Original Death amoca-3

by Eliot Pattison

  Sagatchie touched the small amulet pouch hanging from his neck, which Duncan knew contained a token of his protector animal spirit, then lifted his face to the sky. “Hear me, oh great ones! I am Sagatchie of the Wolf clan, born of the Mohawk! I give you Towantha of the Nipmuc people! He knew how to release the spirits that live inside wood. He brought joy to the young of the tribes. As a boy he ran in forests that had been untouched by ax and saw.” The Mohawk ran his fingers along the tattoos, gazing at them as if reading from a book. “He journeyed to the big water. He carried wampum belts to the Huron to seek peace between our peoples.” A twig snapped, and they looked up to see several deer. The animals were not frightened, but seemed to be listening. Sagatchie raised a hand in their direction as if in respectful greeting then continued, studying another tattoo of wavy parallel lines and small horned animals. His brow furrowed for a moment then lit with surprise. “He journeyed long ago to the great Mississippi and saw bison that covered the land like blades of grass.”

  As he gazed upon the dead Nipmuc, Duncan regretted more than ever that he and Conawago had not met the man. Surely if Hickory John had kept up his search, the two men would have connected. But he had given up and settled in the little community of Indians who followed a god not his own, making implements for people not his own, so he could give young Ishmael a steady life.

  As Sagatchie rose, Duncan silently followed his gestures and lifted Hickory John to the high platform. He knew some of the death chant from sitting at Conawago’s side at all too many burials, and he joined in Sagatchie’s singsong prayer as they set natural adornments around the body. A twig of crimson maple leaves. A turtle shell. A clump of star moss. The skull of a small mammal.

  Duncan folded Hickory John’s shirt and laid it under the dead man’s head, then he reached into a pouch at his belt and extracted a handful of precious salt. He poured the salt into a small pile on the linen near one of the dead man’s ears, then sifted a handful of loose soil into a pile by the other ear.

  “It is one of the old ways of my tribe,” Duncan explained, answering the query in the warrior’s eyes. “Earth for the corruptible body, salt for the everlasting spirit.”

  Sagatchie slowly nodded. “I cannot read all the stories. Someone should be here to speak the full tale of his life,” he said in a forlorn tone. “The women of his tribe should sing songs of lamentation all night. There should be a condolence of at least a week for one such as he.”

  “Conawago will have songs when he comes,” Duncan offered.

  The Mohawk cast a hesitant glance at Duncan. He seemed about to say something, but he turned to survey the forest floor and pointed to a fallen log. Duncan helped lift the log, and with a grunt of satisfaction Sagatchie swept up a small ring-necked snake. He held the snake close, whispering to it, then gently laid it on the dead man’s breast. With an approving nod he watched the snake slither around his neck and disappear into the makeshift pillow.

  The whicker of the horse broke the spell. It was late. They would have to hurry if they were to reach the settlement before nightfall. Sagatchie turned from the scaffold then hesitated and pulled a piece of paper from his belt and began to place it on the folded shirt. Duncan suddenly recognized it and put a restraining hand on the Mohawk’s arm.

  “That is Conawago’s, a treasured letter sent by Hickory John.”

  “He said I was to leave it with the body. He said those on the other side had to see it.”

  Sagatchie did not resist when Duncan pulled the tattered paper from his hand. He, like Conawago, knew the elegant script and words by heart. The pain of the murder stabbed him anew as he read it one last time. When he finished his eyes were moist. “Surely this is something Conawago himself should do,” Duncan said. “He can bring it here tomorrow.”

  “You do not understand, McCallum. Your friend is not coming.”

  “But he is in the village resting, you said. He will want to come here, to sing the Nipmuc songs.”

  “I said I took him to a house to rest. But he left after sleeping two hours. He had a wound on his shoulder that had bled through the bandage, so Madame Pritchard changed it. He was eating some stew brought by those farmers, and talking with them, walking around the room as if to get strength back in his legs. I was keeping watch outside so they would not be disturbed. He found something, then spoke urgently with them. Suddenly he picked up his pack and rifle and climbed out a window. He nodded his thanks to me as he climbed out, then ran across the pasture to the northwest. His face was like a storm.”

