Bone Rattler (63 page)

Suddenly a small, round face was in front of him.

“You can stay here, Alex,” Duncan said. “Study in the schoolhouse.”

Alex seemed to have lost years from his once weary countenance. He was no longer a ghostwalker. He was a boy. He nodded. “She made me promise to come back in a year. Sarah says that I must learn the drawing of words, that I must become a bridge between peoples.”

“And with oxen perhaps,” Duncan said with a grin.

Sadness crossed the boy’s face for a moment. “Before I left the mission, I cut all his bindings. I told him a strange Scottish man had come to save us. I asked him to come with me. He followed me for a few steps and stopped and gazed at me with those huge eyes of his. Then he turned and walked down the road to the bark mill.”

They stood in silence, struggling for words. Adam Munroe was there, beside them, between them.

Someone called out the boy’s name. Alex’s new mother was gesturing him toward a canoe.

Duncan suddenly searched his pockets for something, for anything. He loosened his belt and slid off the sheath with the ranger knife, pushing it into the boy’s hand. Alex solemnly accepted the gift, then backed away several steps, his eyes locked on Duncan’s, before turning and darting to the canoe.

Conawago waited for him on the other side. They watched in silence as the last canoe disappeared down the river, an emptiness building inside.

“He would not go like that,” the old Indian said after a long moment.

Duncan had met many men in America who could expertly decipher the signs of the forest, but only one who could always read the tracks of his heart.

“He waits.”

“Where?”

“There is a place where people from different worlds go to find words for each other.”

He ran. With no thought except that he would be too late, he ran.

But Jamie was there, sitting on a log, staring at the lichen-covered cairn, his gun and pack beside him. He did not turn when Duncan stopped at his back.

“There was an old pantry in the rooms I let in Edinburgh,” Duncan said after a long moment. “He stayed in there with a cabinet pushed across the entry to hide it. At night we spoke about the old times. I was trying to find a ship for him to Holland. I was going to buy him passage
and give him what little money I had. But one morning he said it was his birthing day, and he wanted a jar of whiskey. I never knew what exactly happened when he was alone that day. There was a pounding on the door after I returned. The magistrate’s men knocked me down with their staffs, began beating me. I woke up in a cell. At the trial my neighbors testified they heard Highland singing from my rooms. He got drunk and sang. He survived all those battles, all those storms, and in the end it was the old songs that killed him.

“They took me in chains to the hanging. He spat in the eye of his hangman. The hangman was so mad, he broke his arm. He shouted out the name of our clan. They broke his other arm. He sang one of his songs until he had no breath left.” Duncan’s heart felt like a vise was closing around it. “I was a coward. I should have sung with him.”

“They would have broken your arms, too,” Jamie said, still facing the cairn of the old tribes.

“I should have sung with him,” Duncan repeated. After a moment he sat on the log beside his brother. “You’re going west. You mean to go to the Iroquois towns.”

“No. Tashgua understood before he died. The old ones there understood.”

“Understood what?”

“Do you know how many settlers there are in the English colonies?”

“A hundred thousand, perhaps two.”

“Hundreds of thousands, nigh a million, and increasing every day. There’s maybe thirty thousand Iroquois, far fewer of the Lenni Lenape and other tribes. Every year another twenty or thirty miles of forest is taken. Tashgua understood it. Conawago understands it. Woolford understands it.”

“What exactly?”

“About the future. The tribes all look to the future as a time when white men and red men live beside one another. But the white men, they assume that in the future there will be no more Indians.”

The words raised an unexpected pain. Duncan buried his head in his hands a moment. “The army, Jamie. We can explain things. You have a future—”

Jamie reached into his pocket and pulled out a well-worn letter. “Woolford found this on Pike. It cautions me about trusting the king and the king’s army. It reminds me of what the army did in the Highlands, and to the Highland way of life. The one who wrote it suggests that naught but disaster comes when men without conscience take on the mantle of command.”

