When Cartier had first met those he called Huron there were forty thousand of them. A hundred years later, after the diseases brought by the Europeans and the wars made by the Five Nations of the Great League, there were perhaps a thousand left alive. The remnant of that thousand was driven from Huronia to take refuge in a village just north of Québec, called Lorette by the French. They numbered fewer than three hundred men, women, and children. Many of these had become Christians, but others had not and lived separately from the converts.
On a hot and humid morning in early August, Monsieur Philippe Faucon of the Society of Jesus ducked his head to enter the largest of the longhouses outside Lorette, then stood and blinked his eyes a few times to clear them of the smoke of the five fires that formed a single column marching from one end of the dwelling to the other. The total length of the structure was fifteen fathoms, thirty of a tall man’s strides. It was formed of saplings covered by bark, with a curved roof pierced in a number of places to allow the smoke of the many fires to escape. Family apartments were built along both sides. Each was constructed on a platform built knee-high above the ground, separated by curtains of bark, and deep enough and high enough so even a man of the Jesuit’s considerable height could easily stretch or stand his full length inside, and wide enough so that even this big longhouse could contain only eight down each side. “The peace of Jesus Christ be upon this place.”
A number of squaws were tending pots suspended over the various fires. Some looked up at him, then looked away. Since they were not Christians they did not hold him in any particular reverence, but neither was he an enemy. The hot sun combined with the heat of the cooking fires made the longhouse uncomfortable. No braves were present, and no children. Only the cooks, and one old man puffing on a pipe. He was so thin his bones showed and he found the heat a comfort. After a few seconds the old one struggled to his feet. “Ah, Magic Shadows. Welcome to my hearth.”
“You sent for me, Geechkah. I am honored to come.”
“Yes, yes … You brought your medicine with you?”
“Right here.” The Jesuit held up a deerskin envelope that contained his sketch pad, sheets of bark, and his quills and bits of charcoal. The Huron were awestruck by the ability to draw. It seemed that no one among them had ever attempted to recreate what he saw with any degree of realism or proportion. Their language had no alphabet in the way of European tongues. In that sense neither they nor any of the red men of whom the priest was aware wrote words, but Faucon had been long enough among them to know that strips of cured hide called belts were frequently circulated among the tribes. The belts carried complex messages in the form of wampum embroidery and symbols cut into the leather. The savages could read the belts as readily as an educated white man could read a book. Even tribes that did not speak the same tongue could communicate by way of the belts because the markings, pictures of a stylized and symbolic sort, had been regularized for as long as anyone could remember. But as remarkable as that feat might be, the lifelike drawings of the Jesuit inspired wonder in the Huron. “I have my tools with me, Geechkah. I knew you would want me to bring them.”
The old Indian looked at the deerskin envelope and nodded with approval, then led his guest out of the longhouse and past fields where the com plants were as high as the Jesuits waist and heavy with ripening ears. Vining beans planted at their base used the thick cornstalks for support, and squash sprawled among them, luxuriating in the protection offered by the taller plants. Lines of fish had been hung to dry in the sun, strung between the longhouses like banners decorating the masts of mighty ships. Some distance away a group of young men were hacking apart the carcass of a deer. It would be dressed with the boiled-down sap of the maple trees and smoked over a fire of balsam branches before being set aside as provision for the winter. “The Great Spirit has taught the Huron how to make good use of the land and all that is on it.” Faucon spoke the words to the old man’s back. Geechkah continued leading the priest through the village while Faucon talked. “Now the Spirit has sent the black robes to tell the Huron of the great Lord of All, Jesus Christ, and the truths that will offer eternal life to—”
Still without turning around Geechkah held up his hand. “Your words make me weary, Magic Shadows. We have discussed these things many times before. We do not have to talk of them again today.”
