Bone Rattler amoca-1

by Eliot Pattison

  “In her room,” Crispin said in a thin, frightened voice, “I found these, maybe twenty, spread out under her pillow and under the bed.” He handed Duncan several familiar slips of paper, the slips he had written words on for Sarah. But she had used them again. On the backside of each she had drawn two squiggling lines, connected at the ends. Sarah had been retreating back into her spirit world. “She stopped and clamped my arm like a frightened kitten when we were coming here. She looked back at the great house with a tear rolling down her cheek and said they meant to cut her father into pieces and scatter them in the forest.”

  When sleep came again it was full of nightmares, jumbled images of his grandfather and Lister, of Sarah and the savages he had seen at the army headquarters, of screaming animals and arms reaching up out of graves. By the time the waking nightmare began, he did not at first trust his senses. The screams were distant, the frightened neighs of horses much like the cries of the creatures that inhabited his dreams. But then, through the black night, he saw the flames of the cabins at the far side of the fields and heard the first musket shot.

  A spine-wrenching howl came from the woods as he opened his door. Much closer was a second cry, from a Company man cowering at the corner of the building. “Indians!” he moaned, shaking so hard he dropped the ax from his hand.

  Chapter Ten

  In an instant Duncan threw on his clothes and was out the door, running not toward the fires but toward the great house. The compound was in chaos. Men ran in every direction, some screaming in panic, some grabbing hayforks and shovels for weapons, others running with buckets to battle the fire. Ramsey appeared on the porch in nightshirt and cap, shouting for Woolford and Fitch, then another war screech from the woods caused Ramsey to clutch his heart and press against the wall.

  As Duncan reached the porch Ramsey grabbed him, pulling Duncan in front of him as if he expected an arrow at any moment. More shouts came from the river, followed by victorious cries of men shouting that they had killed one, then another, of the attackers. At the door of the carpenter’s shop, Duncan saw Cameron distributing muskets and powder horns. Ramsey had allowed his secret arsenal to be opened.

  Some men fumbled with the heavy weapons, others quickly huddled in a group and fired volleys into the woods, then, as Cameron pointed out a dark shape behind them, turned and fired toward the open field past the barn. Sparks flew high in the sky. Terrified animals brayed from their stalls. Ramsey disappeared into the house. As Duncan stumbled from the porch, someone put a bucket in his hand and he headed toward the fires at a slow, dazed jog.

  One new barracks cabin was consumed in flames, which now licked at the unfinished palisade wall. Twenty men with brooms and wet blankets beat at the flames that had reached the second cabin. Duncan ran fifty yards to the river and filled his bucket, returned and tossed it on the flames, then picked up a smoldering broom and began beating at a tongue of fire spreading toward the hay fields. The night became a blur of frenzied work against the sparks and flame and breathless runs to the river, punctuated by terrified moments when he and his companions lay on the earth as shots whistled over their heads.

  At last a glimmer of dawn appeared in the east, and the shouts faded, then ceased. Duncan heard nothing but the tired calls of work parties running buckets of water to the smoldering foundations of the cabins. As he walked back, emotionally and physically drained, he was surprised to find no wounded men on the ground, no bodies strewn about the village. But then he passed the cooper’s shed and with a groan of despair discovered a green-clad figure lying face down in a pool of blood. As he rolled the body over, the man’s hand reached out as if to throttle Duncan. But the fingers that gripped his neck had no strength left. He looked into the desolate eyes of Sergeant Fitch. Blood oozed from a gaping wound in his chest, more from his mouth. Fitch opened and shut his jaw as if trying to speak, but only coughed, choking on the blood that now began to flow more heavily over his lips. The sturdy old Indian fighter had taken a tomahawk in the chest, and they both knew he was close to his last breath. As his eyes glazed over, he raised his trembling hands and made a series of motions. With what appeared to be great effort, he ran his open hand down the side of his head to his shoulder. As bubbles of blood appeared on his lips, he clenched a fist then under it stretched two fingers of his other hand, moving them back and forth, rapidly at first, then more slowly as the strength left them.

