Original Death amoca-3

by Eliot Pattison

  Custaloga, now wearing a fox fur on his shoulder, was speaking. His rich voice was slow enough that Duncan could understand many of his words. He was describing the Haudenosaunee nation, sometimes gesticulating to the doeskin pictograms on the walls.

  The League of the Haudenosaunee was without rival. Every tribe from the great salt water to the Ohio country feared the Iroquois and also loved them, for they knew the Iroquois brought harmony. Because no tribe would dare bring war to defy the Grand Council, the peoples of all the woodlands lived in peace, at one with the spirits. Custaloga’s speech was interrupted by long pauses in which he pointed at the old chronicles on the wall, as if to invoke their stories. Duncan saw now the bloodstains on some of the old skins, the charred edges of others. A sadness entered the sachem’s voice.

  This was in the past, Custaloga admitted. The seventeenth century had been the pinnacle of Iroquois empire. Then the French had armed the northern tribes, and the League had been battered in battle after battle. He pointed to a skin on which scores of humans lay sprawling on the ground while others were being led away in captive straps.

  When Custaloga finally sat back in the circle, another chieftain rose to receive a long birch bark container from one of the female elders. He paced around the circle with the container before stopping before Atotarho and ceremoniously opening the container. The old sachem lifted out a long pipe and held it aloft, calling for the gods to open their hearts and come join the circle of elders.

  The pipe was filled with tobacco, lit with a burning cedar stick, then slowly carried around the ring, each chieftain solemnly taking it to his lips. When the sachems were finished, the pipe was extended to Conawago, then to Duncan, who found his hand trembling as he accepted the ancient instrument. He felt like a small boy before ancient sages.

  “Have you come to speak of the final fate of the Haudenosaunee?” The words were spoken by Atotarho the moment Duncan handed back the pipe, so abruptly and in such well-formed English that Duncan stared at the Council leader in mute confusion before realizing they were directed toward Conawago and himself.

  “I have come,” Conawago replied, “to discuss the fate of our gods.”

  The words seemed to offend several of the sachems, who murmured words of alarm until a strong voice rang clear from the shadows. Sagatchie stepped forward, pointing out that no one had properly introduced the great Conawago, eldest of the Nipmuc tribe, who had once been the spiritual caretakers of all the forest people. He reminded them of how Conawago and Duncan had helped the Onondaga chief Skanawati restore honor to his people the year before, and how they both wore the mark of the dawnchasers.

  The words brought a sober repose to the circle, and when Conawago spoke again all eyes were on him. He explained that the Revelator had sent them to ask the Council to join the cause of the half-king.

  “Ask or demand?” asked Atotarho.

  “It is not for me to impose another’s will on the Council.”

  “What does the Revelator offer our people?”

  “He would stop the rum that poisons many of the tribes. He would unite all the tribes to retake their lands. He would bring back old ways.”

  “The Revelator’s path is full of blood,” the old chieftain observed.

  “The path without the Revelator is full of blood,” Conawago replied.

  The sachem’s nod was solemn. “If the gods are asking, how can we refuse?” He directed the ancient pipe to be rekindled and passed around the circle.

  Conawago puffed on the sacred pipe before answering. “But first,” he finally replied, “we must be certain of who is asking. Is this Mingo called the Revelator a war chief or a peace chief?”

  The chamber was suddenly very still. Duncan realized his friend had asked the essential question. The anchor of the great federation, the reason it had endured for so long, was the separation of warriors from the wise old sachems. War chiefs were not permitted to sit on the Council or to determine the course of a tribe’s action, only those called peace chiefs were able to do so. Otherwise, the woodlands would have been in a constant state of war. It was only the peace chiefs, and the matriarchs who always advised them, who could send their people to war, and only then did the war chiefs play a role. For the Council to yield to the vengeful renegade leader would be to turn its back on its sacred law.

