Eye of the Raven (28 page)

The man wiped his hand on his leather apron, snatched up the gear, and studied it a moment before passing it back. "Your complaint is not with me," he declared.

"I beg your pardon?" Conawago asked. His refined tone caused the clockmaker to hesitate.

The man frowned. "When someone appears with a piece taken from a gear works, it is to complain. They think because they have dropped the clock or suffered it to travel over rutted roads that it is the maker's fault when it fails to respond."

"How can you be so certain it is not your work?" Duncan wanted to know. He extended one of the other gears, a pinion, and displayed it on his palm.

"I import most of my gears from England. Yours is meant for a farmer's clock, a crude but cheap machine. Although that one never saw the inside of a case."

"How can you know that?"

The craftsman sighed, extended his palm for the gear, then lifted an instrument like a tiny awl to point to an imperfection in the gear teeth, a place where whoever filed it had slipped, causing an irregular spacing. "An incompetent apprentice," the clockmaker groused.

"And how many incompetent apprentices are there in Philadelphia?" Duncan asked.

The clockmaker snorted. "In those workrooms making mantel instruments for the low trade? Probably one in every shop."

"Why mantel clocks?"

"The pendulum meant for this gear is nine inches long." The man saw the confusion on Duncan's face and gestured for Duncan to hand over the second gear in his palm. He held up the small one. "The pinion that fits into the wheel has six teeth-" here he set the larger gear against the pinion, meshing the teeth. "The large wheel has seventy-two teeth. That is a combination for the short, fast pendulum of a mantel clock." The man gazed at his candle a moment. "Which gives you perhaps three or four likely candidates, all in the cheaper shops along the waterfront, below Walnut."

"Near the Broken Jug?" Duncan ventured.

"All within a short walk of the old jug," the clockmaker confirmed, then cocked his head in confusion at Conawago. As they stepped out onto the cobbled street the man was still staring at the miniature cairn of gears Conawago had made on his table, topped with a yellow feather.

They had eliminated one of the likely clock shops and were approaching another when an urchin ran past, calling out details of a new hanging as he hawked a broadside. Shuddering, Duncan saw his friend staring at a large nondescript brick building on the river side of the street. It appeared to have been built as a ship chandler's storehouse, though there were no ships' masters conducting business, no sailors milling about, no heavy wagons, only a single stylish carriage parked near its door.

Without a word Conawago swiftly crossed the street and tried the front door, then began pounding on it when he found it locked. Duncan glanced at the passersby, already casting suspicious glances, then tried to pull his friend away. Instead Conawago set his face against a window and peered inside.

"You forget there are constables!" Duncan warned. They had noted a half dozen of the large men with staffs since leaving the first clockmaker. "If they see you looking into a building they will surely question you!"

Conawago paused, then let Duncan pull him away, across the street in the direction of the next clock shop. But he would not proceed without first stopping to study the two-story building as if interested in its construction. Duncan tried in vain to make sense of his strange actions. Surveying the structure himself, he noticed the strange metal spikes mounted along the roof, the cradles on the sidewalls once used for holding heavy rope, the winch under the eaves for loading cargo through an upper hatch. Conawago touched his arm and pointed to the main entrance of the building.

The frame of the main entrance had been decorated with ornate, abstract patterns of brick after the Dutch fashion, but the pattern on the lintel over the frame suddenly congealed. With purple and white paint someone had carefully depicted figures from a wampum belt, the stick figures of straight Indians and triangular Europeans holding hands in friendship. A peace belt.

As they gazed at the surprising pattern a brilliant flash erupted through the window of the upper floor, as if gunpowder had been ignited. But there was no explosion, only a long moan of pain, loud enough to be heard through the window glass. Duncan grabbed Conawago by the arm and pulled him down the street toward a line of clock shops.

The fifth shop they visited was a rundown establishment nearly in the shadow of the Broken Jug tavern. As they stepped toward the entry Duncan paused to study an establishment across the street. Coppersmith, its sign proclaimed, and at the rear was a furnace building for melting the metal, a building where small lumps of molten copper might be found.