  As Duncan watched with an aching heart, the old ranger closed his eyes and drifted away, then abruptly opened them and with a heave of his chest coughed up more blood. One hand, limp as a ragdoll’s, gripped Duncan’s as the other fumbled with something on a leather strap hanging from his neck. Fitch freed it from his tunic and closed his hand around it a moment before the light left his eyes. As Duncan hung his head in grief for the steadfast sergeant, the closed fist rolled off his chest. Fitch had been gripping the small metal badge used to identify Woolford’s rangers, around which he had fastened a dozen little yellow feathers.

  Suddenly Duncan became aware of weeping behind him, and he turned to see Crispin, his clothes torn and sooty, cradling Jonathan in one arm. The boy sobbed against the big man’s shoulder.

  “They’ve taken her,” Crispin declared in a tormented, cracking voice. “They’ve taken our little girl again.”

  The sorrow that had overtaken Duncan transformed into something dark and angry and fearful. “Sarah?” His groan seemed to come from somewhere distant. “Which way?” he demanded.

  Crispin stared at the black forest beyond the gray, dawn-lit river. “Gone,” he said with such despair Duncan thought he, too, was about to cry.

  Duncan battled an impulse to race into the forest himself, then he glanced back into the forge and looked at his hands, still covered with Fitch’s blood. “Have them bring the wounded to the schoolhouse,” he directed, and stepped to the nearest water trough to scrub his hands.

  A quarter hour later, having covered the school desks with linens to take the wounded, Duncan was tying a strip of cloth tightly around the ankle of a man who had twisted it running in the dark fields, having already set the broken arm of a man struck by a falling timber, when Crispin entered.

  “There is no one else,” the big man announced in a puzzled tone, “only a few who need salve for their burns. No one wounded by the Indians. Only Fitch killed.” He glanced wearily toward the great house. “I must see to the children.”

  At least ten men with muskets were guarding the house when Duncan entered it a few minutes later. No one stopped him at the entrance, nor at the door to the library. Ramsey sat at the edge of his desk chair, head in his hands, a half-empty glass of gin at his side.

  “The soldiers found her before,” Duncan said. “They can do it again.”

  “We never expected something so foolhardy,” Ramsey said in a brittle voice. He drained the glass and slammed it into the empty fireplace, bits of glass exploding across the hearth. “We’ll have guards with guns, every hour of the day.”

  “They have destroyed us.” The words came from Arnold, in a bleak, hollow voice.

  The younger children are safe, Duncan was about to say, the main compound is intact.

  “The house seemed secure enough,” Arnold said. “The attack was on the north side, at the cabins. We set men to watch at the south side of the house, the point nearest the forest, and I went to help at the fires. Lord Ramsey went to safety in the cellar. They came right into her bedroom, from the river. Wet footprints were all over the upstairs hall. They took wigs,” he added in a confused whisper, “half His Lordship’s hairpieces.”

  “Wigs?” The news seemed so odd that Duncan almost asked Arnold to repeat himself. But then he followed Arnold’s gaze to the desk in the corner. It was in ruin. The top leaf had been levered open, splintering the wood around the lock, and the small drawers inside had been tossed on the floor, some crushed underfoot. The panel behind them-which, Duncan knew, had enclosed the paper safe-had been forced open, and bits of its wood lay stre
wn on the desktop.

  “They stole the king’s charter?” Duncan asked, not bothering to conceal the disbelief in his voice.

  For the first time since Duncan had known him, Arnold was at a loss for words. He glanced at Duncan with a helpless expression. “Our sacred grant,” he groaned.

  “There must have been a hundred of the savages,” Ramsey said. “They were everywhere. It would have been a massacre but for our valiant defense.”

  “No more than ten,” a deep, fuming voice interjected. Woolford stepped into the room, his face soot-stained, his clothes spattered with mud, in his hand a red-painted club that ended in a large knob with an iron spike protruding from it. “And if they had come to kill, there would be damned few of us left standing right now.”

  Ramsey quickly closed the desk, then rose and stood to lean against it. “It was a pitched battle,” he protested. “You heard the gunshots. Doubtless French troops as well. My brave lads kept them at bay.”