  Sagatchie took the letter, and Duncan watched in silence as the Mohawk reversed the fold so that the original address was on the outside. Duncan glimpsed words he had not seen before, scrawled along the back. He took the paper once more and held it in the sunlight. Stay silent between the worlds, the first sentence read, in Hickory John’s hand though not as elegant as the words inscribed inside. They seemed to have been written hastily, as an urgent postscript, as if Hickory John had made a discovery just as he posted the letter. Hasten, it said at the end, this is how we first die.

  “This is how we first die,” Duncan did not realize he had repeated the words until he looked up and saw the Mohawk. Sagatchie had gone very still. “What does it mean?” Duncan asked.

  Sagatchie stared at the dead man. The warrior reached out and held the scaffold as if he had suddenly grown weak. He looked mournful again, but also worried. “It means this old wheel builder was one of the few who could save us.”

  Suddenly the surly corporal shouted, complaining that they were losing daylight. Duncan stared at the Mohawk. The Mohawk stared at the dead Nipmuc. When the corporal threw a rock to get their attention, Sagatchie spun about as if he were going to attack the man. Duncan silently looped the prisoner strap over his head and handed the end to the Mohawk ranger, who reached up to touch the dead man one more time. The prisoner led his captor out of the grove of the dead.

  The corporal, riding the horse now, led them back to the settlement at a fast pace through the lengthening shadows. Sagatchie remained in his melancholy mood. He remained silent even when the corporal paused as the buildings came into view and demanded the prisoner strap so he could force Duncan to follow at a half trot for their arrival in the village.

  The dead in the churchyard had been buried. The band of rangers sat at the front of the barn by a campfire, finishing their evening meal. They stared at Duncan with venom in their eyes as he was tethered to one of the iron rings used to restrain livestock. None offered him any of the stew in their pot. Sagatchie silently accepted a steaming wooden bowl and disappeared. The corporal scraped all that was left into his own bowl, then greedily gobbled it up. As his men drifted toward the houses, Sergeant Hawley bound Duncan against one of the posts along the center aisle of the barn, hands behind him, then shoved him down against the packed earth and tied his feet together, warning him that a sentry would be patrolling the settlement while the others slept.

  “I need to speak with that woman,” Duncan said to Hawley as the sergeant turned to leave. “The one who identified the dead today. Just a word. I beg you.”

  Hawley seemed to relish the request. “Did ye not see her today?” he asked with a cruel grin. “Pointing and gesturing after painting those markers? She’s a mute, you damned fool!”

  The visions came again in the night, but this time Duncan’s father stood atop a heap of bodies when he beckoned Duncan to death. Shades of the dead hovered near, urging Duncan forward. As he neared the pile of bodies, it was no longer his father but Conawago who summoned him, and the bodies were all the dead of Bethel Church, who rose and began pointing to him as well. Then one of the ghosts touched his foot.

  He jerked awake with a sharp intake of breath. “Sagatchie!” he said as he recognized the silhouette of the tall Mohawk. The Indian held a ladle of water to his mouth. As Duncan gratefully drank, a second figure knelt at his side, cracking open the side of a baffled lantern. Her blond hair gleamed in the dim light.

 
“You wanted to see the woman from the farm,” Sagatchie said as he lowered the ladle.

  “But then I learned she is mute.”

  “Not mute,” the Mohawk explained. “Français.”

  “I am Madame Pritchard.” As soon as the woman spoke, Duncan understood why she had deceived the soldiers. Although she obviously spoke English, her accent was unmistakable. She would be in danger of imprisonment if the English army knew a French woman was living along its chain of forts.

  “You knew these people well?” Duncan asked. “You knew Hickory John?” He glanced nervously out onto the moonlit road, where a sentry was supposed to be patrolling.

