“Greek?”
“Put me in mind of the sponge divers I’d seen in the Aegean. Dark, silent. Learned. Genteel enough. Walked the deck all hours of the night. Drew diagrams of constellations, pictures of the great fishes. Had me teach him sailors’ knots. Carved me a little wolf, ’cause I’d said I had a dog like one as a boy. Socrates Moon, he was named.”
“Who was she?”
“A princess, he said. A princess in exile, in danger somehow, so her name could not be spoken.”
“You make it sound a fairy tale.”
“Not my words, but his.”
Duncan rose and put his hand on Lister’s shoulder as the old mate turned to leave. “The day before Adam died,” he said. “Someone’s chest was broken into. The captain accused me of theft.”
“Ye ship with dogs, everyone gets fleas,” Lister declared with a sigh. The Ramsey Company included several slipfasts and pocketmen in its ranks. Possessions of the sailors, even officers, had sometimes appeared on the prison deck, always prompting a flurry of barter and, sometimes, betting.
“But a new horde of trinkets appeared that day,” Duncan explained. “Sewing needles. A flint striker. A horn drinking cup. Musket flints. Wooden buttons.” Adam had never had wooden buttons until the day before he died.
“His honor the lobsterback.”
“Lieutenant Woolford?”
Lister leaned closer, as if unwilling for even a rat to hear. “After we recovered from the storm, he turned out every man in the Company, with the captain’s best bullies at his side, searched the prisoners, then searched every hammock. He cursed the lot of them, demanded the return of his property. He had a club in his hand and fire in his eyes. Even Cameron was scared,” he added, referring to the short-tempered, barrel-chested man who led the keepers. “He said Woolford knows the ways of the heathens, who can inflict pain we have never dreamt of. He struck those who resisted, clipped young Frasier just for asking questions. A trunk in his cabin was broken into.”
“What did he recover?”
“A bullet mold. A steel ax head. The horn cup. Things for America. He went through Adam’s kit, twice. Seemed fair kicked about when he finished.”
“You mean he did not find what he sought?”
“Most of his property he recovered, ’cause he said none be punished if they surrendered it then and there. But I’d say what he wanted most of all he didn’t find. I’d say he was confirming to himself that Munroe took it with him.”
“Took with him?”
“We all saw it. All of us near the bow that day. Woolford. Arnold. Cameron. When Adam was on the maintop after scratching those marks, he raised his hand. Something small was in it, something black. Put me in mind of a lump of coal. But t’ain’t a piece of coal that worries our soldier,” Lister said and reached for the door. “A black bag of jewels perhaps. The instant Woolford saw Adam swing off the mainmast, he began running to reach him.”
It was true, Duncan recalled. Woolford had arrived at his shoulder, gasping, as Adam had disappeared into the water. When Duncan turned, the lieutenant had looked like he had been kicked by a bull. He fought the temptation to touch the black stone in his pocket.
“What questions?” Duncan asked. “What was Frasier seeking?” The young Scot, barely out of his teens, was from a remote Highland family, raised by a maiden aunt after his parents had been taken. One of the Company’s many poorly kept secrets was the fact that his aunt had paid for him to be made a trusty keeper.
“About the Company recruitment. Why was Woolford at every court session? Saying that if the Company was just a scheme for pressing men into the army, he’d as soon stayed in jail. Quick as you can say Jack Pudding, the bastard was on the boy, throttling him. Took three of us to pull him away. Woolford was drunk. Sober as churches all voyage, and now he carries a flask.”
“Is it so, what Frasier said?”
“Near as we can tell. I spoke with the boy. He says he canvassed every man, and every one recalls Woolford in his courtroom, though most thought nothing of it, since the army sometimes recruits from the courts itself. Says that to the army, men like us be like lambs kept for mutton. He says,” Lister added hesitantly, “that English terriers are rightly sent to the kennels of the murderers.”
Duncan chilled as he heard the words. “There is only one of the Company sent to the cells,” he whispered. Adam had kept Duncan connected to the men of the Company, more than a few of whom spoke resentfully of Duncan’s English upbringing. “I had nothing to do with what happened.”
“He says favors ain’t granted for free.”
“Favors? Imprisonment in this rathole?”
“Frasier’s half sick with hate and fear. He’s been tossing salt in dark corners, speaking old words, words I ain’t heard since I was a wee bairn. Reverend Arnold is assembling the Company twice a day for readings of the Bible. He says the only thing they need fear when men take their own lives is too great a distance from God.
“That’s what they would have us think,” Lister continued after glancing out the door again. “A herd of weaklings already being culled out by the wilderness, that’s what Cameron says.” Lister looked up into Duncan’s eyes. “But ye and I know ’tweren’t weakness that killed Adam Munroe. That last night when he sat by the door, I fetched him a cup of tea. He looked so low, I thought he were building a fever. He stared into the steaming mug, not speaking for a long time, then suddenly he looks up and starts firing questions, waiting for nary an answer. Asked me if I had ever thought about what God looked like. Asked if I’d ever been married. Asked if the navy were as heartless as the army. Said he had done terrible wrongs to people without knowing it. I asked if he had gotten into some rum.
“He said the Company would be used to set the price for changing the world. A tear rolled down his cheek, and he said his friend Duncan was about to fall into a black pit. He said the army was going to chew you up and spit out your bones.”
Duncan drew in a shuddering breath. “I’ve nothing to do with the army.”
“Perhaps,” Lister suggested, “if we were to believe young Frasier, we all have something to do with it.”
Duncan drank from the crock again. “It’s because of what Adam said that you came up the mast for me.”
“Cameron always gives me the late watch, in the small hours. Mostly I sit at the hatch, thinking about those inside, listening to their songs and the things they cry out in their sleep. All I knew was that I’m weary of seeing what happens to the fresh blood of the clans.”
“The bruise on your face, Mr. Lister, how did you come by it?”
“It be nothing, an accident.”
“No. Someone hit you.”
The old sailor went silent for a long moment. “The day after Adam died, I asked about him, asked Cameron. He struck me with nary a word. Then told me to keep me nose pointed straight ahead.”
“What exactly did you ask about Adam?”
“Who brought him on board. Did Adam come with Evering.”
“But Adam was just another prisoner.”
Lister pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, a remnant from a news journal, folded very small, compressed as if it had been flattened by an iron. “This was in Evering’s cabin, pushed into a crack in a beam. It’s from a paper in Argyll, where Adam came from. And ye remember how Adam carried things, paper things, small things?”
“In his shoe,” Duncan recalled as he accepted the paper. “Folded into his shoe.” Duncan had once thought Adam kept papers there for warmth, like some of the other men. But then Duncan had seen him reading them, when Adam thought himself alone. Duncan bent to the light and instantly his breath caught. It was an account of the trial of Duncan and his uncle. “Why would Adam have. .?” he muttered when he could speak again. “Why give it to Evering?” But he knew neither he nor Lister had answers, only more questions.
Lister pulled another slip of paper from inside his shirt. “And there was this, inside Evering’s waistcoat when I was helping clean the body.”