  Atotarho nodded very slowly and raised his hands into the air over his head as if beseeching the heavens. He turned to Adanahoe, sitting behind him, who whispered in his ear, then the first chieftain gestured toward a small figure sitting beside the female elders. In her simple doeskin dress, Hetty Eldridge looked more relaxed than Duncan had ever seen her. Some of the lines in her face had vanished. Her hair had a twist of red wool in it, after the Mohawk fashion. Beside her the hell dog watched attentively. The sachem waited until Hetty stood, stepped toward Duncan and Conawago, and sat behind them. They had their matriarch as well. Atotarho motioned for Duncan to take the pipe again, then waited for Duncan to exhale a long plume of smoke before speaking. “Why have you chosen this journey, McCallum?”

  “A wise old Nipmuc was tortured and killed. Children were taken.”

  “Are you the protector of Nipmucs, then?” the elder sachem asked.

  Duncan glanced at Conawago, who kept his gaze on the head of the council. “I do not sleep well when innocent people are slain.”

  Melancholy entered the elder’s eyes. “Then you may never sleep well again.”

  “So just as in our tribe, the old one is the peace chief,” Custaloga inserted, motioning toward Conawago, “and the young one is the war chief.” He pointed to Duncan.

  “Just as with the Haudenosaunee,” Duncan essayed, “the challenge for both is knowing what is worth fighting for.” He paused, but when he received no response, he continued. “Once my people fought for lords and flags and princes. They were a brave and joyful people who only wanted to be left alone. But they were destroyed by bullets, cannons, and swords. The rest of us were scattered like autumn leaves.”

  “So now you fight for innocent men and lost children,” replied Atotarho. “I fear, Duncan McCallum, that old men and children are taken from this world every day. The world shrugs it off.”

  “There is more owed to the innocent men and children of Bethel Church.”

  The last two words took the breath away from the old chieftains. Duncan realized they had not heard the place of the massacre until that moment. No one spoke. Several of the council members abruptly reached for their amulets. Adanahoe broke into a wail.

  Duncan’s mother was crying, frantically reaching for him as he edged over the cliff. His fall toward the rock surf far below was strangely slow, but they both knew he was dropping to his death. No matter how far she extended her arms, they were always just out of grasp. She called out desperate words, but he could not understand them. She had an urgent message for him before he died, and he could not even understand it. Then, impossibly, she was speaking in the Haudenosaunee tongue.

  “You are needed, Duncan.” The words came in a different voice now, and someone was shaking his shoulder. He opened his eyes, and a gentle finger on his lips stifled his protest.

  Kass pulled away his blanket and pointed to a figure who waited behind her. “The mother of the Grand Council asks for you.” Through the dim light Duncan saw Adanahoe, holding a tallow lamp. “Bringer of first light,” he said to the old woman. “It is what your name means?” Adanahoe silently nodded, and Kass put a hand on his arm. “One of the lost children is her grandson,” she said.

  The Council had been slow to explain its connection to the children, but Duncan’s mention of Bethel Church had clearly seized the hearts of the Iroquois leaders. Chieftains and matriarchs alike had leaned forward as he had risen at the bidding of Atotarho to describe what had happened at the Mohawk settlement. When he finished, he had extracted the bits of paper taken from the schoolhouse wall and read the names on each.

  When he had recited Jacob Pine’s name, Adanahoe had r
eacted with an anguished moan. When he read the name of Noah Moss, a tear had rolled down the leathery cheek of old Custaloga. For each name an old chieftain or matriarch had extended a hand for the paper. They studied the papers in tormented silence before returning them with trembling hands. Few of the tribes could read, and most just referred to writing as word pictures and tried to relate the symbols to the pictograms they used in their own records. But the slips of paper Duncan had shown them had seemed precious to them, and before returning them to him, each had pressed the paper to his or her heart.

  The two women now led Duncan out of the longhouse where he slept into the starlit night. Only a few torches remained burning. A solitary guard stood in front of the log structure into which Duncan was led.

