He pushed open a narrow door and found a twisting stairway that led to the third floor. Lifting a candle from a sconce, he ventured upward, into another corridor. Half the space was finished into cells. He passed into another chamber, still in rough timber, used for storage. Crumbling wicker hampers were lined against one wall, filled with rotting clothing. On a shelf behind them were small wooden boxes, each with the name of a monk and two dates. He opened the hinged top of the first, marked Brother Luc, 1652–1687. Inside was a small bible, a writing quill, a ring, and a lock of blond hair tied with a red ribbon. On the bottom was a piece of parchment with a narrative in French.
Brother Luc, dove of Christ, was martyred on the northern shore of Lake Huron, it began, going on to explain that he was the son of a lowly shoemaker in Burgundy who as a teenager had answered God’s call to live among the tribes of North America. Luc had opened half a dozen missions and christened over two hundred aborigines before being burned alive for administering European medicine to Ojibways dying of fever.
Duncan closed the box reverently, realizing now that it, like the others, held the personal effects of monks killed by the tribes they had sought to convert.
He ventured toward the pool of moonlight cast through the window to find a makeshift chapel. A rough bench bore a cross made of white birch sticks set on a piece of white ermine fur. Other benches faced the altar. On the adjacent wall, charcoal pictograms had been drawn in the fashion of those he had seen on the chronicle skins of the Iroquois Council. But as he raised the candle he saw that these did not depict hunts or raids. A stick figure with a beard carried a cross on his back up a hill. In another scene the bearded man sat with others at a long table, in another he distributed fish to a crowd of smaller figures.
The Mohawks of Quebec, Conawago had told him, were all Christians. There was something strangely poignant about the little chapel built by Christian natives in the crumbling Jesuit outpost. In the lands of Duncan’s youth, the violent Reformers of Calvin had torn down chapels, even entire cathedrals, but on some nights his grandmother had taken him to a tiny chapel in a cavern overlooking the sea where an aged defrocked priest had presided.
He stared through the window at the black sky over the blacker river. The apocalyptic destruction of the Highlands had broken the faith of many Highlanders. It had been years since he had been in a church. He looked out at a bright star rising over the water. “Ave Maris Stella.” The words left his tongue unbidden. The old priest had been a fisherman and often opened his nighttime rites at the mouth of the cavern with an invocation toward the ocean. Hail, Star of the Sea.
Despair crept into his heart. He could not remember ever feeling so broken, so adrift, so filled with foreboding. Murderers who lied about gods and thieves who stole treasure and children roamed the wilderness, and try as he might he could not pierce the mysteries that connected them. Armies waited ahead, lusting to soak the land in blood for the sake of distant kings. His companions expected him to lead them to the truth, to an end to the violence and a restoration of the old ways, but he could not shake the feeling that he was only leading them to their deaths.
As the moon rose over the black rim of the horizon, he extinguished his candle and faced the little birch cross, glowing silver in the moonlight. He was head of a dying clan, companion to a dying tribe. The monks of Saint Ignatius had vowed to bridge the peoples from different sides of the sea, and when they failed they had calmly prayed as they were thrown over the cliff.
“Ave Maria,” he whispered, then continued more loudly. “Gratia plena, Dominus tecum.”
He did not know how long he prayed, but the moon had climbed well clear of the horizon when he looked back out the window. The overgrown field was bathed in soft light. Suddenly he saw movement along the low ridge, two slow figures who stopped and bent at intervals along the crest. He shot up and silently slipped down the stairs.
The rocks at the northern end of the ridge provided cover as he ascended, rifle in hand. The two figures were less than fifty paces away when he reached the top. The amorphous shapes glided over the silver landscape. This was the Island of the Ghosts, and this was their hour.
He gasped as he stepped around a boulder to find another phantom. Kassawaya sat as still as a statue, her bow in her lap, an arrow nocked and ready. She showed no surprise at Duncan’s appearance, and he realized she had probably been watching him since he left the abbey.
