As they returned to the cell corridor, Duncan paused and put a hand on the sailor’s arm. “After Woolford’s chest was pilfered, had you seen Adam with Evering?”
Lister rubbed his grizzled chin a moment. “Aye. On the deck the eve before young Munroe died. A Sunday eve. The Reverend held vespers for the prisoners, and Evering and Adam sat nigh each other. Afterwards, the professor was writing a letter for Adam.”
“But Adam,” Duncan pointed out, “could write his own letters.”
Lister’s brow knitted. “So ’e could.”
Evering had not been writing a letter, Duncan knew, but recording notes of something Adam had confided to him. Adam and Evering had shared a secret, and both had died within days of doing so. A secret about the New World. “What do you know of this place Edentown where they take us?”
“On the frontier, a few days from port. Being built by the great laird. Some of the men know of it, say the road to it is lined with graves,” Lister added, then hurried Duncan toward the ship’s ladder that led below.
But Duncan paused when they reached the door to the cell corridor. “Are the pumps still manned?” he asked.
“Finished. Only a foot or so of water in the-” Lister broke off and muttered a low curse as realization lit his eyes.
“You must go to my cell,” Duncan said. “Pull the door shut behind you. If someone comes, pretend to be unconscious. It must look as though I overpowered you.” He lifted the hooded lantern from the peg where they had left it.
“Ye’ll be dead five minutes after the captain finds ye.”
“There are questions to be answered.”
“Don’t do this,” Lister pleaded. “There’s others who won’t take so long as the captain.”
“Like you said,” Duncan rejoined, “a clan chief dies on his own terms. Redeat.” He stole back into the darkness, working his way down the row of cells to a small floor hatch at the end of the corridor. It was the work of less than a minute to pry open the hatch, releasing the garbage-midden stench of the bilges. He clenched his jaw, fighting a tremor of nausea, then dropped into the low, cramped space and, stooping, began moving along the keel, the dimmed lantern in front of him.
The captain of the Anna Rose fancied that the Company prisoners stayed closely confined in their hold except for their hours of daylight exercise. But by the end of the first month they had found a loose plank in the head, at the opposite end of the prisoners deck. Within a week they had loosened two more, discovering access not to freedom but to a secret though fetid retreat. While they seldom had to fight for the pleasure of sitting in the foul, near-suffocating compartment, certain prisoners regularly descended into the bilge in the middle of the night, for the pleasure of cursing the king in private.
Wading through the calf-high muck, Duncan reached the large crib of ballast bricks over the center of the keel, awkwardly crawling forward with the muted lantern held high. Something scurried on the stones beside him. The rats might dine on the decks above, but here is where they nested.
He had taken only a few cramped steps past the ballast bricks when a strong arm reached out of the shadows, clamping around his throat, and the lantern was snatched from his hand. He did not struggle but let himself be half led, half dragged through the bilge water until suddenly his lantern, and a second, were fully uncovered. Eight men stared at him with fierce, angry expressions. His assailant held a long, sharpened nail to his neck, against his artery.
“Pleased to see ye, y’er highness,” the man sneered. “We saved some Company tea for ye.”
“Rats won’t have to go hunting tonight,” another crowed.
“I only-” Duncan’s protest was choked away by the metal pressing deeper into his flesh. He met the gaze of the filthy, unshaven men, the hardest of the Company. Each brandished a jagged fragment of ballast stone, a weapon sufficient to do murder. Behind them someone moaned in the dark.
A red-bearded man in remnants of what had been a coachman’s greatcoat appeared from the gloom and bent over Duncan’s face. “Who gave ye the right to pick one of us to die?” he snarled.
“McGregor, I never-”
“Serv’ ’im ’is tea,” McGregor snarled.
Duncan’s head was slammed downward, submerged into the festering soup of seawater, urine, mildew, dead rats, and pitch. He did not struggle at first, thinking they sought only to frighten him. But they kept pushing, pressing him down, until his lungs were on fire, and he flailed out, fighting for breath, clearing the water and gasping for only an instant before being pressed into it again, the filthy spume biting his mouth and nostrils. The dunking was repeated a third time, until finally his assailant jerked him upright, gasping, retching.
“There was no murder on this ship until you named it so,” the bearded man growled. “Now the only murder that worries us be the one you be committing against one of us.” On McGregor’s knuckles were drops of fresh blood.
Duncan, gaining his breath, spat more filth from his mouth. “Until another man is taken by the true killer,” he shot back, pushing the arm away from his neck.
“Ye name one of us, McCallum, and every jack one of us will name ye. A pretty boy raised below the borders, just another English lapdog, we thought at first. Nay a Scot at all. Now we see ye’re worse, a slimeworm sent to consume us from the inside out. Poor Evering sniffed y’er true scent and ye had to silence him.” McGregor leaned closer, his crooked yellow teeth inches from Duncan’s face. “Ye made it easy, boy, paying us a call. We won’t even have to kill ye. We’ll just knock the senses from ye and cut a few slices on y’er limbs. By the time ye wake, the rats will have eaten half y’er flesh.” The arm began to close around his neck again.
Duncan did not remember all the oaths of the Hebrides fishermen he had learned as a boy, but he recalled enough of them to practice on McGregor, in the coarse Gaelic of the islands. He was invoking the glaistig, the uruisg, and the one-eyed direach, vile supernatural creatures all, when the ragged old Scot, eyes round with surprise and dread, clamped a hand over his mouth and pulled him from his assailant’s arms.
Duncan pushed the hand away. “The English don’t conquer us by killing us. All they have to do is play to the fears and suspicions that have kept Scots killing one another for centuries,” he said in a simmering voice. He reached into his pocket, extracting the piece of folded newsprint Lister had found in Evering’s cabin. “I came from no barracks,” he stated as he handed the paper to McGregor.
The old Scot bared his teeth like an angry dog, but took the paper and leaned into a lantern.
“Whatever you may think about me,” Duncan said, “you know Adam was one of you. He told something to Evering and Evering died for it. A secret about the Company. Perhaps Adam himself died for it.”
“Death to spies!” came an unsteady, boyish voice from the shadows.
McGregor, ignoring the cry, stroked his red beard. “What are ye saying, McCallum?”
Duncan spat more of the filth from his mouth and lowered himself onto a low pile of ballast bricks. “How many of you were taken out of court together?”
The nail, moving toward his throat again, was halted by McGregor’s outstretched arm. “I was alone, the only one taken from me town,” the red-bearded man said.
“I think everyone was,” Duncan said. No one refuted him. “They sought only certain types. Not just those with backs strong enough for seven years’ labor.”
“To what end?”
“To an end Adam glimpsed. We are not going there just to build some rich man’s town. Where were you taken?” Duncan asked. “Where were each of you ordered into the Company?”
“Dunkeld,” McGregor grunted, and nudged the man beside him.