Crow Hollow

by Michael Wallace

  Yet he was still confused. Was this not a sin in Prudence’s mind?

  James’s first experience with a woman had come in Paris, with Richard Cooper distracting the girl’s father elsewhere in the house with talk of business. She was a pretty thing named Giselle du Pont, the daughter of a cloth merchant, and he had been working for several weeks to seduce her, convinced he was in love.

  Afterward, as the two Englishmen strolled back to their lodgings on the Rue de Glatigny, Cooper said, “You did take a hard piss afterward, didn’t you?”

  “No, why?”

  “These French girls are not always clean. Always take a hard piss. Otherwise, you never know when your cock will rot and fall off.”

  Cooper had said this with a winking tone, but James was offended. Not Giselle du Pont! She’d been a virgin. Only later did he learn that not only had Cooper slept with her already, but so had the other two English agents in Paris. Since then, James had always got up to take a piss after making love.

  Unfortunately, he’d trained his body sufficient that he was now feeling the unmistakable urge to go outside and empty his bladder, even though he was quite certain that it didn’t need emptying. It was early in the evening. He’d be waking all night anyway until he finally went. He pulled on his clothes, unclasped his cloak rather than pull it off of Prudie, and made to crawl out of the cave.

  “Where are you going?” She sounded nervous, as if he were suffering regrets and needed to get away from her as quickly as possible.

  He wanted to reassure her, but he was embarrassed to admit what made him get up. What if Sir Benjamin had told her what the foolish young men of His Majesty’s service believed they should do to avoid the pox? She would be hurt and offended.

  “I’m going to put the rest of the wood on the fire. It will only take a moment.”

  His head cleared as he got outside and rose to his feet. The wind cut over the hillside, so sharp and cold that it snatched the breath from his lungs. The fire had almost died, and he used a stick to poke at the coals while he gradually fed it the rest of the firewood.

  He’d made love to Prudence Cotton. What had he been thinking?

  She was a lonely, frightened widow. A New Englander, with all of the provincial attitudes that implied. Born in Boston, once resident of the tiny village of Winton. He was an agent of the king, worldly, and soon to return to London, Paris, Amsterdam.

  James had never played the knave. He would never coerce a woman, and certainly never force her. He didn’t use trickery and lies to get her to spread her legs. Nevertheless, he had enjoyed the benefits of his position. He spent freely of the king’s money, he profited from the power that came with the king’s commission, and he had often used his confidence and handsome appearance to seduce women. Never against their will, no, but neither had he led any of them to believe there was anything more in their lovemaking than a bit of pleasure, freely shared.

  Why had Prudence asked him about Lucy Branch? She hadn’t seemed jealous or judging. No, she’d wanted to know if he had an understanding. There was no reason for that unless Prudence meant that making love to her would be accepting an understanding with her, instead. Of course she would. She was a devout woman living under the roof of one of Boston’s most prominent ministers. A widow, yes, so not a young maid, and her passions had been quite manifest.

  She’d wanted him as badly as he’d wanted her. But only with a certain understanding in mind. Only then did he have permission.

  Prudence hadn’t tricked him. She’d been quite clear.

  Make love to me, James, and we will be betrothed to marriage. Our sin will be minor, soon atoned by a legal and lawful wedding.

  James groaned, disgusted with himself. If he’d been anything but a fool, he’d have stopped it before it had gone any further. He’d had the presence of mind to do so with Lucy, why not this time too? Was he a rutting dog that he hadn’t been able to control himself? And now what? How would he possibly escape without wrecking her heart?

  You don’t want to escape. Admit it.

  There it was. He didn’t. That was the truth of the matter. He wanted to bring Prudence back with him to London. If she wouldn’t go, then (heaven help him) he would stay with her in Boston. Could he do that? Surely not. If for no other reason than that the New Englanders would consider him the devil in human form once this matter was settled. And there was the great prize waiting for him in England. Would he cast aside the position of king’s chancellor for a woman?

  You are doubly a fool.