Inside the shop, two young men sat at a table indolently working pieces of walnut with small planes, surrounded by chips of wood and several incomplete cabinets for mantel clocks. The older of the pair looked up with a sleepy expression.

"He's out for refreshment," he declared. "Three doors down, at the jug."

"I have a problem," Duncan said, producing the defective gear.

The apprentice examined the gear only when Duncan pushed it nearly under his nose, then glanced nervously toward the dimly lit room at the rear of the building. "Surely you don't mean to make your own repair," he said with a sneer. "We'll need the entire works."

"The only thing wrong is this gear that was badly cut," Duncan said in a dissatisfied manner. He extended it, pointing to the flaw. All traces of the youth's confident air melted away. He glanced at his companion, who leaned over his work without looking up, and flushed with color. "In the other shops," he complained, "they get special lanterns, even lenses, and fine tools like jewelers use."

Duncan stared at him expectantly.

"He'll have my hide if I take a gear from his good stock."

"Tell me this," Duncan tried. "Do you trade with Shamokin?"

"What, sell clocks to the damned heathens? Not bloody likely." He looked out the window toward the tavern, then watched Conawago for a moment with an uneasy expression. "I can get a new one," he offered. "Just between us, right?"

Duncan's own gaze lingered on the tavern. "How often do you bring your drinking companions back here?"

The silent youth working the wood sprouted a narrow smile.

"It's not allowed."

"But sometimes your master leaves town," Duncan suggested.

"I'll get a new one," the apprentice repeated, and he disappeared into his master's work chamber.

Duncan silently accepted the new gear from the sullen youth and was about to retreat when Conawago stepped to the table. "That old brick warehouse down the street," he said. "Who occupies it?"

"A lunatic, most say. His calling card says natural philosopher. More like Lucifer, for all his deviling with nature."

A door at the rear of the building suddenly opened and shut. The boy shot up from the table, pushing Duncan and Conawago to the door. "Those who ask too many questions get called to the constable," he warned in parting.

They walked quickly down the street, casting strangely guilty glances back at the shop, drifting with the flow of foot traffic toward a little square where a freestanding plank wall held handbills, newspapers, and notices. Duncan was gazing absently at the bill board, trying to fathom what the Library Company advertised on one sheet might be, when Conawago indicated a recently posted bill at the end of the wall. Thirty pounds sterling, it declared in large type, for the capture of a runaway. Duncan's mouth went bone dry as he read the name. Duncan McCallum, it stated, Scotsman, followed by an exact description of him and instructions to contact Ramsey House. Considered violent, the poster concluded, Keep under Restraint.

As the sun was setting they sat in the corner of the Broken jug picking slowly at miserly portions of cold shepherd's pie, one eye on the stout German proprietor, whose cooperation had been purchased with one of their last coins. He had advised them not to divulge the tract to be surveyed if they were looking to hire someone, only the length of the assignment and the fee to be paid. Retaining a surveyor in Philadelphia had apparently become an affair of intrigue. "If it's too far west," the tavernkeeper added, "they may be asking for guards as well."

The trickle of customers grew into a steady stream as the working day ended. Men with hands stained with ink from printing presses took a corner table with a pitcher of ale. Two customers shook wood shavings out of their hair as they entered, speaking of a shipment of mahogany from the Indies. Duncan found himself filled with a strange longing. It was another world these Philadelphians lived in, a world without murders and bounties and hands nailed to trees.

After an hour, during a lull in the evening's business, the proprietor paused to sit with them.

"What if it is Indian country?" Conawago asked abruptly, in his earnest English voice.

The man stared at Conawago intensely, leaning forward as if only now noticing his customer's bronze skin. "Don't advertise it. There's still a war on."

"We heard of a Mr. Townsend."

"Gone these many months. Some say he journeyed to the Carolinas. But he ain't sent for his sister."

"For whom was his last commission?" Duncan inquired.

"Like I said, the land companies are secretive. It's all to do with competition."

"How long after the burning of his house did he go?"

"Stayed around for the hanging of the heathen what done it. Too many drunken savages allowed on the streets, if ye ask me."

