Bone Rattler (2 page)

He did not know how long he gazed out into the storm, into the nothingness of wind, water, and swirling cloud, but gradually he became aware of someone speaking from a vast distance.

It was the voice of his grandfather, released from a chamber in his mind he had kept closed for years. When, as a boy standing on a sea cliff in a rising storm, Duncan had first heard the words, he had taken them as a somber warning. But now, as the old man’s raw, dry voice echoed across the span of nearly two decades to reach him, a melancholy grin split Duncan’s face. The words had been not a warning but a taunt. Duncan somehow knew now that when a British corvette had blasted the sloop his grandfather used to smuggle rebels, the old clan chief had glared into the dark waves and shouted a Gaelic curse at his god while the violent, frigid waters of the Hebrides crashed over him.

Duncan found himself fingering the runelike shapes on the mast. He had misunderstood. He did not need resolution, he needed release. Adam had shown him, his grandfather was showing him again. There were fates worse than death, and a way for a dying clan to triumph over those who imposed servitude. Duncan was ready to stare down his god.

The ship pitched forward into a trough of the angry sea and was suddenly clear of the fog. Duncan clutched the mast and dared a glance over the edge of the maintop platform, wary of being spotted again. Any moment they would be upon him, this time with clubs and chains, this time planning to strip his back raw.

“Lift up thy hands!”

The sudden command from below stabbed like a blade. Duncan thrust himself back against the mast, the welts on his back afire again, then slowly straightened his tall, thin frame, studying the treacherous rigging above. He would climb higher, to the tip of the tall mainmast. Then it would just be a matter of waiting for the right wave, when the ship would heel over and put him above the raging water. He would not go down to the deck, not ever again.

“Rise up to meet the lamb!”

Duncan froze as he reached for the ropes, then peered back over the edge at a group of men huddled near the bow, where a bearded sailor waved a black book. The calls had not been for him, but for the other sailors gathered around the man, listening to what? A service for the dead? But there was no shrouded body, no solemn officer in formal dress to recite the words prescribed for burial at sea. In fact there were no officers on deck at all, he saw as salt spray slapped his cheek, though the deck and masts should be crawling with sailors to reef sails and ready the ship for heavy weather. He realized the ship had been deathly still since the other prisoners had been taken to the hold an hour before. Even the helmsman seemed about to abandon his duties, for he stood beside the wheel, one hand on a spoke as he stared uneasily at the waters behind the stern. No one had been pursuing Duncan after all. The alarms had been raised for another reason.

From the group at the bow came the uneven chorus of a prayer, the sound growing more distant as Duncan turned his gaze toward the churning waters ahead. The deck seemed to be receding, drifting out of his consciousness. There was no need to climb farther.

They had reached the edge of the storm. He released one hand, letting the wind swing his body away from the mast, yielding at last to the emptiness that was swelling within. He selected a massive black wave in the distance and gazed into it as it approached, letting his hand slip around the curvature of the mast, defying his god to meet his gaze and hear Duncan’s own venomous taunt.

Suddenly strong fingers clamped around his arm, pulling him back.

“’Tis a terrible final thing, lad.”

Without looking, Duncan recognized the gravelly voice of the eldest of the keepers. “Just an autumn gale, Mr. Lister.”

“Do not trifle with me, McCallum,” the older man said. “Have I not seen such a look too many times this voyage? I ken what’s in y’er eye even if ye do not.”

Duncan glanced back at Lister and paused, confused at the pain on the man’s scarred, weather-beaten countenance. Lister was a prisoner himself, as were all the keepers assigned to watch the others, a trusty not confined to cells or locked holds. He had served at sea most of his life, had been in the navy, then second mate on another of the merchant ships that plied the Atlantic, until he was condemned for some unspoken crime. Lister had been the only keeper to show him any kindness, had often spoken with Duncan about the sea, had only the night before pushed the lantern closer to the barred door of the prisoner hold to give Duncan more light as he sat writing at the threshold. The black wave reached and passed the ship, and the two men fixed each other with inquiring gazes as they gripped the rigging and rode the heave of the mast.

When he finally replied, Duncan’s throat seemed dry and scratched. “Adam,” he said, with a gesture toward the crude drawings.

