Late fall, he said, and the weather was bad. It had been raining for days, and the footing was uncertain, slippery and boggy by turns. The wind was high, and the storm surge pounded the beaches; they could hear it, even in the secluded spot where the portal lay.
“We were all scared—maybe all but Rob—but it was way exciting, man,” he said, beginning to show a glimmer of enthusiasm. “The trees were just about layin’ down flat, and the sky, it was green. The wind was so bad, you could taste salt, all the time, because little bits of ocean were flying through the air, mixed with the rain. We were, like, soaked through to our choners.”
“Your what?” Ian said, frowning.
“Underpants—you know, drawers. Smallclothes,” Brianna said, flapping an impatient hand. “Go on.”
Once arrived at the place, Raymond had checked them all, to see that they carried the few necessities they might need—tinderboxes, tobacco, a little money of the time—and then given each one a wampum necklet, and a small leather pouch, which he said was an amulet of ceremonial herbs.
“Oh, you know about that,” he said, seeing the expression on my face. “What kind did you use?”
“I didn’t,” I said, not wanting him to wander from his story. “Go on. How did you plan to hit the right time?”
“Oh. Well.” He sighed, hunching on his stool. “We didn’t. Ray said it would be just about two hundred years, give or take a couple. It wasn’t like we could steer—that’s what I was hoping you guys would know. How to get to a specific time. ’Cuz, boy, I’d sure like to go back and get there before I got messed up with Ray and them.”
They had, at Raymond’s direction, walked a pattern among the stones, chanting words. Donner had no idea what the words meant, nor even what the language was. At the conclusion of the pattern, though, they had walked single file toward the stone with African markings, passing carefully to the left of it.
“And, like—pow!” He smacked a fist into the palm of his other hand. “First guy in line—he’s gone, man! We were just freaked out. I mean, that’s what was s’posed to happen, but . . . gone,” he repeated, shaking his head. “Just . . . gone.”
Agog at this evidence of effectiveness, they had repeated the pattern and the chant, and at each repetition, the first man to pass the stone had vanished. Donner had been the fourth.
“Oh, God,” he said, going pale at the memory. “Oh, God, I never felt anything like that before and I hope I never do again.”
“The amulet—the pouch you had,” Brianna said, ignoring his pallor. Her own face was intense, blazing with interest. “What happened to that?”
“I dunno. I maybe dropped it, maybe it went someplace else. I passed out, and when I came to, it wasn’t with me.” The day was warm and close, but he began to shiver. “Jojo. He was with me. Only he was dead.”
That statement struck me like a knife blow, just under the ribs. Geillis Duncan’s notebooks had held lists of people found near stone circles—some alive, some dead. I hadn’t needed anything to tell me that the journey through the stones was a perilous passage—but this reminder made me feel weak in the knees, and I sat down on Jocasta’s tufted ottoman.
“The others,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Did they . . .”
He shook his head. He was still clammy and shivering, but sweat glazed his face; he looked very unwell.
“Never saw ’em again,” he said.
He didn’t know what had killed Jojo; didn’t pause to look, though he had a vague notion that there might have been burn marks on his shirt. Finding his friend dead, and none of the others nearby, he had stumbled off in a panic through scrub forest and salt marsh, collapsing after several hours of wandering, lying in the sand dunes among stiff grass all night. He had starved for three days, found and eaten a nest of turtle eggs, eventually made his way to the mainland on a stolen canoe, and thereafter had drifted haplessly, working here and there at menial jobs, seeking refuge in drink when he could afford it, falling into company with Hodgepile and his gang a year or so past.
The wampum necklets, he said, were to allow the conspirators to identify each other should they meet at some point—but he had never seen anybody else wearing one.
Brianna wasn’t paying attention to this rambling part of the story, though; she had jumped ahead.
“Do you think Otter-Tooth—Springer—screwed up your group by deliberately trying to go to a different time?”
He looked at her, mouth hanging open a little.
“I never thoughta that. He went first. He went first,” he repeated, in a wondering sort of way.
Brianna began to ask another question, but was interrupted by the sound of voices in the hall, coming toward the morning room. Donner was on his feet in an instant, eyes wide with alarm.
“Crap,” he said. “It’s him. You gotta help me!”
Before I could inquire exactly why he thought so, or who “him” was, the austere form of Ulysses appeared in the doorway.
“You,” he said to the cowering Donner, in awful tones. “Did I not tell you to begone, sirrah? How dare you to enter Mrs. Innes’s house and pester her relations?”
He stepped aside, then, with a nod to whomever stood beside him, and a small, round, cross-looking gentleman in a rumpled suit peered in.
“That’s him,” he said, pointing an accusatory finger. “That’s the blackguard what stole my purse at Jacobs’s ordinary this morning! Took it right out my pocket whilst I was eatin’ ham for breakfast!”
