Eye of the Raven

by Eliot Pattison

  “Your red friend is promised a neck-stretching party. All the same to us if you wish to join him in hell. A man who shares his mess with such filth ain’t much better himself.”

  “Son of a caoineag!” Duncan spat. The Highland curses shot from Duncan’s lips unbidden as he heard himself invoke not just the spawn of a banshee, but the uruisg, the glaistig, and the one-eyed direach, monsters who avenged the innocent. He was barely able to control his fury.

  “We be keeping close watch of your heathen’s health,” the sergeant chided. “If he looks to be dying we’ll string him up without the major’s verdict. We’ll not be cheated of our justice.”

  Duncan pulled the hammer of his gun all the way back.

  “Ye ain’t gonna shoot me.”

  “No,” Duncan agreed, and he swung his rifle toward a keg beside a mound of small bundles. “I’m going to blow your powder and supplies. Of course the splinters from the explosion may take a few of you. Ever see a man with three inches of oak in his eye?”

  The sergeant cursed. Half a dozen men with clubs began to surround Duncan. The sergeant was beginning to lift his knife from the ground when he froze. Two shadows appeared at Duncan’s side.

  “’Tis a bonny thing to be practicing maneuvers, to be sure,” came a voice thick with a Highland burr. “But we cannot let ye have all the enjoyment.”

  The men who stepped to either side of Duncan were huge, the spiked halberds in their hands long and lethal. Each wore a scarlet waistcoat over the plaid kilt of a Highland regiment.

  The militia sergeant spat a curse. He slowly rose, calling off his men with a flick of his hand.

  “Our friend asked for the return of his property,” boomed the soldier to Duncan’s left, a big ox of a man with curly red hair overflowing from his Highland bonnet.

  On a quick, muttered command one of the militiamen slipped inside a tent then reappeared carrying a familiar powder horn, two packs, and nearly all the other equipment Duncan and Conawago had been traveling with.

  “An Iroquois battle ax. A red battle ax,” Duncan said. It was, he knew, a favorite souvenir for soldiers. The sergeant cursed again and retrieved it himself from a bedroll.

  They stepped quickly away from the militia camp. “Sergeant Colin McGregor at y’er service,” declared the red-haired man as he thumped his chest. “Such a fine string of Highland invocations be like a salve to me homesick heart. Did I detect the lilt of the western coast?”

  “For as far back as memory,” Duncan replied, a small grin tugging at his mouth, “the McCallum clan dwelled nigh Lochlash and in the lesser islands to the west. Now my clan is but me and my brother and an old man in the New York colony.”

  “Y’er brother?” McGregor asked. “Surely not our own beloved Captain Jamie McCallum?”

  Duncan paused to study the garb of the men and recognized the dark tartan of the famed Black Watch, the 42nd Regiment of Foot. “Captain of the 42nd no longer.” His brother had been branded a deserter after leaving the battleground of Ticonderoga to save a band of Iroquois holy men from ambush and had been declared an outlaw with a sizable bounty on his head.

  McGregor fixed Duncan with an inquisitive gaze. “He was reported dead in a skirmish with French Indians last autumn.”

  “He was reported dead,” Duncan agreed, leaving the words hanging.

  “Sometimes,” McGregor suggested, “it can be difficult to identify bodies when the heathens have finished with them.”

  “It can be difficult,” Duncan agreed.

  The big Scot offered a conspiratorial smile, then McGregor gestured Duncan forward. A moment later Duncan halted as he saw he was being led into the headquarters building.

  “I need to see the man they brought into the guardhouse today.”

  “The old Indian? Dead, more than like,” warned McGregor.

  Duncan clamped his jaw against a tide of emotion. “I need to know.”

  “Even if he’s not ye’ll not get near the cell without the blessing of Major Latchford,” added the Scottish sergeant. “You can perform your supplication during your interview.”

  “Interview?”

  “Lad, as happy as I be to rescue ye from those damned southern planters, truth is we were sent to find ye.” McGregor abruptly stiffened as an oily-looking junior officer appeared at the door in front of them.

