At last, after four hours of fretful rest, he rose, scrubbed his face with cold water, retrieved a piece of paper from the library, and returned to the forge. The coals were cold. The smith was working outside, trimming the hooves of oxen.
The dead Oneida seemed to call to Duncan, as if the two men had unfinished business. Someone had wrapped the amputated hand in linen and laid it beside the body. He set the paper on the bench beside the stump of the arm, extracted a writing lead, and replicated the lines that had been inked above the amputation, then, with clenched jaw, unwrapped the hand, which held the end of the random, wiggling lines, and sketched them as well. He folded the paper into his shirt and then stepped to Red Jacob’s pack, which had been left on the back workbench.
Leaning on his pack was a hickory bow, dark with the patina of age, probably handed down for generations. Little stick figures of men and animals were etched in the wood. The pack itself had been skillfully made of heavy buckskin and decorated with a sunburst fashioned from the colored quills of a porcupine. It was fastened with two leather thongs, the end of which had been braided together. It would have made opening the pack a tedious affair, as if Red Jacob had meant to discourage a casual inspection. As Duncan moved it, however, a bundle of jerky fell out. He turned it upright. Someone had ignored the straps and opened the pack by slicing through the leather. He reached inside and emptied the pack, finding a pewter spoon, a small, chipped clay pipe, a pouch of surprisingly fine tobacco, a flint, and a striker. He lifted the tobacco again, holding the pouch under his nose. It was not the coarse tobacco of mullein and bark used in the northern tribes, but a richly scented Oronoco leaf from Virginia.
As he returned the items to the pack he tried to recall where the pack had been when he had first found Red Jacob. In his mind’s eye he saw it still draped over one shoulder. The killer had been nearby, probably watching while Duncan had leaned over the body, then had come back to remove the pack, slice it open for his search, chop off the arm, sever the hand, incise the belly, and insert the hand inside. It had been a lot of work, more than one man could quickly handle.
He heard movement behind him, then a gasp. Jess Ross was staring at the dead Oneida, with her fist over her mouth. He gazed at her for a long moment before she realized he had turned toward her. “It’s the captain, sir,” she stammered, lowering her eyes. “He woke and asked for you.”
Woolford sat propped up in his bed, making a mess as he tried to spoon porridge from a bowl. The hand holding the bowl shook. He seemed to have trouble finding his mouth with the spoon. Jess stepped from behind Duncan to take the bowl and was warned away with a low rumble in Woolford’s throat, until he saw who was helping him and relented, allowing her to feed him several spoonfuls before nodding off again. He woke and asked for you, the Scottish girl had said. She had been sitting with Woolford. Her fine blonde hair was combed and tied with a ribbon.
“He’s going to be all right,” Jess said. It was a statement, not a question.
“He suffered grievous injury to his brain,” Duncan warned. “His life hangs in balance.”
“He’s going to be all right,” the Scottish girl insisted, then sat on the bed to wipe Woolford’s face with a damp cloth. Duncan was about to stop her so he could check the bandages but then paused, surprised at the tender way she cared for his friend.
Woolford’s eyes fluttered open and with obvious effort he smiled at Jess, then motioned her away and turned to Duncan. The ranger’s voice was so soft and hoarse that Duncan only made out his own name when he spoke. Woolford’s hand shot to his ribs and a shudder wracked his body. Duncan grabbed one of the vials he had left on the stand and opened it. Laudanum, tincture of opium, would make him forget the pain for another hour or two. But as the vial touched Woolford’s lips the ranger shoved it away.
He grabbed Duncan’s arm. “They have their tentacles around the bard!” he gasped. “The King knows nothing!” His eyes closed again and he seemed to drift back into unconsciousness.
Shakespeare. The only part of Woolford’s brain that was working was that obsessed with his beloved Shakespeare.
The floorboard squeaked. Jess was standing in the hall, as if trying to listen. She seemed strangely frightened.
Suddenly Woolford pulled him back. His eyes cleared for a moment and his words came in an urgent whisper. “The nineteen are dead and don’t know it!” he groaned, the effort clearly costing him pain. “The lie will be written and they will all die! It’s up to you Duncan! Go! They can be saved in Galilee! Their only hope!” he groaned, and lost consciousness.
The floorboard squeaked again. Jess had fled.
Duncan turned back to his friend with new worry. Woolford’s forehead was feverish. Whether caused by the violent blow to his head, the shattering wound to his ribs, or some mortification in his blood, he was losing his grip on reality. Such ravings about tentacles and the bard and men who were dead but alive could only mean the fever was overwhelming him. Not entirely knowing why, Duncan looked again at the paper with the lines drawn from Red Jacob’s arm. The killer had left Woolford alive to catch up with Red Jacob, killing him to search his pack and then cut off his arm. If it had not been a vengeful god then it had been someone who recognized something on the arm, as if that was what he had searched for. Duncan was the only hope for nineteen men, but he was given nothing but meaningless words and meaningless drawings to help him.
At midday Sarah insisted they have what she called a household dinner, with everyone who lived and worked in the great house crowding the table in the dining room. With what Duncan knew was studied effort to distract them, she made small talk, asking Crispin to explain what his students were learning that week, and soliciting Conawago’s view on where they should grow pumpkins that year. A new calf had arrived that morning. At dusk the Welsh laundress had seen a mother skunk with four tiny young ones riding on her back.
Duncan’s gaze drifted toward the map on the wall, a new one of the colonies fresh from the printer in London. Duncan absently lifted a piece of a cold chicken leg and looked back at the map.
“Duncan,” he heard Sarah say in a raised voice. “Crispin was asking about the iron ore mine being built at Brannock’s ford.”
He rose from his chair. “Still clearing the ox road,” he said in a distracted voice, then stepped to the map, quickening his pace as he neared it. “The northern branch of the Susquehanna!” he exclaimed as he pulled out his sketch of the lines from the dead Oneida’s upper arm. He laid his paper under the river on the map. “See how the line turns out of Lake Otsego!”
“And here where the streams join to the west of here!” came Conawago’s excited voice. The Nipmuc was pointing over his shoulder to the spidery lines that joined the main river.
Duncan folded over the paper so that only its bottom portion showed, where he had sketched the lines from Red Jacob’s hand. He rotated the paper to the left, then the right, sliding it over the map below the Susquehanna forks.
“There!” he cried, and pointed to two rivers that lined up in the same pattern as the sketch. “There!” he repeated, more emphatically, then his voice lowered in surprise. “Virginia. It leads to Virginia. The Rappahannock and the Potomac.”
Duncan spun about to face Analie. “Nineteen men to be saved. What does that mean?”