Hadrian recalled quizzing the boy about the telephone in the grave, what he would ask if Jonah called on the phone. About who’s got the words now, he had said. As if Dax sensed something vital, something urgent in the messages. As if he sensed something undone.
“Once he had me leave a message at a birch tree a couple miles up the coast.”
Hadrian considered the words carefully. “You mean a tree beside a steep trail into the mountains?”
The boy nodded. “A week later he sent me there again. There was a flour sack, all sewn up, for me to take back. But not as heavy as flour.”
That, Hadrian told himself, had been a reckless thing for Jonah to do, something he never would have done lightly. It had been many years since they helped their friends Morgan and Helen escape the second expulsion and secretly taken supplies to the couple as they built their remote, hidden home. Morgan knew the forest, and those who traversed it, better than any man Hadrian knew.
“On a day like this, without wind, it’s like they’re running in wet sand,” Dax said abruptly. “Can’t hide. Anyone could see,” he added pointedly, as if to say he was betraying no confidence.
“I’m sorry?” Hadrian followed the boy’s gaze toward the water, not understanding.
“The fishing shoals are there,” Dax said, gesturing to the north.
Hadrian scanned the horizon in confusion, then froze. Although the boat was nearly out of sight, with no wind the smoke of its steam engine etched a long track in the dawn sky. The vessel wasn’t heading to the fishing grounds, it was going west. Following a prohibited course toward the exile camps.
CHAPTER Six
HADRIAN ARRIVED OUT of breath on the balcony outside of Jonah’s library workshop, panting from the run down the hill. He quickly swung the telescope toward the shoreline. The boat now was a speck on the horizon but its trail of smoke still plainly visible. He straightened, studying the harbor, watching as the morning breeze filled the sails of two of the old sailing skipjacks and pushed them northward. He bent back to the scope, lining it up with each of Jonah’s railing marks in turn. In the clearing above, Dax’s red shirt was visible as the boy stood staring out over the rafts of waterfowl.
Hadrian swung the lens back to the middle mark, bringing into view two men on the roof of the main fishery building with smaller telescopes in their hands. They could have been watching the skipjacks, could have been watching for signs of fish. As he watched they swung their lenses toward the smaller wharf closer to the center of town. Jonah’s third mark took him back to the ragged spar at the border of the exile lands. The three cloths still hung like flags from the tree. Yellow, red, yellow. He straightened, puzzled, trying to recall the colors he had seen before. Red, blue, red. They’d changed.
He watched the plume of smoke until it finally dissipated, then focused on the fishery again. The two men were climbing down through a roof hatch. They hadn’t been watching the sailboats or fish. They had been waiting for the steamer, and its smoke, to disappear. He studied the waterfront again. They had been watching the steamer but had also been keeping an eye on the boatshed where the police launch was kept. As he watched them disappear into the building, he recalled Buchanan’s criticism of Jori Waller for overcounting the steamboats in the harbor. The governor’s words had been gnawing at him. Then, as he looked out over the water, he recalled other, similar words appearing in Jonah’s journal from the week before. Striving to capture the splendor of the day Jonah had described ten steamboats in the harbor. But Hadrian knew, and Jonah knew, that one had sunk. Only nine existed. Five were in the harbor now but that meant nothing since they often stayed out overnight, especially this late in the season when they were trying to fill their holds before the ice set in.
He stared absently at Jonah’s marks on the railing. How the old scientist had delighted in riddles! His fingers wrapped around the cool stone in his pocket and he pulled it out, gazing at the intricate patterns in the agate. He would never understand the killings until he understood the mysterious patterns of Jonah’s life. He looked back at the signal flags on the exiles’ tree. There had been one signal when Jonah was killed. There had been a new signal now, when someone had stolen Nelly and Shenker out of prison.
