Blood Ties

by C. C. Humphreys

  Hair Burned Off whispered swiftly, ‘This is Tawane. Black Snake in your tongue. He was once one of our tribe, then he was taken in war, yet spared by our enemy as we have spared you. He became one of them. Yet now he turns from his adopted brothers. He helps us know their plans. He hopes to be rewarded when we conquer.’

  Thomas heard the way that Hair Burned Off talked of the newcomer and noted a change in the elders.

  They use this man, this spy, he thought, but they find it distasteful. Dishonourable.

  Black Snake spoke and it seemed what he said was news also to his leaders. Hair Burned Off translated the gist of it. It seemed that the enemy were almost beaten, though some warriors still made a pretence of fierceness, a desire to resist. Too many people had arrived from the destroyed villages, were living on too little food. They were trapped and they were starving and their hope had nearly died. Then, a few days ago, something happened to revive that hope. A man arrived claiming to be one of the Hunters of the Sunrise who had gone with their great chief, Donnaconna. He had returned with Donnaconna’s Oki, a powerful stone and many, especially of his clan of the Bear, believed he had come in time to save them. With him was a women of the Pale Thieves. Black Snake and his wife thought she was a sorceress. Together, they must have powerful magic, Black Snake said, for they had given our enemy new hope.

  Black Snake stepped back and a silence descended, broken only by a renewed sucking upon the pipes. Then, Gianni stepped forward, Hair Burned Off following. Falling Day spoke again, briefly, saying that this man was the one known as Young Dog, who had many scalps on his lodge pole across the Great Water.

  Speaking through the translator was hard, but Gianni got his meaning across.

  Thomas heard in dismay how Gianni confirmed Anne as a witch, saw the horror that crossed even the calm of the elders’ faces opposite. It seemed that witches were as feared in the New World as in the Old. He then heard him say that she brought with her a powerful Oki, the bones of a dead sorceress, that had caused much death in their own land. It was very important this Oki was taken back across the water, together with the witch. That was why they had journeyed here. If the Tribe of the Great Hill could help them achieve this, he would be happy to help them in return. He had many fire sticks, one for every chief there and an even bigger fire stick on his canoe. He would teach them how to use these weapons.

  Black Snake spoke again. His words were only translated to Gianni and they made him smile. Then the elder who had first spoken so melifluously spoke again. His words were not translated, but drew agreement from all the other chiefs there. He seemed to summarize what had passed and, to another shout of assent, their part of the meeting ended. They were escorted outside and suddenly left, Hair Burned Off returning into the lodge.

  The crew immediately gathered around, all of them shouting questions at Gianni. He stood in their midst, answering them one at a time.

  ‘We have a pact. They will not harm us. The guns I brought on board I will trade. No, you can all trade anything else for furs or whatever you desire.’

  Another clamour of questions arose. ‘Enough,’ Gianni shouted. Other villagers had gathered to stare, men puffing on pipes, children daring each other to approach nearest the strangers then run away. ‘Let us return to the ship.’

  The crew let out a whoop of relief and ran from the village chased by a party of laughing children. Thomas’s knee was hurting so it took him a while to catch up with the younger man on the path.

  ‘What have you arranged, Gianni?’

  ‘You might not want to know.’

  ‘I heard you at least say you needed your sister alive.’

  ‘Yes. I think I have enough of my family’s blood on my hands, don’t you?’

  It was the first time he’d mentioned the death of his father in St Malo. Thomas looked as if he would say something to this, but Gianni carried on walking.

  Thomas struggled to keep up. ‘But what was this you said about the ship’s “fire stick”? You don’t mean a cannon?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Gianni smiled. ‘I thought we could help our new friends with the ship’s Falcon.’ To combat the boredom of the long voyage, Gianni had spent much time with the ship’s gunner, learning how to use the small bow-chaser.

  Thomas took the other man’s arm, halting him. ‘You would have these people kill each other more efficiently?’

  ‘I would have them achieve their objective swiftly so we can achieve ours.’

