Bone Rattler amoca-1

by Eliot Pattison

  As Crispin took an uneasy step forward, Ramsey gazed anxiously at the assembly of Company men, Indians, and Scottish deserters, then sighed and raised a restraining hand. He rose, lifted his stool, and placed it on the opposite side of Woolford. The mask was no longer in his field of vision. With a stroke of his gavel, Ramsey commenced the proceeding.

  The trial, he had once proclaimed, would be a grand ritual, an instruction in biblical commandments and Plato’s logic. Now he extracted a sheet of paper folded within the volume of Plato. From his seat five feet away, Duncan had no trouble recognizing Arnold’s handwriting, and realized the vicar would have had time to rewrite the notes he had sent with McGregor, and lost. Ramsey stated the murder charges against Lister and the charges of theft and breach of indenture against Duncan, then straightened the paper on the plank in front of him and read the first name on Arnold’s list. He worked the witnesses in quick succession, taking testimony on the deaths of Evering and Frasier, following the advice of Arnold from beyond the grave.

  “We have no end of comments about circumstances,” Woolford interjected after the fifth witness, “but not a word on the criminal acts of the accused.”

  “Mr. Lister was found bending over poor Frasier’s body, the boy’s blood on his hands,” Ramsey snapped. “The night Evering died, everyone was accounted for except Lister. He killed Evering because of his hatred for everything English, more particularly because Evering had doubtlessly discovered his lie. He killed Frasier because Frasier had discovered evidence of the first crime.”

  “There are other circumstances to be considered,” Woolford declared. “I call on Mr. Lister’s advocate to explain,” He pointed to Duncan, in the front row.

  “McCallum?” Ramsey gasped. “Impossible! You cannot ask a prisoner to-”

  Woolford ignored Ramsey, motioned Duncan to rise. “There are other motives to consider,” the ranger said, “and other men who were unaccounted for the nights Evering and Frasier were murdered. And there is the science of their deaths. Science does not lie.” He addressed Ramsey now. “Science, like justice, instructs the truth.”

  Ramsey’s anger seemed to subside. Here, at least, was the kind of talk Plato would have preferred at a trial.

  Duncan quickly led them through the scientific evidence, explaining how it proved Evering had been killed in his cabin with two blows from a hammer, how Frasier had also died of a hammer blow, a single blow to the head. Before being killed, Evering had smashed one of Sarah’s dosing vials of laudanum, had, as Sarah could confirm, been allowing her to awaken, had been speaking with her of her plight and of the Ramsey Company. Jacob-another friend of Sarah, Duncan added-had died when his path had crossed that of the Company.

  “The ferryman? He was a heathen,” Ramsey scoffed, his patience paper-thin now. “Two killings will be sufficient to stretch this man’s neck.”

  “There were four murders, counting Sergeant Fitch,” Duncan rejoined, speaking to the assembly in front of him. “All arising out of Ramsey Company affairs.”

  “Do not presume,” Ramsey simmered, “that by digressing you will save a minute of this killer’s life.”

  “I call my first witness,” Duncan said in reply.

  Ramsey pounded his gavel angrily. “You will not mock this tribunal, sir. You have no authority!”

  “I call my first witness,” interrupted Woolford in a loud voice. The officer gave Duncan an inquisitive nod.

  “Reverend Zettlemeyer of the German Flats mission,” Duncan announced. Woolford repeated the name.

  The Moravian, dressed for the pulpit, emerged from the back of the assembly. Duncan lost no time in asking him about the settlers in the lands between Edentown and the mission. Of his own accord, Zettlemeyer produced a piece of paper-a map. When Ramsey objected, Woolford ordered Duncan to proceed. Pike, sitting between two soldiers on a front bench, rose as if to leave; his sergeant, the Irishman, blocked his path. The major hissed an order. The sergeant pointed him back to the bench. Duncan held the Moravian’s map for all to see, pointing first to two crosses marking German Flats in the north and Edentown in the south.

  “What are the little squares?” he asked the missionary. There were over two dozen squares scattered around the map.

  “Each is a homestead, a farm,” the German replied, “all those within forty miles of the mission.”

