D. Jackson - Thieves' Quarry

The lieutenant managed to conceal his dismay at Ethan’s discovery although he did pull out his kerchief and mop his brow. His hand appeared to tremble.

“Well, this certainly complicates matters,” he said, his voice low.

He paused to mark the ship’s progress toward the island and to shout a command to the crewman at the wheel. “I’ll have to inform Captain Gell,” he went on. “But I expect he’ll want us to to identify all of the dead and compare their names with those on the manifest. He’ll want this other man found. Frankly, I want him found, too, regardless of whether he’s our killer.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you stay on with us at Castle William?”

“Stay on with you?” Ethan said.

“I’d like you to work with Doctor Rickman. I don’t know yet if it will be possible to identify these men without making it known to every other soldier in their regiment that they’re dead. But I’m sure that the doctor will need every bit of help he can get.”

Ethan stared off toward Castle William, which loomed large before them. The fortress dominated the island, rising from a mound of stone, austere and formidable. The king’s colors flew above it, the blue, red, and white gleaming in the late-afternoon sun. Somehow, Ethan realized, as he watched the flag snapping in the wind, he had allowed himself to be drawn into a matter of the British navy, something he had vowed after Toulon never to do again. And yet ninety-eight men were dead-or at least ninety-seven were. How could he refuse Senhouse’s request?

“If you can feed and house me for the night, I’ll be happy to do what I can for the doctor.”

Senhouse actually smiled, looking so relieved that Ethan had to smile as well. “Thank you, Mister Kaille.”

A short time later, they docked at Castle Island. Soon Ethan, the soldiers, and even the officers were carrying bodies off the ship and up into the fortress. It was backbreaking, depressing work that grew ever more unsettling as the skies darkened overhead.

The fleet commander had ordered that the dead be kept as far from the barracks as possible, and so Ethan and the others carried the men from the island’s wharf, past the smith’s shop and garden sheds, to the underground vaults that were set aside for food and munitions storage in the unlikely event of a siege. By using the north entrance to the vaults they were able to avoid the barracks, which lay at the south end of the parade.

Stars had begun to appear in the sky when Ethan and Dr. Rickman carried the last of the bodies through the garden toward the vault. The air had turned cold, but still Ethan had sweated through his shirt and waistcoat. He and the doctor said little as they worked. Ethan could just make out faint strains of song in the distance, but he thought little of it until a sudden explosion overhead startled him so, he almost dropped the man he was helping Rickman carry.

“What in God’s name was that?” he demanded.

Before the doctor could answer, another blast illuminated the fortress grounds and was met with cheers.

“They’re celebrating the coming occupation,” Rickman said.

“Who are?”

“The soldiers out on the harbor. Haven’t you heard the singing?”

“I haven’t paid much attention to it,” Ethan said.

“Listen.”

They halted, still holding the corpse. A third rocket went off above them, brightening the fortress like summer lightning and drawing more cheers. Even after the singing commenced once more, it took Ethan a moment to make out the tune. When he did, he shook his head and chuckled. The men were singing “Yankee Doodle,” which British soldiers had been using to mock colonial militia since the Seven Years’ War.

Ethan couldn’t help thinking that the regulars seemed rather full of themselves. But he kept this to himself. He nodded once, signaling to Rickman that they should begin walking again. Rockets continued to burst overhead, and the singing and cheers drifted across the grounds from the harbor.

One last time they descended the steep stone stairs that led into the vaults, barely trusting their footing in the inconstant light of the torches that lined the stairway.

When at last they set down this last man, Ethan straightened and stretched the stiff muscles in his back and shoulders. The air belowground was even colder than it had been above. It was damp as well, but Ethan thought it likely that the bodies would keep longer in the vaults than anywhere else they might have been placed.

“I meant no offense,” Rickman said.

Ethan looked at him. “I beg your pardon?”

The doctor was tall and hale with a kindly, round face and piercing dark eyes. His features were youthful, but his curly hair, which he wore far shorter than was the fashion in Boston, had already turned white.

“I didn’t mean to anger you by pointing out what the men were singing,” the doctor explained.

Ethan shook his head. “You didn’t.” He retrieved the ship’s manifest from a low stone ledge where he had placed it some time before and began to walk down the narrow corridor of the vault, looking over the bodies. He could hear more rockets going off, although down underground the explosions sounded muffled and dull. He couldn’t hear the singing anymore. “Do you know many of these men?”

“Hardly any of them.” The doctor spoke softly in an accent that marked him as a native of southern England, perhaps Southampton or Portsmouth. “Last I heard, Captain Gell intended to ask some of the officers from the Twenty-ninth Regiment to join us here and help identify them.” He eyed Ethan in the torchlight. “Lieutenant Senhouse asked me to examine the men, but he still hasn’t asked me what killed them. The crewmen did, but not William. Neither have you, for that matter. Why is that?”

“I’ve been carrying the dead for hours, Doctor. As grim a task as that was I didn’t wish to make it worse. But you’ve raised the matter so why don’t you tell me what you think killed them.”

Rickman shook his head. “I have no idea. And what’s more, I don’t believe you. I think you do know, or at least can offer a theory. So before the officers arrive why don’t we dispense with the games? Tell me what happened to these men.”

Ethan didn’t answer right away. He should have denied that he knew anything, but something in the doctor’s manner stopped him. The man seethed with passion, with a righteousness that Ethan remembered from his own youth. In truth, Rickman reminded Ethan of another young man he knew-Trevor Pell, a minister at King’s Chapel who had first helped him with his work several years before when Ethan was inquiring into the death of Jennifer Berson. He wondered if Rickman would accept that Ethan was a conjurer, as had Pell.

Before he could say anything, though, he heard boots scraping on the stone stairs leading into the vault. He looked back at the entrance, and Rickman turned as well.

Two men stepped into the vault, both wearing bright red uniforms. One of the men appeared to be in his early twenties-a young officer, who looked at the bodies arrayed before him with an expression of abject fear. His eyes twitched; it seemed that he was continually fighting the urge to close them and shut out the horror before him. His skin looked pasty, even in the warm light of the torches.

The other man couldn’t have been more different. He was tall and broad in the shoulders. Some might have thought him handsome, though Ethan thought he looked more rough than refined, with a long nose, a strong chin, sunken cheeks, and widely spaced pale eyes. He wore his graying hair in a plait beneath his tricorn hat, a hat which he did not remove even here, in the presence of so many dead soldiers. His eyes swept over the bodies and came to rest at last on the doctor.