Then she bent her head in prayer, asking God to make this all a nightmare, begging God to give her back her child, her son. She prayed in a half-spoken mutter.
“Your babe is dead, woman,” the wizard said. “Now, stand and walk, or you will join him.”
Mehitabel ignored him, and prayed, “Oh, God, I beseech thee, give my Roger back.”
Annoyed, the wizard said, “Your babe is dead, woman! Look, if you doubt me!”
He turned his head and whispered something to the crow on his shoulder, and with a flutter of black wings the bird arose, and landed on the branch a few inches from Roger’s remains, where it turned its head from side to side.
Mehitabel looked up, and anger flooded through her. She called aloud, “God, do not let them do any more!”
“Your babe is dead,” the wizard repeated, “and if you would not see the eyes plucked from his head, then stand and come!”
“God will not allow it,” Mehitabel shouted, with a sudden feeling of absolute certainty, a strange sensation of knowledge and power that she had never experienced before. “God cannot be so cruel!”
The wizard shrugged, and waved to the crow; the bird stepped forward…
And a hawk plunged from the sky, and swept the crow from the tree.
Stunned, all present watched as the hawk carried its prey to a clear patch of ground, where it snapped the crow’s neck and began to feast.
Mehitabel felt the thing within her, the sensation of power, subside. Even beneath the shock and grief of Roger’s death, however, some tiny part of her watched with satisfaction as the hawk ate.
The wizard was particularly upset by the crow’s death. He gave up any further argument with Mehitabel; instead he snapped an order to the other men, and began walking northward.
The warriors dragged the two women; after a few steps Mary was willing to walk under her own power, but Mehitabel continued to resist, and at last was bound, gagged, and slung over a man’s shoulder, still struggling.
They travelled all that day, Mary walking and Mehitabel carried, then made camp for the night, and continued on in the morning; their course was north by east. Still, Mehitabel had to be carried.
Late in the afternoon of the second day they arrived at their destination, an Indian village comprised of a single long structure surrounded by campfires, drying racks, woodpiles, and the like. There they were dragged inside and brought before two men seated on red blankets; both women were forced to kneel.
One of the men was another Indian, older than the warriors and wearing a more ornate headdress; the other was a white man—at least technically. He was almost as sun-browned as the Indians, but his hair was brown and wavy, and he wore a decent broadcloth coat and breeches buckled at the knee, a clump of lace at his throat and more lace at his cuffs.
The Indian spoke first, in clear but slow English.
“I am Madockawando, chief of the Penobscot,” he said. “I have had you brought here as a warning to all English, and as a favor to my brother.” He gestured at the white man. Then he spoke to the women’s captors in their own tongue.
The warriors replied briefly, one by one; the wizard held forth for some time.
Mehitabel, however, paid little attention; she was staring at the white man in his foppish clothes.
The chief had said she had been brought here as a favor to this man; did that mean that it was he who had ordered her son’s death?
“Did you tell them to kill my baby?” she said, while the wizard was still speaking.
One of the warriors clouted her on the back of the head, sending her sprawling at the edge of the red blanket.
“Women do not speak unless spoken to,” Madockawando told her. “Most certainly, they do not interrupt the speaking of men.”
Mehitabel glared up at him, but held her tongue.
Mary glanced back and forth between Madockawando and the white man, but said nothing.
“Tell them, brother,” Madockawando said.
The white man nodded.
“Ladies,” he said, “I am the Baron de Sainte Castine, in the service of His Most Christian Majesty, Louis XIV.” He spoke with a definite French accent—in fact, the supposed savage, Madockawando, pronounced English more correctly. “I regret to inform you that due to the folly of your parliament, our two nations are at war. Your foolish lords have deposed their rightful king, James II, and placed a Dutch usurper on the throne; naturally, my lord Louis wishes to see his fellow sovereign restored to his proper position, and to that purpose has declared this war.”
“King James was a bloody papist!” Mary protested.
“Exactly,” Ste. Castine agreed. “A good Catholic, as are all Frenchmen.”
“What does that have to do with us?” Mary asked.
“Ah, well, when my friend Madockawando calls me ‘brother,’ he is not speaking figuratively. I am married to his sister. Thus, when I am at war with the English, so must he be, by the blood bond between us. When word of the war reached us, he acted immediately to strike against the English—and what better way to drive your men from this land than to take you ladies from them, to be returned only when they depart forever from America?”
“And your King Louis makes war against infants?” Mehitabel demanded. “Was it he who ordered my baby be slain?”
Ste. Castine glanced sideways at Madockawando, who sat impassively listening.
“I fear that is the custom among my brother’s people,” Ste. Castine said. “Babies are too much trouble on the trail, and can grow up to be warriors.”
“My medicine man tells me you are a witch,” Madockawando interjected. “You could not save your child?”
“I am…” Mehitabel stopped in mid-sentence and stared at him.
“You called down a hawk to slay Pessatawbo’s crow brother, yet you let your child die.”
“I…it was so fast,” Mehitabel said.