Duncan stared at the ground. It had taken many weeks, and it had gone through many unintended hands, but the letter Duncan had written the night before Evering’s death had finally reached his brother. “You mean to go far,” he said at last. He was having trouble making his tongue work. He had waited years to speak like this, brother to brother, and now Jamie was leaving.

“There are places beyond the Ohio that will see no settlers for two or three more generations at least. If there had been such lands back home, we would have done the right thing long ago.”

“So you’ll do it now for a few Scots and some of the Iroquois.”

“We’ll do it for all Scots, and all Iroquois.” Jamie stood and, as Duncan watched, opened his pack, pulling out an inch-wide strip of wampum. He placed it over his wrist and finally looked into his brother’s face. “We wish you to come with us. There is a place for the McCallum clan out there, away from the world.” He bent and pulled something from behind the cairn. It was Duncan’s own pack.

It was Duncan who broke his brother’s earnest gaze, looking out into the dark forest as he struggled for words. “You forget who I am. A transported convict with a warrant to send me back to prison.”

“Run. You would not be the only wanted man among us. The wilderness is wide. The king is far away.”

“The war will be over in a year or two. The army will turn toward Europe and Asia and the Caribbean. They will forget you. But Ramsey will never forget me. He would hire more men like Hawkins to find me. And once they did, your secret would be lost.”

Jamie silently paced around the old cairn, his hand on the top stone, then reached into his pack and extracted a tattered piece of wool. “I took leave once from the barracks in Chester, told them I was going to Glasgow. But instead I went back to the old house. It was all in ruins, with gorse and heather growing out of the crumbled walls. But I found this under the remnants of a smashed chest.” He unfolded a piece of tartan, a foot wide and two feet long. It was the brown-and-green plaid favored by the McCallum clan. He handed it to Duncan. “The chief of my clan should have this.”

Duncan’s hand trembled as he reached for the wool. He had never expected to see the plaid again.

“In the shards of the chest were small stockings and britches,” Jamie added in a brittle whisper. “Mother was saving it for him, for when he grew older.”

“Angus,” Duncan whispered back, a new pain rising in his heart. Angus, their younger brother, who had not survived the bloodbath after Culloden.

It was a long time before either spoke. They barely moved, Jamie standing with the truth-speaking wampum on his hand, Duncan with the tartan on his. Finally Duncan stretched the cloth in front of him. “I remember the looms,” he said, an unexpected calm entering his voice. “Out in the islands. The women washed the wool by the sea.”

“Sometimes grandfather piped as they worked. And you and I romped among the seals. He watched us close, because sometimes the seals would take children away for their own.”

With one firm stroke, Duncan tore the cloth in half. Jamie’s momentary chagrin turned to solemn acceptance as Duncan handed him his half. As Duncan set his piece in his pack, he paused, looked at his brother, and pulled out the pipes.

He played tunes from their youth, bringing faraway smiles to their faces, before switching to one used by their clan in battle, facing Edentown as he played. When he finished and turned back to the log, Jamie and his pack were gone.

When he finally emerged from the forest, the coach that had
brought the Ramsey children was at the front of the house, its team hitched, baggage being loaded onto it. Duncan hurried to the house, reminding himself that he had not seen Sarah all day, remembering with a shudder Ramsey’s vow to dispatch her to the trepanning surgeon in Philadelphia.

His throat tightened as Sarah emerged from the house with a load of baggage. But she wore no travel clothes, and instead of returning into the house she began speaking with the bearded driver, who was nodding repeatedly, nervously, as if receiving directions from a new employer.

Duncan left his pack on the schoolhouse steps and eased himself onto the end of the porch of the great house, staying in the shadows, then settled into the one of the chairs near the door. He had no reason to believe she had noticed him until after she had retreated inside.

“Please fetch Mr. McCallum a mug of cold milk,” he heard her call through the open door as she hurried upstairs.

Duncan drained the milk when it was brought, then slipped inside, aware that Ramsey could explode out of his library at any moment. But then his eye caught movements in the sitting room, where still the curtains were drawn. Crispin was there, looking as frightened as Duncan had ever seen him. Ramsey was sitting on the day bed where Duncan had left him, mindlessly letting Crispin lift his limbs as the houseman dressed him.

