“Takito must have been using pretty powerful herbs in that steam.”
“Apparendy so.” Cormac remembered the young woman who had pleasured him with her mouth, the one he had imagined to be Nicole Crane, though he knew that wasn’t possible. Could be there hadn’t been any young woman at all. Could be the whole experience was Midewiwin magic. “Very strong herbs. Like nothing I’ve ever known.”
Quent didn’t want to push Corm to describe what had happened in the sweat lodge. The priests, particularly the Midewiwin, had many ways of bridging the distance between this world and the next; the sweat lodge was one of the most effective. He’d participated in the ritual four times, never for more than an hour or two. Each time the experience affected him profoundly and he emerged slightly changed. “The brave you killed was Miami?”
“No, that’s the strangest thing of all. Huron.”
Quent sucked in his breath. “Huron.” The Huron were bitter enemies of the Miami. “Listen, maybe there was trouble. Maybe the Huron sent a war party to the Lydius house and—”
“The Huron wouldn’t send a war party to the center of Albany. And there was no evidence of any kind of fight. The house was empty, but nothing inside was disturbed.” Corm didn’t mention that his knife and tomahawk had been exactly where he left them, something that would not have happened if there had been a war party rampaging through the Lydius house. If he told Quent that, he’d have to tell him about his long gun being stolen. “Whenever Genevieve and the Miami left, they did it peacefully.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“None at all. Neither does this.” Corm released his grip on the medicine bag and pushed it toward the light of the candles. The fine white deerskin and the red and black crane symbols shone in the glow. “At least my having it doesn’t make sense.”
“This is what Memetosia gave you?”
“Yes.”
Quent was intensely curious about what was inside, but it was up to Corm to decide when to open the pouch. “Where did you leave the Huron’s body?”
“In the stream.” Cormac had been unwilling to grant the Huron the dignity of a burial. That was an honor due a worthy enemy, not one who sneaked up on a man drunk with magic. He took the scalp before he’d kicked the corpse into the water, and left it in the Lydius’s front hall, in the place where his stolen long gun should have been.
Cormac fingered the medicine bag. It was miraculous that it hadn’t been found and stolen while he was under Takito’s spells. The Spirit of the Sacred Fire had protected the medicine bag because Corm was meant to have it and do something with it. Only he had no idea what.
He pushed the pouch toward Quent. “Take a look. It’s six shells. Wampum but like nothing you’ve ever seen.”
Quent closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Only when he felt himself calmed and ready did he loosen the thong and carefully, with great respect, withdraw the contents and spread them on the table.
Each shell was about the size of Quent’s thumbnail. He’d never seen wampum that big before. In the days before the Europeans came the Anishinabeg used stone drills to bore holes in shells so they could be sewn onto belts and bands. The position of the wampum on the belts carried the messages they sent one another on the most solemn occasions. Nowadays a skilled wampum carver using metal drills could craft smaller pieces, but ordinary wampum had nothing in common with Memetosia’s gift. Wampum was always white and tubular. These were flat beads made from the purple-black shells of the big clams called quahogs. Individually they were called Súki beads, collectively Suckáuhock. “How old do you figure these are?” Quent asked softly.
“I’ve been wondering about that since I opened the bag.” Corm had examined the treasure yesterday, after he was well beyond. Albany He’d finally given in to his hunger and stopped to fish, and torn into the raw flesh of the fat walleyed pike with his teeth. It was not the mark of a true brave to eat uncooked food, but he didn’t want to risk a fire, and couldn’t wait to get the taste of Huron flesh out of his mouth. After he’d eaten, he had examined Memetosia’s gift. “I figure they’re at least a couple of hundred years old. Could be more.”
“Maybe a lot more,” Quent said.
“Maybe.”
“The carving is marvelous. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Each of Memetosia’s treasures was a complex picture, the shell punched through in some places, deeply engraved in others. In the tiny space available, the ancient artist had depicted signs that stood for various animals and surrounded them with a whole raft of other, more mysterious symbols. Quent recognized the turkey, the spider, and the possum. “What are these?” He gently pushed three of the beads toward Cormac.