“But it is because I respect your great age and wisdom that I—”
“Enough. Look, this is one reason I brought you here.” They had come to a corner of the village where a squaw sat nursing a papoose. “My daughter’s daughter has given birth. I learned in a dream that her son will be a great chief. Make the child’s face appear on your magic bark.”
The bark was ordinary white birch and the quick sketch of mother and child was drawn with charcoal in a style that had been popular in Europe for hundreds of years. Still, when Faucon gave it to Geechkah the old man looked at in wonder, repeatedly turning his head to compare the subject and the drawing. “What I see on this bark is truly what my eyes see, but it will stay when the squaw goes,” he said in a tone of awe. “This is strong magic,” he added after another few moments. “This shadow that does not move will protect the boy until he grows to meet his destiny.”
“I can give the child better magic than that. If you allow me to baptize him and send him to a mission school, he will—”
Geechkah again held up his hand. “Come. There is something else.”
Faucon followed the old Indian. He hadn’t really expected to be allowed to baptize the infant and send him to live in one of the missions and be taught the Catholic faith that would save his soul. Given how important Geechkah believed the child’s future to be, it was impossible. But the priest always made some effort at conversion when he came to a longhouse. Otherwise he would not be able to honestly divert the criticism of his Provincial Superior; Louis Roget had little use for the meticulous drawings of local plants that were Philippe Faucon’s overwhelming preoccupation.
Philippe’s family—for generations keepers and trainers of the royal hawks—had made him a Jesuit priest; Almighty God had made him an artist, one with a small gift for portraiture, but a true passion for documenting the native flora of Canada. His drawings were said to be the delight of the king himself. Philippe was of the opinion that since Louis XV was known to be interested only in food and sex, it had to be his mistress, the powerful Madame de Pompadour, who made so much of the sketches of the Jesuit missionary, and arranged that the seeds he sent to Versailles were carefully planted and nurtured in the jardins des roi. No matter. Given that Monsieur le Provincial believed the king of France, and certainly his official concubine, were both of considerably lesser importance than a Jesuit Superior, Faucon had always to be on his guard.
“What is it, Geechkah? What have you found for me?”
“That plant I told you about, the one that only makes flowers in this moon. I think I have found it.”
“Alpine campion,” Faucon murmured. His heart beat faster with excitement. In Europe horticulturalists believed that Lychnis alpinus grew only in the Alps of Switzerland, but the plant Geechkah described could be nothing else. The priest couldn’t be certain until he saw it in bloom. Then he must confirm the identification, and sketch the flower. And, of course, make provision to gather seed. If this were true it would be—
“Wait.” Geechkah abruptly stopped walking. They were at the top of a ridge at the far edge of the village. The old man held up a hand for silence, then dropped to his belly in the tall grass and indicated that the priest should do the same. He pointed to the valley below. “Look there.” His voice was a faint murmur that carefully avoided any echo from the gorge. “Use your seeing-big glass. This too is a sight not often seen.”
A line of Indians on horseback was riding through the valley. Even at this distance and with the naked eye it was apparent that they were alert and ready for any danger that might come from the surrounding hills. The Jesuit fumbled at his waist for his glass, extended
it to its full length, and squinted through one eye at the men below. There were nine altogether. Five were in the traditional black and red breechclouts of the Huron, the other four wore thin-legged buckskin trousers. All were heavily painted in red and black, and each of the braves had shaved off all his hair except for a single tuft that extended from forehead to the nape of the neck. “Scalp locks,” the priest said softly.
“Yes.”
Faucon snapped the glass closed. “They are a war party.”
Geechkah nodded. So this was the real reason the old man had sent for him. Somehow he’d known that the war party, whoever they were, would be passing this way at this time. And he’d brought Philippe up to the ridge so he’d be sure to see them.
Geechkah scurried back from the edge. Philippe followed, sliding backward on his belly so he never presented a black outline on the horizon for any scalp-locked brave who happened to look up. “They’re Huron,” he whispered urgently. “Why would the Huron make war on Québec when—”
“Those men you saw, they are Lantak and his renegades. They belong to no hearth in any Longhouse.” It was a solemn denial of kinship. To be without a connection to the Longhouse was to be forever outcast. “And they do not go to Québec.”
