more heavily than the actual murder of Evering.

“You suggest the killer had already taken Evering’s life before performing the ghastly ritual?”

“I am suggesting the bones could represent those who died at Stony Run, the salt a sign of the salt lick near the battle site. The claw and eye could say that something powerful is still watching, still at work, set on determining the outcome. The buckle might indicate the soldiers who fell. The feather was that of a warrior, representing the Indians who died. Someone was saying the battle for Stony Run is not over. Someone was warning of retribution. Someone,” he suggested, “who had been there, at Stony Run.”

Lord Ramsey, strangely, closed his eyes for a moment, clutching the arms of his chair. “You can’t know that. You don’t know that. The feather could not have been from an Indian. The ship was coming from England, not America. And you fail to mention the bloody heart.”

“I thought it prudent not to dwell on the heart. It was a different kind of statement, against the Ramsey Company.”

“Ridiculous!” snapped Arnold.

Duncan reached into his pocket and dropped the smashed pendant on the papers in front of Ramsey. “This was stuffed in an artery.”

Arnold seemed about to protest when Ramsey picked up the piece of mangled silver and dropped it into his palm, staring at it forlornly.

“Captain Woolford would confirm it,” Duncan added, “and my words about the feather.”

The statement seemed to snap Ramsey out of his sudden melancholy. “Surely you did not tell Woolford all this.”

“Not yet. But Reverend Arnold did request that I report to both him and the captain.”

“That was when we were still on board ship,” Arnold quickly amended. “The troubles began with the death of Professor Evering,” he observed. “He had no possible connection to the events at Stony Run.”

“You’re mistaken. He knew about it, knew of its secrets.”

“Impossible.”

Ramsey, pacing again, stopped at the north-facing window, gazing resentfully at the red-jacketed men now walking along his street as if on patrol.

“He wrote about it,” Duncan explained. “There was a journal.”

Arnold’s face went as stiff as his starched collar, and he advanced on Duncan, leaning so close Duncan could feel the vicar’s breath. “What journal?”

“It was not just scientific notes he kept.”

“I must have it!” Arnold demanded.

“It was left in the city,” Duncan said. “But I shall append a statement to the report. I will sign a witness oath, attesting that Professor Evering had an informant. A member of the Company gave him a secret about the army at Stony Run, then not long afterwards the professor was killed. We would be remiss not to recall that half the men in the Company served in the army.”

“We will need your real report,” Arnold interjected. “We cannot
embark onto this dangerous ground on such a capricious basis. And you have neglected to reference the seditious statements of the Scottish prisoners.”

“But this is the report that serves the Company best,” Duncan urged, “one that above all you want the military to glimpse. It concludes the murders relate to military intrigue, not a concern of the Company. It allows the Company to avoid a scandal. The army has failed to explain what happened that day at Stony Run. There was a battle, but they failed to report any traces of the enemy. One could suggest they have obscured the truth. The Company is victim as much as those who have died. Someone seeks revenge for what was done there, or to correct a wrong committed there, someone with secret knowledge of what happened that day. Someone,” Duncan added, “with cause to seek out the shaman Tashgua.”

In the stillness that suddenly seized the room, Duncan heard the distant bellow of an ox. Ramsey rose, stepped to the window, staring at the forest a moment, then turned toward Duncan with an expectant look.

“We will direct the report only to the governor,” Duncan continued. “If you sent it directly to the general he would be suspicious. The governor will want Calder to secretly see it, both to put the general in obligation for the favor and to gauge his reaction to it. They must both be aware that what happened at Stony Run is unresolved. We will suggest the murderers’ work is not complete, that the intrigue begun at Stony Run has not run its course, that someone apparently seeks to stop the Ramsey Company’s work on the frontier, and that the only reason must be that they do not want an English victory in the war. The governor will have to thank you for bringing this to his attention. The general will have to volunteer that the army will address the matter. The military has its own courts, private courts. The weight of a hanging is lifted from the Company.”

“What if Lister is the killer after all?” Ramsey asked in a tentative voice. “You have directed attention away from him. Yet you have not proven he is innocent.”

“It is not the role of a court to prove the innocence of every man,
only the guilt of one. Mr. Lister had no real evidence against him except his unexplained appearance in Evering’s cabin. A sworn statement with the report explains he was there at someone else’s request.”

“Your statement. Your request,” Arnold pointed out.

“The statement of your scientific expert, saying he was there to assist with the science of Evering’s death. You cannot accept my statements for one purpose and reject them for another. I would pledge my life on his innocence.”

“Or at least your liberty,” Arnold rejoined in a smoldering tone. The vicar turned to Ramsey. “Surely this is too inflammatory, my lord. To incite the army unnecessarily serves no purpose.”

But Ramsey was staring again at the red-coated trespassers past his barn. “Why would the army dance to your song?” he asked. His eyes were working fast now, studying Duncan one moment, Arnold the next.

