Bone Rattler (62 page)

Duncan lifted the map taken from Pike and turned to the major. “Arnold needed help clearing out the homesteads. You had Hurons at your beck and call. Arnold had men in the south, you had the Hurons in the north.” The phantom raiders under Hawkins had attacked Duncan, he knew now, which was why Conawago had found his medallion on a dead raider at the burnt cabin, and why Hawkins had been so frightened by its sudden appearance in Ravencatcher’s hand.

No one spoke. The assembly in the barn was like a tinderbox. And the fire in the eyes of the Iroquois and the settlers was enough to ignite it.

Ramsey seemed to slowly sense the baleful stares directed at him. “I didn’t . . . . You have no proof that I . . . . How could I have known?” he sputtered. “Arnold was responsible for details. He just had to get the land ready, that was all.”

Duncan lifted the ledger book and turned to the back pages. “But the entries in the ledger, before Cameron and Arnold arrived. They are all in your hand.”

Ramsey had no reply. He shifted in his seat, seeming to grow smaller, then stared at the cross again.

Duncan moved to the place where Sarah had sat and chanted the month before, facing the storeroom. He opened the storeroom door as the spectators shifted to watch him. “Codes and secrets, bounties and bribes. The lifeblood of the Ramsey Company.”

“Let us move to the schoolhouse,” Ramsey suddenly blurted out, standing, gesturing toward the great house. “Refreshments. We should have refreshments in the garden before we continue. Rum. Rum for everyone!”

“What would your wife think, Ramsey,” Woolford asked, “if she knew how many deaths were built upon her cross?”

The words seemed to stab Ramsey. He sagged, dropping back onto the stool, gazing once more at the cross in his hand.

As Duncan began pulling away the barrels that lined the back wall of the room, he recalled another day, on the ship, removing barrels to find Evering’s body trailing in the sea. He felt a strange closeness to the gentle professor, as if now he were taking Evering home.

More men, Iroquois, Company men, and rangers alike, joined the effort. When the wall was cleared, Duncan called for lanterns and began to examine it, began to study each joint, each plank and peg. After a long moment, he surveyed the objects in the room, settling on an open barrel in which spare shovel and ax handles had been stored. He explored the contents of the barrel and then the
shadow behind the barrel, pulling out a short pole, beveled at one end like a three-foot-long wooden chisel. It took only a few moments to find the board on the wall it fit under, at a narrow gap by the floor that could easily have escaped notice. He pried the pole under it, levered it upward, and a three-foot section of the wall swung out on hidden hinges.

A rank, fetid odor wafted out of the sealed room. On a small table by the door sat several writing leads, a candle in an iron holder, and a candle box. Duncan slid back the lid of a small candle box. Inside were several more pieces of jewelry. Brooches and necklaces, most of gold, some with Dutch-worked diamonds.

“The treasure room!” someone in the rear called out as Duncan lifted a necklace into the light. “Bring out the rest of the treasure!”

Duncan stepped into the darkened doorway. “This is what Arnold stole. There is no more treasure,” he said, a new sort of fear tightening his throat, “only the seeds of the Ramsey empire.”

But the men, having seen the gold and jewels, would not be stopped. Duncan found he had no strength to resist as they pushed forward, grabbing the lanterns. The tide pushed him toward Sarah, who leaned against a barrel, her head down, one hand wrapped around the leather pouch at her neck. All color had left her face. He gently pulled her head against his shoulder.

Within seconds the men were fleeing, pale as ghosts, two of them emptying their stomachs on the barn floor. Woolford and Jamie soon stood alone in the doorway, their faces as old and gray as stone.

Here was the essence of the Ramsey Company, here was the warehouse of Ramsey’s and Arnold’s ambitions. They hung from slats like drying tobacco, row after row of patches of skin and long black hair.