“Where then? How do you know all this?”
“Among us when an arm is cut off from the body, whether by accident or by an enemy, it is buried near the hearth of the brave to whom it belonged, so that the brave or his relatives can listen to the earth above it and always know what the arm is doing. Once my hearth was Lantak’s. I listen to the earth around him and I know what he is doing. As to where he is going … It is a very long way away, a distance of many sunrises. I do not know the place, but I know that the brown robe paid hundreds of livres to send Lantak on this long warpath.”
Some hours later, in the oak-lined reception chamber of his private apartment in the Provincial House of Québec, the Provincial Superior of the Society of Jesus in New France listened in silence to this tale. When at last he spoke there was sorrow in his tone, a clear indication that the younger man had disappointed him. “It is difficult—no, impossible—to believe that Père Antoine would pay Indians to commit murder. Any Indians, much less the renegade Lantak and his followers.” Louis Roget rose from behind his writing table and stood looking at the distraught priest whose immortal soul had been given into his care. “You speak slander, my son. It is a grave sin.”
“As Almighty God is my judge, I wish no ill to any man, least of all the Franciscan. He is, after all, a priest of God.”
“Exactly,” Roget agreed. The younger man towered over him, but in every other way there was no doubt about who carried the burden of authority. Faucon was sweating, mopping his brow repeatedly despite the fact that the dim, high-ceilinged room was relatively cool for an August evening. The Provincial was calm, untroubled by the summer heat, and the longer he spoke the more icy his words became. “And you took the word of a savage for this calumny, Philippe. Do you not think—”
“With respect, Monsieur le Provincial, Geechkah is a wise old man. And a peaceful one. He has no reason to stir up trouble unless—”
“Unless the devil is struggling with you for his soul, Philippe. Have you made any progress toward converting your friend Geechkah?”
“Not yet, Monsieur le Provincial, but—”
“But he speaks to you of those little leaves and twigs that so fascinate you, eh? And the doings of renegade Huron braves. Does it not strike you as strange, Philippe, that a Huron who remains a pagan would take you into his confidence?”
“I think he was hoping to prevent unnecessary bloodshed, Monsieur le Provincial.”
Roget sat down again, leaning back and folding his hands over his long black soutane. “Bloodshed. Yes, there is plenty of that when Lantak is involved. A few years ago I saw what was left of a pair of his victims. One, an old man, had been staked to the earth and a hundred or more shallow cuts administered to his body. Then rats were loosed upon him; they ate him alive. I was told it took some hours. You look faint, my dear Philippe. Perhaps you should sit down. The other was a young woman. Whatever Lantak and his braves did to her while she was alive cannot have been worse than her death. They impaled her on a stake, through the anus, I believe, and carried her with them as a kind of standard for as many days as it took her to die. There are numerous such tales, each more gruesome than the one before. Père Antoine has not been long in Québec, but he is bound to have heard about Lantak. Do you really think he would make common cause with such a heathen devil?”
Faucon mopped his brow again, and fought to swallow his vomit. “I do not know, Monsieur le Provincial. Only that I saw them. With scalp locks and war paint, so—”
“So they meant no good for someone. I do not doubt that, my son. It is Lantak’s way. But to accuse a priest of Holy Church of being complicit in such acts … Perhaps you would like to go to the chapel now and ask Our Blessed Lord for right thinking in the matter of your superiors and your brother priests. It will not be necessary to come to the refectory for the evening collation, or to go to your bed tonight.”