Crispin’s fear spread to Duncan. He backed out onto the porch, but as he turned, he found himself face-to-face with Sarah. She offered a shy smile and seemed about to speak when her gaze abruptly shifted over his shoulder.

“There are blankets and pillows in the coach,” she announced in a flat voice.

“Are you traveling, daughter?” came a thin, unsteady voice from behind Duncan. Crispin had led Ramsey outside.

“When our business is complete, you are traveling, sir,” Sarah explained in a new, resolute tone, then pointed to a small table that had been placed on the porch beyond the door, with an inkpot, a
quill, and several documents secured under a candlestick holder. She was wearing her mother’s ruby cross.

Duncan edged away, was about to step off the porch when Sarah touched his sleeve and pointed him to one of the chairs by the table.

“I don’t understand.” Though Ramsey had slept for hours, he seemed as weak as when Duncan had led him inside at dawn. Crispin appeared, carrying a cup of tea, which he set on the little table. The tea seemed to persuade Ramsey to sit. He lifted the porcelain cup, holding it in midair. He seemed to see something in his daughter he had not noticed before.

“You are leaving Edentown,” Sarah announced. “Go to New York town. Go back to England. Go to your southern plantations. Anywhere but here. I am staying here, with Jonathan and Virginia.”

Ramsey slowly lowered the cup. A spark flickered in his dull eyes. “You cannot just—”

“I have not finished.” Sarah seemed to have lost interest in his words. “Crispin stays with us.” It was indeed a new Sarah, wrought from the fire of the night before. “And you will sign these papers. The first withdraws your request for Mr. McCallum to be sent back to prison in Scotland. The second sets forth your finding as magistrate that Mr. Lister is innocent of all charges related to the murders. The third certifies over your name as magistrate that the deserter Captain James McCallum and his men are all dead, killed by Hurons. The fourth grants a power to me for the conduct of all affairs related to the Ramsey property at Edentown. The next states your decision to convert the Ramsey Company to a true commercial enterprise. One half will go to me, for the betterment of this settlement. One half will be shared among all the men of the Company, the proceeds to be held until the end of their indentures.”

Duncan tried in vain to read the papers from where he sat, but he could see that two different hands were used in their drafting. Crispin’s and Conawago’s.

“You go too far.” Ramsey’s voice was still weak, but now not entirely without venom. “I will not tolerate—”

“Mr. McCallum, would you please summarize the new report you and Captain Woolford will prepare for us to dispatch to the governor if Lord Ramsey does not comply?” Sarah did not look at Duncan as she spoke. He saw now that she was struggling to keep control. Crispin stepped closer, to her side. Another figure had appeared by the steps. Woolford was wearing his dress uniform again.

Duncan glanced at Ramsey, then chose to speak to the stack of papers. “There would be many pages dedicated to review of the evidence. But the conclusion will be straightforward. Agents in the employ of Lord Ramsey were the murderers of four men.”

“You’re nothing, McCallum!” Ramsey spat. “A convict, a damned Highland mongrel!”

“Lord Ramsey,” Duncan continued, “persuaded the royal court to create the Ramsey Company under false pretenses.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Ramsey snarled.

“Then Lord Ramsey further obtained a land charter from the king under false pretenses, knowing he could never meet his promise to the king without committing crimes against homesteaders and our Iroquois allies. In time of war, Lord Ramsey violated the governor’s orders against the taking of scalps. He joined with a traitor in the ranks of His Majesty’s army who had conspired with the French at Ticonderoga, who had murdered the king’s own rangers to hide the evidence of his treachery.”

“I never knew about Pike and the French!” Ramsey protested.

“It would not take a stretch of a barrister’s tongue to suggest that Lord Ramsey conspired against the king himself,” Duncan continued. He looked out over the town, his gaze sweeping across the bitter homesteaders and the former members of Ramsey’s militia. “We could obtain fifty, nay a hundred, signatures to vouchsafe every word.”

Ramsey threw his tea into Duncan’s face. As Duncan calmly wiped it off, the patron began signing the documents.