The big keeper spat a curse but backed away to a rope at the far end of the loft, never taking his eyes from the demon. One of the Company men, watching in silence, reached into his pocket, hesitantly approached the wooden creature, and tossed a piece of sausage to the floor below it.
“Why here?” Crispin asked the ranger. “Why the barn?” Duncan recalled he had heard the same question twice before, when Sarah had chanted there and when Frasier had hidden a saw in the building.
Woolford’s brow knitted, then he shook his head again. He had no answer. “Mr. Fitch always liked to camp near running water,” the ranger said after a moment. “If you’d bury him near the river I’d be obliged.”
Crispin nodded soberly.
“His Christian name was Ezekiel. He was born in ’oh-seven. In his pack you’ll find a scrap of silk that belonged to his wife, who died of cholera years ago. Put it near his heart.”
“Where are you going?” Duncan asked.
Woolford’s gaze was filled with foreboding. “The crooked man comes from a crooked tree,” he said, then turned and climbed down the ladder.
Ramsey was in no mood for one of his long speeches when the Company was finally assembled. His message was short, and the icy determination in his eyes seemed to unnerve many of those who watched. “I want six men, no more,” he announced from his perch on a wooden crate in the barnyard. “It is an old game they play. For thousands of years, enemies have sought to steal princesses to use against a king. The way such villains are beaten is through wit and stealth.” Cameron appeared at his side, bearing one of the big muskets.
“I am not empowered to change the duration of your servitude, for that is by order of the courts in England. But those who come back with my daughter,” Ramsey continued, “and the parchment they stole from my office, shall have an extra hundred acres of bottomland at the end of their term.”
Cameron pushed past Ramsey and stood in front of the crate. The assembly withdrew a step, eyeing the big keeper uneasily.
“As the first members of the Edentown militia, you will each be equipped with a musket, knife, and tomahawk,” Ramsey added. “And all the ammunition and other supplies you can carry.”
Two men pushed through the line, the red-bearded McGregor and another of the rough men who had accosted Duncan in the bilges of the Anna Rose.
“You will be led by my strong right hand, whom I have appointed major of our glorious new troop.”
Duncan leaned forward, confused, and was shocked as Reverend Arnold emerged from behind Ramsey. Arnold was attired in the white shirt he usually wore, but over it he had donned a pocketed hunter’s frock, opened to reveal one of the old metal breastplates Duncan had seen in the library. He carried Ramsey’s engraved fowling piece. On his head he wore a new tricorn hat; on his feet, high-topped riding boots.
“We shall smite the heathen with the power of God in our hearts and in our weapons,” Arnold declared in a loud but unsteady voice. He could not conceal the fear in his eyes. Had Ramsey forced the vicar to venture into the forest?
“It’s work for soldiers!” a man called from the back of the crowd. “The captain’s gone for help!”
“This is Company work!” Ramsey barked. “Every hour we wait, the greater the risk to our Sarah! Three more men is all I ask. With the prayers of Major Arnold and the strength of Mr. Cameron, you shall be invincible! Two hundred acres then!” Excitement rippled through the crowd. Within a minute, the ranks of the party were complete.
Duncan gave Ramsey ten minutes before following him inside the great house. Ramsey stood at his collection of arms, swinging a long saber through the air with grim determination.
“I am joining the search party,” Duncan announced.
Ramsey returned the saber to its rack and raised another for testing. “Do you know much about Major Pike?” he asked in an absent tone.
“All I need to.”
“He was stationed in Ireland once. A local conscript deserted and Pike went to his village, to his thatched farmhouse. Somehow a sister, a young maiden, died. Pike hid at the funeral and arrested him. The man was hanged and buried beside his sister before the sun set.” Ramsey, sensing he had Duncan’s attention, continued. “Pike only hated you before. I have made certain he knows you had a hand in the report to the governor. Take a step out of Edentown, and his agents will soon know it. There is probably nothing more he wants right now than to run a sword through your breast. He will then carefully spread word through the colony so your brother will know, before you are buried.”
Despite what Crispin and Woolford had said about Jamie fleeing to Carolina, Ramsey and Pike seemed to think he was still in New York. “I know the Company sought me out because of my connection to my brother. I just can’t understand why.”
“Surely you can see we have more finesse, more humanity, than the army.”
“Meaning that you won’t kill me first?”
“You don’t understand, McCallum. We are but advancing our plan. The party that leaves today is just to beat the brush, drive the game as it were, the vanguard of the Ramsey militia. You and I will march in two days with the remainder of the men to intercept the prey.”
“The prey? Is that what Sarah is to you?”
“You are young and impatient. Let me teach you the ways of the world. I love my daughter, more than she knows. Having her in this house is like having my beloved wife back. But we act on the field of empire. She will soldier this out like the rest of us, and then we will see to her malady. She is not the one in imminent danger. And when we recover her, she shall have new physicians, the best in America.”
“If you wish me to accompany you, then release Mr. Lister.”
“You must read more Plato,” Ramsey rejoined, lifting another sword before fixing Duncan with a cool gaze. “There are a handful who are destined to run society. All the others serve.”
“Hawkins was seen arguing with Frasier, striking him, the evening before he was killed. He fled the next morning.”
“Hawkins is not available for your purposes. His is the most important element in our strategy. His is the hand that will strike the final coup. And our victory will taste that much sweeter for having deprived General Calder of his glory. You and Hawkins will make it all possible.”
Duncan turned to the window a moment, his heart in his throat. “You will use me to lure my brother, and Hawkins will kill him,” he said in a hoarse voice. There was nothing mysterious about Ramsey after all. Everything he did was about his battle with General Calder for the governorship.
“Your brother’s life is already forfeit.”
Duncan fought to control his emotions. “But how does that return Sarah to us?”
Ramsey studied the ruin on Duncan’s face and smiled. “A good tutor understands the basics of astronomy. There are days once every few years when all the planets are lined up.”
Duncan collapsed into a chair and buried his head in his hands, images flashing through his mind. Lister rotting in his cell. Sarah weeping on his shoulder. Adam apologetically pressing the black bear stone into his hand. Jamie, always now at the edge of his consciousness, Jamie, whom Duncan had loved, cursed, and probably betrayed with his fiery letters, who probably didn’t even know Duncan was in America but now was going to die because of it. He rose as if in a daze and found his way to the pantry closet by the dining room, selecting one of the fine linen tablecloths, warning away a protesting maid with a fiery glare. Edentown could afford the best of shrouds for its dead heroes.
As the vanguard of the Ramsey militia, led by Cameron and Arnold, slipped across the river an hour later, Crispin and Duncan explored the riverbank below the house, shovels on their shoulders.
“This will do,” Duncan said after they had walked a quarter mile, and sank his shovel into the sandy soil at his feet. They were in a small clearing at the center of a grove of towering hemlocks, ringed with ferns. Small white flowers grew out of low, heart-shaped leaves. Water sang over the rocks of a small stream that entered the river a hundred feet away.