“This is God’s great experiment on earth,” he continued. “Here He reduces everyone to a common denominator, to see how they start over. And there are others who have pursued a spiritual life in the forest far longer than we have.” He ended with an unexpected motion, two fingers extended, spiraling upward. Duncan had seen it before.
“Is it something about the heavens, Reverend, that sign?”
“They use many names. The Great Spirit. The Guardian of the Forest. Most of the old ones just call it the Great Mystery.”
Duncan considered the Moravian’s words as they gazed at the stars. “Are you saying, Reverend, you have lost your appetite for converting the Indians?”
Zettlemeyer seemed to struggle to get his response out. “I am only asking the question. What if our spirits are blinded by what we bring from across the ocean?”
A shiver ran down Duncan’s spine. “Why do you say these things to me?” Something small in the forest began screeching in terror, its cries gradually subsiding as it died.
“Because I am the one who betrayed the ghostwalkers,” Zettlemeyer blurted out in an anguished tone. “The price for doing so has been far heavier than I expected.”
“But they were captured by soldiers.”
“The three asked me to release them. I refused, for the good of their souls. I kept Sarah Ramsey locked in a room until she could be safely conveyed to New York.”
There was more, Duncan sensed. The missionary still was not telling him what weighed most heavy on his heart. “You visited Edentown last week,” he ventured.
Zettlemeyer sighed heavily. “We had nothing, hardly enough to feed ourselves, no hope of anything so costly as an iron furnace.”
Gradually Duncan fit the pieces together. “There was a reward paid by Lord Ramsey,” he concluded.
The Moravian’s head moved up and down in the moonlight. “A wagonload of food at the start of the winter. It was a great blessing. We gave thanks to Ramsey in our prayers. But I did not understand something about Ramsey.”
“A man like Ramsey,” Duncan suggested, “doesn’t pay rewards. He pays retainers.”
“Crates of Bibles. The equipment to build the furnace. More cases of Bibles, even copies of the Greek philosophers.”
“Money for transport of new settlers,” Duncan said.
“Even our bishop prays for Ramsey now. And I get letters from Edentown asking about things.”
“Things?”
“How many Indians have we baptized. How many Indian children in our school. Send the last known location of the shaman Tashgua. Make two maps of the location of all the settlers’ farms we know of. It doesn’t seem like much, does it? Ramsey sent me a passage from the Old Testament about how true believers must destroy the temples of the idolators. When he was here two days ago, Reverend Arnold announced that the hand of God soon will make a fist.”
The words left a smell in the air, like the smell after a lightning strike.
“Once every few days I see a huge bear at the edge of the fields, by the northern trail,” Zettlemeyer said in a thin, weary voice. “Sometimes it brings the body of something to eat there. It eats, then it sits and watches us. I couldn’t bear to tell Sarah about my dreams when she asked. I often wake in cold sweats, my heart pounding from a dream in which I find the bear sitting at our hearth in a chair, reading our Bible.
Duncan did not respond, in that moment did not believe himself capable of responding. The old Moravian began whispering a prayer, in German. Duncan studied the thousand stars overhead. When he looked back down, Zettlemeyer was gone.
He retrieved his pack from the shadows by the furnace and found his way to the cow shed, then located the small, slender form lying against the slumbering ox and settled onto the straw-covered earth beside the boy, pulling straw over them both. He listened for a long time to the strangely harmonized breathing of the two creatures.
“Alex,” he whispered at last, “I know not how to reach you when you are awake. But my grandfather taught me there are parts of us that listen while we sleep.” The breathing of the ox seemed to grow in volume, the great hairy back heaving up and down.
“My name is Duncan McCallum,” he began. “And I live between worlds, as you do.” After these first difficult words, the others came out with surprising ease. He explained how he had been arrested and transported, how he had met Adam Munroe, how Adam had died, then spoke of Reverend Arnold and Ramsey and Pike and Woolford. In a lower voice he spoke of Sarah’s kidnapping, and of Conawago and the ruined Indian graveyard where he had left him. “There are questions left by the dead, Alex, which will never be answered unless you and I help.”