“I have heard of this place all my life,” she whispered. “Be good or you’ll be sent to the Isle of the Ghosts, my aunts would say. No one ever comes back from the Isle of the Ghosts, my mother said once when I broke a favorite pot of hers. I had to go away to a hut for five days when my first moonblood came on me. At night I had visions of a place where lost, weeping souls wandered aimlessly. I thought it must be this island.”
Duncan gazed uncertainly at the Oneida woman. Her words seem to come from someone vulnerable, even frightened. But the countenance he saw was of someone else. Her playful strength, her strong will, her energetic nature were so dominant they often eclipsed her comeliness. In the moonlight, as unmoving as the rock she sat on, bow in hand, she could have been a statute of wild Artemis, goddess of the hunt.
Her gaze shifted, from the ghosts on the crest of the ridge to its far side, to a small, dark valley that the rising moon had not yet lit. Her expression grew hard, and sad, and when Duncan asked what was there, she offered no reply.
He moved on, warily approaching the two phantoms, grateful for the rifle in his hand. They were moving toward him, stopping every few feet at large rocks along the crest and bending over the rocks before continuing their strange passage. Duncan dropped to one knee and waited for the ghosts. The nearest was ten feet away when it raised an arm to throw back the cowl that covered it.
“Tushcona, is it you?” Duncan asked, confused to see the old woman.
She put a finger to her lips then gestured to her companion, who reached into a sack and extended a small object to the Iroquois elder. A small loaf of cornbread. Duncan looked at the line of rocks behind them and saw now that each held one of the small loaves. He had thought they had baked the loaves for their journey, but instead they were giving them to the Isle of the Ghosts.
The two grey figures remained silent when they reached the last rock, only a few feet from the unmoving Kassawaya, then turned to walk back along the crest. They passed Duncan without a word and continued, Duncan a step behind, until they reached a large flat boulder that marked a trail leading down into the shadowed valley.
“I don’t know who I am,” the old woman suddenly replied. Her companion sat on a rock on the opposite side of the path and removed the cowl of her monk’s robe. It was Hetty Eldridge. Duncan, feeling like an intruder, took a tentative step backward, but Tushcona gestured for him to sit on the ground between the two women.
“I was born to a Shawnee clan,” the weaver of the Council belts confessed. “But my parents were killed in a Huron raid when I was in my eighth summer. They captured over twenty of us, children, young women, and several of our warriors. They brought us here for the trading. Other war parties came in with European prisoners.”
As she spoke moonlight began to filter into the valley beyond. Duncan’s heart leapt, and he grabbed his gun as he saw the rows of upright figures.
Tushcona showed no alarm. “I thought we would stay a day or two when they tied us to those terrible posts. But we had to wait for the market. More parties came in, from the North and the West, to buy new slaves. Every post was used, many with two prisoners tied back-to-back. I was there,” she pointed to a tall grey shape midway down the nearest row.
Posts. Duncan was looking at gaondote posts, prisoner posts sunk in the ground in two long rows separated by a wide avenue. There were a least two dozen in each row.
“It became like a festival for the war parties and slavers. They were on the way home, with prizes of war. There was rum. I was tied with an English boy, a good boy who sang songs and began teach
ing me my first English words. His father and mother were there too and would sometimes call out to him, though they always paid for it with a blow from a club. On the tenth night they tied his father to a long pole and hoisted him over a fire while they danced. They roasted him alive to celebrate their victory. He screamed and screamed, and when the boy screamed back they knocked him unconscious.
“The next day some Abenaki came, friends of the Huron. They paid in pelts for all the surviving English children, over a dozen, but they never untied them. One by one they slit their throats, in revenge for some raid English soldiers made on their camps. Only after the bodies began to smell did those Hurons untie them and throw them over the cliff.
“For generations war parties have come here with captives. So many children died. Scores of children, hundreds even. We could have done more to stop it. We should have done more.”
