Shadowbrook

by Swerling, Beverly

  For a few heartbeats Lantak did not answer. The priest watched him and waited. It was said that though Lantak had been born in the Longhouse, he had a white father. If it were true, it did not show on his face. His bronze skin was stretched over prominent cheekbones, and his nose was beaked in that manner peculiar to many of the Huron. His straight black hair fell almost to his shoulders, and he wore a single white feather pointing down toward his right shoulder. The feather and his tattoos contrasted with the rest of his appearance. He had on neither the breechclout of the Longhouse nor the linen smock and loose trousers of the Jesuit missions. Lantak wore the buckskins of a coureur de bois. Probably stolen from one of the many people he had murdered. A long gun lay on the ground a short distance from his hand. Doubtless he’d gotten that the same way.

  Finally the Indian spoke. “Sometimes, yes, you are useful.” Père Antoine knew he would not be a martyr this day. “Why did you want to see me?”

  “Shadowbrook,” the priest said quietly. “I wish to speak to you about a place many leagues south of here called Shadowbrook.” Then Jesus said, “I come to cast fire upon the earth and what will I but that it be enkindled?” Blood shed to save.

  The way to the sugarhouse was through a dense and deeply shadowed wood. Mostly mixed oaks and elms and maples, Quent explained, with some conifers, pine and blue spruce. They were great trees; Nicole could not wrap her arms around them. It had been the same in the Ohio Country. “In the Old World,” she murmured as they walked the narrow path, Monsieur Quent ahead of her as always, showing the way, “I have never seen trees of such girth.”

  “That’s because white folks have been cutting down the trees in the Old World a lot longer. The Indians never do such a thing, and we whites haven’t been here long enough to spoil the New. My guess is we will soon enough. Mind how you go here,” he added. “The path narrows.”

  One moccasin wide, he’d explained, was how red men made a forest path. It was all they needed, so they chose not to disturb the woods more than necessary. She too wore moccasins, white ones made from the hide of a white bear, but still it seemed to Nicole as if there were no path at all. Only Monsieur Hale who … No, not monsieur. He wanted her to call him Quent, and he was a man accustomed to getting his way.

  The size of him blotted out much else. How many times now had she walked behind that broad back? More than she could count, but she remembered each one. Or thought she did.

  “Moccasins still comfortable?” he asked.

  “They are wonderful.” It was true. Quent—it was easy to think of him by that familiar name, but not so easy to speak it aloud—had waited until they were out of sight of the house before giving them to her. “Take off your boots,” he’d said, indicating a log she could sit on, “and your stockings as well. You need to be barefoot for moccasins to grip properly. I’ve been thinking of giving this pair to you for some time. I figure they’re about the right size.”

  He was gentleman enough to turn away while she removed her boots and hose. As if he hadn’t already seen her ankles and even her legs many times. “I am ready,” she said finally. “Please, give them to me.”

  He turned back to face her and knelt beside the log. “Let me do it. They have to go on just so, with the drawstring adjusted to make the fit perfect.”

  She was embarrassed by his touch, and by a feeling to which she’d chosen to give no name. It was somehow more intimate than all the many times he’d carried her through the forest. His big hands had cradled her feet as he slipped on first one moccasin, then the other, and tightened the lacings and molded them to her instep. His hands were remarkably gentle. She had wanted to ask if the moccasins had belonged to his wife, but he’d given her no opportunity, just tied the laces of the boots together and put them around his neck “I’ll carry these for you. You’ll need them later.”

  “Later” had apparently arrived. “We’re almost there. You’d better put the boots back on.” Quent swung them off his shoulders and gave them to her, and Nicole again sat on a log and changed her footwear. This time he didn’t help, just turned his back to once more give her a bit of privacy. For the hundredth time she wondered if he’d ever peeked while she was bathing naked in the forest streams. A tiny corner of her mind told her that she wished he had, and her cheeks reddened and her breath came fast. Nicole laced the boots so tight they hurt, to remind herself of who she was and where she was going. “Very well. I am ready.”

