Shadowbrook

by Swerling, Beverly

  The men wearing bearskins were the enemy’s prey of choice. The French may have felt constrained by the European custom of not deliberately killing officers, but their Indian allies had learned to pick them off one by one. The redcoats were helpless without them. They were trained to follow commands instantly and without question; without those commands no one had any idea what to do except try to obey Braddock and stand their ground.

  In the woods on either side it was tomahawks and fixed bayonets and hand-to-hand combat between the Indians and the Virginians. Scalps were stripped from the living and the dead by both white men and red. An Indian came at Quent from the rear and he swung round, cursing the fact that he no longer had his dirk, and used his tomahawk to split the man’s skull. Jesus God Almighty. The brave was Potawatomi. Quent felt nausea rise, then disappear as he took on a Shawnee seeking the most prized trophy of the day, Uko Nyakwai’s red scalp. Quent dispatched the Shawnee and spotted a few Lenape behind him. Shingas and the other Ohio Country chiefs hadn’t simply refused Braddock’s war belt, they had been so disgusted with the treatment they received from him they’d decided to fight with the French.

  The marching drums were silent now, but the sounds of the battle were deafening. Shouted commands, war whoops, and above all, the never-ending screams. Quent’s long gun was useless in these close quarters. He fought his way to a tall tree near the cleared area, then climbed as high as he could. He had to squint to see through the smoke hanging over the battleground, but he could tell that the confusion was worse than before. Braddock was in the midst of it, riding what had to be his fourth or fifth horse and shouting out orders that his men now ignored, their terror too great. Many had thrown down their weapons and were running. Most were brought down by an arrow or a musket ball, others were dragged away by the braves. Quent knew they’d be tied up deep in the forest and reclaimed later. Captives were the most important thing any warrior could bring back to his village. The prisoners would be given the chance to prove themselves under torture, then a few would be adopted to make up for those killed here today. The rest would be killed and eaten.

  The tail of the flying column had finally caught up with its head, but rather than reinforcing their comrades the new troops added to the general melee. The new officers too were quickly spotted and killed. The women were almost all captured. Four or five times Quent shot a brave in the act of dragging a woman into the forest, only to have another seize her while he was still reloading.

  The ground was becoming a carpet of bodies, and parts of bodies. Quent could see a headless and legless trunk right below him, the red coat still intact, its buff-colored facings indicating a member of the Forty-eighth Foot. The pair of arms weren’t from the same victim—the turned-back cuffs were yellow, indicating the Forty-fourth.

  Quent got off another shot and took down a brave who had been hurtling toward one of the officers. The barrel of the long gun was smoking hot, but he reloaded in the space of twenty heartbeats. This time when he lifted the gun to his shoulder and tried to sight, he saw the doctor, Walton, moving on his knees among the bodies on the field. Sweet Christ, the man was mad. You couldn’t minister to the wounded in conditions like these. Quent watched him for a moment, then swung the gun around to where a whooping brave—Abenaki from the look of him—was aiming his musket at Braddock. Quent fired, but he was a second too late. He saw the general go down. The Abenaki took a step toward his feilen victim, then the top half of his body separated from the lower, neatly sliced apart by Quent’s blast.

  “Absolve peccatis, Domine.” Absolve thy servant from all sin, Lord. Xavier Walton had been carrying holy oils about his person for just this eventuality. He kept them hidden in the pocket of his jacket and every few seconds moistened the forefinger of his right hand, then traced a cross on the forehead of a dying or dead man as he hovered over him, whispering Latin petitions for the salvation of his soul. Protestant heretics all of them, but his task was to give them the opportunity to renounce their sin. Who knew what thoughts of repentance might cross a man’s mind in the final moment of life? “Absolve peccatis, Domine.” He could do no less than to pray for these sinners, and hope that eventually they would be admitted to heaven. Any minute the martyrdom he had so longed for would come. Walton was convinced of it. Surely he would not escape. This day you shall be with Me in Paradise. You promised, Lord. “Absolve peccatis, Domine.” The Jesuit crawled to the next red-coated body. His finger hovered above the man’s forehead. It was the general. The front of his uniform was covered in blood, but Braddock was breathing.

