The captain glowered at Ethan. Finally he shook his head in disgust. “Go,” the captain told his corporal, his voice flat. “See who he’s talking about.”
The young officer joined Ethan by the dead soldier and looked down at the man. “That’s Jonathan Sharpe,” he said. “He was from York originally, but he fought over here against the French, and remained in Halifax with the regiment.” The young man turned to Ethan. “Why? Is there something wrong?”
“No,” Ethan said. “I thought I’d seen him before. Sorry to have troubled you.” The lie came easily to him, though once again he caught the doctor eyeing him. He wondered if Senhouse or even Geoffrey had revealed to Rickman that Ethan was a speller.
Looking past the doctor, Ethan saw that Uncle Reg hadn’t vanished again, as he thought the ghost might. Rather, he had positioned himself by the dead soldiers whom Preston and his aide had yet to identify. As before, the ghost’s glowing eyes were locked on Ethan’s. Deliberately, he turned to gaze down upon one of the men and then looked up at Ethan again.
“Can I go back to the captain, sir?” the corporal asked.
Ethan barely heard him. “Another one?” he whispered.
Uncle Reg nodded.
“I’m sorry?” the corporal asked.
With a sharp shake of his head, Ethan looked away from the ghost.
“Aye, of course,” Ethan told the man. “I’m sorry to have pulled you away from what you were doing.”
The man edged away from him and rejoined Preston. Ethan followed him, forcing himself not to hurry, though his pulse was racing. Could there have been two conjurers among these men? The odds against such a thing were staggering. There were maybe fifteen conjurers among all of Boston’s fifteen thousand residents, and yet it seemed that there had been two among these seventy-two soldiers.
He slipped past Rickman, Preston, and the corporal, walking until he reached Uncle Reg and the second conjurer the ghost had found. Ethan leaned back against the wall of the vault, and waited for the other men to reach this man.
You’re certain? he asked Reg.
The ghost nodded.
Are there more, or just these two?
Reg held up two glowing fingers.
And you’re really sure about both of them?
This time Reg scowled at him.
Right. Sorry.
Ethan watched Preston and his corporal. Seeing that they remained engrossed in what they were doing, Ethan turned his attention to the man Reg had indicated. He appeared to be somewhat older than the other soldiers; there were lines around his mouth and eyes, and his brown hair was flecked with silver. But he had a boyish face, with round cheeks and a smooth brow. Ethan guessed that he would have had a pleasant smile.
Before long, Rickman and the others reached the man.
“Do you know this one, Corporal?” Preston asked.
“Not well, sir, no. I think his last name might be Osborne.” The young man looked back at the doctor. “Is there an Osborne on the manifest?”
Rickman searched the list. “Here he is. Caleb Osborne.”
The corporal’s expression brightened. “That’s it! Caleb. Another who came to fight the French and stayed in these parts.”
Ethan caught the ghost’s eye and held Reg’s gaze. Caleb Osborne and Jonathan Sharpe. He would learn what he could of them, as well as the man who turned out to be missing.
They reached the last of the dead a short time later, and once the corporal had identified this last man, Rickman thumbed through the pages of the manifest.
“That’s most of them,” he said, sounding weary. “But there are still nine who neither of you knew.” He turned to Ethan. “I’m afraid we won’t have a name for you tonight.”
“The officers who spent the most time with these men died with them,” Preston said. “They would have been able to identify all of them, obviously. But I’ll go back to my ship. Maybe one of my sergeants will be able to help with these last few.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Ethan said.
“You didn’t answer me before,” Preston said. “At least not really. What is it you think the missing man did?”
Ethan shrugged, making an effort not to look at Uncle Reg. “I don’t know. He might simply have deserted. Or he might have had something to do with the deaths of these others.”
Preston turned to the doctor. “And how exactly did they die?”
Rickman was watching Ethan. “We don’t know that, either.”
“You must have some idea, Doctor. Nearly a hundred men are dead-the crew in addition to these regulars. Was it an illness of some kind? Could it be yellow fever so far north this time of year? Was it influenza? It couldn’t have been smallpox-not from the looks of these men.”
At last Rickman turned to face the captain. “We’re still trying to determine what it was. There are several possibilities, but we don’t know yet.”
Preston frowned. “Well, you should inform us when you do.”
“Of course, Captain.”
The captain glanced once more at Ethan and left the vault. The corporal hurried after him.
Neither Ethan nor the doctor said a word until the sound of the officers’ footsteps on the stone stairway had receded. Ethan heard no more rocket explosions, but he couldn’t say for certain when they had ceased. Uncle Reg still lurked beside him in the corridor, and it occurred to Ethan that because he had summoned the ghost, Reg couldn’t leave until he dismissed him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to in front of Rickman.
“What do you think I should tell the captain, Mister Kaille?” the doctor asked after some time, looking over the corpses arrayed in front of them. “Shall I make up some tale about yellow fever or pleurisy?”
“I’m not a doctor,” Ethan said, stepping past him and starting to make his way toward the stairway.
“I didn’t say you were. But I knew a man once-you remind me of him.”
Ethan halted, took a breath, turned.
“He was a wheelwright in Farnborough,” Rickman went on. “He kept to himself, but he was well known in the city nevertheless. Strange things always seemed to happen when he was around. Inexplicable things. One winter he took ill, and I was called in to look at him. He had a tumor-it should have killed him. And yet by spring he was well again, and he lived to be an ill-tempered old man.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
“There were whispers, rumors,” the doctor said, walking toward Ethan. “People said that he cured himself with witchcraft, that in fact he had drawn upon the dark arts throughout his life. He never did anything too grand. I don’t believe he wanted that kind of attention. But I do know that nothing short of witchery could have saved his life.”
Ethan could no longer look Rickman in the eye. “Again, I have to ask you: What does this-?”
“I believe these men were killed by some sort of devilry,” Rickman said. He stopped a few paces short of where Ethan stood. “What’s more, I believe you know this already, and that you were asked to inquire into their deaths for that very reason.”
“I see,” Ethan said. “So you also suspect that I’m a conjurer myself.”
“Yes, I do.”
Ethan forced a thin smile. He was too weary to deny it, and he didn’t think that Rickman would have believed him anyway. “Very good, Doctor. I hope you’ll keep in mind that people like me are still hanged as witches. I’d prefer that others didn’t know.”
Rickman blinked once, his mouth open. For all the man’s bluster and confidence, he seemed to have been quite unprepared for Ethan’s admission.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course. I mean, no, I won’t tell anyone. I just-” He regarded Ethan with wonder, his face like that of a child watching rockets go off for the first time. “You really are a witch?”
Maybe Ethan should have been amused, but having the truth wrung out of him for the second time this day had put him in a sour mood. “We prefer to be called conjurers or spellers,” he said, his voice flat. “But yes, I am.”
“Good Lord,” the doctor said, breathless. “I have so many questions.”