  He turned back. “You want me to take those?” He nodded toward the moccasins she held in her hands.

  “I can put them in my pockets.”

  “Fine. They’re yours now. You can do as you like. We’d best get going.” He started walking again, leaving her to follow.

  “The moccasins,” she blurted out, “were they Shoshanaya’s?”

  He stopped walking for just a moment—a half step lost, then quickly regained—and he didn’t turn around. “What do you know about Shoshanaya?”

  “Only that she was an Ottawa princess, and your wife, and that she died. I offer my sympathies for your loss,” she added. It was difficult to walk in the hard-soled boots now that she had become used to the way the moccasins glided over the woodland path. Besides, she’d made the laces so tight they were truly painful. She slipped and slid as she struggled to keep up. “I heard that Shoshanaya was very beautiful.”

  “She was.” He slowed and Nicole wasn’t sure if it was because he sensed her difficulty or if it was the heaviness of his thoughts that checked his pace. “Did my mother tell you about Shoshanaya?”

  “No, Madame Hale has not mentioned her. It was Torayana, the Shawnee squaw, the night of the drums.”

  “Seems like there was a lot that got itself done or told about that night.”

  “I am sorry if I have offended you, Mons—Quent. I only wanted to know.”

  “The moccasins are Potawatomi, not Ottawa. You can tell by the way they’re made, and the feet that there is no beading. They’re white bearhide. That’s unusual. They belonged to Pohantis, Corm’s mother. She had a liking for white skins, and she knew how to get them. Pohantis died a long time ago. She’s buried up by Squirrel Oaks, the Shadowbrook burying place, but some of her things are still around. All Shoshanaya’s things were sent back to her people, after she was gone. To honor her.”

  Nicole wanted to ask why, if that was the way Indians honored their dead, the same had not been done for Pohantis, but she had become adept at reading his back. Now it cautioned her to silence.

  “Almost there,” he said after a little time. “You’ll see the road just as soon as we get past that stand of oak up ahead.”

  The light was changing, the shade brightening. Soon sunshine burst upon them and they were on one of the wide roads he’d pointed out the day they first walked onto the Patent. The heat of the road was devastating after the woodland cool. Fortunately they did not have far to go. “There’s the sugarhouse.” Quent pointed to a large building made of logs, with a steeply pitched roof and one enormous brick chimney. “And there’s Deliciousness May, waiting for us.”

  The black woman had white hair and her face was deeply lined. She was older even than Kitchen Hannah, Nicole decided, but Quent was every bit as fond of her. He picked her up and swung her around in greeting and Deliciousness May giggled like a young girl. “’Bout time you got yerself home, Master Quent. And how come it took you better ’n a whole week to come see Deliciousness? Never you mind, I got a pair of hares all sweetened up with a bit o’ syrup from last winter, the way you likes, and two peach pies ready to go in the oven. Lilac! You hear me, girl? You waitin’ there like I told you?” All the while she was speaking the black woman was eyeing Nicole up and down, never once letting on that she was doing it. Grace áDieu, the moccasins were in her pocket, not on her feet.

  A little girl jumped out from behind a large elm. Perhaps four, Nicole thought, with black curly hair that was parted in the middle and tightly gathered over each ear, and surprisingly light skin. “This be one
half o’ what my Runsabout popped out year before you went away. You remember that, Master Quent?”

  “I surely do, Deliciousness. The other one’s a boy, isn’t he? Willie?”

  “Sugar Willie he be now,” the woman said with some pride. “Moves the sugar faster than any mule ever been seen around here.” Deliciousness May nodded toward the sugarhouse at the same time that she gave Lilac a shove in the opposite direction. “You go on home, girl, tell Mistress Sarah that Master Quent and his visitor be here. Go on! And you help Mistress put them peach pies in the oven. The heat be just about perfect now.”

  Quent showed Nicole the inside of the sugarhouse before they went on. It was a huge open space with an elaborate still in one corner. The smell was sickly sweet, almost overpowering. Nicole felt ill, but Quent didn’t seem to notice. “The sugar comes from the islands, in the ships that take back our flour and vegetables,” he said, “and—”

  “I didn’t know Runsabout had a husband and children.”