  ‘And if their objective is the slaughter of innocents?’

  Gianni’s voice was harsh. ‘There are no innocents where that six-fingered hand has touched. All are tainted by it. All! And these heathens can all die, so long as that witch’s legacy is returned.’

  ‘We have already been gone two months, Rombaud.’ Thomas tried to keep the anger from his voice, failed. ‘Queen Mary will long have passed her crisis. So the time for the relic’s use is passed also.’

  ‘Its time is never passed. It is a weapon for now, for ever. And my family’s guilt will never be purged until I lay that weapon at the feet of my Pope in Rome for him to use against his enemies, the enemies of Christ.’

  The virulence of the words, the hatred in Gianni’s eyes as he spoke them, halted any reply. The younger man jerked his arm away, held till that moment, and resumed his stride toward the beach.

  ‘God help these people,’ the Jesuit murmured, crossing himself. ‘God help us all.’

  THREE

  WHITE CEDAR

  Anne sat on the porch of the longhouse, shaded from a powerful sun, watching the boys at play. It was a game with javelins and hoops, the players divided into two teams along clan lines – the Wolf, Bear, Beaver and Turtle were all affiliated, cousins apparently, and lined up against the union of the Deer, Hawk, Porcupine and Snake. Yet, despite the detailed commentary by the Porcupine who sat in the space created by her legs, Anne didn’t fully grasp the complex rules. Do-ne, who had attached himself to her the first day she had come to the village and barely left her side in the seven days since, had given her to understand that it wasn’t her lack of language, which had improved immensely under his tutoring. No, it was probably because she was a woman, thus of a limited intelligence, and she shouldn’t concern herself with it too much.

  Another javelin flew, the hoop was struck, and Do-ne tried to leap upwards in joy. But his withered left leg would not support his enthusiasm. Anne had developed a sense for his sudden movements and she caught him under the arms and lifted him slightly till he was standing, without showing him that she had done so. He immediately jumped from the porch and hopped to join in the mob surrounding the victorious thrower. Though he had not played, his clan greeted him as if he had, the hugs and slaps equally fierce.

  A familiar cough came from behind her, words following on its tail.

  ‘I think you have found a husband, if you desire him, White Cedar.’ She used the name they had all given her, for ‘Anne-edda’ was what that tree was called. ‘I do not think any of mine looked at me with such love.’

  Anne smiled, as she usually did on hearing Gaka’s voice. They watched the boys’ celebrations transform into wrestling. The beaten team joined in and a new contest ensued that seemed to have little to do with clans. Rolling in the dust, Do-ne’s leg was not too heavy a disadvantage.

  ‘If this was a village in my own country,’ she said, ‘the boys would not be allowed to play like that, Aunt. Their parents would be out of the houses, beating them with sticks to make them stop.’

  There was a hiss of indrawn breath, another cough. ‘The more you tell of your land, White Cedar, the less I like it. How can they stop children being children? How can they insult another person with a blow?’

  ‘Children are not persons there. They are like …’ She searched for a Tahontaenrat word. ‘Possessions.’

  ‘Here they are like persons. Only smaller.’

  Women called from their porches – food was ready – so the tussles ended, the combatants drifting a
way to their longhouses. Do-ne’s mother appeared in a doorway and beckoned him. He quickly went to her, but not before saluting Anne, indicating with a gesture that he would return soon.

  They went inside their own shelter, where Gaka ladled out some stew into a wooden bowl. Reaching into the hearth she pinched some cold ashes there, crumbling them into the food. Anne did not refuse, but she wished, as always, that she’d thought to bring salt with her on this journey. Of all the tastes of her own country, she missed that the most.

  One of Gaka’s family, a great-niece, walked past them. ‘Would you like a bowl of soup, Blue Feather?’ Gaka asked.

  ‘No, thank you, Aunt. I have to … meet someone.’

  They both saw the girl blush. It seemed to flow right down her face and neck and on to her bare breasts. She was young, and they were still developing, but they coloured red and her nipples swelled. She was aware of it too and, raising an arm to conceal them, she hurried out.

