Original Death (15 page)

Duncan looped the straps of the pack around his shoulders and began to tighten them. “You're not normally so blind, Captain. Bring the body up out of the lake. There was a reason so many died at Bethel Church the day the pay wagon rolled through, a reason why a young Scot was drowned and another stabbed to death.”

“We're at war. Our enemy is desperate but very clever.”

“That's it? The citizens of Bethel Church slaughtered like animals, their children kidnapped because of the war? This wasn't the war, Patrick, this was something else, something that so unsettled Conawago he disappeared into the forest without even trying to account for his long lost nephew.”

Duncan finally had Woolford's attention. “Conawago wouldn't run from—”

“Exactly. He wasn't running away. He was running
to
something, somewhere in the wilderness north and west of here. His kinsman Hickory John was tortured for a secret then killed. There was a message sent by Hickory John to summon Conawago.
This is how we first die
, he wrote. Conawago and Hickory John were guardians of ancient secrets. The others may have died because they witnessed the theft. But not Hickory John. He was tortured for one of those secrets.”

Woolford lowered himself onto the bed, as if suddenly weak. “Not Conawago,” he said in an anguished tone.

“I must find him,” Duncan said, not certain how to read the alarm in Woolford's voice.

“The war hangs in the balance, Duncan. If the French have the treasure they will turn the tide. The generals will no longer be able to rely on the Highland troops. The French can buy every Canadian who can hold a rifle and arm every Indian north of the Saint Lawrence. This damnable war will go on another five years, and thousands more will die.”

“I'm talking about Conawago and captured children. But you are more concerned about the king missing some coins.”

“You are the one who suggests they are connected.”

“The army can't have it both ways, Captain.”

“Both ways?”

“It either has to treat me as a murderer or treat me like the one man who glimpses the truth about the killings and the theft.”

“The court-martial will clear your name.”

“Then you're a bigger fool than I thought.”

“Come with me to the general.”

“You can't be the dutiful soldier and still seek the truth.” Duncan opened the window onto the rear porch roof.

“Damn you, McCallum. You don't understand.”

Duncan handed the paper to Woolford. “Find the drowned man. Even the general would have to admit that I could not have left a body strapped to a heavy wheel a hundred yards offshore. And the Forseys know of a lawyer in New York town who represents a man named Eldridge who was convicted of killing a Dutchman in Albany a few years ago. Find a way to ask him about the murder.” He lifted his rifle and moments later dropped from the roof onto the grass below.

As he stepped into the shadows of the trees behind the inn, a twig broke behind him.

“You would leave them to die then, all those Scots,” Woolford said to his back.

Duncan looked to the ground, not turning around. “What goes on in that prison is on the conscience of the general.”

“Not them. The dozens who will be executed because you have run away.”

Duncan slowly turned.

“The Highland regiments are going to mutiny. Any day now. Colonel Cameron has nearly lost control of them. Dozens of provosts have been brought up from New York town. Orders have been sent by General Amherst, commander of all the British armies in America. At the first sign of rebellion the provosts are to disarm every Highlander. They are to line them up. Every tenth man will be taken to the wall and shot.”

The color drained from Duncan's face. “Surely Amherst would never—”

“He can endure one more setback on the battlefield. But a mutiny will ruin him forever. No chance of the king's honors every general aches for.”

“There's nothing I can do. You know I have to find Conawago and the missing children.”

Woolford surveyed the empty yard then pushed Duncan deeper into the shadows. “I am ordered to secretly recover the payroll. By any means possible. Good men have already died for it. How many more will there be?”

“I can understand why you are an agent of the empire. Surely you can understand why I will not be.”

The words struck a nerve. Woolford was a man who knew much more about the workings of the empire in America than Duncan. The ranger frowned. “I am an agent for the king's justice,” he said, as if correcting Duncan. “I accept that what happened to those at Bethel Church is connected to the theft. Help me so I can help you. I will send one of my best men with you. There still may be time to keep the treasure from the French. Conawago must have understood. It is why he went north.”

“No. He does not trouble himself with the affairs of distant kings. He raced north for something far more important to him, something to do with a breach in the spirit world.”

As Woolford stared at him Duncan reminded himself that the ranger captain knew the tribes better than Duncan himself. When he finally spoke there was new worry in his voice. “You mean because of something he found at Bethel Church.”

Duncan glanced back at the forest, aware that the provosts had patrols out. If he was taken again he would be chained to the prison wall with no chance of escape. “Because there was a desperate plea in a letter. Because the only other old Nipmuc was tortured and murdered. Because he found an old flint knife secretly kept by that dead man. Because he does not believe it is inevitable that the tribes must submit to the Europeans.”

Duncan's words seemed to cause his friend more pain. “A flint knife?”

When Duncan nodded, Woolford sagged. “There are old legends of
how flint knives were used by the gods to carve the first human out of sacred wood and cut openings from the next world to earth.” The ranger gazed into the forest a moment before continuing, now in a despairing tone. “There's a native rising, Duncan. I've reported the signs to General Calder but he doesn't want to hear. Colonel Johnson, the superintendent of Indian Affairs, sends disturbing reports, which Calder shows only to me, and forbids me speaking of it with the other officers. His eminence General Amherst ridicules any officer who shows concern for the tribes, or about the tribes. An Iroquois is just another savage creature of the forest, the supreme commander told me last time I saw him, not worth the time of a true king's man.”

