“I’m sorry, lad,” the deserter said after a long silence. He fixed Duncan with a weak but steady gaze.
“Not your fault,” Hetty replied, stroking his head as though he were her little child. Ishmael held the corporal’s hand.
“That’s not what he means,” Duncan said.
The corporal gazed toward the moon. “T’is a grand notion, is it not? Raising the colors of the clans on this side of the sea. Think of the gatherings we’ll have. The flash of the plaid as we dance the swords, the singing of the lasses.” His weakened hand opened and revealed a worn knot of white ribbon that had been pressed tight in his palm. It was the white cockade of the Jacobite rebels. “Take it, lad.”
Duncan stared at the ribbon but made no move to lift it from Macaulay’s palm. “I had an old uncle who was a riever,” Duncan said, referring to the highwaymen of Scotland. “He said there was no dishonor in taking a man’s cows if he were fool enough to let you, but you never killed a man for them.”
“We’re not talking cows, Clan McCallum.” Macaulay pointedly used the form of address for clan chiefs. “We’re talking about taking back what was taken from us, setting the scales in balance. I seem to recall a lot of cannons and nooses used against us.”
“Innocent men and women were slaughtered at Bethel Church. They had no stake in that cause.”
“It’s war, lad.”
“When were you going to perform your act of war, Corporal?” Duncan asked. “While we slept? A quick blade to the throat?”
Hetty’s hand, about to wipe the man’s brow again, stopped in midair. “Duncan, do not speak such nonsense,” she said in a tight voice.
“Sagatchie said the patch on the canoe that pulled away had been pried at with a blade to loosen it. It would have been the easiest way, to have all three witnesses from Bethel Church drown.”
Macaulay gazed up at the sky without responding. He was past lying.
“When we were in the iron hole, you asked about the settlement where MacLeod died. It was only much later when I realized I hadn’t said anything about a settlement. You were not guilty of insubordination. You were sent in there to watch the boy.”
The hell dog paced around the dying man, sniffing at his limbs, then pushing Hetty away with its muzzle.
“The half-king spoke of a letter taken to the general,” Duncan continued, “a supposed message from me to the French. The conspirators didn’t even know I existed until the day I was shoved into the prison hole in Albany. You disappeared after we escaped. You told them about me, and they saw that I could be their perfect pawn. That’s when they laid their plans for the forged letter. The deserters who attacked Sagatchie were looking for us, following us, just as Hawley was, but Macaulay’s dirk in his back stopped that.”
Duncan spoke to Hetty now. “When Macaulay went ahead with you, it was to let the half-king know I was coming. But you interfered with his plans, Hetty, when you made sure we would be going to the Iroquois Council. The half-king was furious but he could not stop it. There could be only one reason Corporal Macaulay came with us. The Revelator gave him a mission, a special task.”
The brawny Scot turned his head toward Duncan, his eyes full of melancholy. “I protested, lad, said you were harmless.” His words were labored.
“But the half-king insisted,” Duncan said. “He is at war. He received word from the North, word about the children that somehow made him confident that he would win over the Council even without us. He had to let us go because the oracle demanded it in front of his followers. But we could do more damage than good to his cause, so he told you to kill us. It had to be you, since you were the only one in his camp who could get close to us.”
Macaulay did not disagree.
“How many Scots take orders from him?”
When Macaulay did not reply, Duncan tried another tack. “Tell me this, then, Corporal. Did you come with us out of the iron hole to escape or because I showed an interest in Ishmael?”
“You have it wrong, lad. I was not following the half-king’s orders when I went into the hole.”
Duncan hesitated. His gaze drifted back to the white cockade still in Macaulay’s hand. He had thought the big man’s talk about the clans rising was his fever talking, but now he was not so sure. “You’re saying it was a Scottish officer who sent you? Who, Macaulay, who ordered you into the iron hole? They killed you by doing so.”
Macaulay looked away, throwing his arm over his fevered brow. Duncan sat, waiting for him to speak, but soon realized he had lost consciousness again.
It was after midnight when Conawago found Duncan where he kept watch by the river. “He asks for you. I think he has little time left.”
When Macaulay reached out for Duncan’s hand, his grip was as weak as a bairn’s. “It’s all in secret, lad. There’s white cockades all over the regiments now. I ne’er heard a word about killing women and children. I don’t know where it starts. Someone near the top. If I knew I’d tell ye so ye can trade for yer life when the general takes ye. I did wrong by ye. I kept hoping ye would give me reason to dislike ye.” A fit of rattling coughs seized the big Scot. His lungs were filling with fluid. When he spoke again his breathing was labored. “Back home in Stornaway, a priest would come at the end and listen to the dying man’s confession.”
“I am here, Corporal.”
A bitter grin twisted Macaulay’s face. “I’m sorry for the sixteen men I’ve killed in battle,” he said after a few struggling breaths. “I could have just wounded most of them, but I chose not to. I’m sorry for the two men I’ve killed in anger. I’m sorry I have not written me precious mother these four years past. I’m sorry for the wenches I’ve abandoned and the profane words I have spoken. I’m sorry I did not believe me mother when she said me grandmother was a selkie, kin to the seals.” He turned away in another fit of coughing, then reached out and pulled Duncan closer. “Look past the savages to the good the cause can do. Ye can make a good life in the North, with yer own people.”
The effort of speaking seemed to have sapped the little strength the Scot had left. Macaulay reached out for Duncan’s hand, and when Duncan looked down, the white cockade was in his palm.
It was a long time before he opened his eyes again. “It’s time to call them in,” he whispered in Gaelic, and for a moment Duncan thought it was just a fevered rant. “Can you reach them from so far away, lad? I worry that being so deep in the woods I’ll just drop into the heaven of the tribes.”
“I can reach them,” Duncan promised, and when he turned Conawago was extending his pack to him.
An owl returned the call when he piped his first few notes. He started with one of the odes to Bonnie Prince Charlie, then tunes the island clans used when sending boats out to sea. Conawago sat at Macaulay’s side and gripped one of his hands, while Macaulay’s other hand clutched his dirk. Sometime during a haunting ballad for selkies or a call to battle, the tormented Highlander crossed over to the other side.
Chapter Ten
“Nai raxhottahyh!” the old man intoned over the fire of the Grand Council of the Iroquois. “Hail my grandfathers, hearken while your grandchildren cry to you, for the Great League grows old!”
Duncan sat in the shadows behind Conawago, watching, trying to catch the Haudenosaunee words as they were spoken. Conawago had warned him that nothing in the town that was the heart of the Iroquois world would be as it seemed. It would be simpler and more complex than Duncan expected, uglier and more beautiful, the old Nimpuc had declared. Any notion of a grand woodland palace had quickly disappeared when they reached the Onondaga village. Onondaga Castle on its face appeared to be just another worn palisaded town, not much larger than others he had seen. In fact it was not as well protected as many since its population was scattered outside the walls in small lodges and cabins along the riverbank. Only now as Duncan began to relax, grateful for the simple pleasure of warm tea and a safe, soft place to sit, did he begin to notice the subtle differences, the hints that something greater lay hidden beneath the surface.