Council of Fire

by Eric Flint

  “We rode an impossible storm, Commander. 15 degrees north would put us . . . near the Cape Verdian Islands, I suppose.”

  “It doesn’t account for the mountains, My Lord,” Lieutenant Pascal said. “We looked at the charts, and while there are peaks on the islands, they don’t correspond to the sightings.”

  “We’ll see what the lookouts report in the morning.”

  “The sightings were made before night fell, Admiral,” Marshal said. “The man knew what he saw.”

  Boscawen gave his executive officer a stern look. “What do you recommend, then, Commander?”

  “At the very least, My Lord, we should investigate.”

  “Without charts and soundings? If this truly is unknown water, I don’t think I relish the idea of running aground.”

  “It will be a good exercise for the crew, sir. Something to take their mind off—the comet.”

  Boscawen considered this, then nodded. “Very well. We are in open ocean, with no convenient anchor; we will come about and begin to tack northward with shortened sail. In the morning we will . . . carefully . . . investigate this coast. In the meanwhile, I suggest we all get whatever rest we can.”

  Chapter 5

  This is the end of the world

  Aboard HMS Namur

  The coast was more visible in the morning, with the seas calm and the wind scarcely blowing—the best sort of weather for a survey. It became gradually clearer that this land was not the Cape Verde Islands, but was some land hitherto unknown. What at first was taken for snowcaps turned out to be the pale color of the land itself. It was stark, almost like the Dover chalk-cliffs, bare of vegetation.

  Boscawen summoned the slave Gustavus to his quarterdeck. Once again, he was impressed with the young black man’s poise and lack of fear. Unlike Perry, the boatswain, he seemed to have no inhibition to tread upon the private area of the ship’s commander.

  “Gustavus,” Boscawen said. “Do you recognize this coast?”

  Gustavus looked out at the pale mountains; Boscawen took his spyglass and handed it to Gustavus, who took it and placed it to his eye. After a moment he lowered it, his face showing alarm.

  “What is it? Do you know this place?”

  “It . . . O’Brien spoke of this, My Lord.”

  “O’Brien? The Irish lad with the dreams?”

  “The seer, My Lord. Yes. He called this the Place of Bone.”

  “That’s rather ominous.” Boscawen reclaimed his spyglass and surveyed the land—which did seem to have the pallor of a bleached skeleton. “He dreamed of this, I suppose.”

  “It was in his visions, sir.”

  “You seem to be making very careful distinctions, Gustavus. You are well-spoken. Take care that your tongue does not become too clever.”

  “I apologize if I have given offense, my Lord.”

  “No.” Boscawen snapped the spyglass shut and secured it at his belt. “Tell me what the unfortunate lad said of this ‘Place of Bone.’”

  “He said . . . that it would rise out of the sea at the time of the fiery star, and that it would form a boundary between this world and the next.”

  “A boundary?”

  “That is what he said, my Lord.”

  “That is very interesting. I think that we should have a closer look at this ‘Place of Bone,’ don’t you think?”

  Gustavus’ face registered surprise, and even fear. “Oh, no, my Lord, no! We should not go to that place, no, never!”

  “Even if I order it?”

  “I . . . would take many lashes for defying you, my Lord, but no, at the peril of my soul, no!”

  “What makes you so fearful?”

  “I . . . do not know.”

  “You know very well indeed.” Boscawen grabbed Gustavus’ shoulder and turned the young man to face him. “What is it, boy? What do you fear? Ghosties and ghouls?”

  Again, the slave surprised the admiral by looking directly at him, seemingly without fear.

  “Will you punish me if I say yes, my Lord?”

  Boscawen took out his spyglass and scanned the horizon, looking from north to south. As far as he could make out, the bone-pale mountains lay ahead—where no mountains should rightfully be.

  If he was going to return Namur to home waters, he would have to find a way around them. If there was, inexplicably, no way, then he would never see England, or Frances, or his children again.

  “No, Gustavus,” he said at last. “I will not punish you for being afraid. For I am afraid as well.” He lowered the spyglass to his side and looked at the young black man. “But if you will come with me, I shall be less afraid.”

  The sailing-master cast the log and determined that they were in shallow enough water to counsel against coming closer to the shore; accordingly, Boscawen caused his barge—somewhat battered by the storm, but still intact—to be lowered. He chose Lieutenant Pascal and six able seamen, as well as Gustavus, to accompany him, leaving Marshal in command of Namur. All, other than Gustavus, were armed with cutlass and pistol.

  They rowed slowly into the shallows. From a distance, Boscawen made out a figure on the beach, sitting atop a large bone-pale rock; it was a young man, sitting with his knees drawn up in front of him.

  Through the spyglass, the admiral recognized the figure as the Irish lad, O’Brien, who had gone over in the storm.

  Another impossibility, he thought. As the barge came aground, Gustavus—and some of the landing party—recognized O’Brien as well. He looked drawn and tired, but his eyes seemed to give off an unearthly glow.

  None of the others seemed the least interested in setting foot on the shore. Boscawen waited for a moment, then stepped into the shallow water, taking a few steps on to the shore. At his gesture, Gustavus joined him, remaining slightly behind and to his left.