  James stepped away from the fire to piss. The moon had drifted behind the hillside at his rear, revealing a swath of stars in a huge, flickering belt stretching across the vast bowl of the sky. The distant hills were visible only by their deeper black shadows and mounded all along the horizon.

  Again, he was struck by the desolation of the land into which they’d entered. And yet he knew it wasn’t empty. All manner of animals would be noting their presence, some of which—wolves, bears, lions—would happily devour him. And Indians. Never forget that.

  An owl called in the woods: hoot . . . hoot . . . hoot-hoot! From some distance came the faint but emphatic reply: hoot . . . hoot . . . hoot-hoot!

  To James’s ears it sounded like the call of sentries, warning. Intruders had entered their lands.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Prudence woke in James’s arms. A gray light seeped through the entrance into the snow cave. For a moment she lay there, swimming in and out of a hazy, pleasant state of near sleep, her dreams clinging like cobwebs to her mind.

  Then she remembered everything that had passed between them in the night. She felt a twinge of guilt deep in her gut, like the devil’s fingers had taken her bowels and given them a sharp twist.

  And then, surprisingly, it was gone.

  She should feel guilty. How many sermons had she heard during her life warning her of such a situation? The devil worked in a moment of weakness. Relax your vigil—especially with a man, a stranger—and you would give yourself to the most heinous sin. Prudence had proven all too frail, all too weak. She shouldn’t simply be guilty, she should be disgusted. And yet.

  She’d awakened a few times in the night, always nestled in James’s strong arms. His breathing came low and even. Once, he’d murmured in his sleep. She put her head against his chest. It felt too right lying here to be a sin.

  He shifted as she extracted herself, but he didn’t wake. It seemed late, and her bladder was full to bursting. A dull, gnawing hunger was awakening in her belly.

  Prudence crawled out of the snow cave. Outside, the sky was brilliant blue, with the sun well above the horizon. The chill was gone from the sky, and the slushy puddle surrounding the ash of the campfire had not yet refrozen.

  Looking across the hills, she saw nothing but mile after mile of unbroken forest. This was French and Indian territory, full of trappers and deer hunters, not the villages of the Nipmuk, Narragansett, and Pequot of New England, where they raised squash, beans, and corn in little clearings. One would look at this landscape and think it empty, unpeopled.

  There was something about the fresh air, the blue sky, and the good rest that filled her with hope. As she emptied her bladder she searched for and found the Connecticut, cutting north into Verts Monts. Follow it and they could not help but find the surviving members of Mikmonto’s tribe. A day, two at most.

  When she finished, she lowered her petticoats and turned back toward the hole in the snow. A man was standing there. Prudence cried out in surprise.

  He was a tall Indian, about thirty years old, holding a short club with a stone head. He had a sharp nose and piercing, intelligent eyes. The man wore deerskin leggings, a gray wolfskin mantle draped over his shoulders, and deerskin moccasins decorated with porcupine quills.

  Leather bands adorned with glass beads encircled his upper arms. His hair was cut to the scalp on the first two inches above his ears, leaving only the uppermost part of his head covered with his fine black hair. A
rabbit hung by its feet from a thong that had been laced through the wolf pelt. Blood tinged the fur at its throat.

  In addition to the club, the man had a curved English knife entwined in the rope belt at his waist. It was the type of blade an Indian used for gutting prey, but she’d also seen them used to scalp enemies.

  Her cry seemed to have momentarily left the Indian flat footed, but now he sprang at her. She stumbled back with her hands held outstretched. The man swung his club, and she ducked as it came toward her head. It missed her head but struck a glancing blow against her shoulder. She dropped to the ground. The Indian fell on top of her.

  “James!” she screamed. “Help me!”

  But he would still be asleep in the cave, and the snow would muffle any sound. A gale could be howling outside and he wouldn’t hear it.

  The Indian slipped in the snow as they grappled. Prudence tried to crawl away, but the man was strong and had murder in his eyes. In an instant he was straddling her, the stone club lifted above his head.

  At last she found her wits and her Nipmuk. “No! Listen! I’m a friend.”