  Sagatchie sensed his worry. “The guard found a bottle of applejack. He will not be troubling us.”

  Duncan studied the Mohawk for a moment. Even rangers from the tribes had to observe discipline, had to follow orders. Sagatchie seemed unconcerned that he was likely to incur the sergeant’s wrath.

  Madame Pritchard spoke in slow, patient tones, first of her admiration for the little mission community and the Christian natives who had cleared the land near the church and built the first cabin, now the school, and then from that nucleus constructed a thriving settlement. Their priest, an Anglican, had been a woodworker before joining the clergy, and even as they built their houses he had insisted they also build items that could be purchased by the military, at first barrels and kegs, then later wagons and carts. Although the man had died of fever the year before, his dream had been fulfilled.

  “Where were they from?” Duncan asked. “What tribe?”

  The woman glanced at Sagatchie. “Iroquois. Mohawks I think. There are hundreds of Christian Iroquois in Quebec, where I was born, taught by the Jesuits and Dominicans. When the British pushed the Catholic missionaries out of their lands, the Anglicans arrived.” She shrugged. “God is not jealous about whose Bible you read from.”

  “But Hickory John was never christened.”

  “Hickory John was as close to a saint as any of us ever knew. He openly admired the wisdom of the holy book, but his gods were in the trees and beasts of the forest. A reverent man, but not afraid to laugh. When he was not making his famous wheels, he would carve little things, useful things like spoons but also frivolous things likes toys for les enfants.”

  “And his grandson?” Duncan asked.

  The French woman found a milking stool and sat close to Duncan. “Ishmael was the center of his life. It is why he settled here, he told me once, because he knew the boy had to understand the European world. But he still kept the boy rooted to the old ways. They would go off in the forest, sometimes for days at a time, and the boy would come back with strange markings on his skin.”

  “They went to the church?”

  “None sang louder than Hickory John. He loved the ritual. He wanted the boy to know how to speak to the European god, he told me once. He knew he would not have too many years left with the boy, and he wanted the people here to consider him part of their family when he was gone.” The French woman sighed. “Now what will he do?”

  Duncan’s head snapped up. “He was not killed? He is safe?”

  “Safe, never. Alive, yes, for now. I have prayed for him, for them all, and will do so everyday.”

  “Them? The other children? You know where they are?”

  Madame Pritchard would not look him in the eye. “They came in the morning, before noon. Ishmael said he heard a wagon on the road and men’s voices raised in greeting. He thought it was just another supply train. But it wasn’t. We thought no raiders would dare strike this close to the forts, never on the main supply road where the army is always coming and going.” She dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her long dress. “The boy had so many tears and sobs, hard to make sense of his story. There were ten or twelve of them. French Indians and European militia, he thought. They moved quickly, like raiders always do. They forced everyone into the smithy where Hickory John made his wheels. Some of the raiders went to the barn and some worked on his grandfather. That’s what the boy said. Worked on him, with his own tools.”

  Duncan clenched his jaw, exchanging a knowing glance with Sagatchie. They had seen how the raiders had worked on the Nipmuc.

  “They forgot the children at first. After he asked the two oldest to run to see if they could help their parents, the schoolmaster, Mr. Bedford, told the others to hide in the woodshed behind the school. But Ishmael ran out, looking for his grandfather. He was too late, for his grandfather was already a prisoner in the smithy. He hid in the rocks on the slope above. The shutter on the rear window was partly open, and he could see figures inside, though they were in shadow. Some raiders guarded those of the town while another tormented poor old John. Ishmael never saw his face, could not hear his voice, though sometimes the raiders laughed at things he said.”

  Duncan closed his eyes for a moment, remembering how the old Nipmuc’s body had been savaged. “Why? Why would they break his fingers and beat him?”

  The French woman no longer bothered to wipe at the tears that flowed down her cheeks. “They demanded something. He would not give it up. They beat him with a wheel spoke. They took each finger and pounded it on the anvil like it was some bent nail. Finally they began killing the others,” she said with a sob. “The boy said they sang a hymn as they died, poor wretches. They were taught not to be violent, to accept the destiny the Lord had chosen for them. I suppose they thought it was just the way they were being called to heaven.

