A hand was suddenly on Duncan’s shoulder. Reverend Zettlemeyer was at his side. Duncan let himself be led out of the springhouse like one of the living dead.
Chapter Thirteen
A goat tied to a tree. Woolford’s words from the night on the Hudson echoed in Duncan’s mind as he sat on the bench where Zettlemeyer had led him. He had thought he could escape that fate, even save Lister and Sarah in doing so. But now his brother wouldn’t come for him because the army dangled Duncan like bait; he would come because he hated Duncan as much as Duncan hated the English aristocrats. Either way his brother would die; either way Duncan would be powerless to save his friends. The deserter in the springhouse was right. He didn’t deserve the piece of tartan. He was an arrogant fool to even playact as a clan chief. The Ramseys and Pikes of the world were destined to win, would always win. He would wear an iron collar around his neck for years, and every time he touched it he would think of Lister and his brother rotting in their graves, because of him.
A low, throaty rumble disturbed the still evening air. The sound of an angry ox. Duncan was on his feet before he heard the second sound, the hissing rhythm of a switch being jerked through the air. He did not pause as he reached the shed, did not hesitate as he launched himself at the Welshman, seizing his uplifted arm as it was about to slam the stick onto the boy’s back again. He thrust his foot against the man’s knee, spinning him violently backward against a post.
Quickly turning to examine Alex’s injuries, he lifted the boy’s torn shirt and froze. The ox’s tether was stretched tight, its nostrils were flared, its eyes bulging. With another ounce of effort the massive creature could snap the line and, in its current temper, could destroy anything in its path.
But Alex, without even a glance at Duncan, darted to the ox and began stroking its neck. Instantly the tether went slack and the animal’s angry breathing quieted, replaced by the gasping of the Welshman, whose breath had been knocked out of him.
Duncan ventured a step closer. The boy spread his arms and the ox buried its mighty head in them. As Duncan paused, unwilling to disturb the embrace, a slab of firewood struck a painful, glancing blow on his shoulder. A second blow knocked Duncan to the ground, and the Welshman charged forward, switch in hand. He landed another two strikes on the boy’s back before the ox hurled him aside with a thrust of its horn, then Duncan reached him, seizing his free arm, pulling it behind him, bending it until the man cried out in pain. Learning the treatment of injuries at the pugilist matches in Yorkshire also meant he had learned their causes.
“Do you feel that?” Duncan asked in a simmering voice, twisting the man’s arm. “The way the pain rises as I turn it? A little more-” the man gasped as Duncan turned it again, “-and you won’t use it for a day.”
“He gave the brute double rations,” the Welshman groaned. “He has no right.”
“Working until dusk, that is double duty,” Duncan suggested.
“You be the one! The McCallum fugitive that has the great lord so furious! Fifty pounds on your head!”
Duncan increased the pressure on the man’s arm. “If I twist some more you won’t use it for a week. And then how will you raise that musket when the savages come for you?”
“I can fix things for ye,” the Welshman groaned. “I’ll give ye to Ramsey when he comes. Then I’ll split the bounty with ye and let ye go. We can be rich!”
Duncan pressed harder, and the Welshman let Duncan pull the switch from his hand. Duncan released his hold and broke the switch on his knee. As he turned to toss the pieces into the darkness, he saw a bearded head watching from the shadows. Reverend Zettlemeyer, his body all but obscured by his black clothes, wore a sober, almost melancholy expression but offered not a word. As the Welshman followed Duncan’s gaze toward the missionary, he gave a defeated sigh. But he turned with a vindictive gleam before slipping away into the night.
“Ain’t just Ramsey who wants ye, boy. There’s a price on y’er hair. Ye be worth more to the Huron dead and scalped than presented intact to the great lord. In a few days ye’ll be begging to be turned over to Ramsey.”
Duncan stared into the darkness after the man, his heart racing. Ramsey and the French savages were competing for his head. It was impossible. Why would the French want him dead?
Duncan turned to the boy, who had taken the Welshman’s final blows like an old sailor, without breaking his embrace of the brindled beast. He lifted the boy’s tattered shirt only a few inches before Alex jerked it out of his grasp and slipped to the other side of the ox. But it was enough for Duncan to see the marks left by many such beatings in the past.
The boy’s eyes went wild as those of the ox as Duncan tried to approach him again. Duncan retreated, began stroking the opposite flank of the ox, rubbing him down with a rag that hung on a nearby peg. After a few strokes the boy pulled the rag from his hand and began using it himself.
Duncan offered greetings, offered apologies, offered to find Alex some extra food for himself, but nothing prompted so much as a glance from the former slave to the Indians. What had Reverend Zettlemeyer said? The boy had lost all the talents of society.
When Duncan finally abandoned his effort and stepped out of the shed, Reverend Zettlemeyer was still standing there, watching with the same melancholy expression.
“If this is what Moravians do for orphans,” Duncan spat, “then the New World can do without your settlers.”
Zettlemeyer seemed to accept the words like a well-deserved blow. “I wake in the middle of the night thinking of Alex,” he said. “I find myself stopping amidst prayer thinking of the boy, and the Ramsey girl. I know not how to reach them.”
Duncan’s head snapped up. “Sarah? You’ve seen her?”
“Ten days ago. But ever since she first visited last year, she is in my thoughts, sometimes my nightmares.”
Duncan stepped closer to the missionary. “Sarah was here ten days ago?”
“Just for a night. She rode away at dawn, in the direction of Edentown, right toward the raiding parties. She has powerful angels over her, that one.”
“She saw Alex?”
Zettlemeyer nodded. “It was like she needed to be certain he was still alive.”
Duncan turned, looking up to the night sky, his mind racing, and stepped toward the open fields.
The German kept speaking to his back. “My wife says you saved the life of our guest in the springhouse.” Duncan kept walking. “Just a word, McCallum.”
Duncan did not respond.
“Sarah Ramsey didn’t just speak to Alex, McCallum. She spoke to me about a dead man named Evering.”
Duncan halted, slowly turned. The old Moravian gestured him toward the moonlit field above the village and began walking. He had settled onto one of the stumps near the top when Duncan reached him. When he spoke again, he had none of the confidence of a man accustomed to the pulpit.
“She told me to protect the boy, to keep him safe, away from any visitors. But the boy will have none of it. I brought him into the house to sleep the night after she left, and he climbed out the window.”
“But what of Evering?” Duncan asked.
“She said a man named Evering had been given a vital message from Adam Munroe, who had known he was going to die. Evering was to have warned me, she said.”
“Warn you about what?”
“That was the source of her greatest agony. Adam Munroe had decided she could not know, that it was to be the job of the Ramsey tutor to carry the warning. She sat up here with me and wept as she watched Alex settling into the stable. She asked me strange things. She asked if I had ever met the English king. I would have thought it a jest but for her solemn expression. She asked me if I had had dreams since the massacre last year. She gave me something in a leather pouch I was to pass on as a message.”