She was trying to think. Since little Roger had died she had been so lost in grief that thought had seemed impossible, but now it was necessary—here before her were the men who would control her destiny, the men who had sent their warriors to kill Roger and drive her people from their home. She wanted them dead, wanted them in Hell—but she was just one woman, surrounded by enemies. If she flung herself on Madockawando she would die, to no purpose, with Roger unavenged.
She was too caught up in the need for revenge to think about the accusation of witchcraft. Of course she was no witch.
But she remembered the odd feeling of power she had felt when the hawk dove.
That was nothing like witchcraft, though; that had surely been righteous anger and faith in God.
“Ah,” Madockawando said. “You had no time for your magic.”
Mehitabel said nothing.
“Listen to me, woman,” the chieftain said. “A magic that is stronger than Pessatawbo’s, that can slay his creatures—this is something we want. Tell me how you called the hawk.”
Mehitabel decided to tell the truth—perhaps God would send more aid, as he had sent the hawk.
“I am no witch,” she said. “I prayed, and God sent the hawk.”
Madockawando sat back, obviously dissatisfied with this answer.
“I have seen and heard many white men pray,” he said. “I have never seen their prayers answered this way. I say there is magic here, not just prayer.”
Mehitabel said nothing.
“We will keep you here until you speak, then. When you tell Pessatawbo how you called the hawk, perhaps we will release you.” He gestured in dismissal, and said something in the Penobscot tongue.
Mary and Mehitabel were hauled away, separately.
Mehitabel did not see where Mary was taken, but she herself was dragged out of the longhouse to a hut built of treebark over a wooden frame, a hut no more than ten feet across and hardly high enough
for a man to stand upright in.
The two warriors threw her inside and then departed, dropping the blanket back across the entrance and leaving her in semi-darkness. She lay there, still bound hand and foot, and waited.
In time the Indian wizard, Pessatawbo, came.
“This is my home,” he told her, “and you will remain here until you tell me how you called the hawk.”
Mehitabel stared up at him with hatred, and said nothing.
He kept her bound for all that first evening and night. On the second day he cut the thongs that bound her ankles, so that she could walk, but he tied one end of a strong rope to her wrists, the other end to a sturdy post, staking her out as if she were an animal. This, she realized, was so she would not be forced to further befoul the wizard’s hut.
As if anything could further despoil the home of such a creature!
That evening the wizard noticed that her lips were dry and her breathing shallow, and gave her water, holding the dipper for her.
She drank. If she were to die, who would avenge Roger’s murder? And suicide was a sin.
She said nothing during any of this. She endured it all in silence, watching with implacable hatred the man who had ordered her son’s death.
On the fourth day, the wizard gave her the first food she had eaten since the morning of her capture—the morning her baby had died.
The wizard did not watch her constantly; rather, he went about his ordinary business, and when he had a free moment he would find her and demand that she tell him how she had brought the hawk down from the sky.
“A charm? A word?” he demanded. “A token of power?”
She said nothing.
She endured.
When she was alone, she prayed—for her freedom, for Pessatawbo’s destruction, for the safety of her countrymen and the defeat of the French and the Penobscot.
She often dreamed at night that Roger was still alive and well, and woke from her dreams smiling—only to weep when she realized they were only dreams, and not reality. She kept her sobs as quiet as she could, and thought she had hid them from Pessatawbo.
She did not see Mary again; she had no way of knowing whether the other woman was alive or dead.
She often wondered what Thomas was doing, and the other men of Berwick—did they know she was still alive, and a captive? Would they come to her rescue?
Or had the Indians returned to Berwick and slaughtered everyone there, all her family, her friends?
She had no way of knowing.
On the evening of the tenth day, Pessatawbo seated himself facing her.
“Englishwoman,” he said, “I am tired of you. I have not harmed you because I do not know the limits of your witchcraft, but I grow tired of waiting. If you tell me what I want to know, I will let you go free, I will let you return to your people. If you do not tell me, I will beat you until you do tell me.”
Mehitabel looked him in the eye. “If you strike me, God will strike you dead,” she said, and as she said it she felt a certainty that she was speaking the literal truth.
Pessatawbo saw her certainty. He hesitated, then got to his feet and walked away.
He did not beat her, then or ever.
Mehitabel wondered how she could feel so utterly certain of what God would do; was that not blasphemy? Yet she was certain. It was almost as if there were some power within her, some power she had never before known.
The days passed, and then the weeks, and then months. Mehitabel wore through or cut any number of thongs and ropes, and several times fled the Indian camp, but each time she was tracked down, overtaken, and recaptured.
When the winter was well advanced she abandoned any thought of escaping before spring; the snow would make it impossible to hide her tracks. She concentrated on simply staying alive and not losing any fingers to frostbite.
On occasion Pessatawbo, in an attempt to pry her secret from her, would keep her tied outside in the cold—but he always relented and brought her in by the fire before any permanent damage was done.
At times, during this torture, she wished she really did know some magical secret, so that she could have the pleasure of knowing that she really was withholding something from her captors.
She even explained once to Madockawando, when he happened to stop by, that any power she had was that of a good Christian, whom God favored, but these savages were so sunk in their heathenism that Pessatawbo merely mocked her for spouting such arrant foolishness.