  “Hickory John sang, too, the boy said, at first that hymn. But after a few died he switched to an old Indian song, a warrior’s death song.”

  Duncan wanted to weep himself.

  “Then they hitched the horses and left.”

  Duncan looked up in confusion. “Hitched them to what?”

  “The new wagon in the barn.”

  “Raiders don’t use wagons.”

  Madame Pritchard shrugged. “They must have had something to carry.”

  “Left in the direction of Quebec?”

  “South.”

  “Surely not,” Duncan said. “South is where the British troops are thickest. You saw them?”

  She shrugged again. “We are a quarter mile off the road. We work hard. We don’t take notice of every wagon or rider. The boy saw. Ishmael saw them drive the wagon south on the Albany road.”

  Duncan considered her words. It was so horrible, and so impossible. Raiders didn’t use wagons. Raiders didn’t leave settlements unburned. Raiders didn’t commit such atrocities then continue deeper into enemy territory.

  “The boy?” he asked, “the children?”

  The French woman scrubbed away more tears. “They took the children. Brave Mr. Bedford tried to escape with them, and they were caught. The Huron have lost most of their people to sickness and war. A strong child will fetch many furs when they reach the slave market in the North.”

  Duncan’s heart sank. “All the children? Ishmael is with the raiders too?”

  “I fear he wants to be.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “He watched the raiders then ran to our house.”

  Duncan felt a flicker of hope. “He’s there now?”

  “He stayed with my older daughter when the rangers fetched us here. I went back for chores, to get my children to bed. But Ishmael wasn’t there. It was someone else.”

  “Someone else?”

  “I told your friend Conawago when I went to give him food and change the bandage on his shoulder. Somehow he knew I was no mute. He wanted to know everything. When I said he was in the very chamber where the Nipmucs lived, he rose and walked about, lifting things, even moving furniture. There was a loose board under a chest. Conawago pulled it up and extracted a knife wrapped in doeskin. A beautiful knife, with a long handle carved with forest images and a flint blade, very old, more like a ceremonial object than a weapon. He pressed the hilt to his heart then stared at it a long time and grew even more sad. He wiped his eyes, and when he looked up there was a terrible fire in
them. He put the knife in his belt then grew calmer.

  “He asked about the boy, about the boy’s life here, and I told him what I knew, about the preacher who had helped look after him until he died last year, about the joyful songs the boy sang sometimes, about how he was able to call in butterflies and the vigil he kept with the dying when the smallpox hit the village three years ago, even how Hickory John sat with the boy for four days and nights without sleep when the pox then struck Ishmael.

  “When he finally asked me where the boy was, if he was safe, I had to tell him I did not know. When I returned to my house, Ishmael had stripped off most of his clothes. He had leggings over his britches and had untied his long hair. I tried to stop him. Mon Dieu, he’s only a boy. He had used soot and whitewash to paint his body like some savage warrior. He said-” the woman’s voice broke and her hand went to her mouth.

  “Said what?”

  “He wasn’t the boy anymore. The look in his eyes scared me as much as seeing those bodies today. It was like he had been possessed. He had the look of a wild beast.”

  “What did he say?” Duncan insisted.

  “‘Now is the time to shake with fear,’ he declared, then he looked up as if speaking to something in the sky. ‘The world breaker is here!’ he shouted. Then he ran into the forest.”

  “World breaker!” Sagatchie repeated the word in alarm.

  Duncan looked up at him.

  “It is a monster from the old stories, a demon from the end of time when the world has to be destroyed to save the gods.”

  Madame Pritchard crossed herself. They remained silent for a long moment, the name of the spirit monster seeming to hang in the air. Then the French woman dipped the ladle in the water bucket again. She was lifting it to Duncan’s lips when it was knocked out of her hand from behind.