  “They will polish their boots until I say they are done,” the officer snapped in a shrill voice to someone over his shoulder, then paused to study Duncan with a disdainful gaze. He dismissed Duncan’s escorts with a cool nod then muttered a syllable to someone in the shadows. A bent, gray-haired soldier appeared with a heavy brush.

  Duncan awkwardly let the officer’s valet brush the back of his waistcoat, then gently but firmly took the brush from the man’s hand and finished the job himself. The officer frowned, stepped aside, and gestured him through the door. Past two tables stacked with maps was an inner office at which a starched and powdered officer sat, sipping from a china cup as he perused an open journal book.

  “Your mongrel, Major,” the young officer announced in the tone of one expecting a grand entertainment.

  The officer frowned, first at Duncan then at his escort. “Fodder, Lieutenant. How much fodder is needed to overnight another fifty animals?”

  “I will look into it at once, sir,” the lieutenant replied.

  “And the junior officers must be moved into tents by tomorrow.”

  “Of course, sir.” The lieutenant offered not a salute but a servile bow of his powdered head then slipped away.

  Latchford fixed Duncan with an icy stare. “You think you can wander into my garrison without a by your leave?” he asked in a cool, well-educated voice. “Use our water, watch my troops like some spy, provoke our bereaved comrades in arms?” Latchford, Duncan realized, had had him under observation from the moment he had passed under the gate.

  “If I am not mistaken, Major, I was brought into your establishment by soldiers under your command.” He saw the gleam in Latchford’s eyes and instantly regretted the words. A man like Latchford delighted in impudence, for all punishments were at his beck and call.

  The officer lifted a quill and made a note in the journal. “You have not honored us with your name.”

  “McCallum. Duncan McCallum.”

  “I’ll know, McCallum, why your friend killed this particular Virginian on this particular day.”

  Duncan weighed Latchford’s words carefully. There was something more to the murder in the forest than he had understood. “My friend killed no one. You should look to the enemy. Last night we observed a Huron raiding party not twenty miles from here.”

  Latchford lifted a small bronze medallion etched with a tree on one side, a crude W on the other. The strap that until that morning had fastened it to Duncan’s neck had been snapped apart. “Observed?” He dangled the disc toward Duncan. “For Woolford’s rangers?”

  “Nearly twenty men, including two or three French.”

  “I have had no reports of hostiles.”

  “The entire point of secret raiding parties, Major, is to operate secretly.” Duncan clenched his jaw, chiding himself. Sometimes it seemed impossible not to lash out at such officers. It was privileged and powdered men like Latchford who had hanged his father for a rebel, skewered his younger brother with a saber, and raped his mother and sisters before bayoneting them.

  The major’s face flashed with anger. He slammed the medallion onto his desk and leapt up. Duncan braced himself, certain the officer meant to strike him, but Latchford moved to a side door, stepped halfway into the hall to bark out orders for a reconnaissance patrol. Through the rear window Duncan could see parties setting up a large campaign tent. The fortress was expecting visitors, ones important enough to worry the commanding officer. Duncan could not afford to linger if senior officers were coming, officers who might have experience in the New York theater.

  When he looked back Latchford was at his desk again, lifting an elegant pistol with
a metal butt from the desktop. He toyed with it a moment, sighting along the barrel. “Woolford’s men are operating along the Saint Lawrence, the last I heard. And you do not have the look of a ranger, McCallum. We have reports of a solitary warrior and a European woodsman making mischief, always evading our patrols.”

  Duncan shrugged. “I am no woodsman. And Conawago is no warrior, just an old man looking for traces of his family.”

  The major extended the pistol, raising and lowering it as if practicing for a duel. “It is easy for a man to pretend a new identity so far from civilization. I have orders to deal harshly with deserters and spies.”

  “Wounds need to be cleansed every day to keep the filth from entering the blood,” Duncan said abruptly.

  Latchford’s brow knitted. “I’m sorry?”

  It was a desperate wager Duncan was making, based on the passing remark of the militia sergeant. “Your infirmary is without a doctor. But you have wounded. I attended medical college in Edinburgh.”