  “Who has such a map?”

  “I made this copy from two identical ones I sent to Reverend Arnold four months ago.”

  “We must know all our neighbors,” Ramsey said, as if in protest. “The Reverend had to know all the sheep of his flock.”

  “Are some of that flock present?” Duncan asked the missionary.

  Zettlemeyer nodded and motioned a man and a woman forward, introducing them as the survivors of two different homesteads. Duncan asked them to mark their farms on the map, then all the others that had been attacked by Indians. He soon displayed the map to the assembly, now showing many Xs, all along the river.

  When Duncan called the next witness, Pike growled out a futile protest. All the way to the stool, Pike’s sergeant looked at his feet. The big Irishman quickly confirmed that Major Pike often consulted a map kept in the leather cartridge case on his belt. Pike made a quick sideways motion as if to slide off his bench, then felt the chill stare of his sergeant and moved no more. He said nothing as a ranger approached and pulled the leather cartridge box from his belt. Duncan accepted the case, opened it, and pulled out another map. He held it up beside Zettlemeyer’s map.

  Duncan showed how the map had been folded, addressed on the reverse, and marked for postage. “Why, Major Pike,” he asked, pointing to the addressee’s name, “would Reverend Arnold send you one of his maps?” When Pike did not reply, Duncan paced along the front of the assembly. “And why would it be precisely the same map, with the same marks as those we’ve made today by the homesteads that were destroyed?”

  A confused murmur swept through the crowd.

  Pike make another effort to slip away, and was stopped by one of the rangers.

  “The map sent by Arnold,” Duncan declared, “wasn’t an intelligence report. It was a plan.” He held the map back up for the assembly to see. “Arnold and Pike knew where all the raided homesteads were, three months before the raids.”

  The stunned crowd was silent as Duncan placed the maps in front of Ramsey on the table. The patron seemed confused, and then worry creased his brow as he noticed Pike’s stricken expression. Ramsey had begun to grasp that it was not Lister who was on trial now. He stared so intensely at the maps that he took no notice of Duncan’s next witness, until Jonathan replied to Duncan’s question about the time spent by the Ramsey children with Reverend Arnold.

  “An hour each day, sir,” Jonathan said in an eager tone. “Father said we must have religious instruction at least an hour each day.”

  “And did not the vicar offer lessons drawn from life here in Edentown?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, we-”

  “How dare you!” Ramsey shot up from his chair, color filling his face now. “Crispin! Remove the children this instant!”

  Crispin’s response came without hesitation. “I may have the power to remove the Ramsey children, sir, but I have no power to remove a witness.”

  “I believe you were describing how the vicar escorted you around the works of the town,” Duncan continued.

  Jonathan’s gaze now rested on his older sister, standing at the wall, her hands on the shoulders of young Virginia. “Yes, sir. The smith, the carpenter, the butcher, the cooper.”

  “The butcher?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Every day the butcher. Reverend Arnold helped arrange the meals, said there were great lessons to be had in a butcher shop. He spent time in his own cousin’s butcher shop as a boy, and told us that each creature on earth had a destiny in life and death. He said those years had shown him how every human endeavor could be anchored in the teachings of the Bible, how his cousin operated a most Christian meat shop.”r />
  “What would a young assistant do in a Christian butcher shop?”

  “Sweeping clean. Killing the animals.”

  “And how does a good Christian butcher dispatch those creatures meant by God to serve him in their death, Jonathan?”

  Looks of confusion passed through the assembly. Ramsey looked up from his paper.

  A small hand shot up from one of the rear benches. “I know, Mr. McCallum! I know!” Virginia Ramsey did not want her brother to have all the attention. The girl jumped up, blurting out her answer without waiting for her schoolmaster’s bidding. “If you please, sir, if God wishes to use our hand when he requires another creature to be dispatched to heaven, we must seek to avoid their suffering. First you say the words ‘God wills it so’.”

  “Virginia!” Ramsey said, rising from his stool. “This is no place-Crispin! At least take-” The big butler began moving through the crowd.

  But Ramsey’s youngest daughter made sure her answer was complete before Crispin reached her. “Then a quick hammer to the skull-that does the trick,” she blurted out.

