Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

“Then damn the Ramsey Company,” Pike shot back. “He is the source of our problem, and therefore the cause of our defeat.”

“As I have explained, Major, this particular McCallum has never been in the colonies until a few hours ago,” Woolford said in a cautious tone. The general, still at the window, shifted his head slightly to the side, but otherwise did nothing.

“Obviously, Woolford, you are incapable of fully assessing his letter,” Pike proclaimed. “It implies there were earlier letters. We can assume they were equally full of sedition. This man is no doubt the one who turned Captain McCallum against his king.”

The words cut deeper than the crop. “Impossible!” Duncan protested. But the denial came out in a hoarse croak. He had indeed beseeched Jamie to remember the clan, and for the first year after he heard the news of his brother’s commission, he had not written at all, so reviled had he been at the thought that Jamie had joined the very army that had destroyed the Highland way of life.

As Duncan heard the click of a key behind him, Pike’s lips curled into a spiteful grin. “The Ramsey Company is doomed before it even sets foot in the wilderness,” he growled, then cast another wary glance toward the window. “In three month’s time there won’t be enough of it left to bury.”

Woolford said nothing, but released the manacles and stood. Pike watched not Woolford, but the man at the window. When the general did not react, Pike seemed to deflate. By the time Duncan staggered to his feet, rubbing his wrists, Woolford had retreated out one of the side doors.

“It matters not,” Pike declared in a frigid whisper, leaning over Duncan. “Lift a finger to help your brother, and you will hang at his side when we find him. Make no mistake, McCallum, we will find him. Our custom with traitors is to leave them hanging for a month or two, as a reminder. They are familiar with the practice in Scotland, are they not?” he added harshly. “I hear the magpies in forty-six were too plump to fly.” The major turned for a moment toward the man at the window, who continued to stare out the window. When he turned back, there was an odd expression of defeat on his face.

The general paced the length of the window, then turned to Duncan. “What say you of the murder of Lord Ramsey’s scholar?” He had an open, honest countenance, though crows’ feet of worry had grown around his eyes.

Duncan glanced at the nearest door. “The death of a learned man is a loss to all the world.”

The officer offered Duncan a sad smile. His dark, intelligent eyes fixed him with something like deep curiosity. “To our world, yes,” he said, as if another world had been at work in Evering’s death. Pike withdrew into the shadows, then left through a side door. The new turn of conversation seemed to have frightened him.

“You are the one guiding the Ramsey Company to its painful truth,” the officer observed. “What does that make you, Mr. McCallum? High sheriff of the Company?”

“It makes me the dog they all want to kick. To save one of their own I must fight through ranks of clansmen.”

The general seemed amused at his answer. “A murder on the high seas. An investigator who is little more than a convict himself. Tedious legal questions could be raised. The Ramsey Company was allowed to be formed because of the war.”

“You think Evering a casualty of war? I can’t imagine a man further removed from it.”

The officer fixed Duncan with an intense stare, then responded by retrieving something from the shadows and dropping it on the table, an arrow with brown and white fletching and bars of brown on the shaft.

“Someone involved in the war sought to kill the Ramsey tutor today.”

Duncan drew a shuddering breath. “I was under the impression,” he said, “that the savages fought in the forests. I did not expect the army to permit an attack in the city.”

The general smiled at this taunt. “Why would an Indian want you dead?”

Duncan sank back into his chair.

“Two arrows, aimed so precisely,” the general continued. “Your assailant wasn’t satisfied with the captain taking you away-he had to be sure you were dead. The first to stop the captain, the second aimed right at your heart. But for the ship’s rail you would have died before you hit the deck.”

“Impossible. No one even knows me. . ” The protest on Duncan’s lips faded. The cap. No one knew him, but the cap had identified him as the Ramsey tutor.

The general stepped to the front of the desk and leaned on it, studying Duncan. “How was Professor Evering connected to the savages?”

“Evering? He had never even been to America.” But even as the words came out Duncan recalled the drawing of the arrow in Evering’s cabin. He studied the projectile on the desk with new interest. It was a perfect match. The striping, the careful painting was too intricate for it to be a coincidence. Someone had drawn such an arrow for Evering on the high seas, and then one had been aimed at Duncan’s heart. It was as if someone had been toying with the tutor, warning of his destiny when he landed in America.

“You’d be surprised how far these arrows can fly,” the general mused. “We are searching. We are very interested in the man who sought to kill a second Ramsey tutor.” He stepped closer, studying Duncan, as if waiting for a reply. “He is unlikely to give up, now that you are arrived in his homeland.”

“Why?” The question came out in a hoarse whisper.

“You tell me. The Company seems overflowing with secrets.”

“Secrets worth dying for?”

“Secrets worth killing for.”

Duncan stood and stepped to the desk, his hand trembling as he lifted the arrow, running his finger along its smooth shaft, putting a finger to its sleek flint point, then suddenly looked out the window, up the river. “If they thought Evering held a secret that was vital to them,” he said, the thought bursting on him like a cannon shell, “then learned he was murdered, they would assume his killer had it, too.”

The general said nothing, but offered another cool smile.

Lister. The old man, marked as Evering’s murderer, faced the same danger from the savages as Duncan, and he was headed toward the frontier, which teemed with natives. There had been horses outside, mounts for dragoons. If he stole one, how quickly could the army pursue?

“The tutor is part of the Ramsey Company,” the general said in a more insistent voice. “If the tutor must die, it is because of the Company. Something the Company did or is going to do.”

“I am hardly privy to Company secrets, General.”

“You are not trying hard enough, McCallum.”

Duncan looked back at the door where Pike had disappeared. Pike had wanted Duncan because of his brother. The general wanted him for something else. “Are you trying to stop the Company?”

“The Company has been authorized by the king himself,” the general replied. “Surely I would be powerless to stop it.”

The two men stared warily at each other.

“Who was Adam Munroe?” Duncan abruptly asked.

The general gave a nod of grudging respect. “A militia officer. A former prisoner whose terror drove him across the Atlantic when he was released.”

“Prisoner of the French?”

The general sighed. “I am certain we can work this out like gentlemen.”

He was offering some kind of bargain, and Duncan did not even know what was being negotiated. “Are you suggesting the army does not want Evering’s killer identified?”

“In war, the victor is the one who always keeps his eyes on the flame.”

The man was speaking in some code Duncan could not decipher. Duncan stepped to the window. In the distance he could see the square earthen slopes of batteries along the river. “If you believe the death is connected to the war,” he asked, “why not conduct your own investigation?”