Shadowbrook

by Swerling, Beverly

  The runner he’d sent out had brought word a short time before. Five hundred of Onontio’s heavily armed soldiers had left Fort Duquesne. And as he’d feared, a hundred Lenape and Mingo marched with them. If Onontio met the Americans in the forest, Washington and his men would all die swiftly. If the French came here they would place themselves in the hills that surrounded this meadow and easily kill the forts defenders one by one. Tanaghrisson sighed. The sense of disaster was a physical thing. It shivered in his belly now as it had a few days ago back at Gist’s trading post. “Pack,” he said again. “I will tell the others.”

  His wife looked at him shrewdly. “You have lost everything you wagered. How did this happen?”

  “This Washington is a good-natured boy who will someday be a good man, but he has no experience.” Tanaghrisson glanced again at the ill-sited fort with its paltry defenses. “Worse, he will not listen to those who have.”

  Two days later Washington got word that Tanaghrisson and his followers—including his dozen braves—had left Great Meadows. He sent a messenger to try and get the Half King to return, but didn’t have much hope of success. There were only a couple of Indians with them now, malcontents who preferred to stay rather than leave with their companions, and they were not to be trusted. For all intents and purposes, he and his men were marching on alone. It was hard not to give in to a certain despair. No, he told himself, despair had no place in a heroic life. He was meant for greatness. He had been ordered to rid the Ohio Country of the French and he would do so. But without substantial numbers of Indians to swell his numbers he dare not attack Fort Duquesne. Very well, they would wait for reinforcements from Virginia and Pennsylvania, but not here at Gist’s. Exhausted as they were, he would somehow drive the men another six leagues to the trading post at Red Stone Creek, or Red Stone Fort, as some called it. It was sure to be a better place to take a stand.

  Only his determination built the additional six leagues of God-rotting road. And when they got to Red Stone Creek—not a fort after all, just a single fortified building called a blockhouse—it was his will that got the trenches dug to defend their position. He was a madman, compelling the world and everyone in it to do his will, and miraculously perhaps, they obeyed. Two days later everything changed.

  “Scout’s returned, sir.” The lieutenant jerked his head back toward the Mingo standing a short distance away examining the preparations for battle that had been made in his absence. He did not look impressed.

  “Bring him to me.”

  The news was straightforward. Six hundred armed men had left Fort Duquesne—five hundred French infantry and a hundred Indians. The Virginians were outnumbered three to two. “What kind of a force?” Washington demanded. “Do they look as if they’re just exploring?”

  “They come to fight.” The Mingo’s gaze kept traveling the perimeter of the encampment, taking in the shallow trenches and the spent men. “Soldiers and braves all with many scalps at their belt. And big guns. Bigger than those.” He gestured toward the swivel guns the Virginians had brought with them at such cost. “Much bigger.”

  Washington turned away so neither the officer nor the savage would see his struggle. He’d proved he had the potential for greatness simply by getting this far. But force of will could not deflect grape and chain. It would not turn away cannonballs, or shield men from musket fire. When Washington turned back, the Mingo was walking away, planning to disappear into the forest most likely, but the lieutenant was still awaiting his orders. “Tell the men to prepare to leave. We are returning to Fort Necessity.”

  “Now, sir? The boys are very tired, they—”

  “They are alive. I intend they should remain that way. Now, Lieutenant. In fact, sooner.”

  Back at Great Meadows Washington assembled his men in the open fields and waited to engage the enemy. When the French arrived they dispersed themselves in the surrounding trees and raked his lines with musket fire. The Virginians retreated to the shallow trenches surrounding Fort Necessity. And then, sweet Christ Jesus, it poured down with rain. Sheets of it. The trenches filled with water and the enfilading fire never let up.

  Some ten hours after the engagement began a boy—he was barely fifteen—whom Washington had made a corporal a few days before crawled on his belly through the mud to the trench where the colonel had positioned himself. “The troops, sir. They got into the rum. A good number’s pretty drunk.”

