Blood Ties

by C. C. Humphreys

‘Chief want “pugh-chee”’. He imitated the sound of a shot, a ricochet. ‘You say how.’ He gestured back to the pistols and the Chief raised them.

  ‘You want fire stick?’ Gianni said. The man nodded vigorously. ‘I show.’

  The interpreter spoke rapidly to his leader. On a command, he turned back and punched Gianni in the face. ‘Not show. Speak.’

  Gianni blew the fresh flowing blood from his nose, then just simply shook his head.

  The hand was drawn back again but a command held it. The Chief grunted something and immediately three warriors went to Gianni and cut him down from the branch. He dropped, his hands still behind him, taking the fall on the side of his face. Then the bonds of his hands were also cut. He lay on the ground, blood flowing in fire to all his limbs.

  ‘Show!’ One pistol was thrust at him, his own. He reached into the pocket of his breeches where, fortuitously, his cranking wrench had remained despite his treatment. He released the screw that held the cock down and lifted the firing pan.

  ‘That.’ He gestured to his bag that had been brought up from the beach and rifled. The packet of gun powder, spare lead balls and wadding had been thrown back inside. It was brought to him and despite the shaking of his hand he managed to get the ball and wadding shoved in and tamped down.

  An idea was forming. He knew he would have just one chance or he would soon be hanging again, upside down and burning, once he had demonstrated his skill. But for his idea to work, he needed both guns.

  Swallowing, he pointed at the other clutched to the Chief’s chest. He saw hesitation, a calculation in the narrow eyes. He simply pointed at his own pistol again and nodded.

  The weapon was handed over and, using his wrench again, he flipped the firing pan open, pretended to pass some powder between the two. Then casually, slowly, he loaded the second pistol, primed the firing pans, then used his wrench to tighten the serrated wheel against the spring on both. When the click of the wheel came to show each was ready, he took a deep breath.

  Thomas’s eyes had only left the loading of the guns to look at the silent warrior who was still torturing Angeleme, to draw the man’s attentions to himself. All he’d received was an open-handed slap. But when he heard the click of the second pistol his gaze swivelled back. He guessed what Gianni was going to do. He knew he would need a second’s distraction. So as Gianni stood, he screamed, ‘Jesus, Saviour!’ as loudly as he could.

  For the briefest of moments, all eyes went to him. All eyes save Gianni’s. They went to the man next to the dangling Jesuit, to the silent young warrior who was slowly rising, the stick he’d just withdrawn from Angeleme’s ear dripping with the boy’s blood.

  Gianni pulled the trigger. The serrated wheel span, striking sparks off the lump of iron pyrites. They fell into the pan. It flashed, there was a roar, and a lead ball flew from the barrel and opened a hole in the warrior’s face just below his left eye. Still silent, he span back against Thomas and slipped down him to the ground.

  Gianni didn’t see him fall because he was already turning. Stepping forward, placing the barrel of the second pistol in the forehead of the Chief, he said two words.

  ‘Fire stick.’

  For a moment, no one moved. For a moment, the silence in the small clearing was almost complete, the only sound the chafing of reed rope against tree branch as six men swayed. Gianni was surprised that the hand that held the pistol, that pressed it into the flesh of the man opposite, no longer shook. Then he remembered why. Killing for Jesus always calmed him.

  Movements began. Gianni heard arrows fitted onto bow strings, the creak of wood bent back. Opposite him, the brown eyes did not waver, just returned his stare evenly. They did not look alarmed, though they’d narrowed when the barrel first touched the forehead. Now they widened again and Gianni saw something like amusement in them. He said something. Gianni sensed that the ten men whose bows were poised to send ten arrows into his body hesitated for just a moment, the tension on their bowstrings lessening just a little on an outgoing breath.

  The Chief spoke again. The one who could speak French came and stood just behind his leader’s left shoulder.

  ‘Falling Day say – you sit now or you die.’

  Gianni’s glance never wavered. ‘Tell Falling Day – only God will choose when I am to die.’

  The man hesitated. ‘Falling Day does not know your God.’

  ‘He will, one day. Tell him.’

  Gianni saw the smile deepen as the words were spoken. A reply came.