  The words stopped Crispin, and everyone else present. Virginia, pleased with her correct reply, grinned up at the mask of Old Crooked Face.

  Ramsey was the first to break the stunned silence. “It means nothing,” he said in a tight voice. “You mean to obscure the truth. You build no logic in your case, only distractions.”

  “It means everything,” Duncan countered, and called his next witness.

  Cameron settled onto the stool by the judge’s table with a peeved expression.

  “Reverend Arnold was a busy man, was he not, Mr. Cameron, being the Ramsey business agent as well as the vicar?”

  Cameron only frowned.

  “At least he had your valuable help. As a former merchant, you no doubt had a hand in the bookkeeping.” Sarah Ramsey stepped forward, extending to Duncan an object covered with a flour sack. Cameron watched her retreat with resentment in his eyes. When he turned back, Duncan had extracted the account book and opened it in front of the keeper. “Your writing, is it not, for these recent weeks?”

  “Aye.”

  “About stores. I see familiar entries in the first part. Flour. Bacon. Spices. Wheat. Linens.” Duncan raised the pages for all to see. “I don’t understand the second part, the one at the back,” he said, opening now to the pages he had first read in the cellar safe room. “Names from outside the Company. Numbers. Payments. Dates. For what, Mr. Cameron?”

  “That’s the vicar’s writing. Ask him.”

  “A lot of trouble, keeping such accounts locked in the safe room.”

  Cameron glared at him.

  “The Company’s first day ashore,” Duncan said abruptly, “did you kill a bear cub?”

  “That was Hawkins.”

  “Why do you suppose Mr. Hawkins has fled?”

  “He is a trapper. Trapping season is starting.”

  “A pity.” Duncan put a finger on the first line in the secret accounts. “Mr. Hawkins is the first entry, with over a dozen marks. Was he getting paid for bear cubs, Mr. Cameron?”

  When the keeper didn’t reply, Duncan set the ledger in front of Ramsey and turned back to the witness stool. “What did you kill that first day, Mr. Cameron?”

  The keeper’s eyes flared. “When vermin step in your path, you don’t preserve them to plague you another day.”

  Duncan returned his icy stare. “You lost your family in an Indian raid, in Pennsylvania. Did you explain that to Reverend Arnold when he recruited you?”

  A thin, cool smile formed on Cameron’s lips. “He said the Company needed leaders who would not shy away from the duties of avenging angels. Sure, I killed that old Indian, as good as done, judging from the blood he lost. And ye’ll not find a judge in America who would condemn me for it.”

  Duncan stepped closer, spoke quickly as Cameron kept his gaze on Ramsey. “Exactly how many Indians have you killed, Mr. Cameron?”

  “An even dozen so far. Four for each of mine they-” Cameron’s tongue stopped working. He slowly turned to face the assembly, from which at least a dozen Iroquois stared at him.

  “An odd thing, that Arnold had to keep the work of his avenging angels so secret.” Duncan gestured toward the ledger. “This list has your name at the bottom, the most recent entry. The first date by your name was the day Sergeant Fitch was killed. Was he your price of admission to these ranks? Were you paid for Fitch as well as for Indians?”

  “There is no charge against me!” Cameron spat. “Fitch died of a tomahawk to the chest. An Indian weapon.”

  “No,” Duncan countered. “I measured the wound when I cleaned his body. Not a tomahawk. The blade was much wider. It was a hewing ax, the kind kept in the barn by the sharpening wheel. Passed out among the Company the night of the raid.”

  “Fitch had found that damned Welshman at the bark mill,” Cameron muttered, “asked him a lot of questions about what Hawkins’s men spoke of when they drank. When his captain wasn’t here on his return, Fitch came to me about whether to tell the Reverend of what he had learned.”

  “What did he learn?”

  Cameron offered a cold smile. “Nothing much. Just that when they got drunk, they were always practicing their Indian war cries.”

  “Is that an admission, Mr. Cameron?”