  “Why do we steal about in. .” The question died with a shiver of fear. The walls were alive with monsters. Hideous faces stared out at him though a haze of cedar smoke. A grotesquely long face with bulbous eyes and a huge twisted smile sneered at him. A beastly countenance with huge red eyes and a crooked nose glared down at the intruders. Five, ten, a dozen of the terrible faces glared from the walls. As Kass pulled Duncan through the torchlit chamber, he saw that she too was uncomfortable under the gazes. The spirit masks used in Haudenosaunee ritual were among the most sacred of objects. The tribes believed that once the masks were consecrated they were alive and had to be reverently cared for, even nourished with offerings of food. They were closely guarded when not in use by the secret False Face societies. To have so many together was, Duncan suspected, extraordinary, and this house was probably the only place in all the League where it was done.

  A soft rhythmic drumming rose from the shadows, like the pulse of the spirits inhabiting the chamber. He found himself resisting as Kass tried to lead him on. The masks had a strange hold on him. The room was like a dream chamber, a place where men and spirits mixed. Kass pulled more insistently, leading him down a short, dark corridor to a chamber at the rear of the structure. She pushed aside a heavy skin that covered the entry and gestured him inside.

  The room was lit with flickering bear fat lamps. More deerskin chronicles hung on the walls, some bearing images of the False Face masks, others outlines of bison, elk, and giant bears, animals not seen in the eastern forests for many years. Custaloga and the elegant woman Duncan had seen weaving wampum belts sat with Conawago on the floor before a bowl of smoldering tobacco.

  Custaloga’s face was lined with melancholy and confusion. When he looked up he seemed unable to speak. Adanahoe appeared out of the shadows and motioned Duncan to a blanket on the floor then sat beside him, gesturing for Kass to complete the circle around the smoldering bowl. “Bethel Church was our greatest secret. We sent the most promising ones,” the first mother of the Council explained, “the ones who would best learn the European ways. They were to become our bridges to our future, the council decided. Each was the grandson or granddaughter of one of the great peace chiefs. They took new names, English names. Hickory John persuaded us it was for the best, for the good of our people, and he promised to look after them. They were the precious seeds of our new people, who would know how to live alongside Europeans, not underneath them. They would teach those ways to the rest of our people. Tushcona,” she gestured to the belt weaver, “made a chronicle so those in the future would know of our plans.”

  The slow pulsing in the shadows grew closer. Tushcona the belt weaver began to softly shake a turtle shell rattle in time to the beat as Adanahoe continued. “There are those who say this stealing of our children is an act of the spirits, that they are telling us something. There are those who say we cannot interfere or the spirits will punish us. There are those who say it proves we must join the half-king. There are those who say we must go to war over such a grievous act, but we know not on whom to wage such war. Some of the Council have gone out in the moonlight to pray under the old trees.”

  The gentle rattling and the quiet pulse of the drum filled the silence that followed. Conawago gazed at the rising thread of fragrant smoke. Custaloga closed his eyes and bowed his head. Tushcona, still working her rattle, began a whispered prayer. Adanahoe began rubbing a rough wooden slab with a smooth stick, making a sound like the rustle of grass in the wind.

  At last Custaloga lifted his head and looked at Duncan. “Would the spirits lie in order to us to protect us?” he asked.

  Duncan had difficulty speaking. He felt so inadequate, so small, in such company. “The twisted path of my life shows I understand little of what the spirits want.”

  The old man studied Duncan, then Conawago, before replying. “I think the twisted path of your life shows the spirits have often sought to use you. What is needed now are those of both the forest world and the European world, who belong to neither.” The aged sachem leaned forward. When he spoke, his words had the sound of a solemn vow. “When the killer of gods is pushed out of the spirit world, we will need you to bind him down, to keep him from returning.”

  Duncan’s mouth went bone dry. He knew he should protest, should laugh, should run away, but he could not move.

  A new rattling sound disrupted the ethereal music of the chamber. Duncan forced himself to turn, and his heart leapt into his throat. A god was kneeling beside him, staring him in the face.

  A long bloodred mask with a twisted mouth fringed with black hair was inches from his face. Wrapped around the arm of the man behind the mask was a messenger of the gods. The diamondback snake was huge, its head held firmly in the god’s hand, its tail shaking in a strange harmony with the reverent drumming and the murmured prayer.

