Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

The waterfront adjoined a forest of masts, ships ranging from mighty square-rigged merchantmen like the one he had just left to sleek sloops and cutters, small sail-rigged dories, wide shallops made for river traffic, even two frigates and a troopship anchored in the harbor, streaming the Union Jack. Sturdy men unloaded glazed bricks from one ship, sacks of tea from another. The streets along the docks bustled with sailors, fishmongers, cats, street urchins, tinkers, and heavy wagons loaded with fresh-cut lumber. The boots of a dozen scarlet-coated soldiers pounded the cobblestones as they marched, double-time, toward the wharf. A girl in a tattered dress banged a tin cup, loudly proclaiming the price of her fresh goose quills. Laughing boys with soiled faces skirmished with mongrels. A stout woman hawked speckled hens in wicker cages. The morning breeze mixed the salt air of the bay with the pungent scents of old fish, horse manure, tea, rotting seaweed, sawdust, tobacco, and tar.

“I never expected Indians attacking the harbor,” Duncan said. He found himself leaning hard against the seat, staying in the shadow.

“Nor would anyone else.” Crispin studied Duncan a moment. “And it wasn’t the harbor they were attacking,” he said pointedly.

Duncan pressed even deeper into the seat.

They gazed outside in silence, until Crispin seemed to sense the questions forming on Duncan’s tongue. “I am in service as the house butler,” he explained. “Sent to retrieve the new set of porcelain,” he added, tapping the box. “Painted with the Ramsey coat of arms by a craftsman with a warrant from the king himself.” There was an edge in the man’s voice. Was it sarcasm Duncan detected?

Duncan stared in the direction the Company wagons had gone, then found his gaze drifting back toward the strapping butler in front of him. Crispin’s slightly undersized suit gave him the air of a powerful beast that had recently been tamed.

With a start Duncan realized Crispin was returning his stare. “There’s so many ways people find to ask me the same question.” His words were articulated with the slow precision of an educated man.

“I was just wondering how many men you’ve laid down with your left fist,” Duncan said, motioning toward the scarred knuckles of Crispin’s hand. “I was studying to be a doctor. For practice my professor sometimes sent me to the Saturday entertainments to treat the pugilists. I’ve seen many a hand like that in England.”

“They never called me a pugilist where I fought,” Crispin looked at Duncan with challenge in his eye.

“Yet you know the term.”

Crispin cocked his head and raised his brow. “So that’s how you’re asking,” he said with the hint of a grin. “I grew up working in the fields of Georgia, but my mama was a nursery maid. She listened to everything from the teachers. At night she taught me whatever the children in the big house had learned that day. Her lessons freed my mind. The prizes I won with my fists freed my body.”

“When I was very young,” Duncan said, “my grandfather was my only teacher. If I failed my lessons, he would take a cane to my backside.” He realized he had removed his ridiculous scholar’s cap and was twisting it in his hands.

“Bullies are not unknown in America as well.”

“Not a bully. I loved him very much. At night we walked by the sea and he talked of life in the old century, of the stars, of our ancestors. When the moon was full, hanging over the ocean, he would keep me up ’til midnight at the water’s edge, reciting poetry and old tales of heroes and magic, despite my mother’s protests. I would have gladly taken two beatings a day for the chance to walk with him at night.” He stuffed the cap inside his waistcoat.

Crispin fixed Duncan with an inquiring gaze, then offered a somber nod. After a moment he began explaining the sights outside the windows.

The town of New York was smaller than Duncan had expected, though it seemed more active than a community twice its size. The bloody war with the French and their Indian allies was largely being fought in the lands of the mighty Hudson River and its tributaries, Crispin reported, so the old Dutch settlement at the mouth of the river had become a vital depot for military supplies. The streets were choked with wagons from the surrounding countryside, bringing food and fodder to be sold to the army and shipped upriver to the garrisons at Albany and beyond. Hammers rattled in new construction to house the officials who conducted the business of war. Women in fine dresses walked on planks over the mud surrounding the worksites while men in tattered clothes hauled stones to the new structures, their feet sinking to the ankles in the moist grime.

“More homes are being taken for hospitals,” Crispin said, his only pronouncement on the progress of the combat. He nodded toward a large brick house with several soldiers sitting on its wide porch, all wearing bandages on their heads or arms, most wearing absent, defeated expressions.

The three-story structure where the coach stopped was spacious, though of a far simpler design than one of the great houses of England. A tall clapboard building painted mustard yellow, with four dormer windows jutting from the shake roof, it reminded Duncan of many residences he had seen in Holland. As Crispin led Duncan up the brick walk, the box of porcelain perched on his hip, the big man leaned toward Duncan and paused. “The children most of all need to learn there’s things other than grief and hate in this world,” he declared in an oddly urgent tone, then straightened as he spied a stout woman in a black dress standing in the front doorway, arms akimbo. She began to loudly chastise him for the cavalier manner in which he conveyed the porcelain.

After surrendering the box to the woman, Crispin showed Duncan to a small, sparse bedroom on the third floor, under the slanting eaves, explaining that he had a similar room down the hall.

“There was to be a crate delivered to Professor Evering,” Duncan ventured as he dropped his bag on the narrow rope bed.

Crispin nodded. “Carried to the teaching chamber. The Reverend spoke of the professor’s tragic ending. Some people just don’t travel well.”

“I know not what Reverend Arnold told you. Professor Evering was murdered.”

Alarm flashed in Crispin’s eyes. “Surely he wasn’t-” the big man began. “It couldn’t have anything to do with-” he tried again, then grew silent and looked out the window, his brow knitted in worry.

A scullery maid entered, carrying a bucket of hot water that she emptied into the wash basin on the bedside table, and then hastened away without acknowledging Duncan.

“What became of the last teacher here?” Duncan asked to his back.

Crispin took a long time to answer. “Before, it was just gentlemen from Philadelphia or Boston who stayed a month or two. This is the first time all the children have been together. The two little ones will be sent to Europe for schooling in a few years. Meanwhile, Mr. Ramsey wants them to have a teacher from back home.”

Duncan studied the man a moment. Crispin was employed by what must be one of the wealthiest families in the New World, but instead of boasting of its grandeur, he had pointed out its hate and grief; instead of using Ramsey’s title, he was naming him with a common term of address. “I wasn’t hired in England, Crispin,” Duncan confessed. “I was a convict in the Company. I am a convict,” he corrected himself. “A convict with indenture papers that can be revoked at any time.”

The butler stiffened, responded with another worried stare, rubbing the back of his head as if suffering a sudden ache. He seemed about to fire back questions, but finally he only nodded. “I was once a slave, too,” he offered with a shrug.