  “I can suggest no immediate remedy for inebriation, Corporal. And under the circumstances there’s nothing we can do to point out the error of their ways, but they will be disciplined when this is over” Bloody hard to blame them for wanting liquor to ease the terror, but there would be a few hours respite fairly soon. Washington’s eyes raked the horizon. It was eight o’clock and the dusk was thickening; soon it would be too dark for shooting. And with sunrise, who knew … maybe the rain would stop. Maybe the reinforcements would come.

  “Yes, sir. But it’s the bloody rain, sir. The boys’ muskets is soaked; they won’t fire. Not if they ain’t dried and cleaned. And the screw that cleans ’em, sir, we’ve only two of those between all of us.”

  “There’s little I can—”

  “Monsieur le Colonel Washington!” The voice from the trees thundered over the sodden meadow like the summons of the Archangel Gabriel. “Monsieur le Colonel, can you hear me?”

  Bloody hell! If he stood up he’d be a sure target. But glory demanded action. Washington got to his feet. The young corporal grabbed at his sleeve and tried to haul him back down. “No, sir! Don’t! It’s not full dark. They can still see you, sir.”

  Washington shook him off. “I am in command of the Virginia Regiment, Corporal. I quite mean for them to see me.” Then he stood as tall as his more than six feet allowed, with both hands cupped to his mouth so they’d be sure to know exactly the direction of the shout. “I am right here, sir! And I can hear you quite plainly.”

  “Eh bien, mon Colonel. Do you wish perhaps to negotiate?”

  Sweet Christ Jesus. Maybe they wouldn’t all die in this Godforsaken mud.

  “His name is Captain de Villiers, Colonel Washington. He says he is the brother of the French lieutenant. The one who was—The one who died last month in the glen. Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville.”

  “Yes, I remember his name quite well.” The storeroom was the driest place in the stockade, but it leaked like a sieve. And there was only one flickering candle to read by. “This bit here,” Washington thrust the document closer to the Frenchspeaking captain he’d sent to do the negotiating. “What does this mean?”

  “Those are the terms, Colonel. We are offered the honors of war. We can leave with our arms if we agree to withdraw from the Ohio Country and pledge not to return within a year. We have to repatriate their prisoners, sir, and leave two officers as hostages at Fort Duquesne. I’ll stay behind, sir. And I’m sure there’s another—”

  “Why such generous terms, Captain? Have you any idea?” Blast and damnation. Did this de Villiers know something he did not?

  “I can’t rightly say, sir. They look pretty well dug in up there in the trees. They’re all around us, sir. And—’

  “I know they’re all around us.” The fusillades had been pouring down on them from every direction for hours. “What about ammunition? Supplies? Perhaps they’re running low.”

  “Perhaps, sir. I couldn’t say. No way to tell. But Villiers …”

  “Yes?”

  “He says he came to avenge his brother’s death, sir. And he considers that he’s done that.”

  Yes, by Christ Jesus, he had. They’d brought him the reckoning a few moments before. Thirty of his men were dead and seventy wounded, and the surgeon didn’t think he could save many of those. There was not a mule or a horse or a pig alive in the stockade. They were not only without four-legged transportation, they were without a steady supply of meat. Washington stabbed at the paper containing the Articles of Capitulation. “Jumonville’s mur—His brother’s passin
g, Captain, is there anything in here about that?”

  “A few words, sir, nothing important.” What bloody else could he say? De Villiers had written the damned thing on his knee. The bloody document was all but illegible. He had thought there was something in there about Washington accepting responsibility for Jumonville’s assassination, but he couldn’t find it when he looked again. Maybe he’d been mistaken. He was offering himself as a hostage so the men could live; what in hell’s name else could be wanted of him? Wasn’t him who should have given the command to stop the massacre back in the glen. “I don’t think there’s anything that matters, sir. About Jumonville, I mean. But there’s one other thing …”

  “Yes?”

  “The Indians fighting with them, Colonel Washington, I expected it would be the usual French allies, sir. Ottawa and Huron. It’s not.”

