Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

“No,” the officer said. “I always check when I arrive here. I don’t really know why.” When he turned to Duncan, his face was clouded with worry. “The cairn was empty three days ago.” He set the belt inside and covered it. “Go back to town, McCallum. You’ll never understand this.”

“I’ve seen a crown of antlers,” Duncan confessed to the ranger’s back as Woolford lifted his rifle to leave. The officer turned, leaning on his gun, as Duncan began explaining about Evering the dead prophet.

Duncan stared at the blank slate in the schoolhouse for an hour, knowing he must plan lessons for the Ramsey children, unable to think of anything but his strange conversation with Woolford. Giving up, he found Frasier sitting on a shaving horse in the shade of the barn, working with a drawknife to make trunnels, wooden nails, while the men prepared for the evening meal. The sullen young keeper took no notice of Duncan as he finished rounding a trunnel out of a narrow split of ash, offered no thanks when Duncan handed him another splint to clamp and trim.

“Iron’s hard to come by in Edentown,” Duncan observed in an even voice. “At the rate you’re using it, you’ll be pulling up the floors of the great house for their nails.”

Frasier missed the placement of a stroke and sliced away a quarter of the split, ruining the trunnel. He still said nothing as he tossed it aside and accepted another from Duncan.

“My grandmother and I used to make the old crosses with pebbles when I was a boy,” Duncan offered. “And she always cut holes in her eggshells.”

“It’s all been a lie,” the youth declared suddenly. “All the evils of the old country were going to be left behind, they told us. But here is where the demons of the world all are born.”

“Who told you that?”

“One who knows. One who’s seen them roast men alive and eat their flesh.”

“Hawkins? When did you speak with him?” Duncan asked.

“I should have finished that hole on the ship,” Frasier declared in a chilling tone. “Here we just wait between the demons and the English.”

“Where is Hawkins?”

“Fighting the demons. He at least understands the job before us, Cameron says.”

“Cameron?”

“Aye. Mr. Cameron brought rum out for Hawkins and his men. They shared stories.”

“What kind of stories?”

“About the responsibility of Christian men when they meet the heathen.”

A shiver ran down Duncan’s back. He had never asked Cameron what he had done after his family had been slain. A man like Cameron was not one to turn the other cheek.

“When you see Hawkins next, pose him some riddles,” Duncan suggested. “Ask when was the last time the army paid him money, Frasier. Ask him what he did with our body snatchers. Ask if bears ever follow him in the forest.”

Frasier’s face clouded, but he remained silent, working the drawknife.

They worked without speaking, Duncan extending the splits when the young keeper reached for them.

“Did you see who made those other signs by the house?” Duncan finally asked. “Beside your cross.”

Frasier clamped his jaw as tight as the bench vise and kept working.

“A house spoon broken into pieces. There is only one member of the Company who has worked in the kitchen. One who knows the wisdom of the eggshells.” It was a very old practice, nearly forgotten by the time his grandmother was a girl, but there were still those who believed witches could magically turn eggshells into vessels that would transport them through air and water.

“I care not if I am stripped of my rank as a keeper,” Frasier proclaimed.

Duncan took a moment to understand. “I have no reason to speak to Lord Ramsey of this. All I wish is that you be sure of your demons before acting against them. The boy found the crosses. He thinks they are to keep the savages away. But I searched the front of the house. There’s iron in two trees and hidden in the piles of dirt along the porch. You weren’t aiming them at the Indians. You were trying to contain something inside the house.”

“My aunt used to explain things to me and my cousins, in a small room sealed with a ring of salt. She said people like us, we are blessed with vision that others never find. When we see the evil, we must fight it, one demon at a time.” Frasier kept working but glanced toward the great house. He wasn’t worried about being reported to Ramsey but about whether his iron would stay in place. “They say you are responsible for freeing Lister,” the youth offered in a grudging tone.

“He did not kill the professor.” Frasier had always preferred his own theory, Duncan recalled. And his banshee had moved into the great house.

“When you stole onto the second floor, what did you see?”

“Witches owe their powers to charms. My aunt told me of one who had a blue bone, another with a black hen that was the source of her powers. Destroy them and the witch shrivels to dust.”

“She’s little more than a girl, Frasier.”

“You would protect her? You did not know her true color the day you pulled her from the sea. But now-”

“I still do not know,” Duncan confessed. Though he had begun to resent the way the truth seemed to be bent around Sarah, he also could not put out of his mind the frightened, wounded way she looked at the forest. He had not forgotten the words spoken by Woolford at the tavern. Because he had saved her, he was responsible for her. “You still have not said what you found in the house.”

When Frasier did not reply, Duncan leaned closer to his ear. “Ox shoes. In the far north stall of the barn. All the oxen here have been shod. There is a box with old ox shoes. Good iron. No one will miss them. But lift no hand against the lass,” he warned.

Frasier studied him solemnly for a moment before speaking. “Cameron. What I found was Cameron going through things in Reverend Arnold’s private chamber.”

“What things?”

“At the vicar’s bedside table. Lifting his hairbrush. Going through his pockets.”

“For what?”

“Surely ye know the way of those creatures. She must have him in thrall, by some enchantment. He was helping her. He was collecting hairs and threads.”

Duncan closed his eyes a moment. A person’s hairs, like threads from their clothes, were used by witches to cast spells upon them. “You think Cameron is working against the Company?”

Frasier lowered his drawknife. “Cameron has his secrets. He tells everyone he was in the militia. He never mentions that afterwards he was in the regular army. But Sergeant Fitch remembers him, says he fought at Ticonderoga.”

“But he went back to Scotland, started a new life.”

“A tinker came through yesterday. Cameron was asking him about ships sailing to England, whether there were more in Philadelphia or New York.”

The young Scot kept working the knife along the wood. “The professor was going to show me his comet this summer, below the Big Dipper,” he said after making two more trunnels, his voice now melancholy. “Adam was going to show me how to tan a deer hide. He said slippers of soft buckskin would be an admirable gift to send my aunt.” Frasier cast an awkward glance at Duncan.

“I miss them also,” Duncan offered.

“That last night before he died, I let him linger at the rail to watch the sunset,” the young keeper explained. “He watched the dusk like he had never seen one before. When darkness fell, I touched his arm to go below. He didn’t move at first, but he spoke toward the waves. ‘I have seen things no man ever should have to see,’ he said, then he looked at me. ‘There are promises made,’ he told me, ‘which if broken will end all good things ever again. ’Tis a rare great thing to be honored with such a bond,’ he said, and should I ever be so fortunate, I was not to shy from the blessing.” Frasier was not only the youngest of the keepers, he was the youngest of all the prisoners, and never before had he seemed so like a lost boy. His voice trembled when he spoke again. “I made a promise, too, the night after Adam died. I promised to the stars that I would find revenge. Because he saved my life, with his singing.” Frasier seemed unable to look into Duncan’s face. “The English mean for all of us to die. But I know how to slice open Ramsey’s hull now. And I know better than to stop this time.”