Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

A chill ran down Duncan’s back.

A bell started ringing, signaling the evening meal. Without another word, Frasier rose from the bench and was gone.

The next morning before dawn, after a night of restless, uneven sleep, Duncan discovered a note pinned to his door, folded and fastened with a wax seal. The children will be here six weeks, it said. I require a plan of instruction. Geography. Mathematics. Classical history. Much of philosophy and, of course, the biblical lessons. Aristotle. Aquinas. None of the atheist Hume, nor of the traitorous Swift. Prepare for us to review tomorrow at tea. R. Under the note was a dog-eared volume of Plato’s Republic, in which Ramsey’s cherished philosopher described the perfect state as one run by an educated elite, supported by professional functionaries.

Duncan crumbled the paper in his hand, squeezed it into a ball, and hurled it into the cold fireplace.

He had provided for Ramsey a carefully worded version of the deaths of Evering and Old Jacob, which the great lord could exaggerate to gain leverage over the army. But Duncan was no closer to understanding what had happened to the two dead men, only more certain that the threat continued, that Ramsey was capable of turning it into a nightmare for all of them, and that even if he had been able to stop Lister’s hanging, Duncan could never serve such a man as Ramsey for seven years. He gazed out the window toward the forge, Lister’s empty cage. He had freed the old Scot, as his grandfather would have done. And now Lister had given him a way for them both to be free. Carolina. The frail hope that had entered Lister’s voice when he had mentioned the place made Duncan’s heart ache. Lister was right. They had to flee. If ever there was to be a new clan, they had to run, and elude Hawkins and the hounds.

His gaze drifted back to the crumpled note. Why would Ramsey say the children were staying for six weeks? Crispin had said they would stay through summer, twelve weeks at least. He leafed through the Plato, fighting the emotion that boiled under his skin. The Ramsey shackles could not have felt more real if there had been iron around his feet. He slammed the book shut, gazed emptily into the cold fireplace, then rose and left the building, walking away from the town, toward the open fields. He sat on a stump for several minutes, watching frolicking lambs, then absently strolled along the animal pens, pausing to gaze at the young pigs as he chewed again on Frasier’s words. The English mean for all of us to die. In freeing Lister he may have begun to act like a clan chief, but the Company of Scots still faced some unknown doom if he could not resolve its mysteries.

“Men say ye be like a doctor or such.” The words came like a frigid blade along his spine. He looked up into a gaunt scarecrow face over soiled buckskins.

Duncan did not move as Hawkins stepped to his side, in front of the pigs. Strangely, he held a young rabbit, small enough to fit in his palm. Duncan recalled seeing a nest under a log at the edge of the wheat field.

“I’ve had training in-” he began, before realizing the trapper was not interested in a reply. Duncan put a step between them, placing himself out of the range of the man’s sinewy arms.

“It be truly amazin’, the things that spill out when ye gut a man.” Hawkins spoke in a level, casual voice, his narrow eyes aimed like gun barrels at Duncan. “There’s some in the tribes that collects parts, string up a necklace of ears or such. Must be of the medical persuasion, too. Onc’t I saw a string of men’s privates.” Hawkins raised the terrified rabbit and stared into its eyes. “Hell,” he said with a cold laugh, “onc’t I saw a savage cut open a prisoner’s belly, pull out his breakfast, and feed it to his dog as the man watched.” He stroked the rabbit’s neck with a finger. The creature quieted, settling into his palm.

“What do you collect, Mr. Hawkins?” Duncan asked in a brittle voice.

“Prayers,” Hawkins replied in a whisper, grinning, “the last sounds the dying make.” With that, the rabbit uttered a shuddering cry, cut off by a snap of bone.

Duncan looked down to see the little rabbit limp, its neck broken between two of the trapper’s fingers. Hawkins tossed the body into the pen. Instantly three pigs began a tug of war with the still warm creature, ripping it into pieces and devouring them. Duncan stared numbly at the little patch of blood on the dirt before looking up. Hawkins was gone.

Shaken, he found his way back to the schoolhouse, reviewing the events of the past days. He had done nothing to provoke Hawkins. Except tell Frasier to ask certain questions. Opening the book he had left on the table, he read again, read until the hairs on his neck rose and he snapped his head up. Captain Woolford had materialized ten feet away.

“Do you have any idea of the damage you have caused?” Woolford demanded. The odor of brandy reached Duncan even before the ranger advanced a step, leaning forward as if about to pounce. Duncan had never seen such wildness in the officer’s eyes. “Major Pike only considered you a nuisance before, a possible link to your brother. Now he will revile you as much as your brother. Calder will have no choice but to send more men west. You have forced him to move the regular troops, to make a show for the governor.”

“I did not expect your reaction so quickly. How did you discover what I wrote?”

“The original was dispatched yesterday on a swift horse. Before it left a copy was transcribed.”

Duncan had seen a figure at the dining table, with quill and paper. Crispin. “Before, there was a chance of finding answers. Now you have unleashed a pack of mad dogs, banishing every chance of a ranger having a quiet dialogue with any Indian within two hundred miles. And it will take them but a few moments to realize that if the army was responsible for Evering’s death, there was only one member of the army on board the ship. If Calder decides to look for a quick solution, it will be my head he offers.”

“I am pleased to have finally gotten your attention, Captain. Perhaps you will finally admit that the paths you and I follow are the same? The murders of Evering and Jacob, the death of Adam Munroe, are all rooted in what happened at Stony Run. You are trying to find justice for the massacre at Stony Run. My mystery and yours have the same answer. And finding it is now as urgent for you as for myself.”

Woolford, suddenly unsteady, dropped onto one of the students’ stools. “You will never understand. You cannot understand.”

“I understand more than when I arrived a few days ago. I understand not to touch a bear or a snake. I understand the army and the Ramsey Company are rivals somehow. I understand that a woman pretending to be a dead girl is at the eye of the storm. I understand what it means to have your people destroyed by an oppressor.”

Woolford, elbows on the table, buried his face in his hands. “When the army first sent me to America eight years ago, no one dared go into the forests. Everyone had heard stories of savages who ripped out your liver and ate it as you died. I was ordered to join a militia scouting party in the winter. Our leader and half the others drowned when our canoe went over a waterfall. We were lost and starving and it began to snow. One man froze to death. A Mohawk family found us more dead than alive. Two of their men lost toes to frostbite while carrying us back to their village. King Hendrick’s village. More snow came, eight or nine feet of it. We spent two months with them. They taught me their language, taught me the ways of the forest. I watched as they prayed to their spirit world. I played with their children, helped with their dead. When I came back to the settlements, I signed on as a ranger.”