  ‘Falling Day say – he chooses. He say one word and you will go to see your God.’

  Gianni increased the pressure on the gun barrel, pushing it slightly harder into the forehead opposite.

  ‘Then we will go and see Him together.’

  The brown eyes narrowed, the amusement gone. Words came and Gianni braced himself as he heard the bow strings drawn back once more. When they were released and arrows sang across the clearing he nearly squeezed the trigger in what he was sure would be his last action. Then he heard the thud of arrows striking home, a wail of agony, suddenly cut short.

  ‘No!’ screamed Thomas, twisting away from the horror before him.

  The boy, Angeleme, studded with barbs, quivered in his death spasm, spinning from bound ankles.

  ‘Merciful Jesus, Saviour, help and defend us this day.’

  Following Thomas’s lead, suddenly all the Frenchman were crying out, prayers and exhortations reaching for Gianni, telling him what he already knew, begging him to obey on the instant.

  Falling Day had merely glanced at the death throes of the young sailor. Now his gaze returned to Gianni, as level as before, as amused. He spoke again.

  ‘Chief say – he kill your men one and one and one. Give him fire stick.’

  Even Gianni felt it was hopeless now, but he couldn’t let it show. So he said, ‘And when he kills the last of my men, I will kill him, and I will die in the same moment.’

  The small warrior began to translate but his leader cut him off with a word. Then he just stared, as if measuring Gianni, while silence came again to the glade, broken only by the sound of arrows being fitted once more onto bowstrings and the creaking of rope as the body of a dead sailor span slowly, now this way, now that.

  Then Falling Day spoke and Gianni nearly closed his eyes to receive the arrows. He was glad he didn’t, however, because he saw the change in the man before him, knew what he’d just said, though he spoke no word of the man’s tongue.

  The bows lowered and Falling Day stepped away from Gianni’s gun, turning his back on the threat. Gianni kept the gun raised but did not pursue the contact. The Chief was speaking rapidly, while the translator nodded and struggled to keep up.

  ‘Falling Day says you are a warrior and have courage. He asks if you have taken many scalps of your enemies.’

  Gianni had heard the sailors’ stories on the long voyage across.

  ‘Many,’ he said, lowering the pistol, ‘though I am still a young dog, so Falling Day must have taken many more.’

  The Chief laughed when the words were spoken back. Then a question was asked. ‘Falling Day says – he is honoured to know your name, Young Dog. And he asks – will you take the scalp of the man you have just killed, though he was stupid and cruel, and there is not much honour in his death?’

  ‘If he was so, then I will not take his scalp.’

  ‘And will you give Falling Day the fire stick?’

  The Chief had turned back to him. Once more their eyes met.

  ‘I will. Many fire sticks. And I will show his warriors how to use them. If we can be friends.’

  In reply, Falling Day reached out his right hand. Gianni moved the pistol into his left and gripped the outstretched limb with his own right and shook the Chief’s. It was only when Falling Day let out an oath and the warriors around the glade began laughing that Gianni realized that the Chief had wanted the weapon. But since Falling Day followed his lead and held on, vigorously moving his arm up and down, Gi
anni kept shaking while, behind him, the laughing warriors set about slicing the bonds off the hanging men.

  ‘So how is it that you speak our tongue, Hair Burned Off?’

  Thomas was crouched before the hearth, coughing and trying to make out the features of the man opposite him. A woman – by the manner she tended to him and the way the Indian grunted amicably at her, Thomas assumed she was his wife – had just put more wood on the fire. It must have been damp, because smoke swiftly rose to obscure his vision even more. There seemed to be little outlet for the cloud, which joined that produced by the other half dozen fires in the long building. Around each one, women were also building up the fires and clearing away wooden bowls. While they ate, the men had been silent. Now conversations began at each one and laughter erupted at several, not least from the women who had gathered with the bowls at the hut end, where there was a porch, and some light and air. They had been busy, for Thomas had noticed that each visitor – and there had been several, come to stare at himself and Gianni – was formally greeted with a bowl of the same stew they’d partaken of, a thin gruel with lumps of fish mashed in it, bones and all. Some ate, most didn’t, though each visitor took at least a sip and returned the bowl with a bow and some words that could only be thanks. Thomas had seen less courtesy in the palaces of bishops.