When he finally fell silent, the ox turned its great head toward him, as if it had been listening and knew that Duncan had left something out. After a moment he whispered his final, brittle confession. “I built a dream around finding my brother, and all the while he has wanted me dead.” When he settled back onto the straw, he realized his hand had closed around the stone bear, his fingers rubbing the head. So often it had done so in the past weeks, it had become something of a reflex.
He rose before dawn, when he could still fix the North Star, and quietly slipped out of the shed, after piling added straw over the sleeping boy, pausing to touch the crown of the ox, who watched him intently, and pausing again with a grateful grin when he found a pouch of food lying on top of his pack. Five minutes later, on the far side of the fields, he halted. Someone had lit a small fire at the head of the trail to the north. Looking about for a sign of the Moravians, he warily advanced and was almost upon the fire when he glanced down and froze. It was a small mound of tobacco leaves, carefully laid over burning coals. He gasped in alarm as a hand closed around his shoulder from the back. His assailant did not speak, and was already returning his war club to his belt as Duncan turned to face him.
“Conawago!” Duncan exclaimed.
The old Indian acknowledged him with a slight nod, then solemnly pointed to the trail and began a slow trot toward the north. Duncan squatted by the fire a moment before following, cupping the smoke in his hand as he knew Conawago must have done, washing it over his face.
The old Indian did not speak the few times they paused to rest, but somehow Duncan did not expect him to. He was in mourning still, for the dead who had been killed again by the Ramsey men. He had made no more lacerations on his limbs, and, to Duncan’s relief, those he had made were healing well, though they gave the old man a fierce aspect, the look of an ancient and awful warrior.
As they sat on a high, stony ridge, silently sharing a piece of bread from the mission, Duncan began to notice the wariness in Conawago’s eyes. Pushing ever northward, he watched uncomfortably as the old Indian knelt several times to study the trail, sometimes pressing his ear to the ground. Suddenly he gestured Duncan off the well-used path, leading him at a run to a smaller parallel game trail on the ridge above, then pausing at a stout oak to gaze back, his hand on his club.
The explanation came half an hour later, as they moved along a series of high outcroppings. They had slowed to a walk, Duncan in front, and he had cleared the end of a long pile of huge boulders when he spotted a solitary figure moving at a steady lope nearly a hundred yards away on the main trail. It was an Indian, adorned not unlike those he had seen at the army headquarters, a musket strapped upside down on his back. When he turned to point the man out to Conawago, his friend was nowhere to be seen.
“There is-” he began, then a figure materialized in the air, leaping onto Duncan, knocking him to the ground, clamping a small hand over his mouth. Duncan frantically tried to free himself, then realized his assailant was not trying to hurt him, but was using his free hand to cover them both with dried leaves. A small face appeared near his own, aimed not at Duncan but at the trail below. It was Alex.
A moment later more figures appeared. Alex tensed, seemed to stop breathing. Twenty-four, Duncan counted, all appearing much the same as the first, except for two men in the center who w
ore white fringed tunics with green wool caps and green leggings. They all trotted at a uniform pace, fleet and silent as deer.
For five minutes after the party had passed, the only part of Alex that moved was his eyes. His hand stayed clamped on Duncan’s mouth. He made no effort to shift the debris from their prostrate bodies.
Finally came a low, warbling whistle behind them, and the boy was up, brushing off his clothes.
“They won’t hurt you, Alex,” Duncan said to the boy. “I know they must terrify you after all they-”
The boy ignored Duncan, stepped eagerly to Conawago’s side. They clamped their forearms together, their hands gripping near the elbow in a silent, emotional greeting. There was a new aspect to the boy, a feral quality that had been absent at the mission. He had unthreaded the sleeves of his shirt and removed them, leaving his arms bare. A length of rope hung around his waist, from which hung a small pouch. Around his neck was a necklace woven of familiar tawny hair. Alex had braided it from the hair of his ox.
