“Long enough then,” Duncan replied, trying to keep his voice level.
Macaulay hesitated, then noticed the twine around Duncan’s upper arm. “By the blessed saints,” he muttered. “I’m sorry, lad.”
Duncan followed his gaze. “I didn’t ask what it meant.”
“T’is the mark of the king’s rope, son. Surely the provosts mentioned the gallows.”
“It was a colonel named Cameron who did most of the talking. There is supposed to be a trial.”
Macaulay cocked his head. “But the army don’t hang civilians. Ye need a magistrate for that.”
“I’ve done tasks now and again for Woolford’s rangers. It was enough for them.”
The big Scot sighed and shook his head heavily. “So what was it? Spilled your ale on our priggish colonel’s boots?”
Duncan met Macaulay’s level gaze. “They claim I killed a corporal of the 42nd.”
The soldier’s eyes narrowed.
“I found him in a pool of blood. I was hoping to help him, but he was already gone. It was just my bad fortune that a patrol happened by.”
“What corporal?” The warmth had gone out the big Scot’s voice.
“His name was MacLeod.”
Macaulay muttered a curse. “Jock MacLeod of the 42nd? The bare-fisted champion of the regiment? Not likely.” He shrugged. “He’d never be taken by a child like ye. No offense lad.”
“None taken. It’s welcome to find at least one man in Albany who believes me.”
“And my testimony will count like Bibles before the bastards who will judge ye.”
Duncan fingered the piece of twine. The vow to hang him the next day had seemed so remote, just another of his terrible dreams. But the twine made it real. The pain of his beating, the desolate cavern prison, the promised noose. He had come to Albany in search of the truth and a boy he had never met. But he had really come to die. His father had been summoning him to the gibbet, to join the rest of the clan. This was the ending of his short and tormented days. He had to find a way to write a letter to Sarah Ramsey, to let her know she should wait no more.
Macaulay, seeming to sense his strange paralysis, took the blanket out of Duncan’s hands and draped it over his back. Then he settled onto the floor on the opposite side of the candle, holding his open hands toward the flame as if it were some comforting hearth.
“Jock was a Lewis man too. He loved the war,” Macaulay said in a soft voice. “He was fond of reminding me that the men of Lewis were descended from Vikings, that we were meant to die in battle, with a weapon in our hands.”
“He had a sword in his hand when I found him. His fists were bloody.”
“Amen,” Macaulay said with a satisfied nod. “Tell me about it lad. Tell me all.”
Duncan began with the morning of the terrible day of death, speaking of his discovery of the dead dispatch rider in the water.
The big Scot spat a curse when he heard it was another trooper wearing the plaid. “A sad waste of life. Always the Highlanders, eh?”
“I’m sorry?”
“’Tis always the Highlanders who pay the butcher’s bill in this army.” He shook his head and stared into the flame for a moment. “But what of Jock? Where was this settlement he fell in?”
Duncan continued his story, telling how an entire village was slain, even how he had come searching for the Nipmuc orphan who had gone to the river witch.
“Hetty the Welsh sorceress,” Macaulay said. “When I was young ye wouldn’t go near such a fearful hag without clutching a piece of iron in your hand.” Superstitions ran deep in the Hebrides.
Both men remained silent, staring into the solitary flame. A moth appeared and circled over the candle.
“The Highland troops,” Duncan asked at last. “They are all supposed to be in the North.”
“One company from each regiment was held back for the western campaign up the great lake to the Saint Lawrence to steady the fresh troops coming up the Hudson, called up from the Indies. Orders are expected to go west with Cameron to Oswego any day.”
Duncan gestured to the other prisoners, several of whom wore kilts. “Some of them sit in the iron hole.”
Macaulay spat a curse. “Some don’t lick the boots of English officers quick enough.”
Duncan tried to clear his mind, to consider what had transpired in the general’s office. “A soldier works hard for his shillings,” he observed. He had not forgotten the general’s despairing gaze upon the dead man’s pay chit, nor how he had angrily flung it into the fire despite it being presented as evidence against Duncan.
“Not in this man’s army,” Macaulay rejoined. “Nigh a year without pay.” His face darkened. “We didn’t come all this way to be English slaves.”
Duncan shivered again and glanced about the cold, dark chamber. “This place is a chamber of torture. How do you stand it?”
“I was raised in a black house, lad,” the soldier said, referring to the houses of unmortared black stone common in Scotland’s western isles, known for their cold and damp.
“How long have you been in here?”
“Just yesterday. But I’ve been a guest before.”
“For insubordination?”
“This time for taking a sick friend’s place on sentry duty without asking permission. Then not groveling when an English officer expressed his disapproval.” Macaulay shrugged, then stood, stretching. “Get some sleep. Ye’ll need your wits about ye tomorrow. Tell them ye want a rasher of bacon and a piece of apple pie from the officer’s mess.”
“I’m sorry?”
“They’ll come a couple hours before yer trial. They’ll clean ye up, make ye presentable for the English prigs who will condemn ye. They always give a man his request for a meal before. .” Macaulay hesitated. “Before such things,” he finished awkwardly, then moved away.
Before his hanging. The prisoner was given his choice for his last meal on earth.
Duncan sat against the wall again, huddled in his blanket, futilely trying not to stare at the twine around his sleeve. He was strangely scared to touch it. He desperately tried, but failed, to summon visions of his youth or memories of his days learning of the forest from Conawago. All that came were visions of the many McCallum clansmen who had swung from the king’s gibbet.
Death was a beast that had to eat its fill, his grandmother used to say of the epidemics that sometimes swept the Highland towns. The deaths at Bethel Church were no mystery for him to resolve, they were just another sign that death was calling him.
He woke to a hand gripping his shoulder. Macaulay hovered over him, holding a wooden bowl of porridge under his nose. “Better when it’s warm, lad,” the big Scot offered.
The other prisoners sat on their pallets, scooping porridge from bowls with their fingers. Duncan dipped a finger into the lukewarm gruel and hesitantly touched it to his lips before ravenously scooping it into his mouth.
“I thought I was to have mounds of bacon and pie,” he said when he had finished.
“Don’t tempt the fates, lad. They do their trials and hangings in the morning. If they ain’t come for ye by now then ye have another day. But they’ll ne’er forget a prisoner with the twine on his arm. There’s no. .” Macaulay’s words faded as a man with a bloody face was shoved into the cell, followed an instant later by two more prisoners. Macaulay sighed. “There be the reason. The hounds have been busy chewing up others this morn.”
The three men all fell to the floor of the cavern, holding wounds that oozed blood. They all wore the kilts of the Highland regiments. The forearm of the youngest hung at an unnatural angle. He clutched it in obvious pain.
Duncan shot up and went to the young soldier’s side. When he reached for the arm the man pulled it away. “It’s broken,” Duncan said.
“Goddamned right it’s broken,” one of the other newcomers spat. “Didn’t it sound like a snapped spoke when that provost bastard pounded it with his halberd!”