Duncan stood and looked out over the flat with its ranks of posts. It was a torture ground where unimaginable suffering had been inflicted, the blood of so many lives spilled. And it had become a worm eating into the souls of the old Iroquois, who could have stopped it and hadn’t. He walked along the nearest posts, touching each one with only his fingertips, thinking of the belt, the elders, and the night in front of the Council. This dark place of torture was the hole in the world. But he had not understood the connection until that moment.
“The children will be brought here,” he said to Tushcona.
“If they survive, yes. They are in the hands of the Huron, who adhere to the old ways. There are those among them who would pay much to see my granddaughter’s life spilled out on the ground here.”
“But that is not why the half-king took them.”
“He took them to force us to his cause. If he is not successful he will give them to the Huron.” Tushcona walked with him now, though she seemed reluctant to step too close to the posts.
“How?” Duncan asked. “How could the half-king have known the children were from the elders? The secret must have been known by so few.” Secrecy had been their protection, their shield.
Tushcona seemed not to hear. “Sometimes those who came from the North liked to buy a slave and leave it tied to a post to starve.” The old woman pointed a finger toward the second line of posts. “There were two such men dying, an Oneida and a Nipmuc, when I arrived. No food, no water. They would make songs for rain because then they could open their mouths and live another day. At night when it rains I still hear their songs.”
Duncan began to understand the island. “It’s why they built the abbey here,” he said. “The monks wanted the cruelty stopped.”
Tuschcona nodded. “They tried. They would sometimes walk among the prisoners, saying their prayers, offering food and water when it was permitted. When no one bought me, the Hurons decided to starve me too. They kept the monks away and nearly killed one when he secretly brought me a crust to eat in the night. But a French trader came, and the monks got him to trade a cask of rum for me.”
“How long did you stay with the monks?”
“A few months. Some of those Christian Mohawks of the French decided to take me to Onondaga Castle. The old castle. A warrior there took me for a wife. We had a fine son. But they both died when the Wolverines came.”
Hetty stepped to their side, as if she did not wish to be alone. Duncan noticed now the haunted way the Welsh woman stared at the little valley. “You knew the posts too?”
She put a hand up on a post as if she needed support. “The abbey was destroyed by then,” she said. “The western tribes would bring furs to trade. I was eighteen years old. I was so scared. The ghosts were here then too. The ones who had died of starvation were the worst. They would howl for food in the night, but I was the only one who could hear them. I wanted to help them but never knew how.”
A chill ran down Duncan’s spine.
She touched the scars that circled her wrists. “I struggled so much I wore away the skin and flesh, almost to the bone.”
Duncan stared at the Welsh woman, not understanding but somehow believing her. He turned to look up at the rocks with the loaves. “So tonight you finally feed them.”
As she spoke, new shapes emerged from the shadows. The other elders, with Ishmael and Conawago, appeared over the crest, carrying the axes brought from the brig.
Tushcona stepped before Conawago. “The posts still bind those who died at them. I watched a Nipmuc warrior die at the second post on the north side.”
Conawago hesitated. “Surely those of the Council should-”
“No. You are the chosen ones.” She handed an ax to Duncan. “You two shall release the first ghosts to the other side. They will let the old ones there know you have arrived to make good on your word, tell them you are coming to stop the killing of the gods.”
The posts were thick, but the old wood was brittle and their blades sank deep. As Conawago and Duncan alternated their swings, the old Nipmuc chanted, with a phrase on each stroke. “We are coming,” he said with the first swing, then, “do not die,” with the second. “Do not forget us,” he said with the third, then he repeated the words, over and over, his determination growing fiercer with each bite of the ax. Whether he was speaking to the lost children or the fading spirits Duncan was not certain. He joined in the chant.
They had the first post down in minutes. When they had leveled four posts, the elders lit a fire at the center of the slaveyard and rolled the posts into it. After each of the elders had helped cut down a post, they took up positions at the fire, throwing tobacco in it and singing the songs that called for the spirits to take notice. They had taken down nearly half the posts when Woolford appeared, taking an ax from a weary Conawago.