“That’s papankamwa, the fox. This is eehsipana, the raccoon. I’m not sure about this one. It’s an elk, but I don’t know if it’s ayaapia, the buck, or apeehsia, the fawn.”
“There are six Miami nations, aren’t there?”
“Yes. The Miami themselves, plus the Kilatika, the Mengkonkia, the Pepikokia, the Wea, and the Piankashaw.”
“You think the stones represent the six nations?”
“That’s my guess, but I don’t know which symbol represents which tribe, or what any of it means. Or what Memetosia meant me to do with them.”
“And after you got out of the sweat lodge, he was gone?”
“They were all gone. Even Genevieve.”
“You think she was working with whoever tried to kill you?”
“I don’t know what to think. She’s always been—” He broke off. It was as hard to imagine Genevieve plotting to murder him as it was to think of Miss Lorene wanting him dead. His own mother had considered him a burden and an embarrassment, but two women, one white, one a métisse had given him the affection Pohantis refused. “Genevieve’s half Piankashaw. That’s why Memetosia was taken to her house.”
“When he spoke to you, he didn’t say anything that would give you some notion of what he was—”
“I told you—mostly he talked about the danger the whites are to the Anishinabeg, and predicted more war between the French and the English. And oh, yes. That young officer you were with, Washington? Seems he surrendered his Fort Necessity to the French and went back to Virginia with his tail between his legs.”
Quent shrugged. “I saw something about that in one of Father’s newspapers. The reinforcements never got there. Wouldn’t have been much good anyway. Story was, all they had by way of munitions was one barrel of spoiled gunpowder. The North Carolina troops were promised three shillings a day. When word went out it was to be reduced, they disbanded and went home. Besides, that so-called called fort the Virginians built at the forks wasn’t going to withstand well-trained French regulars. Paper said it was Jumonville’s brother who led the French attack.”
“Jumonville? The one Tanaghrisson …”
Quent nodded and both men were silent for a moment Quent was the first to speak. “Listen, you think it was Genevieve who told Memetosia about your notion that Canada can be the home of the Anishinabeg if the French will just get the hell out?”
“Has to have been. Except that Memetosia knows as well as I do that the French won’t just get out. Someone’s got to make them go.”
Quent looked at the stones. “These six tribes?”
Corm shrugged. He could hear the doubt in Quent’s voice; he felt the same. The Miami union wasn’t mighty enough to battle the French and win. They might have been once, but since the coming of the Europeans they, like so many of the tribes, were a pale shadow of their old glory. “Maybe the British will do it.”
“Doesn’t look that way. Not if they keep sending boys to do the job of men. But even if the British were to drive the French out of Canada, it’s not likely they’d hand the place over to the red men, is it?”
“Not likely,” Corm agreed. “Not unless they’re made to.”
“Which brings us back to the same question,” Quent said. “Who’s going to make them?”
The ex
quisitely carved Suckáuhock winked in the candlelight. Cormac gathered up the beads and returned them to the deerskin pouch.
“You still hungry?” Quent asked.
“I wouldn’t refuse some food.”
“C’mon, let’s go down to the kitchen and see what we can find.”
Most of the big-house slaves slept on corncob mattresses, tucked in below the roof rafters. They called it the long room, though it wasn’t really a room at all, just half an attic, a space between the house and the sky. Kitchen Hannah’s corncob mattress was downstairs, on the floor in an alcove behind the cooking fireplace, close enough to her domain so she heard the sounds of her larder being rifled. By two peoples, from the sound of it, she thought, men peoples. Not Master John. He wanted something to eat in the middle of the night, he’d wake her up and make her get it for him. Had to be Master Quentin, and Cormac most likely. She’d heard those two down there plenty of times before. Kitchen Hannah knew there wouldn’t be a johnnycake left in her stores come morning, and could be a good part of the honey would be gone as well. She smiled her toothless smile and rolled over and went to sleep.