“Over a hundred at least,” Woolford announced. “They weren’t particular. Young and old. Men and women.” Some of the braids still held small feathers; some had beads and ribbons woven into them. Along the wall were other trophies—elaborately carved drums and war axes, and Indian clothing, enough to meet the needs of any troupe seeking to masquerade as Hurons.

“What do we do?” Crispin asked in a derelict voice.

Duncan gestured to Sarah, who, of Ramsey flesh and Iroquois heart, seemed inconsolable. “It’s not up to us.”

They waited until finally Sarah had no more tears. She stood, straightened her dress, and began speaking in low tones, to Crispin, to Jamie, and to the Iroquois. They burst into activity. Men began leading livestock out of the stalls, rolling out barrels of stores, carrying away tools. Many of the Company men returned, listened to Jamie’s warriors, and started helping. No one complained, no one questioned Sarah’s instructions.

Ramsey took a long time to notice the hurried effort but still did not speak until Sarah helped him to his feet. Men began collecting water buckets.

“Not my barn, daughter,” he said in a tiny voice, “not my beautiful barn.” But he made no other complaint as she helped him hobble outside, as if he were an aged cripple.

Only the Iroquois carried the torches, touching them to hay and wood chips, then throwing them into the loft. In five minutes flames were leaping up the posts of Ramsey’s palace. In ten, the roar of the fire had pushed the livestock to the far side of the pasture. In fifteen, the crews that had been throwing buckets of water on the adjoining structures had to retreat from the heat.

As the last vestiges of the day disappeared behind the western forest, the shingle roof caught. Night had settled over the compound by the time the posts gave way and the building started to collapse. Not long after—whether by design or accident, Duncan never knew—Lister’s gallows began to burn.

T
HE CONFLAGRATION ILLUMINATED THE FACES of its inhabitants like actors on a well-lit stage. Ramsey sat on the great house steps, his face empty as he watched the destruction, the house staff too frightened to go near him.

The men of the Company returned to dowsing the adjoining buildings, often pausing to gaze at the crackling fire. They cut a wide swath around the solitary figure who stood staring at it from the riverbank, wrapped in a blanket brought by Crispin. Sarah’s face was flooded with emotion. Duncan saw hate, fear, guilt, melancholy on her features, but also a different kind of fire, a fierce yet somehow inquisitive determination that Duncan had seen in the eyes of her Indian father. Her lips were moving, he saw. She was reciting her Haudenosaunee prayers.

“Brace y’erself,” a gruff voice said behind him.

Duncan turned to see Lister and two Company men, one bearing tongs from the forge. Before he understood what they were about, the two men had grabbed both sides of the collar, and Lister, balancing on his crutch, took the tongs and began unbending the hook that fastened it at the rear. The old Scot held the collar in his hand a moment, held it up for all those nearby to see, then flung it, whirling like a top, into the fire. As it disappeared into the red-hot embers, some cheered. Some pounded Duncan on the back, some
shook his hand, then hurried on as they followed his gaze toward Sarah. She still scared them.

Duncan ached for a way to help her but knew that, like the barn, her fire would have to burn out on its own. He turned back to the men with the buckets and worked with them far into the night, dousing the wall of the cooper’s shed when it burst into flame but preserving all the other buildings, with only few charred timbers.

It was long after midnight before it seemed safe to rest, and many of the men sat in the river to wash the soot away, staring at the long, wide pile of glowing embers and low flame, staring at Sarah, who had risen and was leading Crispin toward the door of the kitchen. The fear had burned out of the men, replaced by something Duncan could not at first name. There was a new, solemn strength about them, as if they understood something important had happened that night, something that changed Edentown forever, something that made them closer to whole men again. The burning of Ramsey’s English barn had released something inside the prisoners. It wasn’t a barn that burned so much as the bridge to Ramsey’s world.

As Duncan walked around the huge bed of coals, he found Lister gazing outward, toward the starlit pasture. A knot of men were in the center of the cleared land. He could not make out the words they spoke, but their tone of excitement was unmistakable.