  “Every shot I heard came from an English Brown Bess. Only our guns were fired,” the ranger said. “And if you wish to know the fettle of your brave lads, look to your pasture. There are two champion milk cows lying dead by the hands of your Company marksmen. And a chestnut stump with enough lead in it to sink a boat.” When he met Duncan’s gaze, he sighed. “They took her across the river. Their tracks lead northwest.”

  “My little Sarah,” Ramsey moaned. Tears erupted on his cheeks. “Dear God, my Sarah. Enslaved again. . Thank God her mother is not here to relive the anguish.”

  “What did they take from here?” Woolford demanded.

  Duncan watched Ramsey, who even in his weeping exchanged an uneasy glance with Arnold.

  “They killed your sergeant,” the vicar stated. “Destroyed our new barracks for the Company.” He advanced on Woolford, as if trying to force a retreat. “We will collect the bodies of those we killed. At least we can tell the world the price they paid for their atrocity. If we are fortunate, we may have shot a French officer or two.”

  “There won’t be any bodies,” Woolford shot back. “Even if the Company bullets connected with any of them, which I doubt, they will have taken away their casualties. And you will certainly find no evidence of the French.” The ranger studied Ramsey and Arnold a moment, then cursed under his breath. “Is it truly possible you could be at the center of this maelstrom and not comprehend it?”

  “We do not need the army to explain our suffering,” Ramsey rejoined icily, and turned his back on the ranger.

  With a vengeful glare Woolford raised the lethal spiked club in his hand. Duncan leapt forward, for a terrible instant thinking the ranger meant to strike Ramsey. But with a blur of movement the ranger brought it down on Ramsey’s delicate porcelain teapot, the spike embedding in the refined mahogany table. Ramsey spun about, a snarl on his mouth, but as he saw Woolford’s face, white with rage, he shrank back and fixed his gaze on the shards of painted flowers that covered his carpet.

  When Woolford spoke, the venom in his voice was a palpable thing. “These were no Huron, no Abenaki, no French Indians,” he hissed. “They were our friends the Iroquois!” Woolford spun on his heel and was gone.

  Duncan found Jonathan near the edge of the river, gathering stones into a pile under the eye of a guard fifty feet away. His cheeks were streaked where tears had fallen, his eyes sunken and absent. Duncan watched the boy in silence, then collected a handful of pebbles and added them to the boy’s pile.

  “If I had enough stones,” Jonathan said. “I could have stopped them.” His voice was halting, as if he were about to start sobbing again at any moment. “Next time I shall kill them all. I have learned to kill frogs and squirrels,” he offered with hollow bravado.

  “Did you see them, Jonathan?”

  “I tried to stay awake, but. . If I had been awake I could have raised the alarm, I could have thrown stones while Sarah hid.” The tears began again, and the boy collapsed to the ground, tucking his head into his folded knees as he sobbed. “When I awoke, I thought it was Crispin who held me. He was so large and strong, and he patted me on the back like Crispin.” The boy seemed to have aged years since the day before. He scrubbed his cheeks and gazed fearfully toward the far bank.

  A shadow flickered across them. Woolford was there, bending, dropping more stones onto Jonathan’s pile. The boy pushed his chin out, acknowledging him with a solemn nod-the young recruit in his officer’s presence. “When he stepped to Sarah’s window, in the moonlight, I saw his hair,” he continued, raising both hands and placing them on his crown, covering all but a center patch of hair, pushed up between his fingers.

  “It’s called a scalp lock,” Woolford explained, kneeling at the boy’s opposite side.

  “He had stripes of paint on his face, and his eyes were big black circles. A witch, I am certain. On the side of his face was a crow. He must have cast a spell, because when I tried to scream, no sound came out. I hit him with my fists. That’s when he did it.”

  “Did what?” Duncan asked in alarm. “Something to Sarah?”

  Jonathan shook his head slowly. “He laughed.” The words hung in the still afternoon air. “But savages can’t laugh, can they? They kill. They scream. They invite terrible spirits to inhabit their bodies. That’s what he was doing,” the boy decided, looking back at a second-story window. “It was his way of calling a devil.”