“It wasn’t me!” Donner made a poor attempt at a show of outrage, but guilt was written all over his face, and when Ulysses seized him by the scruff of the neck and unceremoniously rummaged his clothing, the purse was discovered, to the outspoken gratification of the owner.
“Thief!” he cried, shaking his fist. “I been a-following of you all the morning. Damn’ tick-bellied, louse-ridden, dog-eatin’ savage—oh, I do beg pardon, ladies,” he added, bowing to me and Brianna as an afterthought before resuming his denunciation of Donner.
Brianna glanced at me, eyebrows raised, but I shrugged. There was no way of preserving Donner from the righteous wrath of his victim, even had I really wanted to. At the gentleman’s behest, Ulysses summoned a pair of grooms and a set of manacles—the sight of which made Brianna grow somewhat pale—and Donner was marched off, protesting that he hadn’t done it, he’d been framed, wasn’t him, he was a friend of the ladies, really, man, ask ’em! . . . to be conveyed to the gaol in Cross Creek.
There was a deep silence in the wake of his removal. At last, Ian shook his head as though trying to rid himself of flies, and putting down the palette knife at last, picked up the sketching block, where Brianna had made Donner try to draw the pattern he said the men had walked. A hopeless scrawl of circles and squiggles, it looked like one of Jemmy’s drawings.
“What kind of name is Weddigo?” Ian asked, putting it down.
Brianna had been clutching her pencil so tightly that her knuckles were white. She unfolded her hand and put it down, and I saw that her hands were shaking slightly.
“Wendigo,” she said. “It’s an Ojibway cannibal spirit that lives in the wood. It howls in storms and eats people.”
Ian gave her a long look.
“Nice fellow,” he said.
“Wasn’t he, just.” I felt more than a little shaken myself. Apart from the shock of Donner’s appearance and revelations, and then his arrest, small jolts of memory—vivid images of my first meeting with him—kept shooting uncontrollably through my mind, despite my efforts to shut them out. I could taste blood in my mouth, and the stink of unwashed men drowned the scent of flowers from the terrace.
“I suppose it’s what one would call a nom de guerre,” I said, with an attempt at nonchalance. “He can’t have been christened that, surely.”
“Are you all right, Mama?” Bree was frowning at me. “Shall I get something? A glass of water?”
“Whisky,” Ian and I said in unison, and I laughed, despite the shakiness. By the time it arrived, I was in command of myself again.
“What do you think will happen to him, Ulysses?” I asked, as he held the tray for me. The butler’s stolidly handsome face showed nothing beyond a mild distaste for the recent visitor; I saw him frown at the scumbled bits of dirt that Donner’s shoes had left on the parquet floor.
“I suppose they will hang him,” he said. “Mr. Townsend—that was the gentleman’s name—had ten pound in the purse he stole.” More than enough to merit hanging. The eighteenth century took a dim view of thievery; as little as a pound could incur a capital sentence.
“Good,” said Ian, with obvious approval.
I felt a small lurch of the stomach. I disliked Donner, distrusted him, and to be honest, really didn’t feel that his death would be a great loss to humanity, by and large. But he was a fellow traveler; did that impose any obligation on our part to help him? More importantly, perhaps—did he have any more information that he hadn’t told us yet?
“Mr. Townsend has gone to Campbelton,” the butler added, offering the tray to Ian. “To ask Mr. Farquard to attend to the case promptly, as he is bound for Halifax, and wishes to give his witness at once.” Farquard Campbell was a justice of the peace—and likely the only thing approaching a judge within the county, since the Circuit Court had ceased to operate.
“They won’t hang him before tomorrow, though, I don’t suppose,” Brianna said. She didn’t normally drink whisky, but had taken a glass now; the encounter had shaken her, too. I saw she had turned the ring around upon her finger, rubbing the big ruby absentmindedly with her thumb.
“No,” said Ian, looking at her suspiciously. “Ye dinna mean to—” He glanced at me. “No!” he said in horror at the indecision he saw on my face. “Yon fellow’s a thief and a blackguard, and if ye didna see him burning and killing wi’ your own eyes, Auntie, ye ken well enough he did it. For God’s sake, let them hang him and have done!”
“Well . . .” I said, wavering. The sound of footsteps and voices in the hall saved me answering. Jamie and Duncan had been in Cross Creek; now they were back. I felt an overwhelming flood of relief at sight of Jamie, who loomed up in the doorway, sunburned and ruddy, dusty from riding.
“Hang who?” he inquired cheerfully.
JAMIE’S OPINION WAS the same as Ian’s; let them hang Donner, and good riddance. He was reluctantly persuaded that either Brianna or I must talk to the man at least once more, though, to be sure there was nothing further he could tell us.
“I’ll speak to the gaoler,” he said without enthusiasm. “Mind, though”—he pointed a monitory finger at me—“neither of ye is to go anywhere near the man, save Ian or I am with ye.”
“What do you think he’d do?” Brianna was ruffled, annoyed at his tone. “He’s about half my size, for heaven’s sake!”