Eliot Pattison - Eye of the Raven

As they gazed at the surprising pattern a brilliant flash erupted through the window of the upper floor, as if gunpowder had been ignited. But there was no explosion, only a long moan of pain, loud enough to be heard through the window glass. Duncan grabbed Conawago by the arm and pulled him down the street toward a line of clock shops.

The fifth shop they visited was a rundown establishment nearly in the shadow of the Broken Jug tavern. As they stepped toward the entry Duncan paused to study an establishment across the street. Coppersmith, its sign proclaimed, and at the rear was a furnace building for melting the metal, a building where small lumps of molten copper might be found.

Inside the shop, two young men sat at a table indolently working pieces of walnut with small planes, surrounded by chips of wood and several incomplete cabinets for mantel clocks. The older of the pair looked up with a sleepy expression.

"He's out for refreshment," he declared. "Three doors down, at the jug."

"I have a problem," Duncan said, producing the defective gear.

The apprentice examined the gear only when Duncan pushed it nearly under his nose, then glanced nervously toward the dimly lit room at the rear of the building. "Surely you don't mean to make your own repair," he said with a sneer. "We'll need the entire works."

"The only thing wrong is this gear that was badly cut," Duncan said in a dissatisfied manner. He extended it, pointing to the flaw. All traces of the youth's confident air melted away. He glanced at his companion, who leaned over his work without looking up, and flushed with color. "In the other shops," he complained, "they get special lanterns, even lenses, and fine tools like jewelers use."

Duncan stared at him expectantly.

"He'll have my hide if I take a gear from his good stock."

"Tell me this," Duncan tried. "Do you trade with Shamokin?"

"What, sell clocks to the damned heathens? Not bloody likely." He looked out the window toward the tavern, then watched Conawago for a moment with an uneasy expression. "I can get a new one," he offered. "Just between us, right?"

Duncan's own gaze lingered on the tavern. "How often do you bring your drinking companions back here?"

The silent youth working the wood sprouted a narrow smile.

"It's not allowed."

"But sometimes your master leaves town," Duncan suggested.

"I'll get a new one," the apprentice repeated, and he disappeared into his master's work chamber.

Duncan silently accepted the new gear from the sullen youth and was about to retreat when Conawago stepped to the table. "That old brick warehouse down the street," he said. "Who occupies it?"

"A lunatic, most say. His calling card says natural philosopher. More like Lucifer, for all his deviling with nature."

A door at the rear of the building suddenly opened and shut. The boy shot up from the table, pushing Duncan and Conawago to the door. "Those who ask too many questions get called to the constable," he warned in parting.

They walked quickly down the street, casting strangely guilty glances back at the shop, drifting with the flow of foot traffic toward a little square where a freestanding plank wall held handbills, newspapers, and notices. Duncan was gazing absently at the bill board, trying to fathom what the Library Company advertised on one sheet might be, when Conawago indicated a recently posted bill at the end of the wall. Thirty pounds sterling, it declared in large type, for the capture of a runaway. Duncan's mouth went bone dry as he read the name. Duncan McCallum, it stated, Scotsman, followed by an exact description of him and instructions to contact Ramsey House. Considered violent, the poster concluded, Keep under Restraint.

As the sun was setting they sat in the corner of the Broken jug picking slowly at miserly portions of cold shepherd's pie, one eye on the stout German proprietor, whose cooperation had been purchased with one of their last coins. He had advised them not to divulge the tract to be surveyed if they were looking to hire someone, only the length of the assignment and the fee to be paid. Retaining a surveyor in Philadelphia had apparently become an affair of intrigue. "If it's too far west," the tavernkeeper added, "they may be asking for guards as well."

The trickle of customers grew into a steady stream as the working day ended. Men with hands stained with ink from printing presses took a corner table with a pitcher of ale. Two customers shook wood shavings out of their hair as they entered, speaking of a shipment of mahogany from the Indies. Duncan found himself filled with a strange longing. It was another world these Philadelphians lived in, a world without murders and bounties and hands nailed to trees.

After an hour, during a lull in the evening's business, the proprietor paused to sit with them.

"What if it is Indian country?" Conawago asked abruptly, in his earnest English voice.

The man stared at Conawago intensely, leaning forward as if only now noticing his customer's bronze skin. "Don't advertise it. There's still a war on."

"We heard of a Mr. Townsend."

"Gone these many months. Some say he journeyed to the Carolinas. But he ain't sent for his sister."

"For whom was his last commission?" Duncan inquired.

"Like I said, the land companies are secretive. It's all to do with competition."

"How long after the burning of his house did he go?"

"Stayed around for the hanging of the heathen what done it. Too many drunken savages allowed on the streets, if ye ask me."

"Were you there?" Duncan asked. "At the hanging?"

The proprietor nodded, seeming to take pleasure in the turn of conversation. "A great crowd turned out. They started gathering at dawn for the best seats, even with hours to wait. I sold two barrels' worth and cursed myself for not bringing two more."

Duncan stared at the man, trying to control his emotion. "You sold ale at a hanging?"

Their host stood and wiped the table with a rag. "A city tradition. Hangings be as good as a king's holiday. Stalls with ale and little cakes. Boys blowing pennywhistles. Eggs by the dozen."

"Eggs?" Duncan asked.

"To throw, ye fool. Funny thing, when it started the only one to try to stop it was Townsend himself. He got as many yolks on him as the damned savage. Out of his mind over the loss of his home, folks said."

Over the next hour the tavern nearly filled. Duncan studied each newcomer, increasingly certain he had found the place where the dead surveyors had been hired, though not sure if he was any closer to knowing who had hired them. Several men came in and sat alone, nursing tankards of ale, some reading news journals. One played with a writing lead on his tabletop. Several others congregated at the opposite side, aiming small throwing knives at splintered planks painted with bears and wildcats, two men in tricorns performed a balancing act with a ball on the side of their feet, passing it to each other as they hopped around the tables.

Duncan found his gaze drifting toward the half-walled corner from which the landlord dispensed his drinks. Above his head a stuffed crow presided over the chamber, sitting on a shelf where other oddments had been arrayed. A tall angular hat, in the style of another century, that could have been worn by old Penn himself. A wooden shoe. A portrait painted on a board, of a bewigged aristocrat whose bulging blue eyes and large nose identified him as King George the Second. He glanced back at the men amusing themselves with the ball, taking dares and bets now over their performance. Their antics had the flavor of a lacrosse game.

The solitary man with the writing lead gazed in drunken puzzlement at the stuffed crow, as if perhaps he had seen it move. He ran his fingers through his long hair, then looked back uneasily at the bird. With a nudge from Conawago, Duncan regarded him more closely. His ear had been cut off.