  “Where was Sarah when this happened?” Duncan asked. “Was her tongue also bewitched?”

  “I don’t think she awoke until he made that sound. She leapt out of bed, calling my name, then someone else in the room spoke in the forest language and she spoke no more. I didn’t see, didn’t hear anything else. He put me on the windowsill and pointed to the moon. He meant to kill me if I didn’t keep looking at the moon, I’m sure of it.”

  “Did you see her leave?”

  “I think they beat her and carried her away in a blanket. I turned when I saw the cabins burning, and they were gone.”

  “It was all over before it started,” Woolford concluded. “She was already in the woods by the time the cabins ignited. Just a distraction, to keep everyone here while her abductors raced away.”

  “Crispin and I cleaned Fitch’s body,” Woolford reported as the boy set off to collect more stones. “When we lifted it, there was something underneath. The key to the lock on Lister’s cell.”

  “You’re saying he was trying to release Lister?”

  Woolford took out his knife and began rubbing the edge on a flat stone, an action Duncan had seen Fitch perform a dozen times before. “Could be he thought the buildings were all going to burn.”

  “Killed by an Indian in a settlement after so many years fighting them in the wilderness,” Duncan observed. “You said he was the best Indian fighter you had ever known.”

  “I thought you had seen his body.” Something close to contempt had entered Woolford’s voice.

  “I did.”

  “Then you looked and didn’t see.”

  As the ranger continued to whet his blade, Duncan reconstructed the scene in his mind. “His belt,” Duncan said in a muted tone. “His knife and tomahawk were still in it. His attacker took him in the chest.”

  “It isn’t the forest we should be watching.”

  “God’s breath!” Duncan gasped. “It wasn’t an Indian who killed him.”

  “It would be as likely for him to have been killed by the dowager Duchess of Kent as by one of those Iroquois. Measure the wound, McCallum. It’s five inches at least. No tomahawk did that.” A wave of emotion seemed to wrack the officer. “Fitch,” he whispered with bowed head. “I ran ten thousand miles with the man, in every kind of storm man and nature could conjure. He spoke a dozen native tongues, was welcome at every hearth, Indian or white, south of the Saint Lawrence. What do I tell his family? That he died in a make-believe battle in Ramsey’s pitiful, make-believe world?”

  “I was there, in his last moments. He could not speak, but he made these motions,” Duncan said,
and repeated the hand gestures Fitch had struggled to make with his last ounce of strength.

  Woolford grimaced and repeated the sign of the fingers falling from head to shoulder. “The tribes use hand signals sometimes to speak with one another when they do not share a language. This means woman.” He stared with a puzzled expression as Duncan repeated the gesture of the fist with the moving fingers underneath, then sighed and looked away.

  Duncan repeated the motion for himself. The fist. Something hard. A rock, a stone. The moving fingers underneath. A moving stone. A running rock. “Stony Run,” he declared. “He was saying Sarah was being taken to Stony Run. How did he know?”

  Woolford ignored the question, but it seemed to trigger something in his mind. He cast a worried glance toward the forest, toward the Edge of the Woods place. “Someone could not afford to have that message spread.”

  “Not want her rescued? Impossible. No one could. . ” His voice faded, not certain how to complete the thought.

  “We are in the land where all things are possible,” Woolford replied in a bitter tone.

  They watched in silence as the boy gathered more stones.

  “It was like a military operation,” Duncan said with grudging respect. “A precisely planned strike. The fire at the cabins was a diversion.”

  “What did they take from Ramsey’s desk?”

  “The most valuable thing in Edentown. The only thing that cannot be replaced.” There had been many arguments in the law courts about the nature of such charters, Duncan knew. Judges had decreed that the charter itself constituted the right, that without the piece of paper there was no right. And more than once a king had changed his mind about such charters, but was powerless to change them unless they were returned. “They must have been looking for valuables and took it on a fancy. A pretty painted piece of paper signed by the king of England.”