Xavier held up his maimed hand again. “The chieftains long ago accepted that I had paid my passage. I have spent many years in the Ohio country, have even seen the mighty Mississippi. I am a familiar face to all those tribes, and to those who trade with them.”
Duncan realized that he had misunderstood Xavier, just as Woolford had not appreciated the contradictions of the Jesuits when he chose not to probe the Jesuit message route. He looked back up at the skins and spears hanging over the tapestry of martyrdom, then at the beaded belts hanging casually from the shelves. The belts, meaningless to almost every European, were the perfect medium for secret messages. A message on one could be hidden in plain sight. Xavier was no monkish scholar. Here was the secret communications center Woolford had been seeking, the nexus of the messages between the French and the half-king. The messages had been carried by the Jesuits, who regularly traveled between east and west. Xavier was a deputy of the half-king. And he had summoned them for a purpose.
Xavier fixed him with the smile of a conspirator. “There is little time left and much to do. The pieces fall together like the gears of a clock. But old feuds are difficult to extinguish. I need you to understand that only one thing stands in the way of the tribes’ true destiny, preventing them from coming together at last in all their glory.”
“The Iroquois Council,” Duncan inserted. “But the Council will never join the cause if their children are killed or enslaved.”
Xavier gave an approving nod. “Exactly. Regis overreacts. He must learn that chess is won with subtle moves.”
“Regis?” Conawago asked.
Xavier made a dismissive gesture. “Before he became a leader of the western tribes, the Revelator had another name.”
Duncan recalled how the half-king had fluently spoken English and French. Regis. It had the sound of a trader’s son, of a half-breed. The crossed boy, Osotku had said as he died.
“He is too bold by half in dealing with the Iroquois League,” the monk continued, “and he corrupts his cause by stealing their children. He was taught better. Now he talks of riches and bounties and bribes. But he has been taught that gold and silver corrupts the soul as much as the rum he loathes. It does not build on the strength of the tribes he wishes to lead. He spent so long in war parties that he forgets how to negotiate.”
“So we have been brought to his peace chief?” Duncan said.
The suggestion brought a thin smile to Xavier’s face. “He deludes himself and must be shown he can win his crown without stooping to the greedy ways of European kings. Our lust for gold is a disease of the soul! We must show ourselves immune!”
Duncan glanced back at Tatamy. Xavier knew much of the half-king’s ways, but not all of them.
Xavier made another dismissive gesture. “I have someone who is waiting for you,” he declared, changing the subject. He picked up one of his candles and led them toward the end of the tapestry. As he reached it, Tatamy lifted one corner, revealing a small arched door.
Two of the walls of the larger room they entered held barrels of wine stacked lengthwise on heavy racks, and the third shelved the heavy crocks used for storing pickled vegetables and grains. Along the far wall a wooden stair reached up into the vaulted ceiling, no doubt into the seminary’s kitchens. Under the stair was a cot on which a tribal girl of perhaps ten years lay. The girl’s arm was in a sling and a long jagged cut ran down one of her cheeks, expertly closed with sutures.
Xavier said nothing, just stepped aside.
Tushcona gasped and rushed forward. “Hannah!” the weaver exclaimed as she embraced the girl. One of the lost children was found.
Tears began streaming down the cheeks of both the old woman and her granddaughter.
Duncan looked back at Xavier, then at the stairway. Was the Jesuit offering them a token of good faith or baiting a trap?
The woman and child spoke with hushed, rapid Iroquois words as Tushcona kissed Hannah’s forehead then examined her injuries. Finally the girl looked up and spoke in English.
“Jacob Pine saved my life!” she declared through her tears.
