by Alan Smale
Again the murmur of the crowd rose to become a frenzy. Beside him on the stage, a warrior stood. From his regalia he had to be the paramount chief of the Caiuga tribe, and he held a knife. He did not look like a man tired of war.
“I have more to say before you kill me, sir,” Marcellinus said. “Not much more. Just a little.”
Pezi translated. The Caiuga sachem shook his head. He handed the knife to Marcellinus hilt first.
Marcellinus took it and looked to Sintikala for guidance.
“You just swore a blood oath,” she said. “But you did not seal it with blood.”
“What must I do?”
“Hold your arm high and cut into it with the blade. But please, Gaius, for me: not your arm that I cut when we became blood kin.”
Turning to the crowd, Marcellinus raised his hands for quiet. Transferring the knife to his right hand, he slashed his left forearm.
Blood spurted. He had struck deeper than he intended, but unlike the last time, he felt almost nothing.
He raised his bleeding arm high. Blood gushed down onto his shoulder and soaked his tunic. “I swear to the Haudenosaunee on the blood I have spilled that I will do all in my power to prevent war between Roma and the great nations of this land.
“You all, Haudenosaunee and mound builder, must be strong. If you are strong, the Romans will want to make trade more than they want to make war.
“And again I will speak the truth to you, People of the Longhouse: the Romans may demand much. Food for their armies. Passage through Iroqua lands. They may create damage and disturbance. They may take without asking. It may not be easy. But it will be easier than a war that would destroy so many of your people and mine.”
His head still pounded, and the smell of his own blood made him nauseous. He lowered his arm and struggled on.
“I have learned many things here in the land, and the lessons have been brutally hard. I have shed much of my own blood, much blood of brave warriors and of peaceful people, but I have come to learn that it is better to talk than fight. Better to have peace and trade than war and death.”
In front of him in the broad grassy amphitheater, Iroqua warriors howled again. Behind him, the war chiefs muttered.
Marcellinus raised his hands for calm. “I say it again. If you are strong, they will want to make a treaty with you. They will want to go to market with you and make trade. They will want to pass through your lands and go west, toward the evening. You should make them buy that right. Not fight for it, as my army did, but barter for it.
“Understand, Haudenosaunee, that I am no traitor to my people. Roma will gain, too, if the Iroqua and the mound builders are strong. The Imperium will gain a powerful ally and strong neighbors, and they will gain in goods and in skills. Because when you steal goods in war, the spoils are only for that day. When you make trade, you can trade again tomorrow. Am I not right?”
Nausea threatened him. Marcellinus forced himself to stay erect. “Do not think me weak for seeking peace. I am not weak. I will fight today, tomorrow, always. I have fought you before, and I will stand with my brothers in Cahokia and fight you again if I must.
“But I say that the time for war is over. I say that you have lost enough of your men, enough of your women, enough of your children. I say that Cahokia has lost enough of its men, enough of its women, enough of its…”
He faltered. Sudden nightmare images flashed before his eyes: Tahtay smashed to the ground by an Iroqua club, Enopay spitted on a spear, Kimimela maybe being carried away by Iroqua warriors just as Wachiwi once had been stolen by Cahokians.
Marcellinus gritted his teeth. “Enough of its children.”
He drew himself up to his full height. The pounding in his head faded, and all of a sudden he felt very calm. “People of the Longhouse: when I lost my war with Cahokia, I did not kill myself as a Roman should. But if I lose the peace today, then my life has no purpose. I will leave here in peace, or I offer you my life. Command me so, and I will end it here, in front of you.”
Sintikala gasped. Pezi hesitated before the translation. “Yes? You say this?”
“Yes, I say this. Tell them.”
“Translate his words,” Sintikala said. Pezi did so.
Marcellinus turned back to the massed Iroqua and raised his voice in oration for the final moments. “I will have peace in this land or I will have death. I have made my choice, and now you, too, must choose.
“That is all I have to say. I am Gaius Publius Marcellinus, and I have spoken.”
He lowered his head, the knife still in his hand.
It was a long time before silence descended again over the great valley.
