“He stole this plantation, probably killed the rightful owner, and parades the widow on his arm.”
“God in heaven! Not dear Alice Dawson? They used to call her the angel of the Rappahannock for the good works she did for the poor.”
“He is likely the leader of the Kraken Club in America.”
Webb’s anger seemed to give way to fear. “Then our enemy is Satan himself,” he whispered.
“He will arrive in a week or two. He is waiting to settle some business with a magistrate.”
“Business? Ramsey never does business. He does extortion, and never to serve anyone but himself. But what would a magistrate have that Ramsey might desire?”
William Johnson’s warning came back to Duncan. The lie will arrive and they will die. “His signature on twenty-four death warrants.”
Duncan was sleeping heavily, bone tired from another day tending the rapidly growing tobacco plants, when a hand clamped over his mouth. In the dim light of the solitary candle left by the necessary chamber, Duncan nodded at old Jaho. The Susquehannock was holding Duncan’s sack of medicines. He led Duncan to his blanket tent and out into the shadows.
The moon had not risen yet, and Jaho appeared untroubled by the threat of guards. He strode purposefully across the perimeter road and knelt. Chuga appeared, pushing its head against the old man’s chest as Jaho whispered to it. The dog backed away toward the water, and Jaho motioned Duncan toward the fields.
They trotted in the deep shadow of the low ditch that divided sections of the wide field. Jaho knocked on the side of the first building they reached and after a moment the board moved outward and a broad hand reached out to help them inside.
Half a dozen candles were lit along the platforms used by the Africans, and Duncan looked up at more than three dozen wary faces. Ursa, the big slave who had saved Murdo from his misery after Gabriel’s beating, spoke to the others in his native tongue, and several came forward to greet Duncan, led by the man’s wife and son. Duncan introduced himself and Ursa gave his hand a vigorous shake, then pulled his son forward. “Kuwali speak good,” the man said of his son.
The boy gave an awkward smile. “Mrs. Dawson taught me with her children,” he explained in a surprisingly refined voice. “I worked in the manor house until I dropped the Commodore’s decanter one night. We have sickness. In the house they say you are a healer.”
The Africans had divided their sleeping platforms with sacking and even walls of woven reeds so that the building reminded Duncan of an Iroquois longhouse, with compartments set aside for each family. Kuwali and Ursa, clearly the leader among his people, led Duncan along the quarters, first presenting him to an old woman with deeply wrinkled skin, whose eyes blazed like embers. Without thinking Duncan knelt before her. No one moved for a long moment, then she reached out and lifted his hand, running her dry fingers over his palm. She smiled, and as if it were a signal, Ursa pulled him up and pointed to the first of the compartments, where a woman lay cradling a hand with a dislocated thumb. He realized he had been called for his medical skills, and set to work.
He set the thumb in place, then gave four adults with loosening teeth and yellowing eyes instructions to eat a handful of fresh greens-dandelions, wild onions, young poke, though never the larger leaves, which could poison-each day. To be certain they understood, Duncan promised to give Kuwali samples of each when he brought lunch the next day. He set a broken fibula, binding it with the staves of a cask, and with some embarrassment, to Ursa’s quiet laughter, put his hand over the womb of a nearly full-term pregnant woman and opined that the baby seemed healthy. With old Jaho assisting, he dispensed small amounts of his precious medicine, then bound tight a sprained ankle. The Africans, though clearly familiar with Jahoska, were shy with Duncan at first but, with Ursa’s encouragement, they soon warmed to him.
He managed to explain that his people were the Scottish, pointing to himself. “Scoootissh,” Ursa repeated in his rich bass voice, then made a gesture that included most of his audience. “Ibo!” Ursa cried out enthusiastically, then pointed to a man who was much lighter in complexion. “Fulani!” he explained, and gestured to the row of diamond-shaped scars that adorned his own jaw. “Ibo,” he said again, then to the tattoos of fish on the other man’s neck. “Fulani,” he repeated, then asked the name of Duncan’s clan. “Mc . . . Callum,” he repeated several times, making a clucking sound where the c’s intersected.
“Titus in the big house is Mr. Jaho’s old friend,” Kuwali added, pride evident in his voice. “He is Ashanti.”
His eyes gleaming, Ursa led Duncan to a section of the wall covered with a sacking drape and pulled it aside. On the horizontal beam before him was a line of unexpected objects, at the center of which were several human images assembled from carved bone, centered around a woman of slightly larger size. Their arms and legs were just crude suggestions of those appendages, but the heads and torsos had been expertly worked. To the left was a fierce-looking man with jagged teeth, whose wild eyes and mane-like hair suggested a great cat. On the other side was a figure with a pointed face, elongated eyes, and scales of a serpent. In the center, standing on an inverted teacup missing its handle, was a woman with plump, exaggerated breasts and a wide, serene smile. Her body had been stained brown with what looked like walnut juice. Flanking the images were items Duncan took to be offerings-dead beetles, long feathers that appeared to have come from cranes, a turtle shell, several skulls of small mammals, and flower blossoms. At either end of the little altar sat sailing ships expertly carved of bone. Hanging above the woman at the center was a disc the size of his hand, made of red and yellow feathers. He took it to be the sun.
Duncan lowered his head respectfully toward the bone figures, then Ursa pointed to the little quillwork pouch that hung from his neck and thumped his hand against his own heart as if to approve. Jaho grinned, and motioned expectantly to Duncan’s medicine pouch. Duncan opened the sack and extracted one of the little blue mercury pills he had taken from the Ardent, brilliant as a gem, dropped it in an empty vial, and placed it beside the other offerings.
The onlookers murmured their enthusiastic approval. Ursa spoke to his son, who translated for Duncan. “Sometimes our people go to the rolling house to work. Sometimes my mother and I go there with food.”
“Rolling house? You mean the mill?”
The boy nodded solemnly. “Lila is the maid there. She knows their secrets.”
Duncan searched Ursa’s anxious face. “I don’t understand,” he confessed.
“It’s not their god,” Kuwali translated. “It makes their god worried. It’s why they keep it locked away like another slave. One of those men in scarlet jackets painted a cross on the door.” Kuwali spoke for himself now, taking over the explanation. “They send us in there to bring them packets of tobacco and such.” He looked to Ursa who nodded, then the boy motioned to a folded paper behind the goddess. His mother approached the altar, murmured something to the little bone woman, and lifted the paper away for Duncan. “I learned to draw from Mrs. Dawson,” Kuawli added.
Duncan opened the paper and felt his heart leap into his throat. He had only seen the long spirit mask once before, but he instantly recognized the twisted red face and beard of bear claws. The British marines had imprisoned the Blooddancer.