Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

Duncan felt numb. “But there will be a trial?”

“An excellent trial, a grand event,” Ramsey said, new enthusiasm in his voice. “Attended by all the Company, all the settlers on Ramsey lands. I shall issue a detailed judgment for publication in New York and Philadelphia. The good reverend has suggested that we open on a Sunday, after services, so the proper tone is set. I shall read from the Greeks in my opening, about the solemn responsibilities of all citizens to stay true to their destined duties. The general, of course, will have to abstain from interfering, thanks to your insightful report, McCallum. I commend you. None of this could have been possible without you.”

Duncan was not aware of setting out for a destination, did not really understand why he went to his room and retrieved the stone bear, was so lost in his peculiar mix of shame and fury that he paid little attention to where his feet were taking him until he was passing through the thicket that walled the secret cemetery.

Strangely, for no reason he could articulate, the place had begun to take on the air of a sanctuary. He stood before the tombstone with Sarah’s name on it, feeling an inexplicable urge to say something. Here lay the real Sarah. Here was the true starting place of the mysteries that swirled about the Ramsey Company. The men of the Company were in the path of a cyclone that had been building its fury for a dozen years. He knelt and began pulling weeds from the base of the stone. When he had cleared the grave, he noticed small white flowers blooming nearby, and with a stick he dug several up and planted them on the mound. Kneeling on the fresh earth, he stared at the dates and the little angel above, touching it, clearing out the remaining dirt accumulated in the carving. Here at least was something he understood. A child cut down by mindless savages. He had had a brother, barely six years old, lost in the bloodbath after Culloden. He felt he should pray, but knew not what to pray for. At last, fighting a trembling that abruptly seized his hands, he buried the bear at the base of the grave and rose, backing away.

His gaze was on the forge all the way back to town, until, a hundred feet away from it, he saw Reverend Arnold standing at the entry to the cooper’s shed, his makeshift chapel. As he watched, Arnold took a step in, then out, and repeated the motions, an uncertain torment twisting his features.

The vicar blocked the door when Duncan tried to enter. “Lord Ramsey awaits your plan of instruction,” Arnold asserted.

“Surely he would recognize the need for divine inspiration,” Duncan shot back, and slipped through the doorway.

It was a small, dim chamber, which Duncan had visited only once before, barely large enough to hold thirty men tightly packed on the benches that lined the walls. The only light came from the narrow, rough-hewn table used as an altar, which held two candles and a small stack of prayer books. But the brass cross Duncan had seen earlier had been replaced.

“A prank,” Arnold declared in an uncertain, worried voice. “A papist Highlander prank.”

In the place of the brass cross were two long bones, joined together with a thin leather string, resting not directly on the table but on a lush animal pelt.

“I don’t recall any Catholics,” Duncan observed as he approached the table, “who use beaver fur and bone on their altars.”

“We’ve seen these pagan rites before,” Arnold said, his voice gathering strength now, “the first time a murder stained the Company.”

“Before, you agreed it was not Mr. Lister.”

Arnold turned his pale, hard face toward Duncan. “Before, I agreed it was better for the Ramsey Company to blame the army.”

Arnold, Duncan recalled, had once said they were going to provide the answers to human nature. But he had never mentioned what the questions were. “The last time, they seemed to be calling on the devil. This time, they seem to be calling on God.”

“They are mocking our God,” Arnold said. He had not moved from the doorway. “There was a Bible. Who would steal a Bible?”

Duncan warily lifted the cross, surprised by the thought that there was a simple, natural beauty to it.

“I’d say ’twas more like they wanted two gods to get acquainted,” a dry, raspy voice observed.

Duncan turned. In the corner, in the shadow behind the door, sat Sergeant Fitch. The grizzle-faced ranger looked bone tired, but his eyes were lit with a strange excitement.

“Who would do this?” Duncan asked as Fitch rose and approached.

“Like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” the ranger said. “If two spirits were coming from different worlds to meet,” he added in a contemplative tone, “I reckon this would be their Edge of the Woods place. Sometimes they seek to exchange hostages. They be offering to exchange gods as hostages.”

The words seemed to stun Arnold as much as Duncan. The vicar, his face pale as a sheet, backed out of the building.

Fitch, a look of wonder on his face, seemed not to hear when Duncan asked him if he had seen Indians in the barnyard. He left the sergeant staring at the altar and returned to the forge.

Come on me brave seamen that plows on the main, Give ear to me story I’m true to maintain. .

The dimly lit figure inside the coal crib kept singing until Duncan tapped a post.

“Edentown be paradise indeed,” the old Scot said, leaning toward Duncan with the clink of chains. “I lay about all day out of the hot sun.”

“You said Frasier and Hawkins argued. Could you hear about what?”

“The boy spoke softly, too low for me to hear. He was excited, seemed to want to tell Hawkins urgent news. But Hawkins cursed him, said the boy needed some rum. Frasier spoke again, something about treason. Hawkins slapped him like a misbehaving child, then left the lad staring at the ground. Later, when no one was about, the boy walked around the barn three times, sunwise.” A deiseal circuit. Frasier was seeing demons everywhere. But Hawkins was the wrong demon to cross.

“I’ll tell you a secret, Clan McCallum,” Lister whispered after a moment’s silence. “I got sent to the Company for a scrape with an army officer. But ten years ago I was ashore, back home visiting what was left of me family, when a lieutenant of the Royal Navy came to press me last two young cousins for service. When we argued, he drew his sword and slashed one of the boys on his arm, saying we were not permitted to decline the king’s desire. I knocked the blade from his hand, but the fool pulled a pistol. I jumped him, the gun went off, and the ball pierced his heart. We threw his body in the sea. It were a noose for me for certain, but the boat his party came in capsized on the return with all hands lost. Everyone just assumed he was lost at sea. So I’ve been cheating the rope ever since. My account is overdue.”

“You didn’t kill Evering or Frasier. You didn’t murder anyone.”

“I see their faces in dreams, me father and those who died on Culloden moor. I never should have lied about me name, never turned me back on who I was,” Lister said in a hollow voice. “Used to be once a month, but now the dreams come every night. I was meant to die by English hands at Culloden. I cheated them all by lying and running away to sea, and that be the plain way of it.”

They had reached the truth of it, Duncan realized. It was why Lister had so readily revealed his secret Highland roots to Duncan, why he was ready to accept the noose, not for killing an English officer years earlier but for abandoning his clan and the Highland ways.

They sat in silence. Doves cooed in the barn next door.

“There’s autumn flowers sprouting along the edge of the fields,” Duncan said. “I saw thistles.” Through the slats of the crib Duncan saw a sad grin form on Lister’s lips. “One day we’re going to build a cabin on the side of a mountain in Carolina, you and me and any Scot who wants to join us. We’ll plant thistles for the joy of it and speak the old tongue all day, dance a jig all night.”