“The proposal only succeeds,” Duncan said, silently thanking the patron for providing the opening he had been longing for, “if the general does indeed know a black deed was hidden at Stony Run. Then he knows that continuing to obscure it will cloud his political aspirations. Calder thought he would intimidate the Ramsey Company by suggesting that I would trip over the events at Stony Run, as if we, too, had something to hide. But we are not so frightened by the truth as he should be. He will never expect the Company to be so bold as to shift the play back to him. As the ancient Greeks showed us,” Duncan declared, his sober gaze on Ramsey, “in war, surprise is everything. This is a shrewd and defiant move declaring to those who matter in this colony that the Ramsey Company shall be neither subordinate nor beholden to the army.”

Ramsey leaned back into his chair with a distant expression as he gazed out the window toward the dark forest beyond the river. Arnold stepped to the tea tray and hastily poured himself a cup.

“You have reason to resent the army, if I am not mistaken,” Ramsey observed in a tentative tone. He rose and slowly paced along his bookshelves.

“I will not shy from embarrassing them.”

“But what you suggest could be construed as practicing trickery on the army.” A dangerous smile grew on Ramsey’s face. “The governor may wonder about our motives.”

“You will provide proof of the army’s motive by pointing out that the war hinges on the loyalty of the Iroquois, that the death of so many of them at Stony Run needs to be resolved. The obvious conclusion is that secret French agents were at work. It would not be exaggeration to suggest a traitor is at work. It would be motive enough for the army to lie, to keep their actions in shadow, clearly motive enough for more lives to be taken.

“You will prove your loyalty,” Duncan continued, “by pledging that you will not speak publicly of this embarrassment to His Majesty’s government, by assuring him that you would never openly suggest someone in Calder’s command is capable of hiding traitorous activity. It takes a powerful man to keep a powerful secret.”

Ramsey stopped his pacing and turned to face Duncan again, his eyes lit with a new energy. “If I were Calder learning of this report, what would I do?”

“I would end my preoccupation with the Ramsey Company,” Duncan said. “Because any act against the Company’s interest only strengthens our allegations. I would take steps to assure the governor that the king’s enemies are the sole focus of my efforts, lest anyone suspect that personal ambition was afoot.”

Ramsey absently ran his fingers along the spines of his leather-bound books. “To call upon you to teach my children,” he said in a contemplative tone, “that is the greatest test of your own loyalty.”

“Sir?” Something in the atmosphere had shifted. There was a scent of invitation in Ramsey’s words.

Ramsey faced Duncan. “We do the work of empire here. We are the empire here. Great things shall be done, great rewards bestowed. The world I give to my children will be vastly different from what you see here. England the way it should be, without any of its faults or ambiguities. I will share with you a secret few understand. The name of Ramsey will soon ring throughout the land. The Ramseys
and those who stood by them shall be celebrated in histories read by generations to come.”

Duncan glanced at Arnold, half expecting the vicar to utter an
Amen
. “We shall provide answers about human nature,” Arnold said instead.

“The savages must be driven from the land, must they not?” Ramsey demanded.

The question hung in the air as Duncan tried to make sense of the abrupt shifts in their conversation. “Yes, sir,” he said at last.

“The science of man must be brought to the land,” Ramsey said.

“Yes, sir,” Duncan repeated in a tight voice.

“And the rule of God and his laws.”

“Yes, sir,” Duncan echoed, grasping his part in Ramsey’s liturgy.

“I asked Reverend Arnold to explain every detail of that day in the storm. You were surely a dead man when you leapt into the sea. But you reappeared, with the eldest of my children in your arms. What did you see, what did you feel in that dark water? Did you not sense the fingers of God cradling you?” Ramsey asked with an odd glint of hope in his voice.

“All I remember,” Duncan said, “is waking in a prison cell, cold and shivering.”

Ramsey seemed to relish the answer. “Job, too, had to endure great suffering to appreciate the role the Almighty had granted him. Eventually you shall recall what happened to you in the water, when destiny put its hand upon you, and you must record it for the Company archives.”

Duncan found his gaze drifting out the window, toward the men laboring in the muddy fields. He would never feel so unclean as he did now, standing there in Lord Ramsey’s library. There were two other new arrivals, for that morning McGregor had appeared, escorting one of the Company men who had also gone with Hawkins into the forest, a younger man wearing a crazed, hollow expression. The man had become useless in the forest, his sensibilities in some kind of shock. Duncan clenched his jaw and fixed the patron with a level stare. He may not know his role in the drama that was
unfolding, but he certainly knew what Ramsey wanted to hear, and it was no struggle to speak ill of the army. “We will not allow mere generals the upper hand in the events of the day,” he declared.

Ramsey’s eyes narrowed. Arnold, seeming to sense a cue, rose and shut the library door.

“When you issue your report to the governor, you will show him that one company of Ramsey men is more effective than ten companies of soldiers,” Duncan concluded, beating down his shame.

Ramsey stepped to the big desk, gesturing Duncan to turn away as he opened its hinged top. Duncan heard a series of drawers slide open. The patron was accessing a locked compartment, he knew, a paper safe often built into such desks and opened by positioning the small interior drawers in a designated arrangement. After a moment Ramsey cleared his throat, and Duncan turned to see him holding a rolled sheet of vellum. With a triumphant look, he motioned Duncan closer and unrolled the document on the desk. Its script was elegant, the scrollwork along its borders intricate and colored with rich hues, like an illuminated manuscript. But Duncan’s gaze quickly settled on the huge ribboned seal at the bottom, beside a date only three months earlier.