  The man opposite had reached behind him under a sleeping platform and pulled out a small skin bag. From it, he drew a little clay cup with a spout attached. He began to fill it with something else from within the bag.

  ‘It was many, many days ago, before I got my name.’ He passed a hand over his shaven head and smiled. ‘I was with a party that went for fish far, far up where the Bear is prowling in the sky.’ He gestured with the stem of the cup toward the entrance of the hut, which faced onto the river. ‘There were men from your tribe, they came also to fish, with their big, big canoe and their nets this big.’ He stretched his arms wide. ‘I went into the big canoe and fished the season, showed them where the fish ran. They came again and again. Many seasons of fish. I went in the big canoe each time. Then they came no more. But I was young and my hair was not burned off. So I learned your tongue.’

  He had finished packing some of the contents of the bag into the clay bowl. Now he picked a taper from a pile beside him and, when it flamed, he put the spout to his mouth and held the taper over the bowl, sucking air in noisily. After a moment, he breathed out and a huge plume of smoke sailed across the fireplace. A pungent smell came on the breath. It reminded Gianni of autumn fires in Tuscany, but sweeter.

  Hair Burned Off smiled and held the bowl out toward Gianni. Thomas saw that the younger man was about to refuse it. But he had glanced around the hearths, seen other visitors receive the burning bowls and partake with the same formality that they’d sipped of the stew.

  ‘Careful,’ he said, in a low voice and in Italian. ‘You do not want to give offence. Remember – this is the man you tried to kidnap.’

  Gianni changed the warding gesture to an open-handed one. He put the spout to his lips, sucked a little, coughed sightly, and made to pass it onto Thomas. But his host was not content.

  ‘No, Young Dog,’ he said, using the name that Gianni had inadvertently given himself in the clearing, ‘you must do like this.’ And he demonstrated with another deep inhalation. Then, placing the stem of the bowl in the younger man’s mouth, he held another burning taper to it. This time Gianni sucked harder, the bowl glowed, and the next moment, a scorching ran from his throat down into his chest. Smoke exploded from him. He coughed and coughed.

  Hair Burned Off laughed delightedly, a laugh echoed down the long house by the other tribesmen and women who had been casually observing. Thomas struck a balance between a deep and a shallow inhalation and managed to cough a little less. But as the plume of smoke left him, his brain surged with a dizzying power. He felt suddenly nauseous and at the same time, strangely and equally exhilarated.

  Gianni seemed only to have felt the former effect. Even in the dense smoke of the fire, Thomas could see he had turned green.

  ‘What … what is that?’ the younger man spluttered, to more laughter from his host and more from the other occupants once Hair Burned Off had repeated it.

  ‘You have no words for it in your tongue. We call it Oyehgwaweh. Though the men who fished with me called it “tobacco” because that was the sound they made when they coughed.’ He laughed again. ‘It makes thoughts better and it clears the head.’

  Thomas was about to say that it had the opposite effect on him, even though he was starting to enjoy it, when Hair Burned Off suddenly stood. He was looking past his visitors to the entrance of the longhouse. Thomas turned. An older man, was beckoning their host over. He went, listened to what the elder said, then returned to his hearth. He reached once again under the platform and produced a necklace of shells which he placed over his head. Another pipe appeared then, though this one had a wooden stem the length of his arm and the clay bowl had a warrior’s face intricately carved into it. A woven rope ran its length and this the Indian slipped over his shoulder.

  ‘Come,’ he said, ‘we go to the Hodeoseh.’

  ‘What,’ rasped Gianni, his breath only just returning through his tortured throat, ‘is that?’

  ‘You are honoured,’ replied Hair Burned Off. ‘It is the – what is the word in your tongue? Chiefs’ meeting, or …’

  ‘Council?’

  ‘There,’ said the Indian. ‘You are to hear the decision of the council.’