The paramount chief of the Onondaga stood. “Sintikala. You speak for Cahokia? What do you say?”
Sintikala plucked the knife from Marcellinus’s grasp and stepped forward. Her voice rang out clear across the crowd.
“I am Sintikala of Cahokia, known to some of you as Sisika, and I speak for Great Sun Man, the war chief of Cahokia, my cousin by blood. I am daughter to the previous Cahokian war chief, and I am the chief of the Hawk clan.
“I say that Cahokia will have peace with the nations of the Haudenosaunee. And I say that if you do not choose peace, I will stand with this man, this Roman from far beyond our land, and I will die here with him.”
She cut deeply into her arm, and her blood dripped down onto Marcellinus’s feet.
“Among the Haudenosaunee, as in Cahokia, women lead the clans. Women choose the war chiefs. And now, when I ask for peace, I ask the women to help make it so.”
In the front row, a Caiuga woman turned her head and spit on the ground.
“We will have peace or we will die. I am Sintikala and also Sisika, and I have spoken.”
As Pezi finished his translation, Sintikala stepped back to stand shoulder to shoulder with Marcellinus once more.
The terrible roar of the crowd began anew. Marcellinus let it flow over him like water, like rain, aware only of the smell of his own sweat and Sintikala’s blood, and of her shoulder resting against his, solid and strong.
Sintikala had stood by him. In the end she had chosen Marcellinus and the hope of peace.
As they stood waiting, the bloody pools at their feet began to merge.
The noise did not abate, but eventually Onondaga warriors stepped forward to get Marcellinus’s attention and turn him around to face the sachems. The Tadodaho gestured in hand-talk, for words could not have been heard: We speak more of this.
Marcellinus’s eyes met Sintikala’s, and for an instant they stared deeply into each other’s souls. Then the warriors grabbed his arms and hustled him away, and two muscular tattooed female warriors came forward to pull Sintikala off in the opposite direction.
—
Bound at wrist and ankle with heavy sinew, lying at the foot of a pole just inside a palisade, Marcellinus had come full circle.
Here, as on his first morning in Cahokia long before, an elderly woman came to feed him, but she sat him upright and spooned broth or corn mash into his mouth and left without comment when the bowl was empty. She did not understand his words, and tied as he was, he could not do the hand-talk.
His outdoor incarceration lasted eleven days. During that time he saw only the old woman who brought him food morning and evening, roughly smeared salve on his battered leg and the cut on his arm, and three times a day pulled his breechcloth aside and sat him on a chamber pot. On the fourth morning and again on the fifth afternoon it rained; on both occasions the woman eventually showed up to tie an animal skin over him and protect him from the worst of the downpour, but by then the ground beneath him had turned to mud. The woman refused even to meet his eye, which considering that she had to deal with his bodily functions was perhaps all to the good.
Marcellinus endured the indignities as best he could. He was faring better at the hands of the Iroqua than many of them had fared at his. And he was still alive, which meant that Sintikala was probably still alive somewhere
, too. In the distance he occasionally heard the sounds of the call and response and the dancing in the evenings. Clearly, powwow was not yet over.
On the twelfth day of his bondage the old woman brought him a savory deer-meat stew. After the food Marcellinus had survived on until then, the smell of it made his mouth water so much that he almost drooled.
Placing the bowl next to him on the ground, she produced a rough wooden spoon and an unhealthily large chert knife.
Marcellinus lifted his wrists. Surely she had not brought herself lunch to eat over his steaming corpse. And he was right: the sinews binding his arms fell away under the sharply honed stone blade.
Suddenly freed, his flesh stung. The woman rubbed his wrists until the feeling came back into them.
“Thank you,” he said, unable to do the hand-talk, and she handed him the spoon and smiled.
