“The three of them were coming here. What if they were attacked to keep them from reaching Edentown?”
“Patrick simply knew he could be sure of a hot meal here, nothing more.” She seemed to see the protest in his eyes, and pulled him down the hall toward her bedchamber door.
“At least let me take Crispin,” he told her, “so we can search-” His words died as she pressed her fingers to his lips, then wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder. He opened his mouth to try again but gave up and embraced her tightly.
When she pulled away, his fatigue, and his protests, were gone. With a motion that was now a habit of years, she touched the paper impaled with a knife in the lintel overhead, then closed the door behind her.
Their feelings for one another burned deeply but that paper kept their relationship chaste. Sarah Ramsey, raised by fiercely independent Iroquois women, had asked for his hand years ago, had even suggested they could just cohabit in tribal style without a ceremony, but Duncan had refused. He had been her rescuer, her teacher, her mentor, her right hand in her little reign, but above all that he was her indentured servant. She may have coerced her father Lord Ramsey, who loathed Duncan, into transferring the indenture to her but he was still a servant. There would be no honor for either of them, he had insisted, in consummating their feelings before the seven-year indenture expired. The world would say she had forced him as her bond servant, or that he had coaxed himself upon her to ease his servitude. “The world’s an ass,” she had fumed. He had agreed, but would not relent. That night she had furiously impaled the document above the door, and it had remained there ever since.
Woolford, now resting in a bedroom down the hall, was breathing steadily and had more color, signs that he might yet survive his terrible wounds. But Duncan knew his friend would not abide the long convalescence he needed to recover. It would be like trying to keep a bull tied down, and in his current condition the struggle could still kill him. He had suffered a severe concussion. It could be days before Woolford was able to speak with him about what had happened, and why he and Red Jacob had been racing south.
After checking each of the ranger’s wounds, washing them again with vinegar and then rubbing them with witch hazel, Duncan sat and studied his friend. His eyes drifted to the ancient set of Indian armor Woolford had been wearing, now hanging on a wall peg. They had been like brothers for years but much of Woolford’s life was still a mystery to him. Guilt flushed his face as he realized he was looking at his friend with the eyes of the Death Speaker. “Forgive me,” he murmured as he rose and began searching for Woolford’s secrets.
The small pockets of the ranger’s waistcoat yielded some flints, his ranger disc, a few coins and, strangely, a broken bone cube-a half-crushed gaming dice, just as Red Jacob had carried. He looked back at the fragments of the ball he had plucked from Woolford’s ribs, then dropped several in a spoon and held it over a candle.
“You need sleep almost as much as he does,” came a gentle voice over his shoulder. Conawago stepped beside him, looking down at the melting lead.
“It is in pieces but clearly it was a small caliber ball,” Duncan explained, “not a Brown Bess musket or one of the forest rifles.” The lead softened and soon formed a bright silver pool in the bottom of the spoon. “There,” he said, nodding at the melted metal.
“I don’t follow.”
“Lead used in balls made on the frontier is melted in dirty molds over campfires and cookstoves, making it crude and dirty. This has no impurities. It was a bullet made for a gentleman’s gun, one of those expensive English fowling pieces I wager. The ball that hit Red Jacob was bigger, a heavy musket ball. Two weapons. Two men.”
Conawago seemed unhappy with the announcement. “Does it matter? The killers have gone. Woolford lives. You need sleep.”
“Patrick would have me understand what happened. A ranger was murdered, one of his rangers, a man he ran with for years. He would have justice, even on a trickster god.”
His words clearly worried his friend. “Above all, he would have us keep Edentown safe,” the old Nipmuc said, and stepped to the other side of the rope bed. As if to help Duncan, Conawago untied a pouch from Woolford’s belt and opened it, tumbling musket balls and a small priming horn onto his palm. As he reached in to empty the pouch, Duncan did not miss the little twist of his fingers. The old man awkwardly looked away.
“Conawago, I am trying to find the truth. The entire truth,” Duncan chided. “Not merely fragments of it.”
Conawago frowned and slowly turned his hand up, revealing a slip of paper between two fingers. He remained silent as Duncan took the paper and read its single word.
“Galilee,” he recited. “What does it signify?”
“I do not know, Duncan. The Promised Land.”
“But you were trying to hide it.”
“The war may be long over but Woolford is still the ranger who works in the shadows. People pass through here all the time now, some staying overnight. His name comes up sometimes. Some speak of him with suspicion, for they fear those who work in secret. But these are troubled times and sometimes secret work must be done. The last time Sir William wrote”-meaning William Johnson, friend of the tribes and hero of the French war-“he said to be wary, not to trust outsiders, that the landscape is shifting and we must not fall when the chasms open. The frontier has always been the breeding place for troubles. I know nothing for certain, except that we can’t have those troubles brought here. Edentown needs you. Sarah needs you here. I need you here,” he added with an awkward glance.
“You agree then that Edentown is in danger?”
Conawago hesitated. “No. Surely not.”
Duncan studied the weathered face of his friend, as vital and inscrutable as that of any wild creature in the forest. “Would you have us ignore the request of Adanahoe on her deathbed?”
“Not us.”
It took a moment for the Nipmuc’s meaning to sink in. “She said it was both of us in her dream.”
“I have lived with the old gods all my life, Duncan. Blooddancer will not leave a trail a European can follow. He is not your god. Do you know the ancient words to say when you finally confront him? What do you know of the half king at the southern gate, who is said to be able to summon the old gods? This god travels south for a reason.”
“Because it is where the thieves take him. Adanahoe did not call me to playact in some myth. Her desperation was real. Her grandson’s death was real. She sent for me, not you.”
“Because I was too far away,” Conawago rejoined, with surprising stiffness. “You were the best messenger. I have received the message. You must stay here. I must go.”
“What if it is just some treasure hunters who stole the mask? That is a trail I can follow.”
“No. It was just an unhappy coincidence that Woolford and Red Jacob were attacked. Their trail crossed with the fleeing god. The god unleashed his anger and moved on. I will go south in the morning.”
Duncan saw the pain on his friend’s face. He had no stomach for arguing with the old man, and he knew from long experience it was pointless to argue with him about matters of the forest spirits. “Woolford spoke of more men dying, of men who had to be saved. Those bullets were not fired by a stolen god. Patrick cannot help them. I must try.”
“The words of an army officer worried about his men. He could have been delirious, invoking some memory from the wars. In any case that is government business, not ours. What you owe our friend Woolford, Duncan, is a few weeks of constant medical care.”
THEIR EXCHANGE WEIGHED ON DUNCAN AS HE SOUGHT HIS LONG-OVERDUE sleep, its echo stirring him awake. His relationship with Conawago was as father and son, and Duncan knew him well enough to know he was withholding something. It was unlike the old man to keep secrets from him, except when they related to sacred trusts of the tribes. He did not know how he could bring himself to defy Conawago, and he would never violate those trusts, but it wasn’t a wandering god or Iroquois myths that troubled Duncan, it was a real killer, a merciless killer, on the very trail Conawago meant to take.