  “No husband. Just the twins.”

  “But they are here at the sugarhouse and she is—”

  “Everyone goes where their work is needed. Besides, Deliciousness May is Runsabout’s mother, and Lilac and Willie’s grandmother. Her husband, their grandfather, is Big Jacob. He lives here at the sugarhouse most of the time, too. His main job’s to look after the young horses. The paddock’s not far from here.”

  “That day … when you stopped the whipping, Big Jacob’s the one you called to untie—”

  “That’s right.” He hated that the abomination in the Frolic Ground had been the first thing she saw of Shadowbrook. “The Frankels, the people who run the gristmill and the sugarhouse, treat the slaves fairly. You’ll see.”

  Nicole nodded. “I already see,” she said. “This place, your Shadowbrook, it is a great enterprise.”

  “It is. In the sugarhouse, for instance, we make rum not just for ourselves, but to trade with the Indians. I’ll take you up to Do Good sometime. You can meet—”

  “I must go north, Quent. To Québec. You promised.”

  “Do Good’s north. Three hours distant by wagon. Road’s somewhat roundabout because it skirts the hills. If you don’t mind a bit of climbing you can walk. It’s a shorter distance. Either way, don’t worry, I won’t forget my promise.”

  All the time they’d been on the trail he had been so reserved. Now … The look he was giving her was more than she could bear. It hurt her heart. Two people, a man and a woman, kissing in the sunlight, a unit so tightly forged, so at one, that even their own child could not know its depths. Nicole dismissed the memory. “You were explaining about the sugar.”

  “Yes, we get it up here from the river in those carts.”

  He indicated three large, open wooden chests, each with a pair of wooden wheels, and short traces that finished in a harness. “By mule?” she asked.

  “Sometimes.” He looked uncomfortable. For a moment she didn’t understand, then she realized that the boy they called Sugar Willie had that name because his job was to be harnessed to the heavy wooden cart and pull it fully laden from the river to the sugarhouse. How far was that? A league at least.

  They went outside. Deliciousness May was gone, and Quent led Nicole on a path through the woods to the house where a white woman was waiting for them. Tall and thin, with hunched shoulders and an unfortunately long nose, her narrow features all seemed crowded in the center of her face. “This is Sarah Frankel,” Quent said, “she and her husband are in charge of the sugarhouse.”

  Sarah’s wide smile turned her homely face into something almost attractive. She was less effusive than Deliciousness May had been, but she seemed every bit as glad to see Quent, and as curious about the young woman with him. Nicole was glad that the dark taffeta dress she’d chosen for this excursion didn’t show any dirt from the shortcut through the woods, and that the moccasins were in her pockets and not on her feet.

  They were nine at the dinner table. As well as Quent and Nicole there were Sarah and her husband, Moses, a large red-faced man with the shortest, pudgiest fingers Nicole had ever seen. They looked out of place on his big hands, as if they belonged to someone else. Tim, the son of the house, was quiet and withdrawn and appeared to have no wife.

  “Ellie and Tim and I pretty much grew up of a piece. We used to have lessons together at the big house,” Quent said, clearly trying to make her feel part of this group who had known each other so well for so long.

  “And Monsieur Shea?” she asked. “He had lessons with you as well?”

  “Corm, too.” Quent looked at her only briefly, but his blue eyes were dark, and for a moment fierce.

  If a man delights you, ma petite, it is always wise to keep him the tiniest bit jealous. Maman had said such things before she knew Nicole was to be a nun. It was sinful to think of them now. Worse to actually put the advice into practice. She would say two entire rosaries in penance. All fifteen decades each time.

  And she would distract herself from wicked thoughts by paying attention to the others, not to Quent. Ellie—she had been introduced as Mistress Bleecker—did not have the puckered prune face of her mother, or the spare, narrow form. She was a big blowsy woman and her children, two girls and a boy, looked set to take after her. They sat silent at the foot of the table and pushed food into their mouths as if they had never eaten before, despite being repeatedly told by their mother and grandmother to mind their manners. There was no father to make them behave.

