Original Death amoca-3

by Eliot Pattison

  He spun about, suddenly aware of eyes on his back. The great brown mastiff sat only three paces away, watching him. But there was no anger or challenge in his eyes this time. What Duncan saw there was sadness. He looked back at the last image on the doeskin. It could have been a wolf in the scene. Or it could have been a great dog.

  Without knowing why he bowed to the animal, then shifted so the dog too could see the objects. It approached warily, sniffing them attentively. As it did so, a memory stirred unexpectedly. He had seen an old silver coin like that, a precious heirloom preserved by his mother. It was a teething coin, passed down through families for the infants of each new generation. The sad, drunken, angry witch had had a human life once, had been part of a proud family. But she had decided that here, after the massacre at Bethel Church, after receiving a message belt from visitors from the West and destroying her existence in Albany, here she would finally abandon it.

  He stayed very still as the dog studied him, pushing its muzzle against his chest as if taking the scent of his heart. When it backed away, Duncan wrapped the ring in the doeskin, stuffed the skin inside his waistcoat, then packed the other objects in their grey cloth and refastened the bundle to the prisoner post.

  As he walked back to the longhouse, the dog followed. By the time he reached the entry it was walking quietly at Duncan’s side, as if they were old companions.

  The appearance of the creature seemed to awaken something in the Welsh woman. A new light entered her eyes. As her gaze shifted back and forth from the dog to Duncan, he realized it was not so much the arrival of the animal that stirred her as its choice to stand at Duncan’s side. It was as if Ishmael, and now the dog, were reconnecting her to the world. She seemed to become aware of her surroundings, and she studied the lodge and then Ishmael and Macaulay as if seeing them for the first time. She touched the boy’s hand and ran her fingertips along his forearm with a strangely affectionate motion. “The tribes sometimes call this place the fount of thunder from the way the storms like to settle here,” she said in the voice of a tired old matron. “I hope it did not frighten you.”

  Ishmael glanced at Duncan then turned uneasily toward the woman. “I was not scared, Mother,” he said hesitantly. “I was listening. My grandfather thought lightning bolts must be words spoken between the spirits of the sky and spirits of the land. He used to take me out in the storms and listen, marking the differences in the sounds. He taught me how there were different kinds of thunder, whispering thunder and angry thunder, patient thunder and warning thunder.”

  Before the boy could react, the woman reached out and pressed him to her breast. The hell dog sniffed Ishmael, then turned to the front of the lodge and sat facing outward, as if protecting them all now.

  The woman held the boy for a long time. It was not clear who was comforting whom.

  “The dog,” Duncan ventured. “Is he yours?”

  Hetty cocked her head. “A warrior belongs to no one. Sometimes he disappears for weeks at a time. But the day that belt came, he was back.”

  “In Albany they called him the hell dog.”

  The Welsh woman considered his words in silence then nodded, as if approving of the name.

  Suddenly Ishmael reached inside his shirt and produced the fletched end of an arrow and tossed it on the ground by the fire. At first Duncan thought he was showing it to Hetty, but then he saw in her face that she had seen it before. He had used the letters, as Duncan had, to find the woman, but then he had shown her the arrow. Duncan picked it up and studied the long stiff feathers of its fletching. The coloring was of a bird unfamiliar to Duncan in a distinctive uniform pattern, each dark grey feather bearing two circles of white. He realized he too had seen the pattern before, drawn in the dirt floor of Hetty’s hut beside the crumbled letter Ishmael had left there. It meant something to the woman.

  “I stole it from a raider’s quiver when he set it down,” Ishmael explained to Duncan, “and broke off the end to show my grandfather afterwards. He knew the fletching of every arrow made on this side of the Mississippi.” He looked up with a melancholy glance at Duncan. “But now I know. It was Mingo,” Ishmael said to Hetty in a questioning tone. “Because you went west, not north, to find your captured son.”

  When she did not disagree, he turned to Duncan. “I thought she would give me some notion of where the raiders would go. Then I saw that belt. A Mingo delivered that belt to her.”