  “You are a wonder, sir,” Latchford sneered. “Ranger. Woodsman. Doctor. Murderer perhaps.”

  Duncan would not let himself be badgered. “Men with wounds can die without daily care. You have amputees. A man who has given a limb for his king does not deserve to die from neglect.”

  Latchford put the gun on the desk and leaned toward Duncan with a new, intense scrutiny. “If you lie to me,” he hissed, “I shall use you for practice with my new pistol.” Duncan silently returned his stare for a moment, then the major looked down. “We have half a dozen wounded from skirmishes, another five or six laid up with pox. Our surgeon was summoned to help with an outbreak at Fort Pitt. Our senior orderly is too fond of his rum.”

  Duncan resisted the urge to press for an explanation. “I can attend your patients in the infirmary.”

  “What proof do you offer of your competence?”

  “Your arm,” Duncan said. “Extend your arm.”

  Latchford smirked but humored his request, resting his free hand on the pistol.

  Duncan began by pointing to a fingertip then worked his way up the arm. “Distal phalanx, phalange, metacarpal, carpal, radius, ulna, humerus.” When he passed the elbow Latchford held up his hand to concede the point.

  “The man with the freshest wounds lies in your brig,” Duncan observed.

  “You, McCallum, are a hair’s breadth from being thrown in with him!” Latchford snapped. “If he dies it shall save us the nuisance of a trial.”

  “I need to see him.”

  “You are hardly in a position to make demands.”

  “Surely you understand, Major, that the entire balance of power in the war depends on maintaining relations with the tribes.”

  Latchford leaned back in his chair. His hand curled around the butt of the pistol again, as if he were reconsidering whether to shoot Duncan. “His majesty’s troops have won the war in North America,” he rejoined.

  “His majesty’s troops won the last season of battles,” Duncan countered, “after losing so many before. They are now spread thin over a thousand miles of frontier, mostly along the border of French Canada. Any fool who can read a map knows the real prize of this struggle is the western lands. All the army has done so far is win the right for the king to compete for them. Lose the Iroquois and you’ll spend the next five years fighting in the New York and Pennsylvania colonies with no chance of winning the Ohio territory.”

  “You speak of matters far removed from our little outpost.”

  “When Lord Amherst hears the news,” Duncan said, referring to Britain’s military commander on the continent, “your little outpost will be the center of his attention.”

  “News?”

  “Trying a prominent leader of the allied tribes for murder could destroy the alliance. Instead of a buffer of Iroquois warriors protecting the settlements we would have an army of the best fighters in America turned against us. You won’t be able to march a hundred paces past your gate without fear of a tomahawk in your skull.”

  “This man in the brig is an Iroquois chieftain?”

  “Conawago has visited Europe, has medals from the king, is a valued intermediary among all the tribes of the eastern forest. He is the most highly educated Indian you will ever meet. Trained by Jesuits. At home in European courts.”

  “But he is no chieftain.” The major sipped his tea, studying Duncan with new resentment. “Is he even an Iroquois?”

  Duncan glanced out the window again, trying to control his emotions.

  “I am ordered to have that militia in the field,” Latchford declared, casually swinging the pistol about, pausing for a moment as the barrel faced Duncan. “And I always obey orders. You and your friend have strained relations between Pennsylvania and Virginia to the breaking point. Someone is going to hang. Someone is going to hang in the next twenty-four hours.”

  “And what will your commanding officer think when the truth comes out later?”

  Latchford pursed his mouth in annoyance. “The truth?”

  “I was at the dead man’s side minutes after he was attacked. He was not shot. He was nailed to a tree, his heart was mutilated. This was no random killing. This was a ritual performed for a broader audience.”

  Worry flickered on Latchford’s face. “Ridiculous.”

  “Conawago is innocent.”

  “A small army of witnesses will say otherwise.”

  “All they saw was Conawago leaning over a dying man. He was trying to help him.”

  The major offered another icy grin. “Witnesses will say otherwise,” he repeated.