“Power comes from nature around us, or from spirits within ourselves,” he said, “not from some ghost in the sky.”
The snow was melting, the air warming, and Mehitabel was beginning to contemplate escape, one evening when Pessatawbo squatted in front of her.
“You still have not told me how you called the hawk,” he said.
“I have nothing to tell you,” Mehitabel snapped in reply.
“Then I will tell you something. I think you have only a little power, Englishwoman. I think you know a trick or two, but you have not gotten any great power. Perhaps all you know is how to call a hawk; perhaps you learned this to keep the crows from your fields. Still, I would have uses for this knowledge. I want it. And if you do not give it to me, I will not hurt you, as I once threatened—I have seen during the winter that you do not fear pain or even death. You said your god would strike me dead if I harmed you; I do not believe this, but I think perhaps your own spirit might strike at me. So I will not harm you.” He smiled coldly. “Instead, Madockawando and I will lead our warriors to your home camp, and slay everyone there. Madockawando’s French brother asks us to do this, and we will. But if you teach me your trick, Englishwoman, I will spare your man—or whichever one man you choose, if you would have another woman’s instead of your own. Tell us how you called the hawk, and tell us how we may know which man you want spared—or else all will die.”
“You think I will betray all my people for Thomas’ life?”
Pessatawbo didn’t answer that directly; instead he said, “We go to the English town at sunrise.”
Mehitabel did not speak again for the brief remainder that day, but that night, as she lay wrapped in the blanket Pessatawbo allowed her, she prayed endlessly that God would preserve Berwick, and most especially her beloved Thomas.
She dozed off at last, and dreamt that she was back home, standing by Thomas as he lay alone in their bed. She called to him, trying to warn him that the Indians were coming—and at last he rolled over and looked up at her. She gave her warning again, and he sprang from the bed, reaching for his gun.
Then the dream was over, and it was morning.
She called out to Pessatawbo, “God will protect them!”
He ignored her.
She was left under the guard of the Indian women, none of whom spoke any English. They fed her, but otherwise ignored her.
Four days later the warriors returned—and Mehitabel took a savage, sinful joy in seeing that there were fewer of them, and that some of those were bandaged, or limping.
The men held a meeting in the longhouse, but afterward Pessatawbo returned to his hut and confronted Mehitabel.
“Did you send a bird, perhaps, to warn your people?” he asked.
“God warned them,” Mehitabel replied, smiling at the memory of the dream God had sent her.
“Something did,” Pessatawbo said bitterly. “We slew but two, and they struck down five of our warriors, my own sister’s son among them.” He added fiercely, “I hope your man was one of the two.”
“God protects his own, and always shall,” Mehitabel retorted.
“The French say this God of yours is on their side, as well.”
“The French are wrong.”
“I still do not believe in this god of yours. I say you warned the English.”
“And if I did, I am proud of it and will do it aga
in,” Mehitabel said.
Pessatawbo had no reply to that—but no further attacks were made on Berwick. Elsewhere, the various tribes allied with the French continued their raids, but Berwick was not troubled again.
Pessatawbo seemed once more determined to wait Mehitabel out; after all, she was merely a woman, and would surely tire of her captivity in time.
The remainder of 1690 passed. Mehitabel grew accustomed to her harsh, limited existence, and retained her faith that in time, God would liberate her.
That summer Pessatawbo captured a crow, and began training it to act as his familiar—his “spirit brother,” as the Indians called them. Mehitabel watched silently. One day, as she sat before Pessatawbo’s hut and he fed the crow tidbits, she looked up and saw a hawk circling above.
She smiled with the memory of how Pessatawbo’s previous familiar had died, and hoped the miracle would be repeated—but the hawk flew away.
Mehitabel’s smile vanished, and anger grew within her. She looked at the crow.
The bird looked back at her, then suddenly took off and fluttered into the trees.
Pessatawbo looked up, startled, and gave the whistle that should have brought the bird back to him.
The bird did not come; instead it flew deeper into the surrounding forest.
Pessatawbo waited, calling, whistling, and shaking his little talismans of bone and feather, but the crow did not return, then or ever.
At last the wizard gave up. He glowered angrily at Mehitabel, but said nothing to her.
He caught no more crows, trained no more “spirit brothers.”
And as the weather turned cold again and Mehitabel still would not yield, Pessatawbo grew increasingly more frustrated.
Early in 1691, he told her, “I will attack the English in ways your warnings cannot prevent. I and the other medicine men among the Penobscot have summoned the north winds, that the winter shall be cold and the snow deep. Our own people will suffer, but you English will suffer the worse. And we will send fevers and sickness among the English.”
She stared at him, wondering whether he could actually carry out such threats. He was a witch, she knew, though God had forbidden him a witch’s familiar, but surely no ordinary witch could do what he claimed. Had he made pact with the Devil, perhaps? His heathen gods, whatever they were, were not gods, but imps and demons; could they give him such power?
The Lawrence Watt-Evans Fantasy Page 3