Normally Cormac had no difficulty sleeping. “Whatever troubles you will await a solution in the sun-coming time,” Bishkek, the wise old one who was manhood father to both he and Quent, had told him. “The time of dark is for rest, to invite the spirits who speak in our dreams. Difficulties are to be fixed when the Great Spirit sends the sun.” It was a notion Cormac held close and tried to honor. It was one of the things that kept the Potawatomi half of him alive here in Shadowbrook where the white half had come to rule. But tonight Bishkek’s wisdom could not soothe him.
He’d been sleeping in this same bed since he first came to this place. It suited him that it was just wide enough for one person, and that his bedroom was a small space under the eaves, a cubby hole next to the attic long room. That first winter, after he’d been at Shadowbrook maybe a month, Miss Lorene had tried to move him to a bigger bedroom across from Quent’s on the second floor. Cormac had refused to go. “You are not a servant in this house,” she had told him. “You do not have to sleep in the attic.” Back then he hadn’t understood why she spoke with so much urgency or looked at him as if she were sorry for many things he had no idea about.
“I want to stay where I am.”
“Prefer,” Miss Lorene had corrected automatically. “It is more gracious to say I prefer to stay where I am.’ And don’t forget to say ’ma’am.’ ”
“Yes, ma’am. Like I said, that’s what I want. To stay where I am.” It was the white way to speak to a squaw as if she were an equal, even sometimes a superior. He had learned that, along with many other things, since coming to Shadow-brook a few short weeks before. But he wasn’t ready to give in to every white notion of how things should be done. Sometimes, during the night, he snuck out of the house and slept in touch with the earth, the way he had every night of his first eight years. He only did it when he was sick with longing for Singing Snow, but if he were across from Quent he’d be found out.
Now, twenty-two years later, Cormac lay in the familiar bed in the attic and held on to Memetosia’s remarkable gift, tormented by questions he could not answer. When the time is right, use them. How? For what? How would he know the right time? Why was a Miami Midewiwin priest in league with a Huron enemy? And why had Genevieve Lydius, who had been a friend all his life, betrayed him? Finally he slept. And the Anishinabeg part of himself dreamed.
A field of snow, utterly white with no mark upon it anywhere, and soaring above the snow a hawk, silent and beautiful. Very high. Then blood appeared on the snow, a river of crimson cutting a jagged path across the pure white. The hawk followed the river of blood until it led to a vast group of birds that remained on the ground, in a patch of snow untouched by the crimson stain, sheltering their heads beneath their wings. A bear as white as the snow appeared on the horizon and loped toward the birds. The hawk plummeted downward like a streak of lightning, talons extended. The birds rose into the sky in a great fluttering of wings and cries as the hawk attacked the bear, tearing at it with its beak and claws. The other birds hovered above the bear’s head and waited. Then a white wolf emerged from the trees and approached them.
One moment Quent was asleep, the next he was awake. He did not move and the sound of his breathing did not change. He merely came to immediate consciousness with the knowledge that he was not alone. Slowly, with great care, he opened his eyes.
The light had changed. He had not drawn the heavy curtains across the open window and the blackness of night was paling to a gray false dawn. Quent moved one hand slowly beneath the sheet that was his only covering and found the dirk beneath his pillow. He heard nothing, but he knew the intruder was coming closer. Fine, he was ready.
“Quent, it’s me. I know you’re awake.”
“Well, I wasn’t, but I am now.” He saw Corm’s tall, spare frame move past the window and approach the foot of the bed. “What’s the matter?”
“I have to leave.”
“But you just got here. Where are you going?”
“North. To Singing Snow. I have to go right away.”
“You had a dream.” Nothing else could have happened in the few hours since they’d parted. Cormac admitted that was so, and told him the events of the dream. “And you’re the wabnum, the white wolf,” Quent said. He had spent too long with the Potawatomi not to understand.
“I think so, since it’s my totem.”
