Duncan’s head shot up and he strained to see Lister’s face. “Why Stony Run?”
“Hawkins. Frasier spoke with him when he was here, got drunk with him in the barn that night. Hawkins told him Stony Run was where Satan himself waited. Frasier said Woolford was a ranger, which meant he had Indian friends. He said Woolford left the ship early to meet one, to arrange for Arnold and you to be murdered by that arrow. He said, saving Sergeant Fitch, every damned soldier and all the English could be butchered by the heathen and the world be better for it. He spoke with Fitch often, said Fitch was the only sane man in the army. He said the way to destroy a man like Ramsey was to destroy what he coveted most. Then at dusk last night he took a blade from the saw pit.”
“A saw? And did what with it?”
“Hid it in the barn, as best I could tell. Came out of the barn without it, then he spied Hawkins by the cooper’s shed, and the two of them argued. Why the burn?” Lister asked.
But Duncan had no answer.
Cameron appeared and unlocked the narrow crib door. Duncan made him stay to witness his work as he pulled away Lister’s bloody shoe. The skin over the ankle was scraped and bloody. The bones were shattered. Lister would never walk the same again. “I’ll need splints from the cooper’s shed.” Cameron, sensing the cold fury in Duncan’s voice, did not protest. “And a crock of rum.”
Crispin tried to stop Duncan when he approached the library an hour later, but then seemed to see something in Duncan’s eyes and relented. “There’s no need to hold him,” Duncan declared to Ramsey’s back. The manor lord was writing at his cherry desk, its folding top open, revealing its pigeonholes stuffed with papers.
“Plato. I have been giving this considerable thought,” Ramsey said, his head rising but not turning. “We must dose them heavily with the father of all philosophers. A man who understood the practical aspects of power.”
“Kneeling by a body does not make a man a killer. His bloody prints on the hammer mean nothing. The blood came from Lister, when Cameron struggled with him. You could not have Lister for the prior murders, so to ease your embarrassment you take him for this one.”
“An uncharitable suggestion,” a thin voice interjected. Arnold was sitting in the wing-backed chair by the window, reading a news journal. “Your term as administrator of murders lapsed yesterday. It is time to focus on your duties to the children.”
“You said once you could have no cloud over the Company,” Duncan said.
“Our duty to justice is unwavering,” Ramsey said with a distracted air, then paused and scribbled on a paper as if to record the thought. “Our noble philosopher reminds us that the particular expertise of those in government lies in constantly adjusting the balance of social affairs, without being seen to do so.”
“Plato wasn’t living with a company of Scottish prisoners beside a wilderness of savages,” Duncan observed in a taut voice.
Ramsey frowned. “Last week we had two challenges before us: how to keep the army out of our affairs and how to establish our moral authority over the Company. You gave us the perfect script for the first. Now young Frasier’s death gives us the perfect opportunity for the second.” Ramsey stood and paced in front of the window. “We still needed to confront the fact that Mr. Lister lied about his identity. No one would resort to such deception without a criminal motive. Whether he seeks to hurt our cause because of Jacobite sedition or because he is paid by the French is all the same to us. In dealing with our enemies, we need look no further than the Old Testament.”
“You know Evering sent letters for Lister as well,” Arnold interjected, “though we never examined them closely.”
“Because you never believed him to be a Scot.”
“Exactly,” Arnold said, as if Duncan had proven his point.
“He’s just an old sailor.” Duncan heard the helplessness in his own voice.
“Did you know the crime for which he was condemned in England?” Impatience was creeping into Arnold’s tone. “He accosted an army officer trying to stop a barroom brawl. Left him unconscious and fled. But his former captain testified to his character, leaving him a candidate for a trusted position in the Company. Only now do we realize the larger deception. A pattern of violent conduct against British authority.”
“We dispatched your excellent report,” Ramsey said. “The governor will hear of Professor McCallum. Without you, that particular victory would not have been possible. Now, as Reverend Arnold suggests, you must move to the greater challenges of the Ramsey heirs.”
The words pinched at something inside Duncan. He grew very still, and cold. “What will become of Mr. Lister?” he asked, staring toward his feet.
“A trial. First we must build a proper judge’s bench and prisoner dock. I am sending for carpenters and joiners from Philadelphia. Unfortunately, we may not break in a new gibbet without a warrant from the governor,” Ramsey noted with chagrin. “It could be two or three months before the trap door swings.”
Duncan felt numb. “But there will be a trial?”
“An excellent trial, a grand event,” Ramsey said, new enthusiasm in his voice. “Attended by all the Company, all the settlers on Ramsey lands. I shall issue a detailed judgment for publication in New York and Philadelphia. The good reverend has suggested that we open on a Sunday, after services, so the proper tone is set. I shall read from the Greeks in my opening, about the solemn responsibilities of all citizens to stay true to their destined duties. The general, of course, will have to abstain from interfering, thanks to your insightful report, McCallum. I commend you. None of this could have been possible without you.”
Duncan was not aware of setting out for a destination, did not really understand why he went to his room and retrieved the stone bear, was so lost in his peculiar mix of shame and fury that he paid little attention to where his feet were taking him until he was passing through the thicket that walled the secret cemetery.
Strangely, for no reason he could articulate, the place had begun to take on the air of a sanctuary. He stood before the tombstone with Sarah’s name on it, feeling an inexplicable urge to say something. Here lay the real Sarah. Here was the true starting place of the mysteries that swirled about the Ramsey Company. The men of the Company were in the path of a cyclone that had been building its fury for a dozen years. He knelt and began pulling weeds from the base of the stone. When he had cleared the grave, he noticed small white flowers blooming nearby, and with a stick he dug several up and planted them on the mound. Kneeling on the fresh earth, he stared at the dates and the little angel above, touching it, clearing out the remaining dirt accumulated in the carving. Here at least was something he understood. A child cut down by mindless savages. He had had a brother, barely six years old, lost in the bloodbath after Culloden. He felt he should pray, but knew not what to pray for. At last, fighting a trembling that abruptly seized his hands, he buried the bear at the base of the grave and rose, backing away.
His gaze was on the forge all the way back to town, until, a hundred feet away from it, he saw Reverend Arnold standing at the entry to the cooper’s shed, his makeshift chapel. As he watched, Arnold took a step in, then out, and repeated the motions, an uncertain torment twisting his features.
The vicar blocked the door when Duncan tried to enter. “Lord Ramsey awaits your plan of instruction,” Arnold asserted.
“Surely he would recognize the need for divine inspiration,” Duncan shot back, and slipped through the doorway.
It was a small, dim chamber, which Duncan had visited only once before, barely large enough to hold thirty men tightly packed on the benches that lined the walls. The only light came from the narrow, rough-hewn table used as an altar, which held two candles and a small stack of prayer books. But the brass cross Duncan had seen earlier had been replaced.