“I grew so tired, so hungry,” she continued after a moment, clutching her grandmother’s hand. “Those Hurons made us carry heavy loads, and we had to fight their dogs for the bones they tossed aside. But if we showed any weakness they would raise their axes and have our brains on the rocks. I saw it happen, to a boy from the Connecticut country, one day after we joined with another raiding party. When we paused to rest he started crying, hugging his knees and calling for his mother. When it was time to go, he wouldn’t stand up. This Huron yelled and yelled, and then he hit him with his war club. His head popped like a melon. The next day I fell and twisted my ankle and had trouble getting up even with Jacob helping me. That Huron was so angry with me, he lifted his club to strike me.”
Ishmael came forward and knelt by the girl. “Jacob Pine is my particular friend,” the boy explained to his companions.
“He charged that Huron,” Hannah said, “hit him hard enough to push the club away from my head. It just broke my arm, then cut my face when he slashed backward at me. That Huron hit Jacob too then, and cut him bad on the shoulder, but the Caughnawags ran up and pulled the Huron away.”
Brother Xavier stepped closer to the girl and turned toward Duncan, as if to cut her off. “When I saw them I demanded they give up the girl, for I know the fate of captives who cannot perform work. Dead Iroquois maidens help no one. She had the care of the seminary physician.” He shifted toward the Iroquois elders. “I told them I know who those five children were, that I would write it in my great book if they injured more of them.”
“Your book?” Duncan asked.
“The chronicle is a living record. Once it is written, the world remembers. They all know that.” Xavier hesitated and flushed at the suggestion that he used the book to shame his native flock. He was, Duncan could see, well aware of the ways the tribes had been abused and cheated with the written words of Europeans. “I mean only that I reminded them that the children must be properly respected. Honorable men do not fight with children as their pawns.”
“Honorable men do not fight with children as their pawns,” Custaloga repeated, directing his words to Tatamy, who remained expressionless.
The monk grew uneasy. “We should not tire our patient,” he said, gesturing them back toward his library vault.
“Mr. Bedford. Is he safe?” Ishmael asked as he rose.
“They took him away, Ishmael,” Hannah said with a forlorn shake of her head. “They said he was to be tortured because he tried to hide us at Bethel Church. They do terrible things to the prisoners they tie to those posts. I pray for him every night. Brother Xavier says he lights candles for him.”
Hetty must have learned her son’s fate, Duncan realized as he followed Xavier back to the vault. She had changed her plans, had helped them go the Council because she had decided her son was lost.
When they returned to Xavier’s chamber, he produced a hand-drawn map and laid it on his table, pointing out the outposts and batteries around Montreal. A large box marked with a B indicated the British base on the southern bank five miles away. Underneath was written the name of the units in the advance positions: Fraser. Montgomery. Black Watch. All Highland units.
“The Caughnawags and Quebec militia wait for their orders,” the Frenchman declared. “As thick as flies in the summer woods.” He indicated smaller boxes, each within two or three miles of a British unit. “When the Scots are eliminated, the other troops brought by General Calder and Xavier Johnson will be useless. The campaign will be lost, the British initiative lost for the year. And that will make all the difference.”
“When?” Duncan asked. “When has a Scottish regiment ever been defeated in this war?”
Xavier’s expression was that of the cunning fox who has made a kill. “The Saint Lawrence will become a gauntlet of death for the English troops. For the glory of Rome.”
“You mean the glory of the Revela
tor,” Duncan snapped impatiently. Xavier’s silent smile sent a shiver down his spine, and he looked back at Tatamy. Xavier thought they had come to listen to his terms, but Tatamy had brought them to reveal the crimes he could not speak of.
Xavier gestured toward the entryway. “We have laid pallets in the adjoining vault. You can-”
The army coin rang like a bell when Duncan dropped it on the table. Xavier’s gloating expression disappeared. “You mean for the glory of the sainted renegade who had his men hammer the skulls of Christian Mohawks to steal British treasure.”
The color drained from the Jesuit’s face and he dropped into his chair. He had known nothing of the payroll theft.
A low rumble of wheels on stone cobbles woke Duncan from his restless sleep in the empty chamber where he and the others slept. He lay awake in the dim light of the solitary lantern, then finally sat up, stretching, and suddenly saw that Ishmael’s pallet was empty. He slipped out into the dimly lit corridor then up the passage to the cathedral. At the end of the nave, near the altar, a priest was on his knees with an old native woman, both absorbed in prayer. They took no notice of him as he stole out of the cathedral.