  O’Brien straightened out his legs and dropped on to the sand. He was wearing what remained of his cabin-boy’s uniform, lacking a cap or shoes; the jersey and trews looked as if they had been dragged through the ocean. He did not seem to notice.

  “Stop,” he said, holding out his right hand, just as Boscawen stepped onto the land. The word seemed to echo up and down the beach.

  “I beg your pardon?” Boscawen said. “We—”

  “This is not your place, Admiral,” O’Brien said. “This is our place now. You have no business here.”

  “Explain yourself.”

  “You were kind to me,” the young man answered, his voice returning to something like its normal timbre. “I remember that. In courtesy to you, I will offer what explanation you can understand.

  “The world has changed, Admiral Edward Boscawen. The comet has changed it in a great way, just as it once changed it in a small way. Things are beginning to awaken. This is the end of the world. It belongs to us now, and you will be best served by going the way you came—and not returning.”

  “What is this place? What are these mountains?”

  “This is the Place of Bone, Admiral. This is the end of the world. There is no land beyond.” He gestured behind him, at the pale-colored ridge, and when he turned back to face Boscawen, his eyes were glowing crimson. All around them, in crevasses and shadows formed by the piled-up rocks by the shore, Boscawen, Gustavus and the landing party could see other pairs of crimson eyes looking out at them—first a few, then a dozen, then hundreds.

  “I tell you this in return for your kindness,” O’Brien said. “But if you do not go now, there will be no way to stop those who wish you ill.”

  “What of you? We feared you were dead.”

  “I am not dead,” O’Brien said, and the fearful tone had returned to his voice. “I am born anew. Now go, Admiral. And do not return.”

  Boscawen thought of what he might say; he exchanged a glance with Gustavus, who might have been terrified, but remained close by. Then, with the dignity born of gentle birth, and courage beyond what he knew he possessed, Admiral Edward Boscawen turned and walked away into the shallow water, leaving O’Brien and t
he Place of Bone behind.

  Chapter 6

  An enjoyable way to start the day

  Fort Johnson, Colony of New York

  As she now often did after realizing she was pregnant, Molly Brant rose earlier than usual and spent some time just wandering through her new home. You could hardly call it a “house,” in the way white people normally used the term. The edifice her Anglo-Irish husband Sir William Johnson had built a decade earlier in the town of Amsterdam was called “Fort Johnson”—and for good reason. The large two-story stone building served Johnson as a combination home, trading center and office for his various affairs, and was surrounded by wooden fortifications.

  Fort Johnson had soon become the center for British relations with the Six Nations, especially the Mohawks. During the Crown Point expedition in the summer of 1755, Johnson and his Mohawk allies defeated the French at the battle of Lake George, during the course of which he received a wound from which he had never fully recovered, since the musket ball which lodged in his hip couldn’t be safely removed. The injury stood him in good stead, however, since it added a certain luster to his martial reputation—which had hitherto been nonexistent. Although the battle at Lake George had not been a decisive victory, the war had been going badly that year for the British and they needed a hero.

  Enter, William Johnson. King George II made him a baronet and Parliament voted to give him £5,000 as a reward for his services. Much more importantly in terms of the future, in January of 1756 the British government made Johnson the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the northern colonies. This position was a military one, allowing him to report directly to the government in London—which meant he would not be subject to the rulings and restrictions imposed by provincial governments, which so often hamstrung the activities of officials assigned to deal with the native inhabitants.

  Between the new post and his longstanding existing relations with the Six Nations, Johnson rapidly became one of the most powerful political figures in the colony of New York. And that position also led to his marriage to Molly Brant.

  Johnson had been in a longstanding common-law marriage with a German immigrant by the name of Catherine Weisenberg, with whom he had three children. She had died recently and given his changed position in life; he’d sought a new wife among the Mohawks.

  His interest and attention had soon settled on Molly, since he’d been friends with her stepfather Brant Kanagaradunkwa, a Mohawk sachem belonging to the Turtle clan, for years. She was quite a bit younger than he was—in her early twenties compared to his mid-forties—but neither of them saw that as an obstacle. Both the English aristocracy and the Iroquois approached marriage as a practical matter, not a romantic one.

  Her Indian names were Konwatsi’tsiaienni, her birth name, and the name Degonwadonti, given to her as an adult. But as was true of many Mohawks by the middle of the eighteenth century, she was a Christian and usually went by the name of Molly Brant. The surname came from her stepfather.

  Between her Christian faith, the literacy she’d acquired from the schooling her stepfather had provided for her at a British-run school—her penmanship was excellent—and her position as the stepchild of a sachem, Molly made a suitable match for the ambitious Johnson. And the match was quite acceptable to Molly because the young woman was ambitious herself. She understood full well that her position as the wife of Sir William Johnson, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, would give her far more influence than anything she could achieve on her own in Mohawk society.

  Johnson was an influential figure among the Iroquois as well as the British, especially the Mohawks. He spoke their language and they had adopted him into the tribe and given him the name of Warraghiyagey.