  He stopped, his eyes widening. He said something back. She didn’t understand; it was a different dialect.

  “Friend,” she repeated in Nipmuk. “Don’t kill me, please, listen. Listen!”

  A familiar snicking sound came from behind him. The Indian whirled.

  James stood at the mouth of the cave, his pistol lowered calmly at the man’s chest. The snicking sound had been the drawing of the cock. The Indian snarled and sprang to his feet. James’s face was a mask of stone, but there was violence in his eyes that mirrored the look Prudence had spotted moments earlier in the Indian’s expression.

  The instant the Indian was clear of Prudence, James squeezed the trigger and the hammer fell. There was a flash and a puff of smoke, and the Indian flinched as if in anticipation of the ball that would slam into him.

  But the gun had misfired. After so much moving around, then the weapon lying uncovered in the cave during the night, perhaps the powder had come loose or become wet. Out came a little smoke, the smell of gunpowder, but the ball didn’t fire.

  Both men recovered at the same time. James dropped his pistol and reached for his dagger. The Indian threw his stone club. The distance was short, no more than a dozen feet, and the aim was true, but James moved impossibly quickly. He ducked to one side and the club spun past his ear. It buried itself in the side of the snow cave.

  James sprang forward with the dagger. But the Indian was already drawing his own knife. As James came by, the other man dropped to one knee and thrust up with his blade. Both men missed. They came around for another go.

  “James, no!” Prudence cried. Then, in Nipmuk, “Friend! Stop!”

  The two men circled each other. The Indian was trying to edge around to get at his stone club, with its handle sticking out of the snow, but James kept himself between the Indian and the weapon. He was also trying to get to higher ground on the hillside, but the Indian saw this tactic and kept him away with a series of false lunges. Both men were warriors, both deadly. If she didn’t stop this, at least one man would die, perhaps both.

  “I’ll distract him,” James said. “Go for the club.”

  “You have to listen to me,” she said. “If you kill him, we’ll never find my daughter.”

  “But—”

  “No!” she said, sharply. “Listen to me. And if he kills you I’ll be killed too. Possibly tortured.”

  This seemed to give him pause. His posture changed to a defensive one. The Indian stiffened as if to charge.

  Prudence shifted to Nipmuk. “No fighting. No! We are friends.”

  The man ignored her and sprang at James. The two men came together in a flurry of flashing blades, and Prudence’s heart seemed to stop in her throat. James came out the other side with a shout. He was uninjured. The other man’s face contorted with pain, and a bloody gash opened on his bare arm. If not for the leather armband, almost cut in two, it would have been worse.

  But he wasn’t done yet. He looked as if he were going to drop, but when James moved to attack, he came up with the knife again. James ducked past.

  Prudence saw her chance. She sprang for the stone club. She snatched it out of the snow and then looked for a way to come in behind the Indian. Land a blow, if she could. Distract him, if not. He whirled like a cornered animal, his back to the hillside.

  “Tell me what to do,” Prudence said to James.

  No more nonsense about arranging a truce. The other man had understood in spite of the strange dialect. She was sure of that. He’d rejected her pleas and was intent on slaughtering them.

  “Wait for my move,” he said.

  Something crashed on the hillside above them. Three more Indians emerged from the woods on the slope above. They wore snowshoes of bent birch sticks with a lattice of smaller sticks running between them. As they came down into the clearing by the snow cave, they bent and yanked off their snowshoes. These men were dressed much like the first and were all armed with some combination of clubs and knives. One was an older man, and another no more than a boy, but as James came in next to Prudence, she could see from his cornered look that he’d lost faith in their chances.

  The men started arguing amongst themselves, even as they encircled the two English with their backs against the snow cave. It was a dialect related to the Nipmuk of Mikmonto’s tribe but different enough that she couldn’t pick out more than a few words, none of which filled her with confidence: kill, scalp, enemies. They seemed to be arguing over who would have the honor of killing James and Prudence.

  “Put down the club,” James told her. “It’s your only chance.”

  “You too. Drop your knife.”

