Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

“Did someone from across the river attack Frasier?” Duncan looked back toward where the body lay, now surrounded by men. From the place he had died, it was a toss of a stone to the river.

“The river had mist over it, spilling up the banks. A shadow was moving at its edge, but it never came out past the alders.”

“They found you kneeling beside him.”

“Like I said, I was in the loft. I heard low voices in the gray light before dawn. Then there was the sound like a brick on a melon, and someone gave a laugh.”

“A laugh?”

“Not exactly a laugh. More like a satisfied grunt. When I got there the lad was crumpled in the grass, his life’s breath already gone from him.”

“What did you seek in his pockets?”

Lister took a long moment to answer the question. “I told you I had been asked to prepare Evering’s body when he died. I didn’t do it alone. Frasier was with me.”

“Frasier took something of Evering’s?”

“Both of us. The professor had a box of dried flowers.”

“I saw it. I was grateful for the thistle you took from it. And Frasier?”

“A pretty thing. I think he thought to save it for his aunt.” Lister shifted, reaching into a pocket, then handed Duncan a three-inch-wide rectangular object through the slats of the crib. “The lad meant no harm. When a sailor dies on a ship, those who clean him for burial get to take some small thing from the man’s kit. But the Ramsey Company is not so forgiving. I would not have him called a thief o’er his grave. The lad was nurtured on great fears, thrown out into a harsh world too early.”

The object was covered with a yellow and red pattern of dyed porcupine quills, like Duncan’s medallion, shaped into a sheath for a small blade, but the deerskin backing was stretched over a rigid metal object. Duncan looked up at Lister, wondering if he understood. “It was taken from Woolford’s trunk,” he explained.

“I supposed as much. But it was there in Evering’s cabin, in a little hollow in the beam. I think Adam gave it to the professor.”

The lacing on the back revealed brass. Duncan grabbed a small chisel from the anvil and worked at the leather thongs, releasing the metal into his palm. He stared at it in stunned silence. It was a brass buckle, with a 4 and a 2 set on its front. The Forty-second Regiment of Foot. Jamie’s regiment.

“Who did Frasier see yesterday?”

“He was in a state, ye might say. Always so sad, always so frightened. Yesterday, when we broke for rest at the palisade, he said Reverend Arnold was right, the Indians are spawn of the devil, that the Company be on a crusade, that the answer was for Reverend Arnold and as many other clergymen that could be found to be sent with bars of iron to a place called Stony Run.”

Duncan’s head shot up and he strained to see Lister’s face. “Why Stony Run?”

“Hawkins. Frasier spoke with him when he was here, got drunk with him in the barn that night. Hawkins told him Stony Run was where Satan himself waited. Frasier said Woolford was a ranger, which meant he had Indian friends. He said Woolford left the ship early to meet one, to arrange for Arnold and you to be murdered by that arrow. He said, saving Sergeant Fitch, every damned soldier and all the English could be butchered by the heathen and the world be better for it. He spoke with Fitch often, said Fitch was the only sane man in the army. He said the way to destroy a man like Ramsey was to destroy what he coveted most. Then at dusk last night he took a blade from the saw pit.”

“A saw? And did what with it?”

“Hid it in the barn, as best I could tell. Came out of the barn without it, then he spied Hawkins by the cooper’s shed, and the two of them argued. Why the burn?” Lister asked.

But Duncan had no answer.

Cameron appeared and unlocked the narrow crib door. Duncan made him stay to witness his work as he pulled away Lister’s bloody shoe. The skin over the ankle was scraped and bloody. The bones were shattered. Lister would never walk the same again. “I’ll need splints from the cooper’s shed.” Cameron, sensing the cold fury in Duncan’s voice, did not protest. “And a crock of rum.”

Crispin tried to stop Duncan when he approached the library an hour later, but then seemed to see something in Duncan’s eyes and relented. “There’s no need to hold him,” Duncan declared to Ramsey’s back. The manor lord was writing at his cherry desk, its folding top open, revealing its pigeonholes stuffed with papers.

“Plato. I have been giving this considerable thought,” Ramsey said, his head rising but not turning. “We must dose them heavily with the father of all philosophers. A man who understood the practical aspects of power.”

“Kneeling by a body does not make a man a killer. His bloody prints on the hammer mean nothing. The blood came from Lister, when Cameron struggled with him. You could not have Lister for the prior murders, so to ease your embarrassment you take him for this one.”

“An uncharitable suggestion,” a thin voice interjected. Arnold was sitting in the wing-backed chair by the window, reading a news journal. “Your term as administrator of murders lapsed yesterday. It is time to focus on your duties to the children.”

“You said once you could have no cloud over the Company,” Duncan said.

“Our duty to justice is unwavering,” Ramsey said with a distracted air, then paused and scribbled on a paper as if to record the thought. “Our noble philosopher reminds us that the particular expertise of those in government lies in constantly adjusting the balance of social affairs, without being seen to do so.”

“Plato wasn’t living with a company of Scottish prisoners beside a wilderness of savages,” Duncan observed in a taut voice.

Ramsey frowned. “Last week we had two challenges before us: how to keep the army out of our affairs and how to establish our moral authority over the Company. You gave us the perfect script for the first. Now young Frasier’s death gives us the perfect opportunity for the second.” Ramsey stood and paced in front of the window. “We still needed to confront the fact that Mr. Lister lied about his identity. No one would resort to such deception without a criminal motive. Whether he seeks to hurt our cause because of Jacobite sedition or because he is paid by the French is all the same to us. In dealing with our enemies, we need look no further than the Old Testament.”

“You know Evering sent letters for Lister as well,” Arnold interjected, “though we never examined them closely.”

“Because you never believed him to be a Scot.”

“Exactly,” Arnold said, as if Duncan had proven his point.

“He’s just an old sailor.” Duncan heard the helplessness in his own voice.

“Did you know the crime for which he was condemned in England?” Impatience was creeping into Arnold’s tone. “He accosted an army officer trying to stop a barroom brawl. Left him unconscious and fled. But his former captain testified to his character, leaving him a candidate for a trusted position in the Company. Only now do we realize the larger deception. A pattern of violent conduct against British authority.”

“We dispatched your excellent report,” Ramsey said. “The governor will hear of Professor McCallum. Without you, that particular victory would not have been possible. Now, as Reverend Arnold suggests, you must move to the greater challenges of the Ramsey heirs.”

The words pinched at something inside Duncan. He grew very still, and cold. “What will become of Mr. Lister?” he asked, staring toward his feet.

“A trial. First we must build a proper judge’s bench and prisoner dock. I am sending for carpenters and joiners from Philadelphia. Unfortunately, we may not break in a new gibbet without a warrant from the governor,” Ramsey noted with chagrin. “It could be two or three months before the trap door swings.”