As the sun’s early rays reached the balcony, he basked for a moment in their warmth to the sounds of the town coming to life. And a sudden smell of onions. He spun about to see a tall blond man leaning against the doorframe, a half-eaten onion in his hand. He nodded at Hadrian as he took another bite. It was Bjorn, the stone-faced bodyguard.
The Norger policeman spoke while still chewing. “He says you are to come with me. Now.” When he straightened he filled the entire doorway. With a helmet on his head and a battle ax in his hand he would have made a perfect Viking.
They drove in a covered buggy that waited behind the library, the big Norger cracking a whip over the heads of the team as they sped out of town onto the southern road. His escort ignored Hadrian’s questions, speaking only to the horses, expertly weaving the team around farm wagons, the wheels clattering loudly as they raced over a covered bridge. They were nearly five miles from town when he pulled the team to a stop beside another, empty buggy, tethered at the base of a steep wooded hill.
Before he stepped onto the path Bjorn turned to face Hadrian. “Was it over quickly? Did he suffer?” Even after all the years, there was a hint of an accent in his voice.
For a moment Hadrian gazed in confusion. “Jansen? No. It was probably over before he realized what had happened. I’m sorry. Was he—?”
“My cousin,” Bjorn replied without emotion.
When they reached the top, Hadrian saw Jori Waller first, seated on a rock, her face drained of color. She offered no greeting, only a look of apology. Lucas Buchanan stood twenty feet away beside a large log. A terrified boy with a bow and quiver of arrows sat against a nearby tree.
“He and his older brother were hunting when they found this,” Buchanan explained in a tight voice. “The brother galloped to town, straight to my office. Sergeant Waller was there speaking to me about Officer Jansen’s unfortunate demise.”
Hadrian saw now the skeletal legs draped across the log behind Buchanan, a femur exposed through rotting trousers. He forced himself to step forward and examine the corpse. Part of the skull gleamed white through the rotting flesh of the man’s face. Clumps of brown hair flecked with grey had fallen from the scalp. His eyes were gone and mildew clung to his clothes. A vine curled around one leg.
“His hands were tied around the log,” Buchanan continued. The corpse’s arms were stretched along either side, disappearing underneath. “As if he were left here to die.”
“As if he were tortured,” Hadrian corrected. “Who is he?”
“God knows. A hunter. A farmer with a feud with a neighbor.”
A dead man without a face. A scout stabbed and left to drown in sewage. His closest friend tortured and hanged. Hadrian’s fear was slowly replaced with a cold anger. “That day we found Hastings, who did you and Kenton speak with about it?”
Buchanan looked up from the grisly scene. “No one, you fool,” he muttered.
“Someone knew about it. It was why Jonah died that night.”
The governor glanced pointedly at Waller and Bjorn, his eyes filling with warning. “It was a state secret,” he snapped, then gestured Bjorn toward the body. “Release the hands.”
The Norger opened a pocketknife and reached under the log, then backed away as the arm stretched out. The fingers had been chewed on by small animals, but one finger was entirely gone, neatly severed above the knuckle.
Hadrian studied the hair and the structure of what was left of the face, then knelt to examine the remaining clothing. It was all fine wool and linen, with a trace of embroidery on the pocket of the shirt. He looked up at the governor. “Like you said, he was having health problems.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It wasn’t any finger that was severed. It was the ring finger
, because it bore a signet ring, the seal of the guild. What did you call him? Your most important political ally? The most powerful businessman in the colony? I’d say the Dutchman has been exercising his power from the grave for the past six months.”
What little color was left in the governor’s face drained away. “You can’t know it’s Van Wyck.”
“Look at the shape of the face, the hair, the fine clothes. What’s left of his expensive shoes.” Hadrian bent and reached into the pocket of the dead man’s shirt, pulling out and unfolding a slip of paper. He read it, then extended it to Buchanan. “A bill of sale for a new horse, made out to Van Wyck. This is the road he would have taken to his farm in the south.”
