Eliot Pattison - Eye of the Raven

"I have sworn out an affidavit that says otherwise." Ramsey nodded to one of the four men who attended him, and the man touched the shaft of a Leyden jar to a bleeding cut on the back of Duncan's hand. His head jerked back in pain. The man laughed, then touched the jar to his chin.

When he regained consciousness they had stripped off his clothes. They used all the jars, on every part of his body. The more he cried out in pain, the more Ramsey laughed. He saw the room in short bursts of vision between explosions of pain. A man spun the glass ball at a near blinding speed, generating more blue fire. Another man tried to get the rod of a jar into Duncan's mouth. Duncan waited until his torturer was close then jerked his shoulder violently forward, knocking the jar to the floor, shattering it as Ramsey applauded. Marston was naked from the waist up now, and a man applied one of the jars to his arms, which jerked compulsively.

Prisoners began shouting. Ramsey muttered something to one of his lackeys, who stuffed money into the hand of the turnkey. Marston tried to beat away his assailant. There was something on his arm. A metal wire was stretched from a glass jar to Duncan's belly, and he convulsed backward and forward. Marston's arm. He forced himself to focus on it. On the inside of his arm, above the elbow, was a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt.

"Burke!" he gasped, just as one of Ramsey's men applied one of the remaining Leyden jars to the bottom of his foot.

Ramsey slapped him into silence. "You will rot in this jail until the magistrates return you to me," he vowed to Duncan. "Then you will rot in a cell I am building in the cellar of my house. I think," he added, with a bemused glance at Marston's equipment, "we shall purchase some of these remarkable devices to keep you amused." Duncan faded in and out of consciousness. He twisted, flailed his legs. He was helpless in the harness, Ramsey's naked puppet. He made out voices in the outside corridor. Someone punched his belly. Marston, still on the floor, moaned. Duncan struggled against the pain, feeling the sharp stabs now even though his tormentors seemed to be gone. He fought an overwhelming fatigue.

The last thing he remembered was the fury on the face of Magistrate Brindle as he walked into the cell.

He felt so assured by the tender stroking of his forehead, the soft singing near his ear, knowing his mother was at his side, that Duncan wanted to linger in the dark, quiet place. He tried to push away the painful moans from nearby, the drumming of infantry boots on cobbles, the strange tingling in his limbs, until a vision of limp bodies on a gallows invaded his dream. He pushed through his delirium, shaking his head violently, using the pain that followed to help him wake.

Finally he was back, gazing into the soulful eyes of a middleaged woman wearing a white apron over an austere gray dress. As she dabbed at his face with a damp cloth she hummed a hymn.

"I always wondered what the first angel I met would look like," Duncan offered in a hoarse voice. His throat was dry as sticks.

The woman smiled. "You're not in heaven yet, Mr. McCallum. Only Philadelphia." She began checking the bandage that was wrapped tightly around three of his fingers. "All the angels I know are in the Benevolent Society for the Humane Treatment of Prisoners."

"Where do I join?" Duncan murmured.

His nurse smiled again, then lifted a small clay mug of water to his lips. Duncan winced at the effort of sitting up, then took the mug and drank as he studied his surroundings. He had not left the corner cell, but was on a cot now, and Marston's equipment, even the table that had supported it, was gone, the only sign of his experiments the ceiling hooks where the harness had hung. He looked back at his nurse, noticing a small Bible in the pocket of her apron.

"How long?" he asked. He pulled his legs to the floor, trying to stand, then sank back in a wave of nausea. Every extremity screamed in pain.

"You have been unconscious for nearly twenty-four hours," the Quaker woman explained.

"Conawa-" Duncan began then corrected himself. "Socrates Moon?"

"Your friend is safe. Last I saw him he was in the magistrate's library. It was he and the jailer who came to us for help."

"Was he arrested?"

"He is safe, as I said."

"I mean Ramsey. Surely he must be arrested."

The light left the woman's eyes. "There was no one here when the magistrate arrived. And Mr. Ramsey," she cautioned, "is a member of the council, and of the proprietor's private social club in London."

For the first time Duncan saw that the cell door was closed, with a guard outside. The despair that rose up at the sight caused more torment than all his injuries together. He was a prisoner. He would be a prisoner now for the rest of his life. When he looked back and saw the face of his nurse more fully, he realized he had seen her before.

"You gave me a glass of milk," he said. "How long have you been a member of the Brindle household?"

"I was born a Brindle and became a Bythe."

The realization came slowly through the fog in Duncan's brain. "Forgive me. I misunderstood. Your husband. I am so sorry."

"As we all are. It was his time to be gathered to God."

He saw the sadness in the woman's eyes, but felt helpless to deal with it. "The man who killed your husband was not Skanawati."

"They call it an accident now."

"He was murdered," Duncan said. "Like all the others at the boundary trees."

"There are teamsters who signed statements saying he fell on the rocks."

Duncan stared in disbelief. "Who would collect such statements?"

"A lawyer gave them to a magistrate. Not my brother, another."

"A lawyer working for whom?"

"That land venture. The Susquehanna Company."

Duncan closed his eyes again. "So in Philadelphia the truth has become a commodity that can be bought and sold."

Mrs. Bythe bit her lip but did not reply. She reached into the basket and produced a broadsheet. "Your friend from Virginia said you would want to see this."

The sheet was nearly covered with news of ship sailings and landed cargos. But at the bottom was a short article. Shamokin Merchant Drowns.

Duncan's mouth went dry as he read. The body of Matthew Waller, merchant of Shamokin, was found by a river fishing vessel. Waller had been missing for two days and is now believed to have slipped from a wharf in the night.

"The current can be very strong," Mrs. Bythe offered.

"He was killed," Duncan asserted. "He was killed because we were looking for him, because he was connected to the murders." Every door was being slammed shut. "Dr. Marston?" he asked after a moment.

"Recovering at his house by the river."

"I must see him."

"I can send a boy with a message, but I cannot tell if he will soon muster enough courage to return to the prison. And," she said, lowering her voice and looking toward the floor, "there are only formalities to be addressed before you are turned over to Lord Ramsey. Some papers to be signed. Once the signatures are sealed and verified by the clerks and the doctor releases you, you will be surrendered to your bondholder."

Duncan buried his head in his hands. Ramsey claimed to have built a special cell in his cellar for Duncan, was going to acquire electrical devices to use on Duncan. "He is not my bondholder. The document was signed over to his daughter. There were witnesses."

"He has signed an affidavit that says otherwise. He is a member of the council," she repeated, and she poured him another mug of water. She leaned closer as she handed him the mug and whispered, "It is his man on the door."

"The treaty," Duncan said when he had drained the mug. "Skanawati."

"The Virginians threaten to leave. The Indians are considering a huge price."