Woolford looked nervously about. “There's a new cult among the western tribes, spreading like wildfire. Its leader says he has been given a sacred charge, that he is connected to the spirits on the other side and speaks for the old gods, that there is a terrible war beginning on the other side, in the spirit world, and only he knows how to stop it. At their campfires they shout for a war of extermination. Their leader makes overtures to the French while his warriors take vows to drive the settlers back to the sea. The beast he spawns will have an insatiable hunger for European flesh.”

“What tribe?”

“That's the point. If their leader has his way, all the tribes. He is becoming like a god to them.”

“An Iroquois?”

“Bands of Iroquois left for the West a generation ago, tribesmen who considered the federation to have grown too soft and weak. They call themselves Mingoes. He is a Mingo, a self-proclaimed half-king, one who reigns over the lesser tribes. In English he calls himself the Revelator.”

He had never seen Woolford look so despondent. “It could change the war, change the balance of power in the colonies,” the ranger said.

Duncan looked back toward the river, where he had first heard the name of the Revelator, and took a step away.

Woolford reached to his belt and extended his black leather ranger's
cap to Duncan. “Wear this. It will make you less conspicuous to soldiers.” Duncan settled it over his crown, gave a mock salute to the officer, and slipped into the shadows.

Skirting the main streets, staying in the shadows, he followed the sound of the hammers and saws in the boatyard. The Welsh woman haunted him. He had unfinished business with her. He moved from tree to tree as he approached the river, not knowing if the workers would have heard of his arrest. He pushed the cap squarely on his head, stepped to the last tree before the open bank of the river, and froze.

Half the workers stood in a line as though at the edge of an invisible circle, staring at smoke and burning timbers. The cabin was gone. As he watched, the last of its walls collapsed into the fire, sending a shower of sparks and embers into the air. The men watched it somberly, some fearfully. No one made any effort to extinguish the blaze.

Duncan dropped his pack, leaned his gun against the tree, and approached the burning ruins. He paused when he reached it, studying the onlookers. Most kept gazing uneasily at the fire, as if expecting something to rise up out of it. One man repeatedly made the sign of the cross on his chest. Duncan paced around the ruins, looking for any sign of Hetty Eldridge. There was no hope she had survived. The old dry wood would have burned like an inferno.

Duncan knelt and picked up a rattlesnake skin that had escaped the flames.

“It started from the roof.” The deep voice came from over his shoulder. He turned to see the bearded foreman.

“The roof?” Duncan asked absently. With a strange impulse he wrapped the long skin around his fingers and thrust it into his belt.

“A dozen of my men ran to their families this morning when the arrows started falling,” the foreman explained. “The garrison went on alert. There have been rumors of the French mounting an attack on Albany these past months.”

Duncan's head snapped up. “You're saying Hurons did this?”

The bearded man shrugged. “French Indians, sure. Like ghosts. They could have as easily fired the whole town but they chose the witch's hut, as if she scared them more than our troops. Poor woman never even tried to escape. One of my men said he heard hideous laughing as the flames leapt up. The walls may as well have been soaked in lamp oil, the way they burst into fire.”

The heat of the old wood would have been like a furnace, searing Hetty's flesh from her bones. Duncan picked up a long stick and poked the embers at the edge of the fire. There were shards of rum bottles. He pushed further, raking out fragments of bone. With a sudden chill he saw the skull of a large dog, with a shriveled skeletal hand reaching out of its jaw.

“God's breath!” the foreman exclaimed. He grabbed the stick and shoved the skull deeper into the ashes. “If my men see that they won't be back for a month.”

Duncan turned to the man in confusion.

“Yesterday at sundown the beast went inside her hut after watching it all these days. The woman began chanting, loud enough for us to hear. Words of the savages. Some of my men said she was taking control of the animal. Some said she was entering the body of the beast. Might be we could have stopped the flames at the outset, but my men . . .” the foreman shrugged. “No one wanted to.”

A sudden wind kicked up the pieces of charred snakeskin around the edge of the hut, stirring them into the air. They swirled over the ruins, several lighting on fire then rising up into the sky.

“Snakes are the messengers to the spirit world,” Duncan heard himself say. “Go-betweens, between us and the other side.”

The foreman took a step back, his worried expression now fixed on Duncan. He glanced at his men, half of whom had fled, then shook his head. “I'll never get them back to work until I push these damned ruins into the river.”

THERE WAS NO sign of Macaulay at the stream where Duncan had last seen him. Ishmael waited by the overhanging ledge holding a crude spear fashioned from a hickory pole and a sharp stone.

“The woman Hetty,” Duncan announced. “The mother of your schoolmaster. She's dead, Ishmael.”

The boy cocked his head and seemed about to ask a question but remained silent, touching the amulet that hung from his neck and turning his gaze to the northwest.

“Where is it?” Duncan asked. “Did she tell you where the raiders were going?”

When the boy looked back there was worry in his eyes. “She would not speak but I saw that message belt. The old ones are ending all ties with this world, it said. There were symbols of lightning I did not understand.” He shook his head in despair. “Once the Nipmucs would have known how to stop such things.” He turned away as if he did not want Duncan to see his face, and he spoke into the wind. “But there are only two Nipmucs left in all the world.” When he turned to Duncan there was a new determination in his eyes. “The witch knew more. If she is dead, then there's a place where witches are made,” Ishmael declared matter-of-factly. “If they are made then surely they can be remade.” He set off at a trot, spear in hand.

Minutes later they joined a game trail that led north, and as they crossed a ridge they began to glimpse a broad river in the distance below, the traditional path into the western wilderness. Ishmael pointed to it and set off with renewed energy. They had reached a fork in the trail at the bottom of the ridge when a burly man appeared from behind a tree.