  “No doctoring now … have to get up … a horse …”

  Walton got his arms under Braddock’s torso and dragged him across the ground, through the spilled entrails, bumping over bodies whole and dismembered, until finally he reached the scant shelter of a large oak whose branches almost reached the ground.

  The Jesuit’s breath came in hot, hard gasps; Braddock’s were shallow and sounded as if he were expelling bubbles. Walton lay his hand over the general’s chest and felt the rapidly beating heart but not the steady thump of fresh blood being pumped out of a damaged artery. The yellow facings of Braddock’s red coat were stained neither by blood nor dirt. Walton’s fingers were slick with Braddock’s blood as he worked the buttons open, then pushed the coat aside. Holy Mother of God … Braddock had taken a musket ball directly to the chest. The breastbone had prevented total penetration and the musket ball was now acting as a plug, stopping the flow of blood. “You are a man favored by God, General Braddock,” Walton whispered. “You should give thanks.”

  Braddock’s eyes showed that he’d heard, but when he tried to speak no words came. The Jesuit pressed a finger over the wounded man’s Ups. “Save your strength. You are fighting for your life, and perhaps your salvation. Listen to me, and just nod. Do you renounce Satan and all his works?” Braddock’s eyes showed panic. “I am trying to save your soul,” Walton whispered urgently. “You are mortally wounded, man. Do you renounce all heresies and offer your full allegiance to Jesus Christ and His Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church?”

  Braddock understood. Walton, the English doctor, was a Catholic and therefore a spy. He had no weapons; his only hope was to kill the man with his bare hands. Braddock lifted an arm, stretching toward Walton’s throat. The gesture caused a fire to light in his chest, the pain such that a small scream was torn from him. Then he passed out.

  Walton had seen the packet of papers wrapped in oilskin as soon as he parted the general’s coat. He had made the man’s salvation his first concern, but it was too late—or maybe too early—to save him from hellfire. His second duty was to aid the French forces in whatever way he could and help bring Holy Church and the authentic Gospel of Jesus Christ to this New World, and perhaps to speed the day when the heretical and schismatic king of England would be forced from the throne, and Xavier Walton’s beloved country returned to the rule of those who avowed the True Faith. He reached for the documents and slipped them inside his own jacket.

  “Dr. Walton!” Washington had found a fresh horse and dashed for the place where the general lay. He looked at the fallen man. “Is he dead?”

  “Not yet, but dying.”

  “We must move him.” Washington summoned two men and charged them with carrying Edward Braddock from the field. There was an instant when Braddock opened his eyes and frantically tried to signal that Walton was a traitor who must be immediately arrested or killed. “Don’t agitate yourself, sir,” Washington murmured. “Save your strength. We’ll get you clear of all this.” Braddock tried to reply, but produced only burbles through his bloodstained lips.

  The job of command, Washington realized, had fallen to him. The place had become a killing field. “Buglers! Sound the retreat!”

  Retreat wasn’t difficult. The Indians had no interest in pursuing Washington and his soldiers. Instead the braves flooded the field and began looting and scalping corpses and wounded alike. Any heart they found still beating they cut out and at
e. Their cries of triumph could be heard everywhere.

  Deep in the forest Quent heard them as he systematically cut the bonds of one captive after another, the women first, then the men. He knew that he had only as long as the war cries persisted to finish the task. “Go,” he whispered to each freed captive. “South’s that way.” Some would be recaptured, some killed, but it was the best he could do in this day of hellish misery and stupidity and death.

  He’d told the others to go south because that was the quickest way to get out of the range of the French enemy and their Anishinabeg allies. For himself Quent had other concerns. As soon as he’d cut the bonds of the last captive, he headed north.

  MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 1755

  THE COLLÈGE DES JÉSUITES, QUÉBEC

  “Excellent, Xavier! Truly excellent! I had no idea that sending you into the enemy camp would have such remarkable results.” Louis Roget did not look up when he spoke. His glance was fixed on the French translation of the papers Walton had taken from General Braddock the month before. The quality of the information was staggering. Merci, mon Dieu. I will be worthy.

  Roget stopped running his finger down the page and jabbed repeatedly at one sentence. “This bit here about the four-pronged advance, how does it compare with the original?” The Jesuit superior spoke a bit of English, but the written language was particularly difficult and he did not trust himself to correctly interpret every nuance. He had looked at the papers when Xavier first arrived, and listened to the priest’s explanation, then demanded the material be translated into French. The task had taken his spy priest an entire day and most of the night as well. Xavier’s eyes were rheumy with fatigue. “You did as I suggested?”

  “I did exactly as you suggested, Monsieur le Provincial. I strengthened the words used to describe the proposed attack on Fort St. Frédéric.”

  The baron de Dieskau was in Montréal preparing to lead a combined force of four thousand French regulars and their Indian allies to Fort Niagara. Roget knew this because collecting such bits of information was his life’s work, not because Vaudreuil and Dieskau had consulted him. They were under the impression that they could organize things in New France without taking into account the opinion of the Provincial of the Society of Jesus. “Come, Xavier, I hear something in your tone. You do not believe it was wise? I insist that you speak freely.”

  “I entirely agree that these new men must be fully alerted to the threat, Monsieur le Provincial.” Xavier had made a great point of saying that the attack on Fort St. Frédéric was to be led by General William Johnson, and that he had thousands of Mohawk savages under his command. He reached for the bright red bandanna and swabbed at his forehead.

  “An interesting choice of pocket cloth, my son.”

  Xavier glanced at the thing in his hand. “I apologize, Monsieur le Provincial. I did not realize. A woman … in the English camp … she …”

  “Stop sputtering, Xavier. I understand.” Walton still wore the coat and breeches of his Virginia adventure. “You will change back to your soutane now that you are at home. And the red pocket cloth will be retired. Now, about this … interpretation. You were saying—”

  How could he explain what the Indians had done at the Monongahela? Xavier couldn’t close his eyes without seeing them cutting the hearts out of men yet alive, and stuffing the still-beating organs into their mouths. Every night he heard the cries of the painted warriors and saw their arms and their chests running red with the blood of their victims. Almost a month now and he could rid himself of neither the horror nor the perplexity. This day you shall be with Me in Paradise. But the day had passed him by.

  “What is it, Xavier? Something is bothering you, I can tell. Speak up, man. That’s a direct command.”

  He was vowed to obey his superiors in all things that were not sin. “I cannot understand why God did not grant me martyrdom, Monsieur le Provincial. It was so dose. If you could have seen what I saw … Men and women alike, slaughtered, hacked apart while they were alive, their hearts consumed raw—”

  “Yes, I know. And you weep that your own heart still beats in your chest, not in the belly of some brave.”

  “Only because I have been given this desire for martyrdom. It has been with me since I was a boy. Such a thing must come from God.”

  “God demands that you do your duty like a good Jesuit, Xavier. The savages may indeed have carried things to extremes. They frequently do. But have you forgotten that they were fighting on the side of the king? Of New France?”

  “Non, Monsieur le Provincial, bien sûr! Vous avez raaison, mais—”

  “Mais rien! How could you be a martyr for the Holy Faith if you died on the wrong side of the field of battle?”

  The blood drained from Walton’s face, leaving him as white as his shirtfront. “I never thought—”

  “No, of course. But in such matters you need not think. I am the voice of God for you. Not myself,” Louis Roget added quickly, “my office.”

  “I do not for an instant doubt that, Monsieur le Provincial.”

  “Then obey. I order you to stop mourning the martyrdom that passed you by. Give thanks that you have been allowed to serve the Church and His Majesty and our Holy Order so well.” Roget tapped the translations. “These are magnificent, truly magnificent, Xavier.”