  Soon after settling in with her new husband in Fort Johnson, Molly became pregnant with her first child. And found herself wandering through her new home early in the morning, both to admire the structure as well as to consider her now-greatly-expanded prospects in life. All in all, she found it a most enjoyable way to start the day.

  Perhaps a bit less enjoyable than usual, this particular day, because both her husband and her younger brother Joseph were absent. Johnson had left some days earlier to visit the Onondaga. Her brother and their stepfather had gone to Canajoharie, also known as the “Upper Castle,” one of the two major towns of the Mohawks.

  She missed her brother more than her husband, if the truth be told. Molly’s relationship with Johnson was friendly enough, to be sure. But she felt little of the personal attachment to the older man that she felt for her teenage sibling. She and Joseph had always been close; closer than most brothers and sisters.

  She worried about him now more than she had in times past. Joseph had not reached his full manhood yet, but even at the age of sixteen he was more physically powerful and adept than most adult men. Molly thought that made him reckless, at times; not so much because he overestimated his own prowess and skills but because he underestimated those of his opponents, be those adversaries human or animal or—perhaps most dangerous of all—inanimate forces. Be a man or boy ever so strong, he was hopelessly outmatched if he fell into a swiftly moving river headed toward rapids or a waterfall. Or slipped on a wet rock at the edge of a precipice. Or—

  She broke off that train of thought. There was no point to it. Joseph would do whatever he would do, and although he heard her advice that didn’t necessarily mean he listened to it. Or the advice of his stepfather or anyone else, for that matter.

  She left the big house and entered the compound formed by the palisades which surrounded and protected that building. That building—and several others. Johnson had a sawmill and a blacksmith shop within the walls also, and the quarters for the slaves were in a detached building against the eastern wall of the stockade.

  Johnson owned four slaves at the moment: a middle-aged man, along with two younger women, one of whom had a three-year-old son. The two women worked in the house, one as the residence’s cook and the other as an all-purpose maid who helped Molly maintain the place. Cumberland, the man, operated the sawmill and was a skilled blacksmith, although the compound’s smithy was fairly primitive. He regularly badgered Johnson to invest more in it so Cumberland could use his skills to their full extent.

  He could get away with that unseemly pestering where most slaves wouldn’t dare because Cumberland had been with Johnson for many years. The two women, Hany and Ruth—Ruth was the cook, and the mother of the child—for only five years or so. Johnson had bought them at the same time. They were cousins, as slaves reckoned these things.

  Molly was fairly certain that Cumberland was the father of Ruth’s boy, but she’d never inquired. Whatever the relationship might be between Cumberland and Ruth, there didn’t seem to be any trouble associated with it, so Molly figured the details were none of her concern.

  As Johnson’s wife, Molly also held the title of his “housekeeper,” which meant that she was in overall charge of the household and served as its hostess for all public occasions. She also supervised the slaves and the servants; though, of course, not Fort Johnson’s resident lawyer, doctor, and her husband’s personal secretaries. Those were under Johnson’s own management.

  Partly because of her innate temperament and partly because she thought it was stupid to do otherwise, she tried as much as possible to rule the household—slaves and servants both—with a light hand. And she’d never seen where being friendly and courteous to subordinates did anyone any harm on either side.

  It took her no more than twenty minutes to complete her circuit of the compound. Very few of the servants and none of the slaves were up yet, so Molly was engaged in fewer conversations than she would be later in the day, and the ones she did have were mostly brief. Not much more than simple greetings and well wishes, except for the one she had with Hosea Dowling, who served as Fort Johnson’s chief teamster and hostler. That conversation ran on for several minutes, not because Dowling had anything of any significance to report or discuss but simply because he was a garr
ulous man by nature.

  Molly didn’t mind, and listened patiently to Hosea’s largely aimless musings on the new day and its likely developments. Why not? She could spare the man a few minutes of her time; it wasn’t as if she had any pressing concerns of her own that day.

  Eventually Dowling finished. She returned to the house a bit reluctantly, because her footsteps sounded hollow to her—which was a bit silly. Between the comfortable moccasins she was wearing and the fact that she was light-footed anyway, she was barely making any sound at all, even on the stone floor which covered the first level of the house.

  The “hollowness” was a product of emotion, not hearing. She missed her brother; and, albeit to a lesser degree, her husband. The worst of it was that the nature of their journeys made it very uncertain when either of them would return.

  So be it. She’d always had an independent spirit, since she was a little girl—and she reminded herself that her new position in life gave her plenty of responsibilities to keep her busy.

  Part II:

  Awakening

  April, 1759

  The change came not like a wave but like a creeping fog: it took time for men of all kinds to realize what had happened, and why their world would never be the same.

  —John Quincy Adams,

  The Time of the Change: A Chronicle, 1814

  Chapter 7

  You are the man you have always been

  The Maritimes

  The days had been long. The nights were longer, it seemed; they sailed close-hauled, avoiding ice floes bigger than Neptune itself—it was as if some great sheet of ice had separated itself and crumbled into giant pieces, and was now floating southward like a fleet of ships looking for an enemy to engage. Collision with the smallest of them might tear the ship apart.