  “But you raised the alarm in the fort by crying out that Hurons had attacked.”

  A spark of mischief flashed in Ishmael’s eyes. “Because they would never react if I said they were Mingoes. I thought there was a chance the troops could trap the Mingoes close to town and maybe I could speak with them. I never expected to be arrested.” He paused as he saw the uncertainty still on Duncan’s face. “No Mingo would come so far east as Champlain except for his war.”

  “His war?” Duncan asked. He glanced at Hetty, suddenly remembering that she had lived with the Mingoes, that they had been the tribe that had banished her.

  “The half-king’s,” Ishmael said in a near whisper. “The one who spills blood for the old gods.”

  Duncan weighed the boy’s words and began to glimpse the depth of his pain. “Why,” he asked Hetty, “would his grandfather and the others of Bethel Church have to die to protect the old gods? Why would the old gods need the king’s coins? Why take the other children?” Why, he wanted to ask, would a feather and belt of beads cause you to leave your life behind?

  Her eyes filled with challenge, as if she resented his questions. “You will have to ask him,” Hetty replied. “If he lets you keep your tongue.”

  No, Duncan meant to protest, I have to find Conawago and the children. “We will never find him in the wilderness,” he said instead.

  “The white sachem will know where to find him,” she declared, and she began packing for travel.

  They paddled for hours, making steady but slow progress, the current against them having strengthened from the rains, with Hetty and Ishmael in the center of their canoe, the old woman fast asleep. The dog had made no effort to climb into their crowded vessel but followed the trail that hugged the bank, keeping pace with long, effortless strides.

  They had rounded a big bend in the river when Hetty pointed to a landing where a score of canoes were pulled up on the bank. Macaulay nodded at Duncan’s suggestion that he stay hidden near the canoe, then they followed Hetty up a trail that wound through huge sycamore trees.

  When the thick trees opened onto a broad field, Duncan expected to find a palisaded fort, and he halted in surprise. A European estate had been transported into the wilderness. The tall three-story house in the center of the sprawling yard was of cut stone, as was a sturdy blockhouse on the hill overlooking the compound. A hundred paces beyond the great house was a mill, its wheel turning against the water of the brook beside it, and a large barn that seemed to be in use as a lodging for native visitors. Several of the Indians could be seen bending over steaming pots at half a dozen fires, while others worked butter churns and still another group butchered a deer hanging from a tree. He looked back at the house, noticing now its heavy shutters and the narrow slotted windows on the upper floors. The house itself was a fortress.

  It had been Macaulay who had revealed the identity of the white sachem, explaining that the taverns of Albany echoed with tales of the legendary William Johnson, who reigned over the colonial and tribal troops in the region, the hot-blooded Irishman who had been awarded a baronetcy after leading the famed victory at Lake George three years before. Duncan tried to recollect what he had read about the man, who often figured in the New York and Philadelphia journals. William Johnson had been an impoverished teenager when he had arrived from Ireland to set up a trading post along the river. No European had been more adept at forming bonds with the Iroquois, and he had quickly risen to become not only the senior emissary between Britain and the tribes but also senior officer of the peculiar militia of the region, which com
bined tribal warriors with Dutch, German, and English settlers. The Hero of Lake George, the journals had labeled him after he and his irregulars had won the first significant victory for the British at the long lake. He had been lauded not only for defeating the French with his largely Iroquois force but also for saving many French captives when the tribesmen had tried to put them to the knife.

  They had arrived amidst the preparation of a feast. Planks were being laid on trestles along the broad front of the house. Several tribal women wearing calico dresses seemed in charge of the household and were directing a small army of younger natives, German settlers, and even several Africans.