—
“ ‘The rope,’ ” said Sintikala. “ ‘The pole…Holding you captive. It had to be, while the elders and chiefs…and people of the Five Tribes of the Longhouse…smoked? Yes? Smoked and talked. I hope you understand. I hope you will, um, will overlook it.’ ”
With some difficulty, Sintikala was translating the words of Otetiani, the paramount chief of the Onondaga, known also as the Tadodaho. Behind him in the longhouse sat a dozen or more of the other council members, representing their tribes. Marcellinus had been allowed to bathe and change his clothes before this audience, and apparently so had Sintikala. Her long black hair was still wet and hung loose and unbraided as if she were in mourning. She looked as tired and wretched as Marcellinus felt.
“I understand,” Marcellinus said. He didn’t, not entirely, but there was little else he could say.
“All must agree,” she said. “The Five Tribes…They have to talk and smoke until they decide. There was much arguing, many men of loud voices. It takes time.”
“They couldn’t have just voted?” Marcellinus said a little ironically. Sintikala shot him a warning look, and he shut his mouth.
Again the Onondaga spoke. Sintikala said, “ ‘Now you will go.’ ” She glanced at Marcellinus. “He means both of us.”
Marcellinus shook his head. “What did they decide?”
“He has not told me.”
Sintikala turned back to Otetiani, who spoke for a long time. Marcellinus tried to control his impatience.
Sintikala looked skeptical and spoke again. Otetiani responded. Marcellinus could tell she was having difficulty with the Iroqua words. He would have been almost glad to see Pezi appear.
She asked another chief a question and another. Her eyes widened.
Finally, Marcellinus could no longer stand it. “Well? Sisika?”
But it was Sintikala of Cahokia who turned to face him then, and she spoke the words of Otetiani, Keeper of the Hearth, the Tadodaho and paramount chief of the Five Tribes of the Haudenosaunee.
“ ‘By land and water, my warriors will guide you to Woshakee. From there you will go on alone, for it is not safe for the Haudenosaunee to go farther until the news of the peace has spread and all cities of the mound builders agree that the war is over.’ ”
Marcellinus sagged. “Holy Jove.”
“ ‘In the full of the Falling Leaf Moon, I will come by the Oyo River and the Mizipi River to Cahokia in one of the great canoes that is like a house, in the full light of day. With me will come two other chiefs of the Older Brothers and only a few warriors. We will leave our weapons behind in the great canoe. I will bring a pipe to smoke with your Great Sun Man and your chiefs and elders of Cahokia, and we will talk, and we will bury the ax. I will do this if you—’ He means again the two of us, Gaius. ‘—if you will come forward to greet us when we arrive and stand with us unarmed to guarantee the safety of my chiefs and my warriors.’ ”
Tears were trickling down Sintikala’s face. The paramount chief of the Onondaga and all the Haudenosaunee stared straight ahead, politely disregarding her emotion. Marcellinus slumped forward, his head in his hands.
“I gave him our answer,” she said. “I spoke for Cahokia. We will wait for his longship on the banks of the Mizipi at Cahokia by day, when the Falling Leaf Moon is full. And I will bring my daughter for him to meet.”
Abruptly she sat down on the blanket and blinked at Marcellinus, more like an owl than a hawk.
His mouth was dry. “Terms?”
“They will want the freedom to travel the Oyo and live on its banks. Beyond Woshakee and perhaps even nearer Cahokia, but they will leave our existing towns in peace.”
“Great Sun Man will accept that? And the elders?”
“Will Great Sun Man smoke a pipe with Otetiani rather than lead a thousand warriors a thousand miles? Yes. He will. And the clan chiefs will accept it if the terms are fair. That talk is for them to make. But if our towns are not threatened and theirs may grow…”
Marcellinus struggled to think. “Pezi told me the Cahokian army was already on the march. Is it? Does Otetiani know where they are?”
“He knows only what I told him. They are still far. But we will send runners and canoes south to the Algon-Quian, and they will send the news by smoke signal, west across the land to Cahokia, to halt it. This will work. Demothi will know where the army is and fly to them to take the news.”
Still she looked up at him wide-eyed. Marcellinus felt dizzy. “I must think. I must rest.”
He swayed, and Sintikala stood quickly and steadied him. “Come.”
Marcellinus bowed to the Tadodaho and to the silent chiefs of the Haudenosaunee. Otetiani bent at the waist, bowing awkwardly back. And so the Roman bow traveled one nation farther into Nova Hesperia.
