Blood of the Oak: A Mystery by Eliot Pattison

Author:Eliot Pattison [Pattison, Eliot]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781619027596
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2016-02-29T19:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Frightened cries woke Duncan before the dawn bell. Men were rolling out of their pallets, gathering at the far end of the sleeping platform. As Duncan sat up from his pallet, two men darted to the necessary bench and vomited down the holes. He pushed his way through the crowd, then wished he hadn’t. Devon would not take his Sally to the fair. His lifeless eyes gazed up at the roof.

“Christ!” Sergeant Morris muttered. “I didn’t know he was so frail. The cursed overseers are responsible for this. Worked him too damned hard.” Duncan tried to push past the sergeant but Morris shouldered him aside. “I’m his sergeant, damned ye,” he snapped, then called for Virginia rangers to rip open the pallet for a shroud.

“McCallum will have a look,” Murdo Ross insisted.

Morris glared at the big Scot and seemed about to swing at Duncan when Tanaqua seized his arm. The Virginia sergeant backed away.

Duncan touched Devon’s neck. It was not yet cold. He had been dead no more than two or three hours. There were bruises around his nostrils. His unseeing eyes were stained red from burst vessels. The young ranger’s hands were in tight fists, the knuckles drained white. The company grew quiet as they watched Duncan lean over the dead man’s head. Dried blood clung to the corners of Devon’s mouth. He pulled back a lip. Two of his incisors were broken.

“He was—” Duncan began, but Tanaqua cut Duncan off, pulling him away.

“He was what?” Trent stood in the aisle, most of the other prisoners now behind him. Winters stood at the entry. “Lookee here, Mr. Winters,” Trent called to him, gesturing him forward. “The new Scot is playing with a dead man.”

“He is a doctor,” Ross said.

“Is he now? Must be a damned good one if he is going to help this sorry fool.” Trent gestured to Duncan. “Go ahead, McCallum, practice your skills on the corpse. Isn’t that what the doctors like most, a patient who can’t complain?” He gave a throaty laugh.

Duncan lifted the dead arms, already stiffening with rigor, then pushed on the chest. When air did not rush out of the lungs as expected he opened Devon’s jaw and extended two fingers down his throat. They emerged holding a strip of cloth. He had to pull it hard, for it had been rammed in with force, and finally turned to Trent with a dirty strip of sack cloth nearly as long as his forearm. “Torn from the curtain,” he said, then saw a stubby piece of wood that had rolled against the wall and pointed at it. “Pounded down his throat with that planting stick. His eyes have blood in them. He struggled mightily for air. The killer held his nostrils closed until he stopped breathing.”

Trent seemed barely able to control his rage. “Blow the horn for the superintendent!” he shouted to Winters.

A quarter hour later, their breakfast in the kettle untouched, the company stood in a line by the yard’s whipping posts as the superintendent paced before them.

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