  “No, I won’t be taken.”

  “Then I won’t, either.”

  “Think of your daughter.”

  “Netomok,” she tried again in Nipmuk. Friends. “Not your enemies. Please, we need a truce. We don’t want to fight.”

  The older man pushed ahead of the wounded man, who snapped something in irritation. The old man thrust his finger toward her. He spoke slowly in his own language. “You Puda-katan?” She understood.

  “Nuttisowis, Puda-katan, nux.” My name is Puda-katan, yes.

  Relief flooded through her as she turned to James. “They know me. That’s my name, that’s what they call me. Prudence Cotton. Puda-katan. There is no r in their language.”

  “Don’t kill us,” she said in Nipmuk. “We’re friends. We give no harm. You understand?”

  There was more rapid-fire conversation among the Indians. This time, she understood a little more. The injured man wanted to kill them. The older man and the boy did not. The other man seemed ready to follow whoever made the most forceful argument.

  These must be Abenaki, she realized. The eastern Abenaki had been decimated in the coastal regions of northern Massachusetts and New Hampshire, but those tribes in Verts Monts and north toward Quebec had stayed neutral. And a good thing, too, or the war might have turned out differently.

  The Abenaki spoke an Algonquin dialect, related to the Nipmuk. And if these men had heard of her, then there must indeed be Nipmuk who had taken refuge with them.

  “My daughter,” she said. “Puda-katan’s child. Do you know her? Is she still alive? She is called Mary.”

  Mary. My dear Mary. Please, Lord, let her be alive.

  The Abenaki paid her no attention, being caught up in their own arguments. At last, the injured man turned with a snarl, crossed his arms, and showed the others his back. Prudence felt a flood of relief. He’d capitulated.

  James seemed to recognize the signal as well. He put away his dagger in a swift motion and lifted his hands. “I won’t fight,” he said in English. “No fight.”

  “Will you take us to the Nipmuk?” she asked them. “You know them, yes?”

  They would, yes, or at least they were willing to take James and Prudence somewhere over the next hill. But first, they were
demanding a gift, some token of friendship. James reached into his cloak—a move that made the Abenaki stiffen, as if they expected him to come out with his dagger again. Instead, he removed a pewter medallion on a chain, marked with the cross on one side and a shield on the other. He handed it to the older man, who grunted in pleasure and put it around his neck.

  “What is that?” Prudence asked.

  “A medallion from the captain of a Spanish treasure ship.”

  “Why do you have that?”

  “The pope gave it to him. I took it away. Or do you mean, why do I have it on my person?” James shrugged. “Hard to say. I thought it might come in handy. Not like this, mind you.”

  While the other Abenaki admired the medallion and its chain, the angry young man looked up from where he’d been rubbing his injury with snow, and a flicker of curiosity and jealousy passed over his face. The old man made to show it to him, but the young man turned away, as if uninterested. The boy grinned at this and met Prudence’s gaze. She returned his smile. The boy looked like the younger brother of the older one, taking some delight in seeing his overbearing older sibling’s pride trimmed an inch or two.

  The older man said his name was Kepnomotok. He introduced the others. The injured man was named Tictok, and was apparently his son, as was the younger one. The other warrior was either a cousin of Kepnomotok, or a brother—she thought the word was the same in their dialect.

  “Did he say the injured fellow’s name is Tictok?” James said. “Like a clock?”

  “Never make sport of a man’s name,” she said. “They take that very seriously.”

  “I was only remarking to you.”

  “We don’t know if they speak English. They are good with languages, and not always forthcoming about their knowledge, for the sake of gaining an advantage.”

  “Yes, of course.” He sounded taken aback. “That was a mistake.”

  They were not at risk of a swift, brutal end, as it had first appeared, but neither were they honored guests. It was soon clear that the Abenaki considered them prisoners. Tictok hacked off part of Prudence’s petticoat, which he used as a bandage on his upper arm. Then he and his brother forged ahead on snowshoes while Kepnomotok and the other one brought up the rear, watching Prudence and James with one hand always on a knife or club.