“Who from Philadelphia? Who did Woolford meet with?”
“Dr. Franklin and his wife. The doctor I apprentice with. Jared Ralston’s father, the printer who had apprenticed Ralston. There was also Mr. Dickinson the lawyer. And a man named Webb who had just arrived from the south, a tall distinguished-looking man with a scar across his left cheek. He had led rangers in a Virginia company and had a farm in the Piedmont. And there was a printer from somewhere in Maryland.”
“The famous scientist. An Oneida warrior. A captain in His Majesty’s army. A doctor. A lawyer. A printer. A Virginia planter. What common enterprise could they have?”
Rush glanced up with a nervous expression. “I fear they were plotting to steal something.”
Duncan frowned. “My friends don’t steal.”
“I could not make out all of the words, but I heard talk of avoiding magistrates and hiding something. I’m sure it was with the best of intentions.”
Duncan kicked a log in the fire, stirring sparks toward Rush. “It’s a rough walk to Philadelphia, Benjamin, but you can probably do it in nine or ten days. Do not tarry near bear dens. Do not anger the natives. If a rattlesnake curls up beside you in the night, just stay motionless. It will move on in a few hours when the morning sun hits it.”
Rush stared in despair at his cap. “They are not inclined to let a mere apprentice, even a doctor’s apprentice, into their full confidence. I am not a member of the committee, McCallum, but I aspire to be. When they started talking about Ralston taking an urgent message to Shamokin station, I volunteered to escort him. Ralston had made the run before, and knew Rohrbach. We thought it would be a grand adventure, that we would have a chance to pursue our scientific studies. We agreed to share the responsibility. He would memorize a passage and I would carry two messages from Mrs. Franklin secreted in my cap. It was like a test for me, to see if I could be trusted to make the run alone next time.” The words died away and Rush pounded the cap against his knee before looking up. “He was cold when he paddled away so I just tossed him my cap, forgetting what was inside. I failed the great Franklin and his wife.”
“I need more, Rush. Murderers are on the loose.”
“I know nothing else. They open each meeting by reading reports, sometimes just from gazettes. The last time it was just a letter from Edmund Burke to the Parliament about colonial affairs.”
“Peter Rohrbach had been an apprentice,” Duncan pointed out. “Why did he break his bondage?”
“He would never bring such dishonor to his name. They asked him to move to Shamokin. He was apprenticed to Ralston’s father, but released from his work, trusted by the committee for something more important.” Rush looked down again. “How ever can I tell his parents of their son’s death? He loved it here, loved all the birds. He was going to publish his drawings.” He looked up with pleading in his eyes. “Why kill Ralston?”
“Because the killers expected a messenger from Philadelphia. He was obviously from the city but they may have let him go. Except they found a message in his fur cap.”
Rush went very still. He stared into the fire again, his body wracked by a long shudder. He began rocking back and forth as Duncan stretched his blanket over Analie and lay down beside her. “I cannot go home,” Rush finally said. “I will find the murderer with you or I will die trying. Peter and Rachel keep calling me in my dreams.”
A bundle of feathers and fur dropped in front of Rush. He recoiled for a moment, then looked up into Tanaqua’s expectant eyes. The Mohawk had jumped down and was hovering over him. Rush, in his way, had been touched by the Blooddancer. “Hold that bundle and speak to me,” he told Rush. “All of it, all that you have seen in your dreams of the dead.”
The crisp morning air, alive with the call of birds, gradually lifted Rush out of his despairing mood. The young man from Philadelphia had a deep curiosity about the natural world, and he pointed out nesting ducks, leaping fish, and dramatic rock formations with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy. Analie joined in, motioning first toward an eagle, then a majestic heron, before breaking out in a French ditty about a drunken goose. Her voice seemed to beguile several birds, which flew beside them and even joined in at times with ragged caws, but she gradually moved from playful songs to lonely ballads and then, in a quieter voice, to the Ave Maria. Duncan glanced back at the energetic girl, wise beyond her years and battered by life. It was as if she had decided to remind them of their solemn task.
At midmorning they rested on a river ledge shielded by trees and watched as two southbound canoes passed along the far bank. As they passed out of sight Duncan turned to see Tanaqua bent over the wooden box addressed to Mr. B. Franklin, which had remained behind in Bricklin’s dugout. Before Duncan could protest, the Mohawk had slipped off the leather strap bound around it and removed the top. Instantly Tanaqua dropped the top as if it had scalded him, and backed away. Rush darted forward with a cry of glee and lifted the largest of the black rocks from the crumpled newspaper that cushioned it.
It was another creature rock, a fossil that reminded Duncan of one of the wood lice that scattered and curled up when decaying logs were lifted from the forest floor, only gigantic in size, as big as Duncan’s palm.
“Magnificent!” Rush crowed. “As if the ancient Greeks were standing before us!”
Duncan could see that Rush’s excitement was forced, but he did not want to impede his effort to push back his despair. “Greeks?” he asked.
“Was it not Aristotle himself who recorded the first thoughts on animal stones? Did he not explain how they are formed by unnatural mineral vapors?” He pointed to the fossil in Duncan’s hand. “I have heard that called a trilobite.”
Tanaqua stared in bewilderment at the young scientist. Analie lifted the fossils one by one, and held them in a patch of sunlight, her eyes round with wonder.
“Among my people,” the Mohawk stated, “these are objects of great power, not to be trifled with. What does this Franklin want with them? Is he a witch then?”
It was the first time Duncan had seen Rush smile. “I heard him describe himself as just another student of the world, obsessed with the complexity of nature.”
“When I was a boy an old Cayuga came to our village with a black bone of stone as thick as his leg, as long as his arm, and as heavy as a log. He sometimes used it as a pillow, and when he did, he had dreams of a place on the other side with beasts like moving hills.”
Rush’s eyes widened and he dug into his pocket for a scrap of paper. “I am convinced it is evidence of the world that existed before the Great Flood,” he declared as he scribbled.
“The world where the first gods chose to live,” Tanaqua said. Duncan was not sure if he was disagreeing. Tanaqua turned to Duncan. “The Great Council has many such stones-seed stones-kept under the altars of the spirit masks.”
“Seed stones?” Duncan asked.
It was Analie who answered, in a deeply solemn voice. “One night old grandmother Adanahoe showed me such a stone, after we had seen a shower of shooting stars. She told me they are seeds left by the gods when they departed, for the new world that needs to rise when the last good men have died. They represent a trust, she said, from one world to the next.”
Tanaqua touched the neck pouch holding his spirit totem.
Rush seemed about to laugh, then saw the sober way his companions looked at the girl. “They are rocks, girl, most peculiar rocks I admit, but still rocks,” he pointed out.
“And such seeds would have to be hard as rock, wouldn’t they?” the French girl replied with a tone that seemed consoling, as if she felt sorry for Rush. “Do you really think some chalk-skinned scholar from Philadelphia would know more about nature than an Iroquois?”
Rush glanced uneasily at Tanaqua and chose not to answer.