“More homes are being taken for hospitals,” Crispin said, his only pronouncement on the progress of the combat. He nodded toward a large brick house with several soldiers sitting on its wide porch, all wearing bandages on their heads or arms, most wearing absent, defeated expressions.
The three-story structure where the coach stopped was spacious, though of a far simpler design than one of the great houses of England. A tall clapboard building painted mustard yellow, with four dormer windows jutting from the shake roof, it reminded Duncan of many residences he had seen in Holland. As Crispin led Duncan up the brick walk, the box of porcelain perched on his hip, the big man leaned toward Duncan and paused. “The children most of all need to learn there’s things other than grief and hate in this world,” he declared in an oddly urgent tone, then straightened as he spied a stout woman in a black dress standing in the front doorway, arms akimbo. She began to loudly chastise him for the cavalier manner in which he conveyed the porcelain.
After surrendering the box to the woman, Crispin showed Duncan to a small, sparse bedroom on the third floor, under the slanting eaves, explaining that he had a similar room down the hall.
“There was to be a crate delivered to Professor Evering,” Duncan ventured as he dropped his bag on the narrow rope bed.
Crispin nodded. “Carried to the teaching chamber. The Reverend spoke of the professor’s tragic ending. Some people just don’t travel well.”
“I know not what Reverend Arnold told you. Professor Evering was murdered.”
Alarm flashed in Crispin’s eyes. “Surely he wasn’t-” the big man began. “It couldn’t have anything to do with-” he tried again, then grew silent and looked out the window, his brow knitted in worry.
A scullery maid entered, carrying a bucket of hot water that she emptied into the wash basin on the bedside table, and then hastened away without acknowledging Duncan.
“What became of the last teacher here?” Duncan asked to his back.
Crispin took a long time to answer. “Before, it was just gentlemen from Philadelphia or Boston who stayed a month or two. This is the first time all the children have been together. The two little ones will be sent to Europe for schooling in a few years. Meanwhile, Mr. Ramsey wants them to have a teacher from back home.”
Duncan studied the man a moment. Crispin was employed by what must be one of the wealthiest families in the New World, but instead of boasting of its grandeur, he had pointed out its hate and grief; instead of using Ramsey’s title, he was naming him with a common term of address. “I wasn’t hired in England, Crispin,” Duncan confessed. “I was a convict in the Company. I am a convict,” he corrected himself. “A convict with indenture papers that can be revoked at any time.”
The butler stiffened, responded with another worried stare, rubbing the back of his head as if suffering a sudden ache. He seemed about to fire back questions, but finally he only nodded. “I was once a slave, too,” he offered with a shrug.
“You mentioned two young children. And the third?”
Crispin’s face took on a pained, puzzled expression, as if Duncan’s simple question were impossible to answer. “What did the Reverend tell you?”
“Just that I was to teach three children. What of the third?”
Crispin stepped toward the door with a reluctant expression, as if Duncan were forcing him from the chamber. “She needs the most. . ” He sighed. “I don’t have the words,” he said, his voice overcome with a sudden melancholy.
Duncan stared after him, trying to fathom his abrupt change of mood, as Crispin retreated down the hall. He gazed out the window over the small, busy town for several minutes, fighting a terrible guilt for being in the comfortable mansion house while the Company moved toward the wilderness, gauging his chances of leaping on a horse and racing to find Lister without being stopped. He pulled himself away to quickly unpack and wash, then explored the house, encountering several servants who hurried past with hasty words of greeting and lowered heads. Wandering through an elegant dining room with an elaborate mural of the harbor painted on one wall, past a long mahogany table adorned with three matching brass candelabras, he found himself in a chamber lined with bookshelves. Duncan walked along the shelves in awe. Several were stacked with newspapers and periodicals: The Spectator, The Gentleman’s Magazine, Dr. Johnson’s Rambler, and something called The Pennsylvania Gazette. But there were also at least four hundred books, a veritable treasure, a collection worthy of the most learned men of England. The complete works of Hume were there, as well as Voltaire, Swift, Rousseau, Pope, Dante, Hobbes, and Defoe. One shelf held nothing but the works of the Greek philosophers.
Flanking the library’s large central fireplace were four oil portraits in ornate gilded frames. On the right were one of the king and another of old King James II, the former regent who as the Duke of York had taken the colony from the Dutch in the last century. On the opposite side of the mantel were two separate images, one of a beautiful woman whose vibrant face betrayed the austerity of her black dress and lace bonnet, her eyes as bright as the gold and ruby cross hanging from her neck. On a small table below her image was a vase of wilted spring flowers.
The man in the frame beside the woman had an impatient air and a wig of white curls too small for his large cranium. His was the only one of the four portraits that displayed the full body of its subject, seated in a throne-like chair. The man’s closely set gray eyes burned not only with intelligence but with pride and ambition. In one hand he held an ornate compass. At his feet were hunting hounds, behind him a shadowy landscape with running horses over one shoulder and grazing stags over the other. Duncan’s eyes went back to the hands, each of which bore heavy jeweled rings. It was the pose of a member of royalty, or of an explorer, a conqueror of lands. Duncan noticed something else in the shadows of the background, past the stags, at the edge of a dense forest. Stepping closer, he discerned a cabin of logs, with a woman sitting on the ground, cradling in her lap the head of what appeared to be a dying man stretched out beside her. He stared at the dim, unsettling image a long time, chilled by the memory of the attack in the harbor, admitting to himself for the first time that he had been caught up in the war with the savages before even setting foot in America.
Eventually Duncan’s gaze settled on the carved and painted crest set in the top of the frame. On a blue field with gold stars stood a stone tower under a pair of crossed swords. Arched above them were three ornately painted words: Audentes fortuna juvat. Fortune favors the bold.
At the bottom right of the crest was a rearing black stallion; in the bottom center, a red rose; and at the left, a globe gripped in a hand. Duncan stared at the globe, then pulled from his pocket the button extracted from the bloody heart, studying it in the sunlight cast through the window. The globe of the button was identical to that of the crest, as intricately worked as the delicate carving on the frame. He examined the button’s underside and saw many folds of metal. The crushed metal could have comprised such a wrist and hand, and he realized that the object could as easily have been a pendant as a button. Whatever its function, there was no doubt that the ornament that had been left in the bloody heart had borne the Ramsey family crest.
He paced slowly along the rows of books again, trying to comprehend this new riddle, noticing for the first time a narrow door in the corner of the room by the window. As he approached it he heard the muffled sound of a chair scraping the floor. The door flung open and an adolescent boy in the dark livery of the house servants emerged at a trot, holding a leather case on a strap-the case Arnold had carried from the ship. The youth was halfway across the room when, spying Duncan, he halted with a cry of surprise.