  “I admit to nothing. Like Woolford said, the killing of a soldier be a military matter. Not a damned thing you can do it about, McCallum. This trial is about Frasier and Evering. You can’t-” His words choked away again as movement above caught his eye. The assembly followed his gaze upward. A tall, stately figure stood beside the mask, staring intensely at Cameron.

  “You may remain there, Mr. Cameron, as my next witness speaks,” Duncan announced. “His name is Ravencatcher, of the Onondaga tribe.”

  The gavel began pounding on the table; Ramsey worked it so feverishly, his wig came ajar. “This circus stops now, McCallum!” Ramsey shouted, turning for a moment to Cameron. “The chains! I want him in chains again! You’ll feel the lash this very-”

  Ramsey’s arm was stopped in midair as Woolford gripped his wrist. When the patron tried to shift the gavel to his free hand, another strong arm blocked him. Pike’s sergeant loomed over him and silently pried the gavel from his hand. “Sergeant,” Woolford acknowledged with a grateful nod, and then he turned to Duncan. “Please continue.”

  Another figure appeared by Ravencatcher. Conawago draped a wampum belt over the Onondaga’s raised arm. Tashgua’s son stepped into a pool of light cast through the hayloft door. Not a man below spoke.

  “You were near here, in the forest, for several days before you came for Sarah in the night,” Duncan began.

  “It is true,” came the reply from above.

  “You and Sarah exchanged messages, using signs on the riverbank.”

  “She would put signs out at dusk. I would come at dawn to reply.”

  “But young Frasier saw them and tried to destroy them.”

  “I did not know his name,” explained the Onondaga. “A young one with red hair. He had much fear. The day before Sarah came away with me, I saw him, by the barn in the early light. I thought to wait for him, to explain I meant him no harm, to ask that he stop destroying our sacred signs. I crouched by the alder, wrapped in the ground mist.”

  “But he didn’t make it to the bank.”

  “Another man came, carrying something on his shoulder. The one you call Frasier spoke in a low voice.”

  “Did you see the other’s face?”

  “No. He was in shadows all the time. There was only the beginning of light. It was over quickly. Four words, then a swing of that thing on the second man’s shoulder and the sound of bone cracking.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I stepped back across the river. It was town trouble, not for me.”

  “And the four words. Did you hear them?”

  Ravencatcher nodded solemnly. “‘God wills it so,’ the man said-only those words.
Then the young one fell.”

  Duncan turned to the judges. “There was no Scottish murderer on the ship,” he declared. “The same one who killed Frasier killed Evering-also with a hammer.” It had taken his time with Tashgua for Duncan to understand. Only one person could have taken the chart, which had been crusted with sea salt, from Evering’s cabin. Sarah never would have done so, never would have taken it into the ocean with her-unless she had known Evering was dead already. That certain knowledge had caused her to lash out at the Company with the ritual at the compass, and then to mount the spar for her suicide. Only Arnold had something to lose by Sarah’s awakening. Perhaps Evering’s life would have been spared if Arnold had only found him with the dosing vial he was to have given to Sarah, but he had seen Evering’s notes, too, which he burned in the chamber pot after killing him. Only Arnold would have understood their significance, would have known that Evering had become the junction, the ally, of the only two people who could do his plans harm.

  Ramsey’s head sank into his hands. Ravencatcher and Conawago disappeared from sight. Duncan nodded to Woolford, who rose and quietly spoke to Pike’s sergeant. Duncan found himself gazing at Sarah, who stared at the floor, a single tear on her cheek. Duncan became aware of movement around him, of a growl of protest abruptly cut off. When he turned back to the table, Ramsey was finally raising his head. Pike was standing to one side, a ranger holding each of his arms, a gag in his mouth. Conawago stood beside Duncan. Lister was standing, leaning on his crutch, rubbing his wrists where the manacles had been.

  Duncan motioned to Woolford, and the ranger pushed Pike’s leather belt box in front of Ramsey. “Open it,” Duncan instructed, “there was more than a map in the case.” Ramsey glared at him, then lifted a small, cloth-wrapped object from the box and, with an impatient sigh, flung the cloth open.

  As the glittering object inside was revealed, all color left the patron’s face. A choking moan escaped his throat. “Impossible!”