  Washington knew almost without having to ask, but he wanted to hear the words. “Very well, Captain. Which Indians, then?”

  “Ours, sir. At least the ones supposed to be ours. Mingo and Shawnee and Delaware.”

  Washington reached for his quill. “Pray God this ink is not too full of water to be readable, Captain.” He signed his name with his usual flourish.

  The Virginians, Washington leading, left Fort Necessity the following morning, the fourth of July 1754. Most of the men were barefoot, and there wasn’t a complete uniform between any ten of them. They carried their muskets pointing downward, as custom demanded of surrendering troops.

  De Villiers had lost three men of his six hundred; a few more had sustained light wounds. The victors watched the militiamen leave, then destroyed Fort Necessity before heading west. On their way back to Fort Duquesne, traveling the road the Virginian troops had built, the French burned to the ground Gist’s trading post and Red Stone Fort. The Ohio Country was once again safe for New France.

  Chapter Seven

  SATURDAY, JULY 4, 1754

  QUÉBEC UPPER TOWN, NEW FRANCE

  THE MAN, A habitant wearing leather breeches and a belted hunting shirt and a broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his forehead, made his way across the Place d’Armes, the ceremonial heart of the Upper Town, and headed toward the Porte du Palais. There was a guard at the gate, a Canadian wearing the uniform of the colonial troupes franches de la marine. He glanced at the basket fixed to back of the habitant. “You go for firewood?”

  “Bien sûr, mon ami. How else can my family eat?”

  The guard waved him on. The man shuffled forward, not stopping to glance at the great château on the banks of the River St. Charles that was home to Intendant Bigot. It was said that Bigot could lose thousands of livres at gaming tables in his great ballroom and never count the cost. Nothing to do with a man who must gather firewood in the forest to survive.

  The woods thickened when he was out of sight of the château’s wooden palisade and its cannon. Now Louis Roget did not feel the need to stoop so markedly; he walked with a bit more ease, enjoying the tall pines and fir trees and the feel of their needles beneath his feet, glad of the shade and the breeze off the river. Except for the nature of his errand, the Provincial Superior of the Society of Jesus would have found this a pleasant stroll in the country.

  “Vous! Ici!”

  The savage was covered from head to foot in blue tattoos. Both cheeks were scarred with knife cuts that ran from ear to mouth, precise enough so it was obvious they were ceremonial marks, not battle scars. He wore feathers in his long black hair, a breechclout, and little else besides an array of bracelets on his arms and legs. A large medicine bag made of the whole skin of an otter hung round his neck, marking him as a member of the powerful Midewiwin priesthood. The Jesuit suppressed a sigh. Dear Lord, that You have sent us to such a place as this to deal with such men as these.

  “Tu n’as pas de savoir-vivre, mon fils.” Roget spoke slowly and with more than usual care. He was never certain how much French these savages understood. “You forget your manners, my son. Remember to whom you speak and adjust your tone.”

  The Indian shrugged. “We are both priests, is that not so? Do you think you are higher than me?”

  “I am a priest of the one Great Spirit that rules the heaven and the earth.”

  The sun was directly overhead now. The red man had been waiting in these woods since it was only a quarter way above the horizon and he had eaten not long before; he belched loudly, then squatted. In his own language he was a Twightwee, a crane person. The Europeans had adopted the Ojibwe word and called them Miami. By whatever name, his people had inhabited the land the French called the pays d’en haut since long before the Cmokmanuk arrived. Still more important, he was a priest of the Midewiwin, a member of one of the most powerful lodges, and a holy man who could speak with the spirits. He had little use for these Europeans no matter what tribe they belonged to, French or English, but he had learned to make choices between bad and worse.

  The French made trade, they gave gifts, they showed respect—at least most of them did, this haughty black robe was an exception—and there were not so many of them. The English multiplied like grasshoppers and devoured the land the way swarms of insects devoured leaves. When the English came, the hunting grounds were destroyed and the Anishinabeg had to leave their homes and the bones of their ancestors and search for new places to live. “Since we agree that there is but one Great Spirit,” the Indian said, “all his priests must be equal.”