  Hetty seemed uneasy around so many strangers, but Duncan saw the bright curiosity in Ishmael’s eyes, and, leaving his pack and rifle with Hetty as she settled onto a log in the shadows, he led the boy into the throng. The long table was quickly being transformed as tankards and chargers of wood, pewter, and even china materialized on its planks. No one objected when Duncan guided the wide-eyed boy into the huge house. The wide central hallway held several small paintings on its yellow plaster walls, framed landscapes of mountains and lakes, but otherwise the hall had the air of an arsenal. Racks of muskets lined one side, racks of spear-like spontoons and halberds the other. The walls of the sitting room, however, offered neither signs of war nor of European opulence. They were adorned with the trappings of an Iroquois chief, including a half circle of tribal arrows radiating like the rays of a rising sun from an orange hub. An elegant robe of fur and feathers hung on another wall, under a long ceremonial pipe. Beautifully worked tomahawks and clay bowls with crenulated patterns along their lips lay across the mantle of the fireplace.

  “You are welcome in our house,” came a soft, refined voice behind him.

  Turning to greet the European woman who spoke, Duncan could not hide his surprise at seeing instead a comely Iroquois woman dressed in a simple vermilion dress. She smiled at his reaction. “Although the anniversary of my birth is not for some weeks, William will soon be off to war once more and has decided to celebrate today. He likes to call our little settlement Fort Johnson, but I prefer to think of it in more hospitable terms. All travelers are welcome in our humble home. Let us pull the thorns from your feet and wipe the dust from your eyes so we may speak as friends.”

  The woman in the European clothes, in her very European house, was offering the Iroquois words for welcoming travelers. Duncan grinned but was suddenly very conscious of his unkempt appearance. She smiled again as he pushed back the long strands of hair that had escaped from the tail at his neck. “We have no call on your hospitality, ma’am,” he said awkwardly.

  “Of course you do, and I am no madame. I am Molly Brant, and we welcome all visitors, of all nations,” she said and cocked her head at Ishmael in curiosity for a moment before gesturing to the tall, lithe woman who had appeared at her side. “Kass will see to you,” Molly said, then hurried to a group of men carrying chairs from the dining room.

  They followed the woman named Kass out the rear door to a bench set by a hand pump where buckets of water and towels lay waiting. Ishmael could not take his eyes off the woman. “You are Mohawk?” the boy blurted out.

  “Molly is Mohawk. I am Kassawaya of an Oneida clan.” A gentle smile lifted her high cheekbones. “Many Mohawk and Oneida reside in the household of Colonel Johnson. When the last of my family was sent by the Council to fight in the North, Molly and the Colonel asked me to stay with them.” As she glanced toward the river, Duncan saw the little tattoo of a fish on the woman’s neck, above her necklace of glass beads.

  “You can bring the big Scot who hides by the canoes. He has nothing to fear from us.”

  “He is shy,” Duncan replied, realizing she suspected he was a deserter. “If he smells the ale he may come yet.”

  Kass’s dark eyes flickered with amusement, then she grew serious. “It is dangerous to travel on the river alone. You will have to choose a binding or one will be forced on you.”

  “Binding?” Duncan asked.

  “Will you be bound to the king’s army? To the French? To the tribes? To the rebels in the West?” With a quick deft motion her hand went to Duncan’s belt and pulled away the leather cap Woolford had given him. “Or perhaps to the half-wild rangers?”

  “We are bound to an old Nipmuc who protects the old spirits in the wilderness. And to five children captured by Mingoes.”

  Kass seemed unhappy with his words. “That is no binding at all. That is a wish for death,” she declared, and without another word she stepped away, the ranger cap still in her hand.

  “Mind your feet!” a good-natured voice called out, and a bucket of water was tossed onto their hands. Duncan looked up into the broad walnut-colored face of the man who handed him a towel. He smiled at the African and nodded toward Kass’s departing figure. “Colonel Johnson seems to enjoy the company of Iroquois women.”

  The servant laughed. “The Colonel, he enjoys the company of all women, but Mohawk and Oneida most of all. Miss Kass, she’s just a friend. Miss Molly, she’s the mother of two of his children. They play and learn alongside those of his first wife, a good German who was taken by a brain fever.”