He circled the big stone structure and its seminary, thinking the boy may have sought a perch to watch as the ox-drawn cannons crept through the town, then he retraced their path from the river. The stone wall where the beggars sat was lit by street lanterns, and Duncan dropped back into the shadows as he spotted the boy. Ishmael was on his knees before the aged woman beside Hetty, extending a blanket to her. The woman held her palms up to decline the gift, but the boy remonstrated until at last she let Ishmael drape the blanket over her shoulders. Ishmael quickly stepped backward, as if worried she might change her mind, then bent to give Hetty an awkward embrace before hurrying toward the shadows where Duncan stood.
The boy halted as he reached the darkness and turned to watch the old women. They seemed to a mystery to him, and with a tightening in his chest Duncan realized the boy had never had women in his life. Duncan had lost his own mother and sisters, but he had been blessed with memories of good years with them. Ishmael’s only family had been his grandfather, and Hickory John had been hardening him for a life alone in the world.
After several minutes Duncan stepped closer to Ishmael, who acknowledged him with a silent nod.
“That one with Hetty,” the boy said, “she is a Conoy, one of the lost tribes of the Pennsylvania lands. Hetty met her many years ago, wandering in the Ohio country. She had been a revered matriarch, a leader and teacher, daughter of a great chief. She says when the great snows come, the other beggars put on crosses and are allowed to sleep in the back of the cathedral. But she won’t do so because she says it affronts the old gods, that it is not the way of her people. The others laugh at her and say she has no people.”
“She has a blanket now,” Duncan observed.
“Is that the way of it when you are the last of your kind?” There was a catch in Ishmael’s throat as he spoke. “Being laughed at? Sitting in a blanket alone in the raging snow?”
“She is not alone,” Duncan said after a long moment. “All of her gods and all of her people live inside her.”
As they returned to the cathedral Duncan did not object when Ishmael gestured him to a pew. They sat in silence for a quarter hour, gazing at the image of Christ on the cross over the altar and the priest who still spoke with the native woman, who was now weeping. Ishmael finally rose and without a word disappeared back down the stairway.
Duncan lingered a few more minutes then stepped to another arched doorway on the opposite side. The bell tower stairs were so narrow his elbows brushed both walls as he climbed. He emerged onto an open belfry, the highest vantage point in the city. A cool wind blew through the starlit sky. The muscles of small gargoyles jutting off the ledge below the belfry rippled in the silver light, as if the creatures were about to leap into the sky.
Below him the city lay in repose except for wagons with provisions arriving at a single gate. The city was preparing for a long siege. In the far distance, down the wide eastern stretch of the river, the rising moon silhouetted the topmasts of British warships. The clip-clop of a solitary rider echoed off the cobblestones below. A lantern moved along the top of the outer wall, an officer checking his sentries. He gazed over the open expanse of river beyond. If the British ships could advance and hold in the right position against the river’s powerful currents they would pound the walls to dust. But the French artillerymen, famed for their cool, efficient fire, meant to sink the ships before they could secure their anchors. Hundreds of men were soon to die.
From his perch he could see far beyond the city, the fortifications, and the ships of war. The rolling shadow of the wild country extended to the far horizon. The European hold on the vast continent sometimes seemed so tenuous, but he knew the power of the Europeans. Gunpowder, Greek fire, and the mighty steel ax were weapons for which the natural world had no defenses. He had begun to sense something else, an awareness deep inside that had not been there before. Conawago would say it was because he had been woven into a Haudenosaunee belt. For all his effort to help the tribesmen be treated as equals by the Europeans, he was beginning to understand Johnson’s claim that the humans of towns and settled lands were fundamentally different from those of the forest. The soil of the woodlands was mixed in the blood of the tribes. They were inextricable from the land, part of the wildness, part of something ancient and vital that the world badly needed. Looking out over the dim lights toward the vastness beyond, he felt the pain deep in the hearts of the elders, the essence of their anguish over the disturbances on the other side. The bond to the natural world that defined the tribes was weakening. The settlements, the armies, the endless flow of farmers were like rot in the root of their world.
