“Damn you, old man, I know he was no threat.” Woolford’s mouth twisted in frustration. He gazed outside, into the night, for a long moment, before turning back to the Dutchman. “Then I must know what he said when he was leaving. What happened that day?”
“Lord Ramsey,” came the innkeeper’s hesitant reply.
Woolford’s knuckles whitened as he wrapped his fingers around his mug. “Where exactly in the mountains?”
“I cannot say for sure. North and west, I daresay. He won’t be found unless he wants to be.”
Woolford closed his eyes a moment, then cast a pointed glance at Fitch, who quickly reached for his own mug, as if suddenly in great need of the potent liquor.
They drank in silence, stabbing with wooden splints at the slices of hot sausage volunteered by the proprietor. Duncan became aware of a soft, lyrical sound from the dining chamber, gradually growing in volume, that he recognized as the strains of a violin. As patrons in the room lifted chairs, turning them in the direction of the music, Sarah came into sight, standing against the wall, flanked by her siblings. Beside them on a window seat rested Crispin, alternately watching the night and the Ramsey children.
“What Shakespeare do you have, Captain,” Duncan asked after a moment, “for a tutor to an old family come to a New World?”
When Woolford did not respond, he noticed the intense way the officer stared at Sarah.
“You spent much of your voyage with Miss Ramsey,” Duncan observed.
“Not exactly with her. She was sleeping most of the time, like she was in a coma. I would take my turn watching her. Sometimes I would read aloud, though she seldom gave sign of hearing.”
“I would have thought her father would have wanted a doctor to escort her. Instead she had you and the vicar.”
Woolford’s gaze was full of challenge but Duncan did not look away. “The Reverend received instructions from a great physician in London before embarking.”
“It was he who prescribed the laudanum?”
Woolford stared into his cup. “I took no pleasure in assisting with that. She was judged mentally unfit for a voyage. We had no choice. The doctor said otherwise we would have to tie her to her bed. Mix it with tea, he said, every cup of tea, so soon she would not notice the bitter taste.”
It was Duncan’s turn to gaze into his mug, so as not to reveal the flash of discovery in his eyes. Before he died, Evering had been making tea for Sarah and had smashed the dosing vial. Before he died, Duncan realized, Evering had been reviving her. They must have sat in the night, speaking secretly, just as Adam and Evering had done. He had been wrong to think the disasters on the ship had started with the opening of Woolford’s trunk. There had been another event, perhaps just as important. Sarah Ramsey had awakened.
Duncan fixed the officer with a sober gaze. “You lied to Adam Munroe about the destination of the Company, about it going to a Ramsey plantation in the south. What else?”
“That,” Woolford said with a sigh, “was the only lie that was necessary. You would think it a small thing.”
“But you knew it wasn’t. Not for him. Not for you. For his sake, you owe me the truth. I had thought the key to Evering’s death lay in the connection between Adam and the professor. But perhaps that is not the connection that was important. How did Adam Munroe know Sarah?”
“They lived in worlds apart.”
“You mean one in chains, one chained by opium.”
“I mean no one would ever expect such two to be acquainted. The Pennsylvania dirt farmer and the silk-gowned heiress.”
The truth, in the hands of a man like Woolford, was not necessarily a helpful thing. “I take it they met in the New World. Why were they both on the Anna Rose?” But Duncan needed no answer, not after considering what he had learned about Adam. Adam had been on board because of Sarah Ramsey, had been so desperate to sail on the prison ship with Sarah that he had threatened to assault soldiers, and had ultimately bought his passage with news about Duncan.
The scars on Woolford’s neck blanched again as he clenched his jaw. “No one,” he said slowly, “expected Sarah to stir from her cabin.”
“No one,” Duncan shot back, “expected Evering to become a channel between them.”
“No one expected the Anna Rose to become a death ship,” Woolford countered. Sarah abruptly rose, pulling Jonathan onto the dance floor, swinging his arm in time to the unseen fiddle. “She only survived because of you,” he added after a moment. “That water was certain death. In England people would say it puts her forever in your debt.”
“And here?”
The ranger shrugged. “I know Indians who would say it makes you forever responsible for her. That because you interfered with the spirits’ plans for her, there is no spirit to watch over her now.”
“Were they lovers?”
“Of course not. She is. . ” Woolford struggled for words, then gave up. “Adam was married.”
“Impossible. He would have told me.” Duncan’s mind swirled. Pursuing Adam, even in death, was like chasing a ship in a changing wind.
“In my experience, McCallum, the secrets of the heart are always the most difficult to put into words. I met his bride. A wild but gentle beauty. You would never find two who adored each other more.”
“What happened to her?”
“They were driven apart,” Woolford said in a tight voice.
“If it was not passion that drove Sarah to Adam in Argyll, then what? Her family is here.”
The ranger offered only a small, ironic frown, as if to say Duncan had answered his own question.
“Did you know Evering wrote about her in his journal?”
Woolford’s brow knitted. “What journal? Where is it?” he demanded.
“At the house in New York,” Duncan said. “Why would he write about Stony Run? What happened at Stony Run? How could he know?”
Woolford seemed to shudder. He turned to gaze out the darkened window. “It’s a place in the forest nearly a hundred miles north of Edentown. There was a council of Iroquois tribes led by a great priest, a powerful shaman. Something happened when the shaman met the other chiefs. Many died. At headquarters they listed it as a battle. But I believe there were no enemy there.” Woolford grew very still. When he spoke again it was in a near-whisper. “Sergeant Fitch and I arrived a few hours later. It was no battle. It was a series of murders, a massacre first of friendly Indians, then of my rangers when they followed the killers.” Woolford turned away to stare at the crackling fire.
“God’s breath!” Duncan gasped as realization flooded over him. “You’re trying to find the murderers.”
The ranger kept his gaze on the flames. “They were good men. Each one like a brother to me.” He could not conceal the pain in his eyes when he looked up at Duncan. “Evering couldn’t have known about Stony Run,” he said. “It was not something the army wished to publicize.”
“He knew,” Duncan said, “because he spoke with Adam.”
The ranger lowered his head into his hands a moment. “Guilt can often loosen a man’s tongue. Sad cases, Munroe and Evering. If it is possible to die of confusion, then perhaps they died of the same cause.” Woolford poured himself another applejack and drained it in one gulp.
“And where does King Hendrick fit into the tragedy you are scripting?” Duncan asked. “Evering connected him to Stony Run.”
“An old Mohawk chief. Teyonhehkwen was his tribal name. Visited England nearly fifty years ago, when they labeled him a king to ease his introductions in court. One of our strongest allies. Died fighting the French in ’fifty-five at Lake George. Over eighty years old. He stood up with bullets flying around him, shouted out, ‘Who wants to live forever,’ and charged a line of French infantry with a war club.”
“You speak of him as of a friend.”
“I am proud to name him so. If he had been a soldier, he’d have been in the Black Watch. If he had been a king of old, he would have been a pillar of chivalry.”