Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

“I don’t know. Yes. They’re not coming back. Over there, in the forest, it’s like being thrown into the ocean not knowing how to swim. For four days, this one,” he said, indicating the younger convict with him, “never slept. ’Tain’t right, McCallum, ’tain’t for people like us to-” The Scot’s voice trailed off as the younger man wandered away into the makeshift chapel. “Hawkins, he left the boy on the trail, weeping like a babe, so weak he couldn’t walk. I told Hawkins the boy was Ramsey property, that he couldn’t be wasted like that without accounting to the great laird.” McGregor shook his head. “He sneaks into the chapel when e’re he can. I’ll have to drag him out again, a’fore Reverend Arnold hears.”

“Hears what?”

“His prayer, always the same prayer. May I die soon, he says, may I die quick.” With a sigh McGregor stepped toward the chapel.

Duncan returned to the schoolhouse steps, keeping an eye on the men who walked along the muddy paths of the town until he spied a compact, sinewy figure in green. Fitch entered the barn and was sharpening his hand ax on a grindstone when Duncan approached and silently took over the turning of the handle. The sergeant nodded and continued working the blade with grim determination. A Company worker appeared with a spade to grind, and backed away as he saw Fitch. The men treated the sergeant like some kind of wild beast that sometimes prowled in their midst.

“The Indians use codes in their beads,” Duncan said after a minute. He extended the strand of beads on the stick with his free hand. “Jacob used the same code.”

Fitch paused, testing his blade with a callused thumb, glancing at the beads. “This used to be their land. Even if Ramsey offered to pay for it, which he didn’t, they wouldn’t understand. Their brains can’t fit around the idea that men can own land.”

“Who exactly uses such codes?”

“The Six,” the sergeant said toward the trees, then turned to Duncan. “Each of the Six Nations has its own bead pattern, to identify it in messages. Four strands, with two purple and one white, that be Onondaga. They are the central tribe, the keepers of tradition, the ones charged with watching over sacred things. The ones with the most powerful shaman.”

“Tashgua, you mean.”

“He was born Onondaga. But he lives apart now, away from the Iroquois towns, with his own band, has for years. Like a band of roaming warrior priests, protecting the old ways.”

“But there are soldiers here. Surely hostiles won’t move about with the soldiers so close.”

“Gone, with the last of the settlers, worn out by Ramsey hospitality. There was a farmer named William Wells, with a place not many miles north. Killed and scalped two days ago, but his place wasn’t burnt, so those settlers went there. And the troops were just a small patrol, due to go back soon.”

Duncan examined the stick again. “It has ten notches. What does that mean?”

“It’s a council stick, lad. A religious council. An Indian shaman wants to talk. Ten notches means in ten days.”

“Are you saying it’s an invitation?”

“If ’twere given to an Indian, that’s what it would be.”

“Where? Where is this council?”

“If you have to ask that,” Fitch replied, “then I reckon it ain’t intended for you.” He rose and pushed the tomahawk into his belt. “Given recent events, I reckon ’tis the last place any sane Christian wants to be.”

Duncan put a hand on his arm as the sergeant took a step away. “Adam Munroe was supposed to be with the Company. He would have known how to read the beads.”

Fitch looked away. “Aye,” he confirmed in a reluctant tone.

“Because he was a ghostwalker,” Duncan ventured. “Because he was a prisoner of the Indians,” he added in a questioning tone.

Fitch frowned. “Ghostwalker’s just a name for the pitiful souls who are brought back, not Indian but no longer exactly European either. Most of them move about without purpose, having lost the way of themselves.”

“How long was he a prisoner?”

“There was an expedition of Pennsylvania militia three years ago. He was one of those who did not come back,” Fitch added, then hurried away.

Adam had trusted Duncan with the stone bear, he had said, because Duncan was becoming a ghostwalker. For a horrible instant he thought Adam meant he was to be captured by the savages, then he understood. Duncan was between worlds, too, able to see certain true things because his true people were lost. He looked down at the notched stick. It ain’t intended for you, Fitch had said. But maybe it was. The old Ramsey tutor had given it to a new one.

It was dusk when Duncan returned to the schoolroom. Dropping the paper with the drawing of the belt onto the table with his other clues, he stared at them all, arms folded on the table, until his head dropped into his arms and he slept.

When he awoke, a nearly full moon had risen. He unlatched the door and sat on the stone step, watching the sky, his thoughts constantly drawn toward the old Scot in the makeshift cell. Finally he rose and stepped inside to his bedchamber. Pulling out the sea bag he had brought from the ship, he extracted the clothing and reached into the bottom, removing the tattered, stained muslin bag that held his most precious possession. Holding the bag tightly to his chest, he stepped outside. He studied the forge a moment, then stepped away from it, walking hurriedly over the open ground, slowly finding his way through the laurel thicket until he reached the overgrown cemetery. As he reached into the sack, his heart gave a sudden lurch, and he stood unmoving, overwhelmed with emotion. The intricately crafted pipes had been handed down through his family for at least two hundred years, but they had been lovingly cared for, left to him by the old uncle who had sought refuge with Duncan, secretly kept for him by one of his Scottish professors who had visited him in prison and then appeared in the courtroom when he had been sentenced to transportation.

Slowly, methodically, sitting on one of the ruined cabin walls, Duncan prepared the instrument, flooded with memories of his grandfather playing and teaching him with the same pipes. Finally, the bladder bulging with air, the reeds wetted and reset, the drones tuned as best he could manage, he clamped the blow-stick in his teeth and grasped the chanter. He was out of practice, but the fingering came back quickly. His grandfather had taught him many lonesome ballads of the Highlands and the seafaring island folk, and Duncan played all he could recall, each song releasing him further from the guilt and hopelessness he felt in the Ramsey compound. Long-dead scenes opened in his mind, of his mother dancing with him in the kitchen as his father played small music, of his grandfather offering a solemn pibroch to bless the fishermen each spring before they set out on the treacherous Hebrides waters. His heart thundered, and a new energy reached his piping. He was rowing with his grandfather on a calm sea as the old man piped to the whales and seals. He was at one of the joyful Highland weddings, where men who smelled of heather and peat piped all night by a bonfire and girls danced over swords.

Duncan did not know how long he played, how long he had been transported to the country, and clan, of his youth, but when he had finished, he brimmed with unexpected tranquility, a lightness of heart he had not known for months, perhaps years. He returned the pipes to their sack, then carefully laid the bag inside a hollow log by Sarah’s stone, stuffing the end with moss. He entered the night-still paths of Edentown boldly, buoyed by his unexpected contentment, and had begun to circle the barn, hoping to come up on the back of the forge so he might whisper to Lister, when a murmur abruptly stopped him.