  “My husband went logging last winter.” Ellie’s voice was so emotionless, she might have been asking for another hot biscuit. “Lost his footing and got crushed in the white water.”

  “I am so sorry, madame.” Ellie shrugged, and Nicole leaned close enough to catch a whiff of the musky smell her brown kersey frock had acquired after le bon Dieu alone knew how much wear. She put her hand over Ellie’s, then quickly withdrew it, offering both sympathy and dignity in the space of three breaths.

  “You were good with them,” Quent said after they left. “They liked you.”

  Shoshanaya had never had much to do with the tenants. He hadn’t expected it of her, and they wouldn’t have accepted her in any case. He’d told himself it didn’t matter. It still didn’t. He was never going to be master of Shadowbrook. All the same, Nicole was different. But it was foolish to think of such things. The situation was no different than it had been. John was still the elder and the heir.

  Chapter Ten

  MONDAY, AUGUST 3, 1754

  LORETTE, NEW FRANCE

  IN 1535 JACQUES Cartier explored the St. Lawrence River and claimed for France the Gaspé Peninsula. At that time the Iroquoian-speaking Anishinabeg known as Wyandot occupied their ancestral lands near what the French first called the Great Freshwater Sea. The Wyandot called their land Ouendake. The French renamed them ruffians, Huré, which became Huron. The sea was eventually known as Lake Huron and the Wyandot land was called Huronia.

  The Huron were skilled farmers; no one knew better how to grow squash and beans and corn and insure that there would never be famine, but to ease their grief they made war. It had been so since the beginning of the Haudenosaunee, in the first Longhouse built on the turtle’s back where Sky Woman wept for her dead father.

  When a family had suffered a loss, whether through illness or accident or a tribal raid, the lamenting survivors would for ten days be excused from all community duties, and even the most intimate obligations of bathing and dressing. For a year after that they would continue to neglect their personal appearance, while gradually resuming some part in village life. But if the women’s tears still did not cease, then only the replacement of their dead relative by a war captive would ease their pain. If the young men related to the survivors did not mount a raid to bring back those who might be adopted into the bereaved family, the women publicly accused them of cowardice and the braves were shamed before the whole people.

  So the braves would form a war party and go to take captives from among their t
raditional enemies—sometimes other Iroquois speakers and sometimes those belonging to the Algonkian nations—and bring them back to the warriors’ home village. There the women devised many tests to see who among the prisoners could withstand the greatest amount of pain and thus be worthy of adoption.

  A captive judged unworthy was slated for death. But first such a one was addressed as uncle or nephew and ceremonially painted for a death feast at which he was allowed to recite his war honors and receive the homage of the entire village. Then he was tied to a stake with a short rope, and the villagers, including the smallest children and the oldest squaws, used firebrands to burn him. They did so artfully and with imagination, working slowly from the feet up, all the while speaking in formal terms of the caresses they were bestowing. Before he died the prisoner was scalped and hot sand was thrown onto his bare skull. In this way he was allowed to prove his bravery and enter the next life covered with glory. Finally a knife or a hatchet ended his life. Then the women dismembered the corpse and threw it into cooking kettles from which the whole village feasted—including the chosen adoptees who were now considered to be truly Huron.

  So the wound in the spirits of the bereaved was healed, and the empty place at their hearth in the Longhouse was filled. Always, for all the tribes since the beginning of time, there had been such wars of mourning. Until, in the words of the storytellers of the Longhouse, “Everywhere there was peril and everywhere mourning.” Seeing this endless river of tears, the Great Spirit whispered wisdom to the chiefs of five of the Iroquoian-speaking nations and they formed themselves into the Great League of Peace and Power. But the Huron had many years before formed a confederacy with some of the other Iroquoian-speaking tribes. They did not join this new league. So its members set upon them and drove them from Huronia. They said it was to bring them an end of mourning wars and to give them the Kainerekowa, the Great Peace.