Conversation broke out again. The measured syllables of spoken Iroqua washed over him, guttural but no longer hostile, but Marcellinus had stopped listening.
It was done. They were alive. And the Mourning War was over.
The dragon prow of the Iroqua longship loomed over the oily waters of the Oyo River. Behind Marcellinus and Sintikala the broad black and yellow mainsail flapped loosely. As dusk approached, the prevailing easterly wind had dropped, and the longship was beginning to drift and skew toward the right bank.
Though competent, the Onondaga sailors were no Norsemen in their command of the shallow-draft ship. Terse commands flew, and from Sintikala’s amused expression Marcellinus guessed they included a fair selection of Iroqua curses. Rivermen were the same everywhere.
The helmsman steered back into the current while half a dozen Iroqua hauled on hempen lines to reef the sail. Behind Marcellinus and Sintikala, working around their fellows, other braves lifted squares of pine decking to bring the remainder of the long oars out for later, when the wind dropped completely.
Here the Oyo was several hundred yards broad and healthily deep, and they had no fear of running aground. The banks were wooded, and the terrain was gently rolling to the south and mostly flat to the north. They would not need to pull ashore until the light was almost gone. Soon the longship would be rowing into the sunset.
“Sintikala, all of this that you call the land, from Chesapica through to Cahokia? Everything on the big map you showed me? The Romans call this Nova Hesperia, New Land of the Evening. And that’s how it feels to me: fresh and new, just made.”
Never before had Marcellinus told a Hesperian what the Romans called their continent. It would have seemed presumptuous. But Sintikala knew the land more thoroughly than anyone. He felt that it was important for her to know.
“Just made?” Sintikala shook her head. “It was here always.”
“But new to me.” Marcellinus met her eye. “New and wonderful.”
“Hesperia.” She tried out the word. It sounded exotic on her tongue and full of promise. “It is a good word.”
“And the land is good. But it is a shame that your map of it was destroyed.”
“Destroyed?”
His mouth dropped open at her expression. “Your big map? It didn’t burn up when the Iroqua burned your h
ouse?”
“I keep it hidden under the floor. In my grain store. I took it out that day so I could show you. The fire did not burn it.”
Marcellinus smiled. She still had the map. It was a good omen. “Nova Hesperia,” he said again.
She grinned wryly back at him. “But no more Mourning War. No revenge for what Cahokia suffered. No revenge for the Iroqua digging up the Mounds of the Chiefs and the Hawks. Many will not like it. Some may even want to kill you.”
“They’ll have to stand in line. Chogan and Ohanzee will want to kill me even more. Perhaps even Tahtay.” That thought made him sad.
“Not Kimimela, though. Not the farmers and ordinary people, not most of the women. And Cahokia is a great city with great warriors. Those warriors will need to be great enough to put aside their revenge and live with not fighting Iroqua.”
“To the Haudenosaunee, what they did to Cahokia was revenge,” Marcellinus reminded her. “Iroqua revenge for what Cahokians did to their people here along the Oyo.”
“So long ago,” she said. “What they did to us, that was now.”
Marcellinus thought of Roma’s long history and the lines of hurt that still extended across Europa and eastward from wars fought centuries before. “Two generations. Twenty. Sometimes nations have long memories. But it will work? The peace will hold?”
She waggled her fingers, the hand-talk for uncertainty. “Not for all. Some will always raid. Some Mohawk bands, most of all, and their Huron brothers. Some Seneca. Some of our Wolf Warriors and men from Ocatan. The mound-builder cities that are not Cahokia may want more Iroqua scalps before they rest. But those who fight now break the law of Cahokia as well as of the Haudenosaunee League, and Great Sun Man will stop it. There will be no more big fight. No more complete war.”
Marcellinus grunted. For now, Cahokian hegemony had a limited reach. But the spread of writing would help, along with speedier communications once they could install Eagle launchers up and down the Mizipi and fly the three-person birds regularly, with envoys, gifts, and expertise.