  Roget had not come into the woods to argue theology with a savage. He remained standing, but he removed a small chamois bag full of coins from beneath his shirt and held it in plain view. “I was told you had important things to say. I am listening, but I hear only small words.”

  The Midè priest looked up, thinking that he would like to cut out the heart of this arrogant European, and that if he did he would not eat it but feed it to the dogs in his village. But the bag of coins would buy a large quantity of firewater. His mouth was dry with his need for it, and sour with the taste of betrayal. He licked his lips. “I speak big words, black robe, important words. I am offering you more power over the red men than you can believe possible. I will make you king of all the Anishinabeg. You will be able to summon them to fight for Onontio and defeat the English once and for all.”

  “I am not interested in your spells and incantations. You must offer me more than just words.”

  The Indian summoned the spittle for speech and tried to ignore the sick feeling in his belly. “Memetosia, an old and wise Miami chief, is in Albany now. He makes powwow with the English who would overthrow Onontio.”

  “It is three years, many moons, since the Miami turned their back on their father Onontio and chose to listen to the lies of the English. It is not a surprise that they attend a powwow with Onontio’s enemies.”

  Ayi! Half of him hoped this dog turd would refuse the bargain and try to walk away. Then he would kill him and take the money and have no need to betray Memetosia. But he was sure to have brought only a part of the payment. If he killed the black robe now he would never get the rest. “Do you tell me you are not interested in what happens between Memetosia and the English in Albany?”

  “I am interested in the glory of the One True God and His Church. The English separated themselves from that Church. They are in mortal sin and doomed to hell fire.”

  Impossible to deal with men who thought they knew everything. The priest felt a fart coming on and rose slightly on his haunches and freed it, laughing inwardly at the flicker of distaste he saw on the face of the black robe. “If you do not like the English, then you must agree my words are big words.”

  “If they concern the enemies of Almighty God, yes,” Louis Roget said, finally squatting beside the Indian, “they are big words. And I am listening with both my ears.”

  “How much do you have there?”

  So, now we come to the heart of the matter, the Jesuit thought. The servant asks and the master pays. “One hundred livres.” It was a third of what had been stipulated.

  The
Miami spat on the ground in disgust. “It is not enough.”

  “It is a first payment only. One hundred now. Two hundred more when you accomplish ‘the great good thing’ you have promised.”

  The Miami hesitated a moment, thinking about how much firewater he could purchase with three hundred livres, of the hunger that never left of his belly, and of his great need. Finally he took up a twig and scratched a series of symbols in the earth. “Papankamwa, the fox.” He tapped the first mark, then indicated the others in turn. “Eehsipana, the raccoon. Ayaapia, the elk buck. Anseepikwa, the spider. Eeyeelia, possum. Pileewa, turkey.” After each pronouncement he looked up to be sure the black robe was paying attention.

  Roget waited until the recitation was complete before speaking. “I told you I would not pay for your charms and incantations.”

  The Midè priest felt such a need to cut out this one’s tongue that it almost overcame all else, but his great thirst reminded him that it did not. “When you speak words over the bread and the firewater in your Mass, do they not change?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “So we are agreed that words can be very powerful.” Then, before the black robe could find another argument: “Your bread and firewater look the same after you speak your words, yet you say they have become different. I speak of something you can touch and see. Ancient stones, black robe, magic more powerful than the words of your Mass. Papankamwa, eehsipana, ayaapia, anseepikwa, eeyeelia, pileewa. My words will make you a king.”

  MONDAY, JULY 13, 1754

  NEW YORK PROVINCE

  The reeds that grew beside this stretch of Hudson’s River were taller than Nicole’s head, taller than either of the men. They parted with soft, sighing sounds as the party of three moved through them, then closed as if they had never been disturbed.

  It had been three weeks since the night beside the Shawnee fire. The journey by canoe had been infinitely easier for Nicole, but the boat had been abandoned the day before and left well hidden on the riverbank.