“Why did you ask Woolford about being at all our trials?” Duncan asked the young keeper.
“If the Company is to be used by the army, we should know it.”
“But why now, why ask when you did?”
All the fight had gone out of Frasier. He spoke toward his hands. “Adam had died.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Adam used to sing in the night.”
“You’re making no sense.”
Strangely, it wasn’t pain in Frasier’s eyes when he looked up at Duncan, but embarrassment. “I asked him once,” the young Scot said. “I missed my home so. There was a song my mother used to sing, about the sun setting over the loch with the heather in bloom. I asked him to sing it, and he did, every night when he knew I was in earshot.”
“But why?” Duncan pressed. “If you were upset about Adam, why badger Woolford about the army?”
“Because of the lies they told, because of the way they treated him. Because I won’t let it be forgotten. They put Adam in with the Company prisoners two days before sailing, as if he were just another one brought in from some village court. But he was the first prisoner, here before the keepers, before the murderers, kept by Woolford in a cell.”
Duncan leaned closer. “How do you know it was Adam in the cell?”
“Because the captain’s wife fed him when Woolford was away at the law courts. She was feeling ill one eve and told me to go down with the food. That was when I first heard him sing. I still hear him,” Frasier added in a whisper. “I never saw him in the cell, and might have been taken into the deception like everyone else.”
“Except he sang,” Duncan concluded. “And you heard him later, in the prisoner hold.”
Duncan tried to piece together Frasier’s words with Woolford’s revelation that Adam had volunteered to become a prisoner. “Sometimes,” he said, “a man’s crime can be knowing someone, or something.”
“What secret could Adam have known that made him so dangerous to be locked in a cell?” Frasier asked in a rueful voice.
“What he knew was something about someone called a fishspeaker and an inn in America. And,” Duncan said with conviction, “why the Company is going to need so many poachers and body snatchers.” As well as, he almost added, a secret about Duncan that Duncan himself did not know.
When he returned to the cells, Lister had a bucket of seawater waiting for him, and Duncan gladly let the old mate dowse him repeatedly. But his dreadful foreboding could not be stripped away as easily as the stench. As Lister locked the cell door, Duncan leaned against the wall, feeling strangely weak. Confusion had become his new disease. Adam had condemned himself to the ship of his own accord, as if under some dark spell. Woolford’s chest had indeed been the work of Pandora, its demons now preying on the ship. Woolford, he had slowly realized, must have told McGregor about the hole in an attempt to slow the ship’s arrival in New York, as if he, like Adam, dreaded its arrival there. His legs gave way and he slowly sank to the floor, staring into the shadows. Much later he discovered that the black stone was in his lap, one hand clenched tightly around it, the other stroking the thing as if it needed comforting. He pressed the warm stone to his cheek, then to his heart, and then began wrapping it in the unused bandage, covering it in many layers. He stuffed the bundle into the bottom of his sea bag and settled into a corner of his cell, his hands clasped around Adam’s mysterious amulet.
He awoke to shouts from above, sounds of celebration floating down from the main deck. An hour later his cell door opened and a dark bundle was tossed inside. His servant’s clothes. Duncan glanced up to see Cameron’s tall figure retreating toward the ladder.
“It’s New York,” Duncan said to Flora after he had dressed, awkwardly squared the tutor’s cap on his head, and shouldered his bag. Her cell was as silent as death. Something moved inside. It could have been the despairing woman. It could have been a rat.
“I wish you good fortune, Flora,” he whispered into the hatch of her locked door, then paused, knowing that luck had long ago abandoned the woman. In another time, another life, he would have tried to help her. But in this life he was powerless. He pushed his arm through the hatch, fingers extended, but she did not respond. “I wish you peace,” he said in a cracking voice, then turned away.
He climbed warily into the sunlight, pausing with his head just over the rim of the deck-uncertain why he was not escorted, half expecting to be seized and chained again-then slowly approached the rail. The ship, docked at a wide timber wharf, was busily disgorging its cargo, human and otherwise. Cameron stood like a sentinel at the bottom of the gangway, forty feet from an elegant carriage attended by a broad-shouldered man whose skin was a rich chocolate brown, his waistcoat and britches a larger version of those worn by Duncan. Beyond the carriage were several heavy wagons with benches along their sides, guarded by the keepers and several brutish, thickset men armed with clubs and spontoons-the broadheaded spears sometimes used by the army-watching as the prisoners, wide-eyed, filed off the ship and climbed onto the wagon benches.
“Benign Providence continues to watch over you,” an austere voice said at Duncan’s side. Reverend Arnold was in his merchant’s attire again and clutched a thin leather case, the kind Duncan knew was often used for military dispatches. “A short report now, and you will be done. There is a grand sermon here, about the pitfalls of forgiveness.”
Duncan’s mouth went dry. He searched the deck for an explanation, then studied the Company wagons again. In the first wagon two men with clubs sat behind the driver’s seat, a crumpled shape on the floor between them. “What have you done?” he demanded.
“He was seen lurking about Evering’s cabin last night, against our express command. As a keeper he had the run of the ship the night Evering died. He has condemned himself with his own traitorous ways. When we caught him he pulled a paper from his shirt and stuffed it into his mouth, obviously to destroy evidence against himself. The captain brought out the cat again, to loosen his tongue. He began pouring out curses in the Highland tongue, invoking the Jacobite prince. Lying from the start, betraying our trust in him as a keeper.”
Duncan did not recall running down the gangway, did not remember touching the wharf, his first step in the New World. He was suddenly at the wagon’s side, nearly retching from what he saw.
The pile of bloody rags was breathing, though only just. He leapt onto the wagon, parrying a keeper’s raised club with a venomous glare. The old man’s shirt was in ribbons, revealing crosshatches of raw flesh where the cat had done its work, partly healed and now reopened. His manacled hands were bloody and swollen, his battered face barely recognizable. Lister was not unconscious, but he did not seem to recognize Duncan.
“He wouldn’t stay down, the old fool,” Cameron said over Duncan’s shoulder. “’Twere the sailors, with the captain urging them on. Lying about his Highland blood, to some it’s as good as confessing a murder.”
“Remove him, Mr. Cameron. He is in need of care.”
“I cannot,” the keeper said with a glance toward the ship.
As Duncan followed his gaze toward the captain, who now stood beside Arnold, a haze seemed to fall over his eyes. Cameron was not quick enough to stop him as he darted back up the gangway.
“He must have a doctor!” Duncan demanded. “You have no right!”
The captain seemed to take great pleasure in Duncan’s protest. He signaled to someone behind him, and with a flurry of movement two sailors appeared, one tapping a belaying pin on his palm. “One more insult,” the captain snarled, “and I shall appropriate you from the Company. There be no keepers on board to protect you now!”
“He did nothing last night but-”
The sailors seized Duncan, one on each arm, pressing him against the rail as they gazed expectantly at the captain, who stepped forward with a cold grin. The open hand that slapped Duncan felt like an oak plank.