The boulders were rough-hewn tombstones, a dozen of them, for eight men and women and four children, all dead the same year, 1746. Duncan rested his hand on the largest of the stones, onto which a flying cherub had been carved.
1740–1746, he read under the angel, then his heart lurched and he sank to his knees. The name carved on the stone was Sarah Ramsey.
He did not know how long he wrestled with the despair that seized him. He watched his fingers moving across the stone as if of their own accord, trembling, peeling away the lichen growing in the carving. He scrubbed at the stone with his fingertips, then slumped against it, head in his hands, wondering at his pain. Was it just the weight of the terrible foreboding bearing down on him, he wondered, or was it also the year? It was the same year, 1746, that his parents had been taken from him-the year of Culloden.
An hour later he was back at the schoolhouse table, studying his slips of paper, fighting a new desperation that had seized him, rearranging the slips again and again, pausing for minutes at a time to stare at his quill and the blank papers before him, pausing later to gaze out the window toward the great house, seeing, as Lister had, the woman using Sarah’s name staring at the forest from the second floor. He could not escape the sense that he was being asked to strike a fire in a powder magazine.
Eventually he became aware of a presence and looked up to see Crispin holding a plate of cold beef and potatoes.
“Look like you’ve seen a ghost,” the big man said as he shoved the plate across the table.
“I did. I stepped into that thicket that juts into the fields.”
Crispin’s face sagged. “No one goes there. The ground is cursed.”
“They were the first settlers, weren’t they?”
Crispin looked longingly toward the door, as if he were thinking of retreating, then pulled up a stool and sat opposite Duncan, but spoke toward the window. “There had been a little settlement, a few cabins long abandoned when Mr. Ramsey bought the land. He hired six families to clear the first fields and came in that autumn for a month, mostly to hunt. It was warm. Indian summer they call it, because that’s a favorite time for the tribes to raid, to get plunder for their winter camps. He went out hunting stags for three days, downriver in Pennsylvania, took half the men with him. When they came back everything was burnt, all the people hacked to pieces. It was Iroquois, folks say, back when they were not all our allies.”
“You mean he left his daughter here while he hunted,” Duncan ventured. The way Cripsin broke away to stare into his folded hands was answer enough.
“I will not go near the place. Lord Ramsey has ordered briar thorns planted all around it. If he saw you there-”
“Sarah Ramsey is there.”
The houseman buried his head in his hands a moment. “’Tis wrong to be digging up old graves. With Lady Ramsey gone, there’s no one else,” he added in a voice gone hollow.
“Why can no one speak a straight word about her?” Duncan demanded. Crispin was not trying to bait Duncan, he knew, or deceive him. He was just trying to protect the strange woman whom Duncan had pulled from the Atlantic.
“Stay out of the woods,” Crispin said with sudden pleading in his voice. “No good for anyone.”
“They want to condemn Lister to hang, Crispin,” Duncan said. “And I believe the truth of it to be bound up around this woman using a dead girl’s name. Without it, all I can do is point out possibilities, explanations that could be wrong. Innocent men have already died. Another will hang if all I can find is shadows.”
“But your friend,” Crispin declared with an uncertain grin. “They released him, reduced him to the ranks of the workers. He’s in the river, singing like a boy.”
Without another word, Duncan raced out the door and moments later halted beside an oak on the bank. Half a dozen prisoners were watching the jaunty old man in the river, some grinning, others wearing uneasy, nervous expressions. Lister had stripped to his waist and was sitting on a flat rock midstream, singing something bawdy about ladies in Spain as he scrubbed his arms with sand and rushes. Thirty feet upstream stood Frasier and another keeper, armed with clubs.
“The old fool’s heart is as light as a leaf,” said a voice at his shoulder. Duncan turned to see Cameron hovering close, the keeper’s eyes full of worry and locked on Lister. “Mine would be, too, with so much brandy.”
“What happened?”
Cameron shrugged. “Order came from His Lordship, with a pint of his finest French spirits. Release him into the Company, reduced to prisoner rank, but watch him close.”
As Lister shifted on the rock, playfully skipping a pebble along the current, several of the onlookers paled and turned away. The old man’s back was a latticework of scars, overlaid with long, ugly scabs from his most recent lashing.
Had Ramsey actually taken Duncan at his word, actually accepted that he owed Duncan a debt? But then Cameron handed Duncan a cloth-wrapped bundle.
“Greetings from our patron,” the keeper declared and stepped away.
Inside were several sheets of fine white paper and four fresh-cut quills. He glanced back the house. Arnold stood on the rear porch, gazing at him expectantly. They weren’t repaying a debt. They were forcing the bargain, increasing the stakes. Duncan had to finish his report. They didn’t intend Lister to stay free for long. They were simply striking at Duncan with an invisible lash.
At midnight Duncan arrived at the door of the great house, the report folded inside a blank sheet of paper with Lord Ramsey’s name on it. He paused and touched the iron thumb latch. The door was unlocked. With a quick survey of the yard to confirm no one watched, he stepped inside and laid the report on a side table under a flickering candle in a pewter holder. The house was still and silent. He lifted the candleholder and ventured over the wide plank floor into the kitchen in search of something to ease his mounting hunger. With guilty pleasure he discovered and quickly consumed the heel end of a loaf, dipping it in a tub of butter left on the windowsill, then saw the small door under the back stairway. He lifted its latch slowly, wary of making the slightest noise, then raised the candle and moved down the steps into Ramsey’s forbidden cellar.
Rows of wooden crates and barrels lined the large, dirt-floored chamber. He ventured along the nearest wall, extending the candle to read the labels. Madeira, Port, Brandy. Sugar, salt, ale, and a dozen other consumables. Across the stone flags along the opposite wall were crates and trunks bearing the Ramsey name in the black letters he had seen on the ship. It took but a few moments to verify that they were the ones he and Woolford had seen in the hold, one still smelling of tar, though its ruined coats were gone. Beyond, under a heavy canvas cover, were more kegs of rum than he could quickly count. He raised the candle and discovered in the far corner a small chamber constructed of heavy timbers and planks. Its narrow door did not yield when he tested the latch.