Webb took up the explanation. “New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts have sent confirmation of the date. Their confirmation comes in the form of one of the strings, accepting the date.”
Duncan recalled the strange jumble of letters encoded with Franklin’s fossils. Massnyconnri. He studied the string, then counted nine double knots and seventeen single ones. “Ralston had been bringing Pennsylvania’s confirmation. September seventeenth” he whispered, then looked up at his companions. “They would kill to know it.”
“They have killed to know it,” Tanaqua corrected.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In the dark heart of the night Duncan slipped out of Jaho’s blanketed hatch and darted to the bank of the swamp. A figure was receding out on the water, and in the light of a half moon he could dimly see the slightly muddy water where the man had passed, the track of the narrow path of firmer ground that twisted its way through the beds of quicksand.
For more than half an hour Duncan followed the old man down the narrow, treacherous path, fighting his fear when clouds briefly obscured the moon and he lost the trail. One false step and he could be pulled into the killing mud, and if he lost sight of his ghostly guide he knew he would be hopelessly trapped. In the silence, mosquitoes bit at his ears and bubbles gurgled as they burst, reeking of decay. He quickly pressed on as the moon emerged, past islets of willow and sedge, through water that was at times up to his thighs, until suddenly the moon disappeared again. He stumbled, lost his footing, and dropped into a thick ooze.
Duncan pushed with his hands, his feet, his knees, but could find no purchase in the sucking mud. He was drawn down, his shoulders going under, as he frantically tried to keep his head above water, fighting the mud that wanted to swallow him. The water touched his chin, his lips, then the foul mix was in his mouth. Sputtering, choking, he made a final desperate twist that caused him to slip further, sending his head under. As he lost consciousness the teeth of the mud bit into his arm.
Duncan awoke slowly, watching as through a fog, as a monk prayed at an altar by a crackling fire. Gradually he recognized the shapes of crumbling lodges and overgrown fire rings, even what looked like old fish-drying racks. He sat up, spitting the grit from his mouth, and saw that he was on an island of tall pines and cypress. His arm ached and his clothes were lined with damp mud. Rising unsteadily, he staggered for a moment, then a furry creature pushed against his leg to keep him upright. Duncan looked down into Chuga’s black eyes, which stared at him with an oddly worried expression. As he approached the fire the murmuring of the man at the altar turned into wheezing laughter.
“Three times Chuga has pulled me from the deathsands,” Jahoska declared. “He has always been an energetic retriever, glad for the practice. Now get your shirt off so we can pull away the leeches. Stand in the smoke to keep the blood bugs away.”
As Jaho stretched his shirt between two sticks by the fire, Duncan saw now that the altar was the bottom of an inverted, rotting dugout set against the fallen trunk of a great cypress. Arrayed on and below the altar were small skulls, old stone mortars, chipped pots with intricate but faded designs of birds and fish.
As the old Susquehannock plucked the leeches from Duncan’s torso, he saw now that the old man had not been praying, but simply singing as he worked on a heavy clamshell with a small blade. He was making an intricate image of two small children flanked by a man and a woman. Beside him on the altar were more than a dozen other such shells, each inscribed with a scene of tribal life. On one, men were dragging a massive fish out of the water; on another, what may have been a hummingbird hovered over a man and woman. A European ship was surrounded by canoes on a shell, while on one more a crude fortress was fired on by cannons.
When Jaho finished, Duncan stepped closer to the chronicles, until halfway down the row he saw the small black stone Jaho had shown him in the field. He lifted the fossil and looked up. “It was always on the altar in our Council House when I was a boy,” the Susquehannock explained. “It was believed to hold great power. Our war chiefs carried it into battle.”
The old man took the fossil and held it toward the moon. “My mother said such seed stones were proof that though time always takes life, the messages of life endure through time.” He bent to a squarish block of stone below the altar and slid back the top. The stone inside had been carved out to create a container. Inside was an object wrapped in what looked like eel skin. Jaho carefully unwrapped the flat rock it covered. “This too was always on our altar, from years long ago. My mother said it too was a kind of seed stone.”
Duncan took the rock as Jaho extended it, not understanding. It was no fossil, of no particular geologic interest, the patterns on it seemingly random works of nature, but when he held it closer to the flames the lines took on an order. He dropped to his knees, his hands trembling. He had seen such signs as a boy, carved into the boulders of the Hebrides.
“They’re called runes,” he finally said. “How did you . . . where would . . .” He looked up to see Jaho’s wrinkled face lifted in a smile again.
“People can reach across time,” the old man replied. “The messages can tell you who you are.”
“These were from mighty warriors who rode the sea,” Duncan said, “dozens of lifetimes ago.”
The Susquehannock dropped crosslegged in front of the fire, listening with the eagerness of a young boy, as Duncan told him of the ancient northern adventurers who left rune stones on the shores they visited. By the time he finished Jaho was rocking back and forth, his eyes out of focus. Over the past weeks Duncan had seen the ravages of advanced age on the old man, and now he realized Jaho’s mind had gone somewhere else. He stared at Jaho a long time, trying to understand why he was sharing so many secrets with him. At last he returned the rune stone to its container and paced along the altar, studying the other clamshell chronicles and finding a bowl of loose wampum beads waiting to be strung, similar to those in the strand Atticus had carried in his death. Here before him were the lost treasures of a lost tribe.
At last Chuga nudged the old man and he snapped out of his trance. “You’re right,” Jaho said to the dog as he rose. The moonlight fades. He turned to Duncan and put a hand on his shoulder. “Sometimes you have to die a little to know how to live,” he said, and gestured him back into the swamp.
The fork and spoon retrieved by Duncan were being transformed into weapons through long hours of scraping. The frame of the window slit by the door became pockmarked, for the sling throwers practiced by aiming for the narrow slit from the opposite side of the building. Stones flew, rocks scraped, and six more lines had been marked by the door before trouble hit again. One of the African work crews had worked its way close to their company, planting the last of the sotweed, when an adolescent boy tripped and dropped one of the baskets, spilling and crushing several seedlings as he fell. It was the boy with the bright, inquiring eyes who often delivered their lunches. To his misfortune, Gabriel was riding by on one of his inspections. The superintendent screeched his displeasure then sprang from his horse and bounded toward the boy, reversing his whip to use its heavy metal ball.
Suddenly Murdo Ross was bent over the boy, back toward Gabriel, who did not check the swing of his stick. His fury enflamed by the Scot’s interference, he pounded it into his back, then through the shredded cloth into his skin. “You brainless ox!” the superintendent screamed. “Do not-” the ball struck again, “get between me-” it struck once more, “and my sotweed monkeys!”