“I thought you had grown more particular about your scalp,” Conawago chastised Duncan.
“But they were like-” Duncan suddenly felt weak. He lowered himself onto a rock. Despite his first impression, obviously they had not been like Conawago, not like the army Indians.
“Hurons. And a few Abenaki, if I’m not mistaken. Two French soldiers, at least one an officer. If they’d seen us, we wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. They are not inclined to be merciful, or to take prisoners, this deep in enemy territory.”
Duncan fought a shudder. “A raiding party? Why here? The farms are along the river.”
“Raids on farms are usually by just a handful of Hurons,” Conawago replied. “Which means the better question is why a party so large should be here at all. A party that size acts as skirmishers between units of the main armies. But the armies are far north of here, where General Wolfe is moving on Quebec. They shouldn’t be here.”
They shouldn’t be here, Duncan repeated to himself, just as they shouldn’t even know who Duncan was. But they were here, and the French were paying the Hurons to kill him.
Five hours later Duncan was about to drop from exhaustion when Conawago abruptly halted his relentless pace, dropping to a knee beside a fallen tree. Again Duncan knew the old Indian had seen, or sensed, something invisible to him. It was evening. They had been climbing a series of ledges that rose stairlike up a steep ridge, eating dried meat on the run. In the still air came the call of a bird, a low, two-tone whistle, which caused Alex’s head to snap up with a broad grin. Conawago answered the call, and a figure in green emerged from behind a rock a hundred feet ahead.
Captain Woolford looked worn out. The left side of his face bore a long bruise; one hand was wrapped in a bloodstained rag. He offered a weary nod, then led them to a campsite nestled among rock outcroppings beside a fast-moving spring. It was a base camp of some kind, Duncan realized, for inside the shadows of an overhanging ledge he spied several leather pouches, a kettle, and half a dozen rolled blankets.
After greeting the boy with a long, silent embrace and conferring in low, hurried tones with Conawago, the ranger confronted Duncan.
“Do you have any idea what Ramsey will do to you when he catches up?” Woolford snapped. “You’re going to wish you had chosen to stay on the ship and face Jamaica. With fifty pounds on your head, you’ll probably be better off if it is Ramsey who takes you. He is paying for you alive, but barely alive will be good enough for him.”
“I must start traveling with a clerk,” Duncan replied, his voice heavy with fatigue, “to keep tally of all those who wish me harm.” He decided to tell the ranger about the French bounty on him, leaving the officer gazing in confusion at him. “Now let me see that hand,” Duncan said in conclusion.
The ranger did not object as Duncan unwrapped the makeshift bandage. It had been an ugly gash across the back of the hand, but was healing well. Duncan did some quick calculation. “This was done not long after you left Edentown.”
Woolford gestured to Duncan’s own wound along his temple. “It could have been the same knife that did that. They jumped me at a stream. They had more blades, I had faster legs. And they knew nothing of reloading on the fly.” He sensed the question in Duncan’s eye. “Rangers are trained to load while running, at least one shot a minute, including time to twist about and aim.” His gaze settled on Alex, who was helping Conawago light a fire. “How does he fare?”
“I left him at the mission this morning, thinking he was lost to the world of men. Three hours later he just appeared from thin air. Saved my life. Or more accurately, kept my foolishness from killing us all.”
“The Hurons aren’t supposed to be here. Headquarters tells me all the French Indians have been called back north, to harass Wolfe’s army marching on Quebec. When I sent an urgent message reporting they were wrong, that every farm from Edentown to German Flats has been raided, all I got back were orders to move north myself.” Woolford explained that he had already dispatched most of his men north, then studied the forest with a worried expression. “One of my men had been tracking this party. They were headed north and changed course three days ago, turned back for here.”
“Why?”
Woolford shook his head in frustration. “It’s like a war within a war.”
“We must be close to Stony Run,” Duncan declared.
“No more than ten miles now.”