  ‘Ah,’ said Gaka, ‘and I think I know who she is to meet. He is of the Wolf clan, one of the boys who came when their village was burned out. You know how interesting a new face can seem. Well, they will make a beautiful child, if that is what the Gods want. And it is a good day to be lying by some cool pool with a handsome new boy.’

  Now it was Anne who found herself blushing. ‘You don’t mean they … they are going to …’ The older woman was watching her with a smile. ‘But she seems too young.’

  Gaka looked puzzled. ‘She can bear a child so she is certainly not too young. And anyway, he will not be her first handsome boy. For she is very pretty, my Blue Feather. And he may not be her last.’

  Anne’s blush deepened. ‘This is something else that is very different in my country. There, when you take a husband, he is meant to be your first – and your last.’

  Gaka tipped back her head and laughed loudly, the laugh swiftly melded with a cough. Despite a cordial that Anne had made for her, the older women’s throat was still raw, the cough growing worse by the day.

  When she had recovered her breath she said, ‘But that is like saying, “I think I will like deer meat – one day! – so I will not taste bear, or moose first.” How can you know you want only one thing, for life, unless you have tried others?’

  ‘So when they are married, do they …’

  ‘When you take a husband, then it is different. You stay with him and him only. As does he with you.’ Gaka paused and a glint came into her eyes. ‘But at least you remember and, on nights when your husband does not please you, you can dream of bear meat, moose meat, beaver …’

  Humour and coughing shook her again, till the tears ran down her face.

  Usually Anne found she could not help but join in Gaka’s laughter but a memory held her, the look in a maiden’s eyes. Somewhere in this village, the man she’d followed from France was struggling to be born again. All his desire was to be part of his tribe once more, in every way. So when someone like Blue Feather, raised her eyes to him and moved them toward the forest …

  She felt herself flush again. But it wasn’t embarrassment this time, and it surprised her with the violence she suddenly felt, a fury directed at all the bare-breasted young women of the village.

  The older woman had been watching her. She put down her bowl and took Anne’s hands in her own.

  ‘I think our ways are not for you, White Cedar. You came to us too late. By my eighteenth summer, I already had three children.’

  ‘Good,’ Anne said, the bitterness clear in her voice. ‘So I am already too old for any man to look at me.’

  ‘That is not what I am saying.’ Gaka shook the younger woman’s hands gently. ‘I am saying you do not need to look for love. You have already made your choice.’

  Anne looked away. ‘And the man I want no longer wants me. If he ever did.’ She felt warm tears cut down her face as she spoke the words she’d only thought before.

  ‘I think your fear is making you read the signs wrongly. It is not that he does not want you. It is that he cannot want anyone – yet. Because he does not know who he is. He is like a bear cub whose mother has been killed in the hunt. He wanders in a huge, strange forest. He can see his reflection in the water so he knows he looks like a bear but he knows nothing of a bear’s ways. He cannot hunt like one. He cannot sleep all the winter long like one. And he cannot choose a mate like one.’

  Anne returned the pressure in the hands, gripping the older women’s urgently. ‘So what can I do, Gaka?’

  ‘Wait.’

  ‘But there is no time! Your whole nation is under threat. Tagay may be reborn one day only to go to war, maybe to die, the next. How will he find the time to know his heart?’

  Gaka whispered, ‘You think wisdom is only there when many moons have come and gone? I say it can come in one clear, bright moment. Tagay was born to a wise mother, part of the wisest clan. His uncle, Donnaconna was the Hunter of the Sunrise. And the sunrise takes just a moment to show us the world.’

  Anne tried to smile back. ‘I hope you are right.’

  ‘I am sure I am. I am sure Tagay loves as you love. The signs are clear in his face. But if he needs one moment of power to make him realize it … well, that is what wise old aunts are for!’

  Before Anne could reply, shouting could be heard, sounding like it came from the edge of the village.