"Were you there?" Duncan asked. "At the hanging?"

The proprietor nodded, seeming to take pleasure in the turn of conversation. "A great crowd turned out. They started gathering at dawn for the best seats, even with hours to wait. I sold two barrels' worth and cursed myself for not bringing two more."

Duncan stared at the man, trying to control his emotion. "You sold ale at a hanging?"

Their host stood and wiped the table with a rag. "A city tradition. Hangings be as good as a king's holiday. Stalls with ale and little cakes. Boys blowing pennywhistles. Eggs by the dozen."

"Eggs?" Duncan asked.

"To throw, ye fool. Funny thing, when it started the only one to try to stop it was Townsend himself. He got as many yolks on him as the damned savage. Out of his mind over the loss of his home, folks said."

Over the next hour the tavern nearly filled. Duncan studied each newcomer, increasingly certain he had found the place where the dead surveyors had been hired, though not sure if he was any closer to knowing who had hired them. Several men came in and sat alone, nursing tankards of ale, some reading news journals. One played with a writing lead on his tabletop. Several others congregated at the opposite side, aiming small throwing knives at splintered planks painted with bears and wildcats, two men in tricorns performed a balancing act with a ball on the side of their feet, passing it to each other as they hopped around the tables.

Duncan found his gaze drifting toward the half-walled corner from which the landlord dispensed his drinks. Above his head a stuffed crow presided over the chamber, sitting on a shelf where other oddments had been arrayed. A tall angular hat, in the style of another century, that could have been worn by old Penn himself. A wooden shoe. A portrait painted on a board, of a bewigged aristocrat whose bulging blue eyes and large nose identified him as King George the Second. He glanced back at the men amusing themselves with the ball, taking dares and bets now over their performance. Their antics had the flavor of a lacrosse game.

The solitary man with the writing lead gazed in drunken puzzlement at the stuffed crow, as if perhaps he had seen it move. He ran his fingers through his long hair, then looked back uneasily at the bird. With a nudge from Conawago, Duncan regarded him more closely. His ear had been cut off.

"They say," Duncan declared as he slipped into a chair beside the man, "that ours is a new fraternity of mercenaries."

The man turned with a dull, resentful look, then Duncan lifted the hair at his temple to expose the long, ragged scar along his scalp.

"God's breath!" the man gasped, jerking Duncan's hand down. "Have you no sense! The mark of the savage is like the mark of the devil to these city folk."

"Then you are not of the city?"

The man answered cautiously, all signs of drunkenness gone. "Bethlehem, in the north."

Duncan knew it only by reputation. "The Moravian town?"

"Ja. But here I take my education," the stranger offered in a hollow voice.

"As a surveyor?"

The man nodded. "I am an excellent surveyor. Though I fear I lost my equipment in the wilds."

"Along with your ear?"

The German winked. "I expect it's now being worn on some savage's necklace. My father declared it was a sign I should return to mission work. Missionaries be protected by God."

"I hear surveyors are needed for the Virginian claim in the west."

"I hear," the man shot back, "they require as many grave diggers as surveyors." He accepted an apple from a servant girl who wandered among the patrons with a basket of the fruit. Duncan sipped from his tankard as the man unfolded a pocketknife and cut the fruit into wedges.

"Suppose a man were desperate enough," Duncan said. "Who would he see?"

The Moravian pushed an apple slice toward Duncan and ate one himself as he studied the crowd. "There is a tobacco merchant who sells Virginia leaf and pipes to smoke it, a Potomac man."

"How many has he hired?"

"Half a dozen perhaps."

Were there men still out there, Duncan wondered, unknowingly proceeding toward their deaths? "How long since-" his words died in his throat. The men playing with the ball had stopped, had taken off their hats, and were standing at the corner counter where drinks were dispensed. A familiar figure stood at the front of the group, staring directly at Duncan now. The notices declaring a bounty on Duncan would be meaningless to the residents of the city since they would not know Duncan's appearance. But Samuel Felton, the magistrate's nephew, knew his face. One word from Felton and every man in the room would turn on Duncan.