A twig broke behind him. Sergeant Waller was approaching. She was forcing herself to look at the evidence.
“Who would dare torture him?” The governor’s voice had gone hoarse. He had been invoking the Dutchman as a political ally on the Council, using his vote, reading his statements into the record, for months. “There’s no sign of a death blow. It must have been an accident. He was being pressed for something and he had a heart attack.”
Hadrian leaned over the body, studying the ruined torso, noting now the long striations in the remaining flesh. “They cut deep into his belly before he died.”
“To what end?” Buchanan glanced with worry into the shadows of the forest.
Hadrian paced around the log, studying the surrounding ground, seeing now that Bjorn was staring at a large hole fifteen feet up an old maple. The shape was familiar, as were the scratch marks below the hole. “It would have been in early spring,” he said. “The marten that used that hole had young. The slices were to ensure there was an irresistible scent of blood.”
“I don’t understand,” Waller said behind him.
“They have four, even six babies. After the first few weeks the pups are ravenous for fresh meat.” He turned to face her. “Van Wyck was tied here to be finished by a frenzy of tree jackals feeding on his belly.”
Something like a sob escaped the sergeant’s throat. Buchanan retreated behind Bjorn.
Hadrian touched the sergeant’s shoulder and pushed her away from the grisly sight. “Why not just kill him?” she asked.
“He was being punished, I wager,” Hadrian said. “Made an example of. There were probably others here, brought to watch.”
“But who?” Buchanan asked. “Who would engage in such butchery?”
Hadrian fixed him with a cold gaze. “The ones who have been working with you to control the Council.”
THE ENDING OF the world had been hard on the devout. For most their faith had not only been broken, it had been shattered, not simply forgotten but rather the butt of bitter jokes and jibes. In the early years survivors had turned their backs on their religious upbringings, losing themselves in the ordeal of staying alive and the abject pain of their losses.
As Hadrian watched the compact figure in brown homespun working in the garden of his little white chapel, he realized the man might well be the only one left in all the world able to perform a religious ceremony that would have been recognized in the century before. Yet Father William had not even tried to replicate or invoke the old institutions. He had sought to honor spirituality, not the traditions of earlier centuries, adapting to the new realities of the colony and the cultural markers of its citizens. There was no liturgy as such in his services, there was debate on “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” There were no sermons, there were soliloquies involving skulls. In a colony where it was more likely in most households to find a volume of the old poet bard than a Bible, it was no surprise that William’s flock called themselves Shakespeare Christians. They were as likely to solemnly quote a verse of MacBeth as a passage from Ecclesiastes.
While on Sundays William played the priest to his congregation, on other days he was the solitary monk, roaming the forested ridge above the chapel, meditating, and tending the little shrine overlooking the lake. When Hadrian arrived he was dividing flower bulbs dug up from his chapel garden. The monk nodded silently as Hadrian dropped to his knees and began helping with the chore. Hadrian knew better than to raise the first word with William, who had been known to take a vow of silence that would span the entire week between worship services. It was far from the first time Hadrian had joined him in his chores. Months earlier William had dragged him, in a drunken stupor, out of a gutter and put him to work plaiting beehives, had encouraged Hadrian’s frequent return to divert him from another alcoholic binge.
When they finished with the bulbs, William produced two stiff brushes and handed one to his visitor, who began cleaning a marble cherub mounted on a whitewashed fence post. Such little stone figures adorned nearly every post, and the window sills inside the chapel, all donated by salvagers. Hadrian and William knew the weathered figures had been gleaned from ruined cemeteries but never spoke of it.
“The Lord is my shepherd,” the monk murmured as he began cleaning a limestone lamb. Part of William’s ritual was a quick invocation over each before he worked on it. “He that sheds his blood with me, be he ever so vile this day shall gentle his condition,” he recited when he reached a small statue of a Christian warrior.