  Duncan put a hand on the back of the chair in front of him. “Who was he? The dead man?”

  “The captain? Winston Burke? Commander of the militia? Second son of the greatest landowner in the valley of the Shenandoah. His father is a member of the House of Burgesses. We will have a hanging and get on with the work of war,” Latchford declared in a matter-of-fact tone. He aimed the pistol at Duncan and pulled the trigger, sneering as Duncan flinched at the spark of the empty weapon.

  Duncan worked at a quick, efficient pace among the sick and wounded. Van Grut followed him to assist the orderlies as he progressed along the cots and pallets, changing bandages on wounds and amputations, inquiring when sulfur had last been burned to fumigate the wards, chastising men over the need to keep their wounds clean, even sending an orderly out to gather moss and pine sap when he was told poultices were in short supply. He knew from experience that the fates of such patients were mostly sealed by the time they arrived. Those with flesh wounds would live, those with wounds in the abdomen would almost always die.

  He watched as Van Grut became engrossed explaining how to lance a boil, then quickly slipped through a door in a shadowy corner that seemed shunned by the others.

  On a table in the center of the narrow, windowless chamber Captain Winston Burke lay now in peaceful repose. By the light of a single candle at the head of the table, Duncan could see that the commander of the Virginia militia had been cleaned of the blood that had stained him, a small ornate dagger placed in the hands crossed over his belly. His long brown hair had been gathered at the back with a fresh blue ribbon. His light blue waistcoat, fastened over his chest, was faced with buff, the makeshift uniform he had seen on the other officers in the Virginians’ camp. His brown woolen britches showed little wear, except for the long jagged tear along the right thigh, mottled with the darker brown of dried blood.

  He glanced around the chamber, which was used as a storeroom for the infirmary, the shelves on two walls bearing a few large jars of spirits and vinegar, smaller jars of dried rhubarb, powders of Algaroth and Peruvian bark, small crocks of ointments, and a few linens. He slipped a roll of linen bandages into his belt. Far outnumbering the stocks of medical supplies were rolls of canvas, beside spools of heavy naval thread. Duncan closed his eyes a moment, fighting dreadful memories of his voyage across the Atlantic, of the Scots he had sewn inside such shrouds, once joyful men who had slowly rotted away aft
er being condemned to the king’s prison ship, their primary offense being the Highland blood in their veins.

  His head jerked up as the sound of a deep, shuddering sigh raised gooseflesh along his spine. He turned with a wrench of his gut to the dead man, as if Burke were about to rise from his repose, then realized the sound came from the darkened rear of the chamber. Lifting the candle, he stepped toward the shadows. A middle-aged man in a threadbare uniform of an infantryman was sprawled in a rocking chair, a bottle of rum in one hand, dead drunk.

  Duncan turned back to the corpse and paced around the table, touching an elbow, a knee, a wrist. Rigor mortis had begun. He worked quickly, stretching the torn cloth over the thigh wound to study the long ugly gash. The blade had been heavy and sharp, from a hand ax or tomahawk. Despite the Virginian’s other wounds, this had been the one that killed him, this was where his lifeblood had drained away. Pressing the flesh back further, he noted the dark central flow in the pattern of its dried blood and the way the wound narrowed where it had cut the artery, then he straightened and pushed up the sleeves to examine Burke’s arms. There was none of the bruising that would indicate a struggle, only a raised, jagged scar nearly three inches long, just below the left elbow, still pink from having been recently formed.

  Glancing up with increasing discomfort at the man in the chair, he quickly searched the single pocket sewn into the right side of the waistcoat, finding a flint striker but none of the coins that would have been carried there. He studied the waistcoat itself. It had been expertly tailored, of fine wool, using elegant silver buttons with crossed swords embossed on them. But the upper four buttons had been cut away. Only the top four. The killer had been stealing the valuable buttons and been interrupted. Had Duncan and Conawago been so close that they had frightened him from his gruesome work? He glanced back at the figure in the rocking chair, extracted his own knife, and quickly cut away the button that had been covered under the folded hands, stuffing it into his belt pouch.