They fell silent again. “If he had lived, Adam would have found a way to be there now, because of his wife,” Duncan said with a tone of query.
“Because of his wife,” Woolford agreed. “If things had been different.”
It had been one of the many layers of mystery surrounding Adam Munroe. But Duncan had finally realized that he had kept his wife a secret because she was part of the secret of his Indian captivity, because he had married while with the Indians. “Will she be there?” Duncan asked.
A low sigh escaped Conawago’s lips.
“Butterflies,” a small, tentative voice said. “There is a valley full of butterflies where she lives now.” Alex had found his tongue. “She used to visit it often, would tell me about it.” He spoke very slowly, seeming to struggle for each word. “She makes meal with a magic pestle, never having to add more maize. And there are. . ” His lips twisted in frustration and he made a sign of something large and round with his arms, then turned and spoke in a tribal tongue to Conawago.
“And pumpkins,” Conawago translated, “fields full of pumpkins.”
“Pumpkins,” Alex nodded. “She likes pumpkins.”
Duncan dared not speak for fear of spooking the boy. In the spreading darkness only his gaunt face was visible, lit by glowing embers.
“When we arrived at the German mission, Adam said we weren’t prisoners,” Alex continued, “but they all treated us as if we were.”
“When she came to visit him, he sent her away,” added a new voice, low and strained. Woolford, turning halfway so he could still watch the night.
“Not right away,” Alex explained. “They spoke first, Adam and Sarah and she. They didn’t know I was watching. Adam gave her something, told her she had to flee to the farthest of the Indian towns. I don’t think they even saw when I followed her, hanging out the Reverend’s cabin window. I thought no one else saw. I caught up with her behind the furnace. We slipped into the forest past the charcoal piles and ran. One of the Germans knew the trails, though, and led the soldiers onto the path that goes over the ridge, while I took her around it, because of my twisted ankle and because she was with child, four or five months with child.
“Suddenly they were there, leaping down the hill, calling out. She was terrified, pushed me ahead, clutching the sacred thing in both hands, the thing that Adam had saved from an old chief at the massacre, the thing he ran down the waterfall with and had given her for safe-keeping. I didn’t understand the ways of those men in red. I was in front of her when she fell on her knees, and I turned to see the thing that
grew out of her breast. She stared at it, touching it with one hand, not understanding. She even tried to get up, but that metal had taken all her strength. Not a night passes when I don’t see her like that, her hand on the metal growing out of her, covered with her own blood. I was as confused as she was. I, too, had never seen one of those things before.”
“What things?” Duncan asked, his throat tightening.
“A musket sword.”
Woolford spoke again, in a desolate whisper. “Bayonet. A bayonet in her back.”
The tale opened a frigid chamber inside Duncan’s mind. He was back in Flanders, learning for the first time what the English soldiers had done to his family.
“Sometimes I find a snake in the forest and ask to visit her,” Alex said. “They live in the valley of the butterflies, just like Adam promised they would. By a river, because of Adam.”
“They?” Duncan asked. “Who else is there with her?”
“Adam. He just came a few weeks ago.”
A new chill crept down Duncan’s spine as he exchanged a haunted glance with Woolford.
“What do you mean beside the river, because of Adam?”
Alex looked up uncertainly, then gazed into the embers. “A spirit totem is his secret, not for words of men.”
But Duncan did not need to be told. The beaver. The beaver had been Adam’s sacred sign, the beaver who had been carved on the mast when Adam died, the beaver who swam deep.
“She didn’t want to leave him at the mission that day. Adam said she had to save the ancient thing, or the soldiers would find a way to use it against her people. He promised she would be safe, that there was nothing to worry about, that he knew she would never let go of it, never let it fall into enemy hands, that it would protect her, that if anything happened to her he would know. He vowed on the spirit of their child that if she went to her sacred land before him, he would know and he would join her.” Alex poked at the embers. “Sometimes when I see them, there is a small shape in the shadows behind them. It’s him, I think. Their son.”
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