Duncan had the sense that his ax was growing lighter as they leveled the posts. Ishmael exclaimed with joy as a meteor shot overhead. He became aware that all of them, including Woolford as he swung the heavy blade, were singing a new chant, a spirit chant used by warriors. Not for the first time on their strange journey Duncan felt as if he were caught inside some ancient myth of the tribes. He paused and looked at Hetty and Tushcona at the fire, sparks flying around their heads, then Conawago, who swung his ax again, looking more like a fighter than the gentle philosopher Duncan knew him to be. This was how the old tribesmen fought their wars.
They were only done, Tushcona insisted, when every post was cut and burned. It was arduous work, and by the time they were finished Duncan felt as if he had felled an entire forest. He collapsed beside Conawago by the fire. The soaring flames and singsong chant were hypnotic.
He was not certain if he dozed off, but Conawago’s touch on his knee brought him back to full consciousness. The sky had lightened to a dull grey, enough to illuminate the crest of the low ridge. As he followed Conawago’s gaze, his heart leapt into his throat. For a moment he was certain he was looking at a line of ghosts staring down at them from the ridge. But then the figures began to descend the slope in a line of attack, shoving a frightened Kassawaya before them. They were vengeful warriors and were ready for battle.
Chapter Thirteen
Woolford grabbed his rifle. “Stay with Conawago!” he desperately whispered before darting into the shadows. Duncan reached for his own rifle.
“No!” came Conawago’s quick command. “Caughnawags.”
The warning did little to dispel Duncan’s fear. The Caughnawags were the northern Mohawks, who had been converted by French Jesuits in the prior century then exiled to Canada when the Iroquois fell into the British sphere of influence. They prayed to one God but gave homage to their war axes as well. They were the most numerous of France’s allies on the northern frontier and second only to the Hurons in their reputation for ferocity. They did not consider themselves part of the Iroquois League, for they were French Indians, and those of the League were British Indians. For decades they had led raids deep into British territory, including the infamous massacre at Deerfield, in the Massachusetts colony.
Duncan struggled against his imp
ulse to grab his weapon as the enemy closed around them. Each warrior carried a musket, though they kept the barrels down as they surrounded those at the fire.
“They spoke to me in Mohawk,” Kass groused, glancing at Sagatchie. She was obviously shamed by her capture.
“Because they are Mohawk,” said Custaloga, his eyes on a stern middle-aged warrior wearing a sash of skunk pelts. “Because the same blood flows in their veins and ours.”
The warrior with the fur sash stepped forward. “You have made good use of the wood here,” he declared in a deep slow voice.
Duncan realized the man was offering support for their night’s work, although his sober expression gave no hint of friendship.
Custaloga offered a tentative smile. “Our northern relatives sometimes recover captives and bring them back to us,” he said to Duncan, though loudly enough for all to hear.
The chieftain in the black-and-white fur shrugged. “The Hurons and Abenaki will be furious.”
Custaloga shrugged back. “Chief Tatamy, you and I know that Mohawks do not wage war on women and children.”
The stranger called Tatamy stared at Custaloga with a stony expression, as if to rebuke him. His gaze shifted to Ishmael as the boy stepped in front of Conawago, holding a stick like a club, and a weary smile flickered on his weathered face. “Mohawks do not wage war on women and children,” he agreed.
“Then you will help us recover the five lost children of the Council,” Duncan interjected. The moment the words left his tongue, he knew they had been too hasty. The Iroquois had not even begun the rituals of hospitality.
Tatamy frowned his disapproval.
“This person is Duncan McCallum,” Conawago apologized as he gestured to Duncan. “A wretched Scot who is still learning the ways of true humans.”
The chieftain shook his head, expressing his own regret, then sighed and gestured to several warriors standing behind him. “If you would share your fire,” he said to the elders, “then we would share our fish.” The warriors stepped forward, extending vines strung with huge trout.
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