Mother Brumbach shook her head. “After only three years he came north.”
Duncan sensed the tightness in her voice. They both knew the term of apprenticeship was seven years. “He broke his bond?”
“He just said he was done with Philadelphia and had new work to do for his master.”
“New work? Those were his words? He was clearing fields and building a cabin for a Philadelphia printer?”
The German woman winced. “He was a good boy. I wasn’t going to pry.” She indeed suspected that he had fled his servitude, which meant he would be a fugitive from the law. There were bounty hunters who specialized in tracking down such men.
“Had he friends who were soldiers? Rangers perhaps?”
“I doubt that. The church tells us armies cause more trouble than they solve.”
It seemed impossible that the dead man would have a secret message for Patrick, but Rachel’s aunt had spoken of a captain who could easily have been his friend. “What about a man named Patrick Woolford, who often travels with Iroquois?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Her brow furrowed. “There was a nice young man with an Oneida brave visiting once when I brought bread. He was reciting Shakespeare to Rachel. ‘Oh beauty, till now I never knew thee,’” I remember. She lowered her hands a moment and spoke toward the cross with the strips of ermine. “And then, ‘Is she kind as she is fair?’ following her with his hands uplifted as if praying to her, the rogue.” Moisture welled in the German woman’s eyes again. “Rachel was laughing like a young fraulein.”
“That’s him. Patrick Woolford. The one who killed Peter almost killed him as well. Why was Woolford there?”
“I assumed they had met in Philadelphia. They had common friends. They had business to discuss. Peter gave the man papers. Letters, I think. They talked about committees. They talked about Parliament.”
“Committees?”
Mother Brumbach shrugged, “I know, silly talk for the frontier. Not my business. The only committees I know of are for building churches and helping the needy. Or maintaining cemeteries,” she added in a whisper.
Duncan looked back at the crosses, joined by the snakeskin. Conawago would say Shamokin lay at the junction between many worlds, the most important of which was that between the European and native spirit worlds. He sensed that the answers he sought might lie at that intersection. He glanced at the church. “Mother, I . . .” He did not want to give offense.
“The Death Speaker wants to see his things again.” She gestured toward the church. “Take whatever you wish. Anything that brings the wrath of God down on the devils who did this.”
He dipped his head to the woman and had nearly reached the door with the cross on it when she called out. “That brute of a Dutchman was looking for you. He is very angry. He said you stole something of his on the river and he wants it back.”
“Bricklin? I stole nothing,” Duncan replied, casting a wary glance toward the street.
“Says he has salvage rights on what’s taken off the water by his convoy. Then he asked about a Rush. I said rush yourself, right away from here. He said Rush was his. I told him I know no man with such a name and to please take his overfed, unholy face away from my holy grounds.”
Duncan returned to the little corner closet where she had secreted Rohrbach’s valuables. He took the strange letter of symbols and letters, then lifted the Bible. A slip of paper lay inside the cover. It was another verse:
His confusion was like a physical pain. He stared at the foreboding words, which kindled anew his grief for the young couple in the churchyard.
It made no sense that amidst the urgent, mysterious work these men were engaged in they would take time to speak of Shakespeare, to memorize passages, first from King Lear and now this one, from Richard the Second. He examined the paper more closely. On the back, dimly inscribed, was the numeral 4. He extracted the slip Red Jacob had carried and turned it over to confirm his recollection. It held the numeral 5. He shook his head in bewilderment, then took all of Rohrbach’s treasures, leaving only the dog-eared Bible.
The river was streaked with a gold and purple dusk when Duncan finally left the church, holding the letter from Rohrbach’s box in his hand. He did not hear Analie approach but suddenly she was pulling his arm. She guided him into the shadows between two buildings but before she could speak he thrust the cryptic images before her. “Tell me what you see, tell me what you would call these images,” he asked her, and pointed to the little drawings that substituted for words.
She cocked her head, then began pointing at images she recognized. “A deer, a tree like a pine or yew,” she said, “I see a toe, an eye, a saw, a world, an oinker, then cattails,” she said of the last.
“Cattails,” Duncan repeated slowly, then he shook the girl by both shoulders. “Of course! You have settled accounts between us, Analie!” he declared. He thought back on the message at the graves. An evergreen, the word go, a drawing of a toe, a grate, an r, the word ha, a pie, and a nest. You go to greater happiness, it had said. “I will speak with the Moravians about you before I leave. I am sure you can stay with them. They can write letters for you.” He turned and motioned her toward the church. But the girl pulled his arm again.
“Tanaqua sent me. He says Bricklin and Teague and some of those others from the convoy are asking in the taverns for you. They are carrying clubs.”
They stayed in the shadows until they reached the riverbank, then Duncan sent the girl on her way and turned to the woodshed where he had left the ungainly man from Philadelphia. He was fifty paces away when he saw the gang of tribesmen who had chased Rush that afternoon, drunk now and waving war axes as they resumed their search. He quickened his pace and had nearly reached the shed when he saw Rush sitting outside, reading a book in the fading light, oblivious to the danger. Duncan grabbed him roughly. “You are about to become evening sport for some unpleasant gentlemen,” he warned when Rush tried to shrug him off.
Rush did not resist as Duncan pulled him down the slope, desperately looking for a vessel. Grabbing his pack and rifle, stuffed between the cargo bales where he had left them, he shoved Rush farther down the river landing. A shout rose from the group of natives, followed a moment later by one from a tavern porch. Bricklin and his men had spotted them.
“McCallum!” came the Dutchman’s angry shout.
Duncan ran to the one boat that still lay half in the water, Bricklin’s own dugout, shoved Rush into it, and then jumped into the river to pull it afloat, scrambling over its side as it drifted free. The shouts increased, and as Duncan clumsily extracted the paddle lying under Rush, the boat rocked with a new weight, then sank deeper a moment later under a second, heavier weight. The big dugout shot forward and Duncan paddled frantically to leave their pursuers behind. He did not turn around until the shouting behind them subsided. Analie wore an amused smile. Tanaqua only nodded and kept paddling.
“Must I read it to you, Benjamin?” Duncan demanded of Rush as they sat by their small, struggling fire. He had lost all patience for the inept scholar who seemed so blind to the death that surrounded him. “Your own letter? Mother Brumbach suspected it was black arts. I didn’t dare tell her it was just a bumbling pedant who enjoys confusing people with a rebus. You knew Peter and his wife but instead of telling Mother Brumbach you just lurked about their graves as if you had something to hide.”