  The longhouse of the council was double the length and width of the one they’d come from. Shields, adorned with feathers, embossed with beads, hung from the cedar-slat walls. Between them, masks of horned deer, wolf and bear shimmered in their red paint, seeming to move in the glow of the three fires set a dozen paces apart in the middle of the earthen floor. Down one side of the open space, facing the flames, at least twenty men were gathered. Some, the older ones, were weighed down with vast necklaces of shell and bead. Others, younger, had chests bared, the better to display elaborate tattoos. The elders had a variety of hair styles, some with their greying locks parted and split either side of the face, others with shanks hanging down only on one side of the head, the opposite side shaved clean. The younger were uniform, their heads hairless save for the single long topknot, a horse’s mane of it, wound and oiled and flowing down the back.

  They are the warriors, Gianni thought, his opinion confirmed when he saw Falling Day among them. The imprint of a pistol’s muzzle still stood out redly on the man’s forehead and Gianni shuddered slightly when he remembered how close he’d come to pulling the trigger. It was only here he realized how tall the warrior was, yet he was no taller than any of his fellows. What made them appear so big was the contrast with the men who faced them on the other side of the longhouse – the rest of the captured crew of the Breath of St Etienne.

  The crewmen looked at the newcomers in nervous, mute appeal. Though Thomas had led them often in prayer on the long voyage across the ocean, it was not their spiritual selves that needed succour now. It was Gianni Rombaud who had killed their Captain, Ferraud, when he wouldn’t proceed down the river, Gianni who led them to be captured. Yet he was also the one who had saved them all, apart from poor Angeleme, from a certain and horrific death. He was their only hope now. Even Fronchard, the old sailmaker, bowed his head as the young man took his place at the line’s end.

  Each of the natives had a long pipe like the one Hair Burned Off was carrying. As if at a signal, they raised them and drew a deep breath through them. As Gianni and Thomas took their places, thick plumes were exhaled toward the roof, the only movement, the only sound in the longhouse, save the shallow breathing of the captives.

  The eldest of the elders, whose thick grey hair was held off his face by a snakeskin band across his forehead, gestured to Hair Burned Off and said a few words. Their guide nodded and turned to them.

  ‘Ganeodiyo, who you would call, perhaps, Handsome Lake, is the Main Sachem of th
e Nundawaono, what you would call the Tribe of the Great Hill, our people. He says for me to speak to you and tell you the thoughts of the council. Then we will hear your thoughts.’

  When he finished he nodded again to the elder who immediately began speaking. Thomas was straightaway lulled by the cadences of the man’s speech. Even though he understood not a word of it, it had a song to it, a rising and a dying fall, a flow that indicated carefully thought out ideas, eloquently expressed. When, as a young Jesuit in training, he had studied the great Roman orators like Cicero and Cato, he had delighted in the beauty of the language when some of the more gifted of his tutors had spoken it. Yet he suddenly knew that few of them could have equalled the simple rhetorical power, the verbal grace, of the man now speaking.

  The translation was, of necessity, a poor and fractured imitation. But both he and Gianni learned how they had arrived at the final crisis of a war against an ancient enemy, who lived on the fertile lands on the far bank of the great river, the starboard side as they’d sailed down. How the Great Spirit had blessed his chosen people’s bone knives, war hammers and bows, and how they’d burned many of the enemies’ lodges to the ground. Village after village had been reduced to ashes until now the last of this enemy – he called them the Tahontaenrat, the Tribe of the White-Eared Deer – had been driven into their last, their biggest village beneath the cliffs. The summons had been sent out to the brothers of their confederacy – for the Tribe of the Great Hill was only one of five mighty tribes joined together – and the most skilful warriors were answering the call. Soon they would have enough numbers to attack, to crush the enemy warriors, to enslave those who did not die in the fight, to take their lands both under the cliffs and all along the river.

  It was the destiny of his people, sang the elder. Thomas heard the oratory rise to a peak, to a final drawn out note of triumph and, as it hung in the air like the smoke, all the other chiefs let out one cry of assent: ‘Haau!’

  Hair Burned Off’s narration stopped on this cry, then continued as the elder introduced someone else. Another man stepped forward, as tall and muscled as any there, his tattoos elaborate. One especially drew the eye – a snake reached from the back of the neck up the face, a tongue emerging from fangs to curl around his left eye.