“Half would seem more than coincidence. It would take some effort to find so many who had both fallen out with the law and been in America.”
“A credential much to be desired,” Arnold interjected. “We had several weeks to fill the Company ranks, time to be selective. Experience in the colonies told us they were strong, that they would require little time to adjust to the rigors of their new life.”
Duncan had never known a man of the cloth who was an outright liar, but indeed had known many who chose to focus on pieces of the truth rather than the whole of it, when it served to make the point of their homilies. “The objects used that night,” he said. “I would like to see them. Perhaps a closer examination would-”
Woolford raised a hand to cut Duncan off. “The crew was terrified of them. Mr. Lister and I wrapped everything in a canvas weighted with rocks from the ballast and tossed it over the stern.”
Duncan stared at him in disbelief. “They would have told us more.” It was as if Woolford, too, was interested in only fragments of the truth.
Woolford stroked the long scar on his neck again. It seemed to have become a nervous habit, one Duncan had not noticed before the storm. “Your pipe,” he said abruptly, remembering now the clay pipe Woolford had often carried during the voyage. “You are no longer smoking. It affects your nerves.”
Woolford grimaced. “Someone stole my tobacco,” he admitted.
“And burnt it in the compass room,” Duncan concluded. “I have never heard of such a ritual in the Old World,” he added after a moment.
“There are other people,” the officer observed in a hesitant voice, “people who burn the leaf to attract spirits.”
“What kind of people?” Duncan pressed. “Who prays to spirits with tobacco?”
Arnold’s glance of warning was quick but obvious. Woolford looked away from the vicar, into the shadows. He seemed to struggle to get the words out. “The people of the forest.” Woolford’s haunted expression as he spoke toward the darkness caused Duncan to twist about to study the shadows. It seemed Woolford’s meaning was grasped first by something in his gut, turning it cold, sending an icy tentacle up his spine until it touched his brain. The savages. Woolford was speaking of the dreaded aborigines of the American woodlands.
No one spoke for a long moment.
“So tobacco was burned to gain the attention of Mrs. Evering in the next world,” Duncan suggested in a careful tone, feeling Arnold’s withering glance.
“Most of the men partake of tobacco when they can,” Arnold interjected. “One of them stole it from the lieutenant, who was well known for having fine twists of Virginia leaf.” He paused, taking note, as Duncan already had, of the sudden melancholy that had overtaken Woolford. “Evering brought the brazier for warmth. The tobacco fell as the murderer struggled with him.”
“I must see the professor’s quarters,” Duncan finally stated. He dared not openly express interest in Evering’s journal.
“The captain gave his orders,” Arnold said. “You’ll not be leaving the cell deck.”
“I must see the other letters at least.”
“Equally impossible,” Arnold said. “You will not be permitted to tamper with the royal mails.”
Duncan gazed at the letters in front of him. “Then surely you will return these to the mails.”
“They have become evidence.”
“There is but one killer. Even were it one of these men, the other is innocent.” He searched Arnold’s unyielding face. “Bring me paper and ink. I shall transcribe them. You can witness them as true copies. Surely,” he entreated, “we will not punish the innocent. When will word reach their loved ones again? A child needs his buttons.”
Arnold cast a disappointed glance at Duncan. “Innocent, Mr. McCallum?” he asked, as if unfamiliar with the term.
Woolford rose. “I shall make it so,” the officer said, and hurried up the ladder.
Arnold paced around the table. “Paper and ink will provide an opportunity to commence your report,” he observed. “Lord Ramsey is fastidious about records. He will desire a quick conclusion, but a complete written account. Flavor it with your science. The army will soon know of a killing in the Company,” he added, with a glance toward the gangway where Woolford had disappeared. “Lord Ramsey will not desire a military inquiry to be opened.”
“It could be useful to one writing such a report, Reverend,” Duncan pointed out, “to know why the military would be interested.”
Arnold considered the question for a long moment. “The Ramsey Company and the army share many of the same goals, but we are oceans apart in how to achieve them.” The vicar gazed toward the cells. “Your report. It shall point out the sins committed along the way, with the truth shining like the light of the Almighty at its conclusion.”
“You make it sound as if I am writing a sermon,” Duncan replied. “And you forget I have been locked in a cell,” he added.
“Your isolation but heightens your objectivity. You will record a simple and tragic tale. Evering was possessed by the demon of grief, compelling him to the unnatural act in the compass room. His lapse of faith gave the killer an opportunity. Amen.”
Arnold was indeed interested in a sermon. “Perhaps,” Duncan suggested with a solemn air, “there should be lightning. Evering could have been struck by a bolt that burned away his reason.”
“Excellent,” Arnold said, in the voice he used in the pulpit. “Poetic. A call from God. Worthy of the Ramsey scholar. You encourage me, McCallum.”
“Then a mermaid rose up and killed him.”
Arnold sighed, then answered by pushing open the door to the cell corridor. The smell of unwashed men and women, of mildew and human excrement, wafted into their chamber, mingled with the sound of weeping. The vicar paused, as if for effect, then approached the table again. “The killer will hang, whatever reason for the crime. Perhaps one of them stole something of value from Evering. His gold watch is missing. Linking the killing to a robbery would offer a strong moral lesson,” he suggested. “The Company will witness the punishment after we arrive at Edentown. A perfect ceremony for setting the proper tone of the prisoners’ new life. The path of righteousness,” he added in a suddenly contemplative tone, “can be as slender as a thread. Do your work correctly, and there will be no need to raise the specter of sedition.”
Suddenly Woolford was back in the pool of light cast by the lanterns, with a writing box holding paper, ink, and a quill. As Duncan arranged them on the table, Arnold climbed back up the ladder. Woolford paused at the dark corridor of cells, then ascended the ladder, leaving Duncan alone, staring at the white empty paper. He paced about the table, considering the threat against Scots in Arnold’s parting words, fighting to dam up the unnatural fear that had surged through him when Woolford had mentioned the savages of the forest. British papers frequently reported on the cannibalism, the compulsive violence, the unquenchable blood thirst of the American natives. Animals in human form, they were often called.
When he finally lifted the quill, Duncan did not begin with the transcription of the letters, but with a list of names, sixteen names in a column, including his great-uncle, his father, and his grandfather. The name of every chieftain of Clan McCallum for the past four hundred years, names that had been burned into his memory as a young boy, an unbroken chain of names he and his grandfather had often shouted into the wind as they had sailed and rowed among the Hebrides. Angus McCallum, was the earliest, then Ian McCallum, Lame Rob, Alastair, Crooked James, and Blind William. When he was done he ripped away the long column and wrapped the paper strip around Adam’s amulet, close against his skin; then he pulled the silver button from his pocket, examining it for the first time in direct light. It was intricately worked on the top, and though its dome had been smashed inward, the violence had not obliterated what was obviously, as Lister had reported, a map. The surface of the button had held a tiny rendering in relief of eastern America and Europe, exquisitely worked in silver.