  Gaka squeezed Anne’s hands again, held onto them as she rose. ‘Come,’ she continued, ‘shall we go and see what this noise is about?’

  It had been a week to sap the strength of even the strongest man. And those who tested him took as of no account that he had spent so long cramped on a ship, nor that his life before at the French court had been lazy and indulgent. They knew nothing of such matters and cut him off when he tried to speak of his former life. To them, it was very simple. He was a lost member of their clan. He needed to be found. And because of what threatened the whole tribe, he needed to be found swiftly.

  There was also the matter of his death. All those who had sailed away with the French Captain, Donnaconna and the other hostages, including Tagay’s mother, all the Hunters of the Sunrise, were dead. Though their bones had not been wrapped in beaver skins and buried in the pit outside the village, ceremonies had been conducted, they had been mourned. Fortunately, there were precedents for the situation; warriors feared captured and killed would sometimes escape, or a hunting party, trapped by flood or fire would have to survive a winter away and return with the spring. Each of the resurrected would have to go through a ritual of rebirth.

  Thus he’d spent the first night at his native village lying naked in a birch bark canoe filled with river water and lumps of deer fat. Though it was summer, the water chilled and shrivelled his skin, and he shook till he thought he’d split the frail craft apart. In the morning, every member of his clan, men, women and children, had gathered to watch him held under the water until he thought he was drowned, until the sides of the canoe were stoved in and he was spilled forth, flapping like a tickled trout, onto the river bank. Four men then threw him into the torrent, where the fat was cleansed from his skin. Then the same men – his cousin, Sada, among them – carried him, shaking uncontrollably, to a small hut made of saplings, covered in deer skins. From the intense cold he was plunged into its opposite, for large stones had been kept in the hearths all night and the heat hit his face like the slap of an open hand. More and more of the men crammed naked in behind him, till every space was filled with sweating flesh. Pipes were filled with sweet scented tobacco, clouds of it obscured even the man next to him. His shaking calmed, only for nausea to replace it, and he had to be taken outside to vomit. Gradually, though, the heat started to feel good, the tobacco making his mind conjure strange images in its smoky layers; images added to by the stories the men told, tales of talking beasts, flying men, the birth of a people, of warfare and hunting as well as the absurdity of being alive. Laughter rose on the swirls of smoke, visions shimmered in heat haze, and the day passed till, near sunset, the deer skin
s were stripped from the hut and the whole clan was revealed outside it. Tagay was picked up again and, along with all his companions from the hut, found himself once more in the river. When he emerged, he walked between two lines of his clan, while every man, woman and child touched him.

  The sleep he had that night was deep, full of joyous dreams. It was also short. Long before dawn, he was woken by a rough shaking of his shoulder. Sada stood above him and curtly ordered him to rise and follow. About forty others – the full fighting strength of the clan, it transpired – awaited him outside the longhouse. A breech cloth was all the dress he had against the chill, that and the hide moccasins that covered his feet. Sada led them from the village and up the barely visible pathway of the cliffs, across the gaming field and into the forests beyond. They walked swiftly, silently, without pause, till morning found them high on another bare plateau.

  ‘You are one of the Tahontaenrat, one of the Deer people again. But you are not yet a Bear.’ Handing him a bow, a quiver of arrows and a small pouch with grains in it, the clan began his education.

  For two days and nights, they treated him harshly. There was no time, it was said, to do anything else but test him to his limits. He was never struck, for Sada said that would be an insult to him as a person. But any failure or shortcoming would be greeted with scorn, insult piled on insult as to his skills, his manhood and his origins among the lesser, scavenging animals. And afterwards, Tagay still had to perform again whatever task he’d failed.

  Each night he would sit in solitude, sometimes dozing, often awake, staring at the sky, dwarfed by its enormity, by the challenges that faced him. Sometimes, he’d weep. And often, when he did, he’d see a vision of Anne reaching out to comfort him. He wanted her touch, her soothing caress. Later though, when the tears had dried, he’d resent her part in his weakness.