“A cruel, rotten thing,” Lister muttered, venom in his voice, then saw the question in Duncan’s eyes. “Me mind has no reason to ken it, but in me heart I know what we saw plain before us was a murder, as sure as if we watched a blade planted in Munroe’s back. His dying was different from the others. Adam didn’t want to die. He had to die.”

Something unexpected stirred within Duncan. The old sailor had found the words that had been struggling to rise from Duncan’s own heart.

“’Twas that bastard redback,” Lister added. “Our bluestocking prig.”

The emptiness ebbed for a moment. Had Duncan misunderstood something about Adam’s death? “Lieutenant Woolford?” he asked. There was only one member of the king’s army on board.

“Ye were there. Ye heard Woolford report our destination had
changed, that we be bound for Edentown, in the New York colony.” Lister fixed Duncan with a grim stare. Prior to Woolford’s declaration, the Company leaders had let the men assume they were sailing to Virginia or Georgia, whose tobacco and cotton plantations employed legions of transported criminals. “Adam had been in the militia,” he added soberly, as if it explained much. “New York be where the war lies. In the wild lands.”

He searched Lister’s face, remembering once more Adam’s last words.
They mean to use you, then they must kill you.
He had known Adam had spent years in the Pennsylvania colony, but Adam had always evaded Duncan’s questions about his former life in the New World, diverting him with tales of colonial towns and taverns, promising him that one day he would show Duncan mountains and lakes that rivaled those of Scotland. “Are you saying Adam died because of something that happened in America?”

“I saw his face go white as snow when Woolford spoke those words. That night he asked for a writing lead and a scrap of paper. Next day he was dead.”

“After he declared our new destination,” Duncan recalled, “Woolford tried to see him. Adam had me tell Woolford he was ill, that he would have to return the next day.” But there had been no next day for Adam. Duncan was silent a moment, considering Lister’s words. “Adam would not fear the French.”

“Did I speak of the French? There’s fates in those wilds God never meant for man.” Lister clenched his jaw and gazed toward another huge wave, as if he, too, had begun to see some message in the rapidly building storm.

After a moment, Duncan gestured again to the strange animal shape scratched on the mast. “Do you know it?”

“A beaver, I’d wager.”

Duncan touched the lines with his fingertips. “I have never glimpsed a beaver.” He knew of the lush beaver hats that were the rage of fashion on high streets across England, but had no certain notion of the animal’s shape.

“A great round rat with a tail like a skillet. Except,” Lister added in a confused tone, “this one’s got wings.” More frightened cries rose from the deck, followed by the angry shouts of officers.

Duncan’s fingers went to the cold black stone in his pocket, and he began to withdraw it to show to Lister. “What does it mean, Mr. Lister?”

But the old mate was gazing in the direction of the chaos on deck and misunderstood. For the first time, Duncan saw the darkness along the right side of his face, the greyness around his eye. Someone had hit Lister, hard. “The captain sends for ye,” the keeper said without looking up.

“To lift more skin from my back.” Duncan glanced toward the rigging above. Even if Adam was right and the Company leaders needed him for some secret purpose, they apparently did not mind if he were scarred and broken.

“Not today. ’Tis terrible trouble. Nigh all the hands refuse to work. There be a medical question. They’ll n’er take the captain’s word on it. We searched for Professor Evering,” he said, meaning the scholar who took passage with the company of convicts, “but he’s nowhere to be seen. No doubt hiding from the storm in the holds. The cook might do, but every time a storm rises, the lubber drains half a jug of rum.”

Duncan eased the stone back into his pocket. “I’m no doctor.”

“The men say ye studied anatomy and such. Ye be the closest thing we have. Whether ye choose to toss y’er life away is between ye and y’er god. But there be a hundred other souls on board who don’t wish to die this day. The devil hisself’s at work in—” The words choked in his throat as the old sailor glanced over Duncan’s shoulder, cursed, and threw an arm around Duncan’s waist, seizing the mast with his other arm.

The second huge wave broke over the bow of the ship, submerging it, roiling toward the stern as men below cried out and lunged for the nearest rail or line. For a long, terrible moment, the entire main deck disappeared in swirling foam, and Lister and
Duncan were alone, with the three great masts like trees sprouted from the sea, and the wind gusting through their square limbs, ripping apart the topgallant sail above them.