“Your dream, too. But my totem’s wabnum, as well. You want me to go with you? If something’s wrong at Singing Snow I—”
“No, not now. Your place is here for as much time as your father has left. If I need you, I’ll send word. But there is something …”
“What?”
“I want you to take care of Nicole.”
“Of course.” His belly knotted; by giving her into his care Corm had made it impossible for him to compete for her affection.
“Not just look after her,” Corm insisted. “I need you to take on my promise.”
Quent got out of the bed and reached for the dressing gown Corn Broom Hannah had spread in readiness on the chair. The silk felt cool against his skin, but it did not soothe him. “Just what kind of promise did you make her that you mean me to take on?”
“Not her. Her father’s death wish was that I take her to Québec.”
“As you wish. When I can leave. After my father—”
“Ahaw.” The Potawatomi word for agreement. “That’s fine. I don’t have the impression it matters much when she gets there. Only that she arrives safe.”
The sky was rapidly turning pink, promising fierce heat. Quent could see Corm clearly now; he was wearing buckskins. Quent had gone to sleep wondering if Corm would come to breakfast in his home clothes and what Nicole would make of him when she saw him like that, more white than red. “You leaving now? Before breakfast?”
“Yes. I must. I just wanted to say goodbye, and ask you to look after Nicole.”
Both men knew there had never been any doubt about Quent’s reply to Corm’s request. “You’re missing something,” Quent said, eyeing the tomahawk and knife at Corm’s waist.
Cormac didn’t answer. Quent went to the cupboard in the corner, picked up the long gun leaning against it, and tossed it in Corm’s direction. Corm caught it with one hand, but he didn’t put it over his shoulder. “I had to leave my weapons in the front hall when I went to see Memetosia. By the time I was in that hall again my gun was gone.”
“But not your tomahawk or your knife.”
“No, not those.”
“Doesn’t make much sense.” For a Miami to steal a weapon that had been left behind to do honor to one of his chiefs was unthinkable.
“No, I know it doesn’t. Not much of what happened there makes any sense. But the dream was clear.” Corm held out the long gun. “Here. Thanks, but I can’t take this.”
“You can’t go off to fight a hawk and a bear without it. Bes
ides, there are no hostiles at Shadowbrook.” Both men thought of John and smiled. “Least, not the same kind you’re after,” Quent added. “Don’t worry, I know where I can get another.”
Corm’s face grew grave. “Do it. Right away. There’s something …”
“What? You dream something else? Something about Shadowbrook?”
Corm shook his head. “No, nothing. But—”
“I told you, don’t worry.”
Corm raised his left hand and Quent put his palm against it. Because he was the older brother, he spoke first. “Pama kowabtemin mine,” he said. We will see each other again. “Be safe. The bear is a fierce enemy.”
“Wabnum is a mighty foe. Pama mine,” Corm repeated. “Tell Nicole I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye.”
Quent didn’t have to ask if Cormac was taking the Miami Suckáuhock with him. He could see the thong of the medicine bag around Corm’ neck.
Chapter Nine
FRIDAY, JULY 17, 1754
SHADOWBROOK
“HAD TO GET ME old bones up real early and make these johnnycakes for breakfast,” Kitchen Hannah said. “‘Fore even the sun come up I was stoking up that kitchen fire and getting that griddlestone hot, and mixing up my Indian meal and a tiny bit 0’ ’lasses and some 0’ my special water from the spring up by the still—what poor Deliciousness May has to carry to me all the way from the sugarhouse and now I ain’t got none left—and making these here johnnycakes for breakfast. ’Cause there wouldn’t be none otherwise. Seeing as how a my stores was raided in the black of night, when proper folks ought to be asleep in their beds.”
She put three fresh johnnycakes on the plate in front of Quent while she spoke, then, after a slight hesitation, added a fourth. “Some folks just are never filled up, no matter what you puts inside ’em.”
Nicole had difficulty understanding the speech of the Patent slaves, though she liked the music of their accent. This morning it was easy enough to tell that Kitchen Hannah was scolding Quentin, that she didn’t mean a word of what she said, and was intensely pleased at his return.
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