After several minutes he finally looked up. “One of the Buchanan girls came to me yesterday—the older one, Sarah, clutching one of those magazine ads. Came to me here,” he added.
Hadrian glanced at the ridge above them. The little clapboard chapel wasn’t William’s main church. It was a shrine of solace built below Suicide Ridge. “Please tell me it was not about a trip to collect toys on the other side.”
His companion’s face tightened. “I’m sorry?”
Hadrian gestured to a bench. “Have a seat, Father,” he said, then gazed out over the water as William settled onto the bench. With a sigh he began to explain how ghosts had been giving gifts to the young.
The monk stared unseeing at his garden as he considered Hadrian’s words. “Who would do such a thing, who would treat eternal souls as playthings?”
“Sarah is stronger than that.”
William slowly nodded his agreement. “She asked for you, Hadrian, said she’d been trying to find you. When I said I didn’t know where you were she sat on the bench as though going to wait for you. She sat there and sang under her breath, just staring out over the water. After an hour she finally decided that I would do, and started speaking.” The monk absently plucked a dried flower stem and twisted it between his hands. “But I still don’t know exactly why she came. She has a restless spirit, that one, but there is something more going on, more than the emotional squalls of an adolescent girl. She said her father is wrong to hoard the past as if it was just another of his antiques. When I asked her what she meant she said he pretended that life always had been easy and cheerful for them. He tells the girls about the splendid festival meals their mother loved to prepare for them before she died. But Sarah remembers long winters of being always hungry. Once she found her mother chewing on acorns in order to save bread for her daughters. Buchanan got furious, told her not to tell such lies in front of her little sister.
“Then she pulled out more magazine ads—more than a dozen, all with photos of homes and families playing. She had drawn circles around things.”
“What things?”
“Random objects. Porcelain. A glass fish. A brass table lamp. A grandfather clock.”
“Salvage. All things she has seen before in this world.”
“A grandfather clock?” William asked in surprise.
“There’s one in their house. The governor’s mansion.” Hadrian paced along the perimeter of the garden, touching each of the statutes on the posts as he passed. Their heads were shiny from being stroked by mourners. “I remember before, when you had just a garden and some log benches, up higher on the ridge.”
The monk nodded. “We could see the lake better from there.”
“And more of the land on the other side of the ridge.”
“Wh
at do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” Hadrian began working on a pair of marble doves. “I remember an article in the paper when this chapel was dedicated. The building itself was paid for by the Dutchman.”
“Van Wyck is a supporter of our flock. With his help the merchants’ guild funded the construction. There’s a plaque by the door.”
Hadrian stepped to the door, reading the wooden plaque with the carved expression of gratitude to the guild, looking inside at the half-dozen benches and simple altar adorned with candlesticks and more gravestone carvings. More than once he had calmed himself in the little sanctuary. Over the altar hung a simple wooden cross and a long slab of wood that William had inscribed with elegant letters. WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS MAN, it said, HOW NOBLE IN REASON, IN ACTION HOW LIKE AN ANGEL, IN APPREHENSION HOW LIKE A GOD.
He sensed William at his shoulder. “Did they tell you to build down here?”
“The old site wasn’t suitable for building. Van Wyck sent a contractor who selected this one, even purchased the land from the Council.”
Hadrian turned to face the monk. “Van Wyck is dead,” he said abruptly.
William closed his eyes, pressing a hand over the little wooden cross that hung on his chest. “May he find eternal peace. I had heard he’d been ill recently.”
“He died months ago. He was tortured, then murdered.”
The monk squeezed his cross tightly. “Surely you are mistaken. He sends money for our support. He still sends the little statues.”
“But they actually come from the guild.”
Worry creased William’s round countenance. “Yes,” he confirmed, “they come from the guild.”
Hadrian ran his fingers over a lamb. “Salvage,” he said. “It’s all about smuggling.” He explained what he knew about Van Wyck’s death and the use of his signet ring to manipulate the governor.
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