Crispin’s only reply was a thrust of his shovel into the soft earth.
“This is the day,” the house butler declared when they were nearly finished with the long, rectangular hole. “There is a good moon tonight. Slip into the woods along the fields while Ramsey takes tea. Stay in the shadows. Those who are watching keep their eyes on the river. Circle around to the road and walk all night. You can be twenty miles away by dawn.”
“I could not. Not now.”
“Now above all. You promised her.” Crispin leaned on his shovel and wiped his brow. “The only thing I know for certain about those savages is that it is right for us to fear them. But I think she is in no physical danger. Why would they go to such trouble to steal her away if they meant her harm? To them she is just a runaway slave. Slaves,” Crispin said in a pained voice, “are property to be protected. There is only one thing you can do for her now. You promised her. I saw the relief in her eyes when you vowed it, an instant of contentment such as I haven’t seen since she came back to us. She will be found, in a month, in a year. And a minute after I see her she will ask me about you. Do not force me to disappoint her. I would not have you betray her hope. Her hope is my hope. Do not betray us.”
Duncan had no answer. He knew well about hope, and hope betrayed. He gazed across the river for perhaps the tenth time in as many minutes, then resumed his digging.
Only a dozen men gathered to lower the old soldier, wrapped in the Ramsey linen, into his grave. Crispin extended a Bible to Duncan, reminding him that Reverend Arnold was gone. Duncan recited a Psalm in a thin, tentative voice, then retreated to a rock, where he sat as the men closed the grave. He stared at the mound of earth, so lost in his thoughts he did not notice the men leave, rousing to his senses only in time to help Crispin finish laying small stones along the edge of the new-turned soil.
He stood, hesitated as Crispin headed back toward the town, then bent over the grave. With a stick he drew two waving lines on the grave, connected at the ends.
The Company crews were hard at work, cleaning the wreckage of the night before, as Duncan approached the rear of the charcoal crib, where Lister hummed one of his sea chanteys. When Duncan whispered his name, the old Scot crawled toward him.
“Did Mr. Fitch speak with you last night?” Duncan asked.
“An owl called, then another not far away. I saw Fitch run to the shed where the guns were stored, heard him curse when he found the door locked. Then the cabins caught fire. After that I saw him no more. He was a good man. May God have mercy on his thick-skinned soul. Pray for him in Carolina, Clan McCallum,” Lister added.
“He’s the last,” Duncan vowed, an unexpected vehemence in his voice. “No more are going to die. Not by hammers, not by axes, not by nooses.”
“We done fair by each other, you and me. Ye let me be me own man again, after pretending for too many years. No regrets.” Lister shifted his chains and crawled to the far side of the crib. “Now I need ye to make that journey and start our cabin in Carolina. By the time the trial’s done, I’ll be fit to join ye. I’ve been thinkin’ on it. I’ll get a Percheron, a big gray plow horse like me father had. I’ll buy one in Charleston and trot up to meet ye, grand as a prince.”
“We’ll need a cow,” Duncan heard himself say in a dry, cracking voice.
“Aye, and some sheep. But ye’ll be the one for the milking in the dawn.”
Duncan jammed his hand through the slats, futilely trying to reach the old man. He had not felt the black thing that now grew inside him since the day of the storm when he had climbed the mast and decided to die. We done fair by each other. Since Lister had pledged himself to Duncan, the old man had been whipped, arrested, beaten, reviled, arrested again, and now, despite their banter, they both knew he was going to hang.
Lister began a sailor’s song in a subdued, doleful voice. Duncan sat still, not sure he could summon the strength to move. “Good moon tonight,” Lister observed when he finished his song.
“What do you mean?”
“Crispin and I spoke. When the great lord settles into his library for tea, Crispin will appear on the kitchen step and leave a broom leaning by the door.”
“A broom?”
“My signal. Five minutes later I will start shouting that I see savages on the far bank. That’s when ye break away. A few miles to the east and quick as Jack Puddin’ y’er a free man. May God and Mary protect ye.”
Duncan seemed to watch himself from a distance as he stepped to the schoolhouse, then rolled his papers into his spare shirt. Minutes later he was at the little cemetery, uncovering the pack and inserting the pipes. He had moved away ten paces when he paused and turned back to Sarah’s gravestone. It took but a few moments to locate and clean the stone bear, which he pushed down beside his pipes. He slipped on the pack and made his way into the shadows. Ten minutes later he reached the Edge of the Woods place, where he sat staring grimly at the stone pedestal, as Woolford had done days earlier.
Images swirled in his mind again, the strange dreams that sometimes boiled out of despair. He would go to Carolina and send for Sarah. He saw her laughing and dancing with Crispin over the news that Duncan was in the southern mountains. Jamie and he were building a cabin as Lister plowed fields with a big grey mare. At a Highlands festival, Lister told old tales to freckled, kilted children. But then, like a frigid wave, reality broke over him and he found the words that had been squeezing against his heart. Sarah was a slave again, probably lying beaten and bloody that very moment in some squalid camp. He could only save her by breaking the solemn vow he had given her. And Lister could only be saved if Duncan preserved Hawkins, the man who was going to kill his brother.
He glanced at the map she had given him, and the name of the farmer who would act as go-between. William Wells. No one had told Sarah that the settler had been hacked to death the week before. The savages were close. The savages were everywhere. But slowly the realization had been building that there was another way to save Lister, as impossible as using Hawkins. There had been a witness to Frasier’s murder, lingering in the shadows by the alder bushes, laying another message on the riverbank. Somewhere in the vast wilderness was a savage who had seen Frasier’s killing.
When he finally rose, he lifted the stone cover of the lichen-covered cairn and draped the wampum belt over his forearm, the belt over which one could only speak the truth. He extracted his list of clan chiefs and held it before him, reciting the names without looking at the paper. He added a new name this time, in a firm, level voice aimed at the shadows before him. Duncan McCallum. Finished, he cupped in his hand the dried thistle he had carried since the day Lister had brought it to his cell and raised it toward the trees. He returned the belt, neatly folded, draped his list of clan chiefs around the thistle and set it on the belt before replacing the stone cover. As he did so men began shouting alarms from the town, and he saw figures running desperately toward the barn and great house. With a trembling hand he tore up the map to Carolina, then stepped toward the river and the black western forest. He wasn’t going to throw his life away as Ramsey’s puppet. But he was ready to die as the last chief of the McCallum clan.
Chapter Eleven
Never in his life had Duncan felt so alone, so helpless. He ran at a crouch as he climbed out of the river, ran until his lungs ached, until he stumbled on a root and fell, gasping for air. Without conscious thought he crawled into a gap between two boulders, leaning against one, his heart thundering.