“’Tis those savages,” Lister said in a worried voice. “They took that mask out there.”

Duncan took several steps into the pasture, then turned and gestured for Lister to join him. The Iroquois were there, with several of Jamie’s men, gathered around Ravencatcher, who wore the mask, facing upward, arms extended toward the sky.

None of the Indians seemed to notice them as they walked around the circle. They were all watching Old Crooked Face as he studied the eastern sky. Duncan followed the gaze of the mask, not understanding. Then he saw it—a long, glowing slash in the sky. A small gasp of joy escaped his lips. “What day is it, Mr. Lister?”

“Wouldn’t know, sir. Late September, nigh October.”

The Iroquois had found Mr. Evering’s comet. And from their excited tones, he knew they had decided it was the third miracle, the miracle of the sky that proved the old spirits had not abandoned them.

 

 

Ramsey still sat on the steps of the great house in the morning, gray and empty, another cinder left by the night. In all the long hours of darkness it appeared no one had gone near him, no one had dared to offer help. Duncan, having collapsed onto a bench in the carpenter’s shop three hours before dawn, rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he approached the patron. He ventured a quiet greeting. When Ramsey did not reply, did not even seem to see him, Duncan pulled him to his feet and led him, hand on his elbow, into the house.

Inside, the second floor bustled with activity. Duncan led Ramsey into the quieter sitting room of the first floor. Like a man robbed of his senses, the lord let Duncan lay him down on the day bed and cover him with a blanket. In seconds, he was asleep.

Outside, Iroquois, Company men, and rangers worked alongside one another, clearing away the debris of the barn, stacking its salvageable building stones as they cooled, raking embers into piles, gleaning pieces of hinges and pintels, some gnarled by the heat, for reuse by the smith. Duncan found a shovel and joined the effort. The sun was nearly overhead when they finished, and Duncan was washing himself at one of the water troughs when he heard an alien, unexpected sound. A child’s laughter. He looked up and stared in wonder. Jonathan and Virginia were ankle deep in the water, with poles and line, being taught to fish by Lister, who sat on the bank, crutch at his side. Virginia squealed with delight as a long, bronzed arm appeared around an alder bush, holding a huge, flopping trout.

“Come see, Clan McCallum, ’tis Mr. Moon!” Lister exclaimed to Duncan as the old Indian appeared around the bush. “The very one I sailed with!” Duncan smiled and nodded. Conawago had put on his European clothes, though a feather dangled in his braided hair and his legs were bare below his britches. Conawago showed the fish
to the children and let Virginia stroke its rainbowed side before setting it back into the stream.

Duncan lay back on the bank, luxuriating in the sun, watching with an unexpected contentment until he saw Jonathan staring uncertainly across the river. People were quietly moving in the shadows, pushing canoes in the water. Tashgua’s band was preparing to travel.

“To the west,” Conawago said as he settled beside Duncan.

“I didn’t think you would leave so soon.”

“Not me, not with them. Our ways will no doubt cross again, but we are not on the same path. They promised to keep an eye out for my people.”

“They would be welcome here, to rest for a few more days.” Incredibly, he told himself, it was true. As they had worked side by side the night before, the inferno seemed to have welded something between the Company men and the Iroquois.

“Soldiers will be coming,” Conawago reminded him.

Duncan found himself on his feet. Canoes were already shoving off, heading downstream, some paddled by the warrior Scots. He quickly waded through the thigh-deep water to the far bank, shaking a hand here, offering a word of encouragement there, accepting from one of the Iroquois warriors a bundle of feathers wrapped with a strip of fur. Tashgua’s son was there, arranging large leather pouches that Duncan suspected held the ceremonial masks. Ravencatcher soberly lifted a leather necklace from his neck and placed it around Duncan’s neck. A claw of a bear hung from it. “In all your life,” the Indian said, “you will never need to fear a bear again.” He turned and stepped into a canoe.