  The news of the great French victory that had preserved Fort Duquesne set church bells ringing in all Québec, From the mighty bells of the cathedral and those of the Collège des Jésuites to the bells of the Convent of the Ursulines at the Hôtel-Dieu and the single bell of the tiny Monastery of the Poor Clares.

  Every bell had a name, and those who knew them could identify each one by its distinctive sound. The one belonging to the Poor Clares was called Maria. Its voice was sweet and true and clear. Nicole had learned only lately to ring the Maria bell. Soeur Joseph had been teaching her. Slowly, ma petite Soeur, with the rhythm of your heart. It is like singing, no? When you ring the bell you make the music of the angels. Ringing the bell is an act of prayer.

  She could not follow the rhythm of her heart this day. It was thudding painfully in her chest. And she could not stop her tears. She had been crying when Mère Marie Rose found her, peeling potatoes for dinner, and sent her up to the bell tower. “Soeur Joseph cannot go. We need her in the choir for the Te Deum. I know you weep for joy, dear child, but you must dry your eyes and go and ring the bell.”

  How could she ever explain to the abbess, to any of her sisters? Not one of them had ever seen a battlefield. They did not know what she knew, what she had seen. So much blood, mon Dieu, so much pain. And the terrible screams of those who died in agony. She clasped the bell rope firmly with both hands and pulled slowly and surely, taking the movement as far as it would go, bending her knees to accommodate it as Soeur Marie Joseph had taught her, then rising, allowing the tension to ebb. You do not let the bell go, ma petite. You guide the release as you guided the capture, slowly, with your body and with your heart.”

  Her heart knew no release. It was with her beloved. I do not know if he was there, mon Dieu, in that terrible place of death. But I beg You to keep him safe. My life for his, my good God. I have given up my life with him and come here to offer You my small penances. Keep him safe. The top of the release came and the Maria bell of the Poor Clares of Québec added its voice to the general peals of joy.

  In the choir the nuns heard their bell and Soeur Joseph intoned the opening notes of the Church’s great hymn of joy: Te Deum laudamus …

  The triumphal ringing of the bells had ended by the time the Provincial Superior of the black robes sat across from Vaudreuil, the newly installed governor-general of New France. “I am honored that you come to me, Monsieur le Provincial.” Vaudreuil had lived eighty years, most spent in Canada, but many in France. He knew how things were arranged, and how they were meant to be arranged. The governor-general had already paid his obligatory call on the Jesuit residence. The hounds of hell could not have dragged him back a second time. Onc
e was a courtesy, twice was submission.

  Roget knew as well as his opponent when to sacrifice a minor piece in order to gain one that was still more vital. “It was important only that you have these papers as soon as possible. Protocol is of no matter in times like these.”

  “I agree, of course.” Vaudreuil didn’t want to appear too eager, much less too impressed, but he couldn’t keep his glance from dropping to the French translations at least once every third word. “You are sure these things are accurate? A clever forgery could—”

  “That is why I brought them myself, Monsieur le Gouverneur-Général. So that I could assure you that they were taken from the person of General Braddock by the man I sent for exactly that purpose.”

  “Braddock is dead over a month now.” The dispatches describing the great victory at the Monongahela had been sent to every corner of the Empire. Vaudreuil had received his copy that morning, hence the great celebration throughout the city. “It is said the English buried him somewhere along the road.”

  “So I have heard.” Roget piously signed himself with the cross. “May God have mercy on his soul. But before he died a member of the Society attended him and—”

  “Braddock was a Catholic?”

  “Mais non, Monsieur le Gouverneur-Général. As far as I know God did not grant the general the grace of conversion. Nonetheless, a member of the Society was with him when he was wounded. And this man took these papers from General Braddock with his own consecrated hands.”

  Jésus! Everyone said these black robes were formidable spies as well as meddlers, but to have one of their own inside the English camp! “On the field of battle, Monsieur le Gouverneur-Général. While the English general lay bleeding from his wounds.” Roget pronounced each word slowly, but without a hint of pride. “Of course I tell you all this only for your own information. So that you may be sure the documents are to be trusted.”