He moved to the other side of the tower to gaze on familiar stars, leaning out to see the belt of Orion the hunter emerging over the horizon. The constellation had been a favorite of his grandfather’s and they had often. . Duncan froze. One of the gargoyles below was indeed alive.
“I keep thinking of what they say about the hell dog,” Sagatchie suddenly said, as if they had been carrying on a conversation, “about how a great warrior is in its body.” The Mohawk ranger was seated on the narrow ledge beside a stone gargoyle, one hand resting casually on its head.
“The creature has a more noble air than many men I know,” Duncan replied, fighting the impulse to reach out to pull his friend to safety. There was nothing but air between Sagatchie and the cobblestones over a hundred feet below.
“I knew of that warrior married to Hetty. There were legends told of him when I was a boy. He knew how to die. He understood that a man must die at the right age, which may not mean an old age.”
“Sagatchie,” Duncan asked, “would it be possible to sit more like a man and less like a sparrow?”
The Mohawk’s teeth gleamed as he grinned. He rose and vaulted upward to sit on the wall beside Duncan. “I try to understand the cut world, but it never gives me quiet,” he said after a moment.
“The cut world?”
The Mohawk gestured toward the buildings below. “Living in cut stone and cut trees. The only time I feel alone is when I am surrounded by so many Europeans and their buildings.
“That night at the Council,” he continued after a few breaths, “the elders spoke of our nation growing old. It was painful to hear but I know they spoke the truth. Worlds change. It is the way of all things. I have always known in my heart that there would be nothing better than to die for my grandfathers and for my gods. But when I grow old what will be left? What will there be to die for? Will anyone remember the names of our gods a hundred years from now? My greatest fear is that I die an old man in the cut world. I had a vision of that on the last full moon, and it kept me awake all night. I have never been frightened in battle, but that night I felt like a small boy surrounded by hungry beasts. I saw those beggars on the streets today. I cannot stop thinking of them. I
fight for the British king, but when he wins the British will take our land. The land is our birthright, the essence of our people. When we have land, we have everything. When we have no land, we can only live by working for others, which means we all become slaves and beggars.”
A great weight settled over Duncan’s shoulders. He wanted to argue. “The wilderness is like a living thing,” he offered, gesturing toward the surrounding countryside. “It will endure, like its children.”
“Wilderness?” Sagatchie said. “I see British ships on the horizon. I see camps of soldiers in every direction and a river that has become a European highway.”
“But beyond that the deer runs free and the eagle flies high,” Duncan said. “To the West no man even knows how many hundreds of miles the wildness extends.”
Sagatchie seemed lost in his own thoughts. “A warrior’s life is nothing unless it ends with honor,” he said, and he would speak no more.
As Duncan descended, the words echoed in his mind. A sacred belt said he was supposed to die for the tribal spirits, which at least would be a death with honor. But it was more likely he would die crushed in the European war machine.
When he stole into the darkened library vault, he thought a grey-haired monk had come to study the books. He was about to retreat, wary that the man bent by the candle might sound an alarm, but the monk straightened, yawning and stretching his arms. Duncan grinned and stepped into the light.
“It was the life they tried to push you to,” he said to Conawago, who had donned one of the monks’ robes against the chill. “In a robe, in a cathedral.”
“If they had just left me alone with the books, I probably never would have left,” his friend said. “Look at these!” Conawago exclaimed. “The treatise of Linnaeus on plant classification! The poetry of Thomas Grey! I was just reading the one on the death of his favorite cat. Drowned in a tub of fish!” When Duncan did not react he shrugged, then closed the book before him. “They had other plans for me, Duncan.”
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