Louis Roget waited until the young man had gone, then went to one of the ornately carved oaken panels in the south wall of the room and touched a particular leaf. The panel swung open to reveal a view of the Lower Town. It was heavy dusk, soon to be dark, but the Jesuit readily picked out the roof of the monastery where Mère Marie Rose and her Poor Clares lived their lives of cloistered penance, and that of the nearby hovel he had arranged to be home to the Delegate of the Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor. “So, mon Père, the mad dog you have so carefully cultivated now attacks at your bidding. And you have sent him a long distance to the south,” Roget whispered aloud. “Across the border into the English colonies, I’m quite certain. Nothing else would be worth hundreds of livres.”
If only the Blessed Virgin would enlighten him as to the object of the attack, and its purpose. Then he would be in a position to use his knowledge for the good of the Society, which was the same thing as saying the good of Holy Mother Church. Perhaps he would join the feckless Monsieur Faucon in a night of prayer and penance. After he had read the prayers of Compline, the Jesuit who ruled in New France decided. And after he had shared in the evening collation.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 1754
ALBANY, NEW YORK PROVINCE
Quent rode into Albany alone. He had an excellent reason for the journey, to secure a long gun to replace the one he’d given Cormac—which also gave him a fine excuse to visit the Lydius household. John Lydius was the best source of munitions in the province and had been for dozens of years. Selling arms to whoever could pay for them remained the major source of the Lydius fortune.
The house on North Pearl Street looked as it always had, sturdy and impressive. It stood out among the humbler dwellings behind the town wall. John was at home. Genevieve as well, and a number of the Lydius children and grandchildren. No sign of any Miami.
The Lydius family greeted him warmly. John said he was pretty sure he could put his hands on a long gun, seeing as how it was for Uko Nyakwai, a legendary shot as well as the son of one of Lydius’s oldest friends. “How’s your father these days, Quent?”
“Not well. My mother thinks he won’t be long with us, and I fear she is correct.”
Lydius had lost an eye in some long-ago battle. He wore a black patch over the empty socket and had a way of cocking his head when he looked at you, bringing you into his limited focus. “Sorry to hear that. I’m told John’s in charge of Shadowbrook now.”
“That’s right.”
“I always thought …” Lydius shrugged. “Ah well, no point in wasting time on foolishness, is there?”
“None. About that gun …”
“Yes, of course. Take me about a day to get my hands on something that will suit your needs. Shall we say tomorrow afternoon? About this hour?”
“Suits me.” Quent started to leave, but Genevieve stopped him before he re
ached the door.
“I heard John say your business will bring you back tomorrow. You’ll have to stay in town the night in that case. Rest with us, Quent. There’s always a bed free for you, you know that.”
“I was figuring on old man Groesbeck’s place. I wouldn’t want to put you out.”
“You’re not putting us out. And the sheets here smell a great deal sweeter than those provided by Peter Groesbeck, I warrant.”
“So do I,” Quent agreed with a smile. “Thank you. I’ll be glad of your hospitality.”
And so he was, but though he prowled the property thoroughly during the night—something he’d have returned to do even if he’d slept at Groesbeck’s Sign of the Nag’s Head—he found nothing of the sweat lodge, nor any indication of the strange happenings Corm had described. He tried once more after breakfast when he managed to get Genevieve on her own in the kitchen. She was giving instructions to one of the household slaves, and he waited his opportunity, then said, “I hear you had an important guest a while back. Chief Memetosia of the Miami.”
“Yes. He stayed for a time after the Conference, in June. You heard about that, I suppose. All those important people arguing and coming up with their probably useless Plan of Union.”
“Cormac mentioned it.” He searched her face for any reaction to Corm’s name, but there was none. “Memetosia was ill after the conference, wasn’t he? Practically on his deathbed.”
“So it seemed when he came here. But he’s a tough old bird. He rallied and—Oh no, Jess! Not like that. I told you, Master Lydius likes his pie made with just a little salt, not a whole handful.” Then, turning to her guest: “You must excuse me, Quent. I bought this one not long ago when our old cook died, and she has no idea how we like things done. If you don’t mind …”
Shadowbrook Page 18
