Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

He approached stealthily, his club raised, but found no guard under the dim candle lantern. Tossing his club on the ground, he staggered onto the smith’s stool.

“’Twas a bonny thing you did this night, lad,” a hoarse voice said through the slats. “Men were listening in the barracks, be sure of it. I ain’t felt such joy in years. I didn’t think I would ever hear a pipe again.”

“You knew it was me?”

“I gathered y’er things on the ship. I kept that brown sack hid away.”

A shudder of pain wracked Duncan’s body.

“First few hours be the worst, lad. Ye need liniment or grease. Don’t let the wounds dry and crack.” Duncan heard the sound of chains as Lister inched closer. “And listen to me, listen sharp. I told ye there be Scots, to the south, in the Carolinas. Good Highland men, living far from John Bull. The scars on y’er back will be y’er ticket. Ye must go there, lad. It’s y’er only chance. Me bum foot will hold me up, so I’ll just have to meet you there. Ye’ll n’er survive seven years under this-”

Duncan jerked about as something cold touched his back. A hand closed around his shoulder. “I have liniment,” Crispin said. “Hold still. I had prayed Mr. Ramsey had fallen asleep. He did not hear his daughter but he surely heard the music. He held his temper well with you.”

“You can be in Charleston in six weeks’ time,” the old Scot continued.

“Mr. Lister, don’t-” Duncan warned.

“This one slips pieces of bread between the logs in the rear,” Lister interrupted. “He knows the Carolinas. Black slaves go north to be free. Scottish slaves go south.”

“First time I entered one of those settlements, I was frightened,” Crispin declared. “Most of the men had hair the color of fire, wore skirts, and spoke in a babble that hurt the ears. They drank hard and laughed a lot. When I came north, I passed through another such village, having a festival. Throwing logs end over end like giants in the hills.” Duncan’s back arched as the liniment touched it, then he slowly relaxed.

“He would need a pack, Crispin,” a soft voice interjected from the shadows. “And food. As much food as he could carry, for he must not take time to stop for it.”

“Miss Ramsey!” Crispin gasped.

“Keep quiet or you will alarm the house,” Sarah said in a soft, weary voice. As she stepped forward, a pool of bright light appeared before her. She had opened the shade of a lantern in her hand. In her other hand she held a shirt. “I have brought Mr. McCallum a clean shirt from the laundry. Lord Ramsey’s, but he owes as much.” Her tone became matter-of-fact, all business, giving no evidence of the strange delirium Duncan had seen her in an hour before. Setting the lantern on the anvil, she took the tub of liniment from Crispin and began applying it to Duncan’s wounds. “Also some coins, and a tomahawk for cutting firewood,” Sarah said in her new, conspiratorial tone. “Not yet, of course. Your back must heal. A map should be made.”

“You cannot,” Duncan protested.

Sarah hesitated. From the corner of his eye, Duncan saw her lower the medicine tub. “I have heard of another Flora,” she declared.

The words reached a place Duncan had not thought she could find, and the ache they brought made him forget for a moment the pain of his lashing. Flora McDonald had become a legend in Scotland for risking her own life to help Prince Charlie escape to a French boat off the Highland coast as his English pursuers closed on him.

Sarah lifted the tub and set to work again. “You forget how much I owe you.”

Duncan gripped two slats of the coal crib as another wave of pain wracked his spine. His mind raced. This was the innocent, taciturn daughter of the man who had just flayed his back. No, this was the woman who had been turned into a savage by her Indian captors. No, this was Flora, the melancholy soul who had chanted in the cell next to his and touched his hand in the dark. But now she seemed none of these. The girl who applied the liniment to his torn flesh was a strong, spirited creature who was knowingly defying her father. Somehow he knew he would never understand the mysteries that were enveloping the Company, and threatening Lister with execution, unless he could understand how, and why, all these people seemed to live within Sarah.

“I will not leave Mr. Lister to hang,” Duncan declared.

“A fleeing bond servant is sometimes easy to forget,” Crispin said. “If Mr. Lister flees, however, they will say it proves his guilt-and an escaped murderer, they are sure to hound.”

“He speaks true, Clan McCallum,” the old Scot said through the shadows.

“Do you think Mr. Lister guilty?” Duncan asked Sarah, forgetting until the words left his mouth how she reacted to questioning.

Sarah stopped applying the liniment but did not bolt. “No,” she said at last. “But if you stay, my father will use him against you.”

“This lass is wise,” Lister said. “Wait a few days, then disappear.”

“I will report you ill,” Crispin added, “so you will not be missed for a day or two. There is no war in the south. Scots go there, far from the law. Far from the army,” he said in a pointed voice. “They will know about your brother. If Captain McCallum of the Forty-second has half the sense of his brother, he will already be there, with answers for your mysteries.”

“I cannot leave,” Duncan insisted.

“Then ye be a damned fool,” Lister shot back.

“That,” Duncan said in a falling voice, “we can take as proven.” If he did find the truth in the Carolinas, he would return, even it guaranteed an iron collar for seven years.

Crispin began covering the last of Duncan’s wounds. Sarah had melted back into the darkness without a word.

When he returned to the schoolhouse, his room had been ransacked. His pallet was thrown against the wall, and his few articles of clothing were strewn about the room and stepped on by muddy boots. The drawers of the chest all hung open. Duncan pulled the pallet onto the ropes of the bed frame and dropped onto it, belly first, and was instantly lost in slumber.

There was a half day of lessons slated for the morning, and Duncan was up at dawn, silently taking breakfast in the kitchen with the house staff, returning to stand on a wooden box to write the alphabet at the top of the large slate behind his table, pausing every few moments to fight the pain that shot across his back each time he stretched out his arm.

As he rang the bell at eight o’clock, the young Ramsey children bolted out of the great house, Sarah walking a few steps behind, wearing a plain grey dress, its lace collar buttoned tightly around her neck, her hair tied in a ribbon at the back. She offered Duncan a nervous smile and joined her siblings inside, sitting at the small table behind Jonathan and Virginia. They recited the alphabet together, then Duncan invited them to write a word that began with the letter A , to gauge how far the younger children had been instructed.

Jonathan and Virginia worked quickly but Sarah stared at the alphabet, pain in her eyes, before laboring over her own slate. After a moment Jonathan held up his board, showing the word Albany in careful letters. Ax, Virginia had written in a practiced hand. When Duncan stepped to Sarah, her hand trembled, and she pushed the slate away as if it scared her. She had written Akrn in crude, misshapen letters, but expertly sketched a tree beside them.

“Excellent,” Duncan said, pushing the slate back so her siblings could not see.

He read aloud the remainder of the morning, relieving Sarah of the need to write again. When he dismissed school for the day, she lingered behind.

“My tongue can find the words, but not my fingers,” she said, gazing awkwardly at the floor. “My mother taught me before. But it is difficult to bring those things back from so many seasons ago.” Her gaze lifted toward the window. A little gray bird perched on the windowsill, looking inside. “I am ashamed.”