  By midafternoon, the banquet was underway. Colonel Johnson, seated with Molly at the head of the table, was a man who laughed much and deeply enjoyed the motley assembly of neighbors, Iroquois, militiamen, and traders who were perched around the table on stools, kegs, and upended logs. Molly had brought the Colonel to Duncan for a hasty introduction before the meal. His greeting to Duncan had been cordial if perfunctory, but he had turned back as if in afterthought. “There was a young Scot who visited that Welsh woman who kept dying. But he was imprisoned so that cannot be you,” he observed pointedly. “I’d like to chat with someone who met the witch of Albany. Mingo runners came through here urgently looking for her. Now people say enemy tribesmen attacked her cabin there,” Johnson added.

  Duncan studied the man with new interest. It was too early for the colonel to have picked up casual rumors. Johnson had specific intelligence sent by courier from Albany. He had to remind himself that the affable head of the household was also the most important military figure on the frontier. “People?” he asked.

  The big Irishman shrugged. “The king looks to me in matters of the tribes. Reports of Huron raiders in Albany would not only be inaccurate but irresponsible.”

  “I agree. They were Mingo. At Albany and at Bethel Church.”

  “That, sir, is not possible.”

  As if on cue Ishmael pulled the stub of the Mingo arrow from inside his shirt. Johnson’s brow furrowed, and he reached out for the arrow. The white chieftain studied the fletching with intense interest. “You could have gotten this anywhere.”

  “We have not come for your food, sir, nor to ask for men at arms,” Duncan said. “We only seek information and will be on our way. The Mingo half-king is approaching from the west. Where is he now?”

  “You speak of matters that are the concern of the government.”

  “Our concerns with the half-king are private.”

  Johnson grimaced. “Lad, there is no private business with that damned renegade, and you will never reach him alive. There was only one who had a chance of acting as intermediary, and I was about to send for her when I learned she had burned alive in her cabin. I’ve heard half a dozen stories about her deaths through the years. She turned into a skeleton when Shawnees were chasing her, got eaten by a bear another time. This time witnesses swear she burnt alive.”

  “And didn’t we see the earth give her up again last night at the witch’s hole!” Ishmael shot back.

  Johnson’s breath seemed to catch in his throat. He quickly looked about as though to be sure no one else had heard then put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and seemed about to usher them back inside the house when Molly pulled him away, declaring that forty hungry guests waited his arrival at the table.

  Duncan stayed at the feast for Ishmael’s sake, but he watched with inter
est as the tribesmen listened with rapt attention to the colonel’s flowery speech about the covenant chain that bound the Iroquois and British peoples. For the first time he saw the boy relax, enjoying himself as an adolescent should. Duncan knew the young Nipmuc was in sore need of good food, and he grinned with pleasure as the boy consumed huge servings of mashed pumpkin, succotash, roasted venison, and corncakes.

  One of Johnson’s sons, who was nearly of an age with Ishmael, struck up a conversation with the Nipmuc boy, and when the young Johnson announced he had an albino raccoon in the barn, Ishmael looked up at Duncan, who nodded his consent. As the boys scampered away, Duncan too rose, grateful for the chance to explore the estate. Soon he found himself at the mill, first admiring the big waterwheel then following the sounds of the great gears through the open door.

  As he opened the shuttered window to admit the fading light, a thick timber materialized from the shadows and slammed into his belly. He lost his wind, lost part of his meal, and was on his hands and knees when his assailant flattened him with a kick to the ribs and a knee on his chest.

  Duncan’s raised fist froze as a blade touched his throat.

  “I could save the king a lot of trouble,” the man snarled.

  “Hawley!” Duncan gasped.

  “Slowly lad,” Sergeant Hawley instructed as he pulled Duncan up by his collar. “General Amherst needs yer tongue to work, but he won’t mind at all if the rest of ye be in pieces.”

  Duncan staggered to his feet, the blade pressed against his chest. “I didn’t-”

  Hawley pushed the knife, the tip stinging his flesh. “We know ye killed that escort to the payroll. They have my sworn statement to prove it. But ye know much more, we’re thinking. Amherst will pay me richly to have ye in chains before his lordship. Now pick up that rope by the gears and-”