A moment later the ship lurched clear, the deck draining of water, and the sea grew flatter. The damaged sail tore free of its stays, the wet canvas fluttering toward the deck. Two sailors ran to it as it lodged on the port rail against the shroud lines. The canvas slipped toward the sea as they reached it, and one man stretched over the side to capture the sail. But the sailor reeled back without the canvas, jerking his companion away, terror on his face as he fled toward the praying men at the bow. “It’s too late!” he moaned. “They’ve come for us!”

Lister eased his arm from Duncan and pushed him down, to sit on the platform. Glancing at the panicked crew below, the keeper shook his head grimly. “Mostly Cornish men and West Indians. Each fool more superstitious than the one before. If the captain does not restore order soon, the ship is lost. I prefer to live, lad,” he added, his tone hollow with desperation. When Duncan offered no reply, he searched Duncan’s face and sighed. “’Twere McCallums on the west Highlands coast nigh Lochlash, lairds over the small islands. They be y’er people?”

Duncan stared uncertainly at the keeper, then slowly nodded as he studied the terrified men below. There was no still no sign of the other keepers who liked to make sport of escapees. Surely, as an old ship’s mate, Lister would be hounding the crew if he believed the ship were in peril. But then Duncan remembered Lister himself was a prisoner. “A proud, stubborn lot,” Lister continued, “as brave as any in Prince Charlie’s army. Fought aside me own clan at Culloden, they did,” the keeper confided, referring to the last desperate battle of the Jacobite Scot rebels against the English army, in 1746.

Duncan looked up, astonishment on his face.

Lister glanced about and lowered his voice, as if the mast had ears. “I always sign me ships’ books as Lister. They think me of English blood, raised in Glasgow. Few ken me true name be McAllister.”

The old mate fixed Duncan with a level, knowing stare. Hidden Highland roots were a dangerous thing to reveal, a secret that could cost Lister his status as keeper, and much more. The day before they had sailed, the Company, nearly all of whom were Highland Scots, had been assembled to witness the hanging of a shepherd for keeping an illegal cache of swords and plaids.

After a moment the keeper glanced down at the quarterdeck, where the sailing master had appeared, blasting the helmsman, shouting for men to reef the foresail. When no one responded, Lister spat a curse and looked back with worry in his usually steady eyes. “They were hard years, lad. And ye have the look of one who’s crawled from the battlefield. But ye would have been a wee bairn then, in y’er mother’s aprons.”

“I was in school in Flanders. And by then my mother had ripped all her aprons into bandages,” Duncan replied in a taut voice. “Someone brought me a newspaper with the story of the battle,” he added, fighting a sudden flood of emotion. “It told how scores were hanged afterwards as traitors to the English king, with orders for no one to cut down the bodies. It listed the names. My father, and all his brothers, left to rot on the king’s scaffolds. A few weeks later when they got around to seizing our house and lands, my mother stabbed an English officer in the arm. She and my sisters never made it out alive. Nor my six-year-old brother. Only the two of us away at school survived.” The painful words rushed out, surprising Duncan. He had not spoken of those dark days for years.

More fearful shouts rose from the deck. Men were pointing past the stern.

“‘And the sea shall give up its dead,’” a hopeless voice declared.

Duncan looked down as he recognized the words. A sailor was reciting from the Book of Revelations when he should be protecting the ship from the gale. A chill crept down Duncan’s spine. It was true. Although the wind had ebbed for the moment, the full fury of the storm lay close ahead, and the ship’s crew was seized by an inexplicable, paralyzing fear.

“We’re bound for the New World, lad,” Lister said. “New lives can be made.”

“I had a new life,” Duncan said despondently, his eyes back on the clouds. “Cousins in Yorkshire raised me. They never let me speak our true tongue out loud, never let me speak of my dead parents. A proper Englishman they made me. The best schools in Holland and England. I had completed three years of medical lectures, was set to join the chambers of a doctor in Northumbria. Then six months ago the last of my great-uncles appeared at my door, asking me to hide him in my rooms. Over eighty years old. I had thought him in the far northern isles, hiding all these years. Our last clan chief.”