  Duncan was not sure he had not already entered the spirit world.

  “It is said you can read the dead,” the old woman said. “What we need is for you to read the dead god.”

  It was nearly dawn when they finally emerged from the spirit house. Several elders sat outside the door, waiting. One of them rose and gestured their small group to follow him. They made a silent procession out of the gate, to a circle of frightened men and women at the river landing.

  Hetty stood at the edge of the circle, clutching Ishmael to her breast. Their guide pressed forward through the throng then stopped abruptly. The chieftain turned and gestured for Duncan. His gut tightened as he sensed the elder’s intent. For now a reader of the human dead was needed.

  Black Fish would witness no more miracles. Duncan knelt at the body. The man who had energetically recounted the killing of gods and the resurrection of the half-king had been set in his death against a stump. The empty sockets where his eyes had been were fixed on the setting moon.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Never before has there been such a belt,” Conawago said. There was wonder in his voice, mixed with confusion. They had made camp at the water’s edge after their first day of travel from Onondaga Castle, and as Kass, Sagatchie, and Ishmael readied their camp for the night, the old Nipmuc sat at the fire gazing at a dark belt of beads in his hands.

  They had been summoned into the Council lodge after Duncan had finished examining the body of Black Fish. “This is not a time for great war between the forest tribes,” Atotarho had declared. “But it is a time for little war between certain men,” he concluded, and he gripped both Duncan and Conawago on the shoulder while murmuring a prayer. He took the wampum belt from Tushcona and extended it in both hands to them. “We know you will show no fear when the time comes,” he declared as Conawago accepted the belt, then he retreated into the shadows.

  Adanahoe then appeared. “It had already been decided before the killing,” the matriarch announced. The belt would have indeed taken hours to weave. “The Council cannot act as the Council in this matter. But these children are the Council’s great hope. A secret war is being waged against us, and we cannot stand idly by,” she had said as Conawago gazed at the belt with wide, disbelieving eyes. “This killing leaves us no time. The half-king will think it was the work of the Council, an act of hostility against him. If things are not made right, there will be open war b
etween the tribes. Keeping the League alive is the most sacred of our responsibilities, and we will have failed. The forest will run with blood.”

  As they paddled northward, Duncan had spent much of the day trying to understand those words and the strange symbols on the belt. The killing had indeed changed everything. To have a prominent disciple of the Revelator murdered virtually in the shadow of the Council lodge would outrage the half-king and be seen as a sign of weakness on the part of the Council by the Iroquois people. The League could not declare war on the rebellious tribesmen, nor would it join the Revelator. The belt meant they would fight in their own secret way, using Duncan and Conawago as their surrogates.

  Duncan had been given almost no time to ask about Black Fish, learning only that the dead man had arrived with four others in a large cargo canoe with red eyes painted on its bow, and the man in the naval jacket who had accompanied Black Fish to the Council ring was a ne’er-do-well Seneca named Rabbit Jack. Duncan kept revisiting the scene of Black Fish’s arrival in his mind’s eye. There had been other men accompanying Black Fish and Rabbit Jack, including one whose face had been obscured with a wide-brimmed European hat, but they had stopped abruptly and turned back. Something or someone at the Council ring had caused them to retreat. But the only thing that could have been unexpected was the presence of Duncan, Conawago, and Hetty.

  Now at their campfire, Conawago kept staring at the belt, turning it over, holding the beads close to his eye as if they might hold some tiny secret. There was a hollow amusement in his voice when he finally spoke. “That’s me,” he said with a low chuckle, pointing to the larger of the stick figures in the center of the belt, the one who held a spear. The three-inch-wide belt consisted almost entirely of purple beads, making it a black belt in the parlance of the Haudenosaunee, a war belt. The two figures in white beads, one larger than the other, did not signify a big man and a small one, but a young one and an old one. Conawago pointed to the smaller figure, “And that’s you. Tushcona said the image had come to her in a vision.” Over the heads of the figures was a small half-circle with rays coming out of it. The Council had decided to send the dawnchasers to war.