Remembering Maggie:The Complete Bread Sister Trilogy (The Bread Sister Trilogy)

by Robin Moore

  The women murmured softly by the fireplace.

  This was a strange place; so much to think about and figure out.

  Thought is the enemy of sleep. But sleep is the enemy of thought. The rigors of the war trail had taken a toll on Maggie's body. She couldn't think anymore. She slept.

  Chapter Six

  During the first month of Maggie's captivity, her thoughts were filled with plans for escape.

  She fell into the rhythm of village life, doing the small household tasks the women allotted to her. But all the while her hands were busy, grinding corn or scraping animal hides, her mind was at work. She noticed everything that went on around her, looking for the hole in the net that would allow her to slip free.

  Early on, Maggie realized she had two serious problems.

  The first was actually getting away from the village. She was constantly surrounded by people, mostly women. Men had their world, outside the village, in warfare, the hunt, and diplomacy. Women had their domain in this fertile valley, raising children and food, keeping the households alive and well.

  As long as she was within the confines of the town, she knew escape was impossible. But out in the fields, and in the orchards and woods beyond, a person might be able to slip away. She would wait, she de­cided, until these people grew confident enough to take her into the fields to hoe corn or into the woods to collect fuelwood. Then she would make her move.

  Her second problem was even more troublesome. Once she escaped, not knowing where she was, how would she push on to find Franny? She tried to pic­ture the map Gimpy Weaver had drawn in the dirt that night. She knew the Allegheny River flowed south along the western border of Pennsylvania, until it joined the Ohio River. That's where Franny was, at Kittanning, on the Allegheny, north of its junction with the Ohio.

  But where was the Allegheny in relation to the village? Somewhere off in the southwest. But how far? She had no idea. There was a blank space in her mental map that had to be filled: the stretch between the Genesee and the Allegheny. For lack of a better plan, she decided to point herself west, hoping to luck onto the river that would carry her to Franny.

  A third problem arose, but Maggie pushed it out of her mind as soon as it occurred to her. She didn't want to think about what the warriors would do to her if she was caught.

  It was another month before she got her chance to move outside the confines of the town. Maggie could not understand anything of the Seneca language, but with hand signs and gestures the moon-faced woman made her understand that she would be going out to assist in a deer hunt one night in the cedar swamps north of the village. She would help skin and butcher and carry the meat. Maggie did her best to appear indifferent. Inside, she trembled with excitement.

  In early evening, Maggie set out by canoe with two men who appeared to be father and son and related in some way to the moon-faced woman. They pad­dled up a small stream into the thick cedar swamp just as it got dark.

  They sat quietly in the canoe for some time before the men struck up a small fire on a flat rock laid across the bow of the canoe. Another flat rock was set up behind it as a reflector. Maggie sat quietly in the center of the canoe. The son kneeled with bow and arrows in the bow and the father skillfully steered the craft downstream from the stern.

  Up on the bank, Maggie saw something: twin points of light, moving in the dark. As they drifted closer, she could see three deer, their eyes shining in the firelight. The deer seemed hypnotized by the light. The canoe drifted close.

  At last the young man drew his bow and sent an arrow singing into one of the animals. The deer turned and bolted into the cedars but saw its shadow and leaped back into the water, almost running into the canoe. Maggie watched as the wounded doe bounded up on the opposite bank and fell on its side in the weeds. Meanwhile, the archer had tried a sec­ond shot. But the other deer were spooked now and had bounded away into the safety of the swamp.

  The father pulled the canoe aside and both men stepped up onto the bank and disappeared into the brush, leaving Maggie behind in the canoe. She was alone for the first time in weeks.

  "This is going to be too easy," she thought to herself. She slipped over the side of the canoe and waded silently into the swamp.

  She had no sense of which direction to take but, for now, that didn't matter; what she wanted was to put some distance between her and the two hunters. She doubted they could follow her trail through water.

  It was just as she was breaking into the thickest part of the cedar swamp that she heard them shout­ing. She could see their torches bobbing in the dark as they walked up and down the stream bank calling her.

  She smiled to herself. She felt as though some of the warriors' stealth on the war trail had rubbed off on her. She had learned how to travel silently and quietly, even in the dark. Now those skills would be turned in her favor.

  By now the swamp was up to her knees and the bottom of her dress was heavy with water. She con­sidered pulling it up over her head and tossing it aside. But she would need it to protect her from the mosquitoes and other biting insects that made the swamp their home. Bugs swarmed around her head and neck. As she had learned on the war trail, she didn't slap them; that made too much noise. Instead she used the flat of her hand to smear them into her skin.

  There was no moon. The night was so dark that the only way for her to steer was to look directly overhead for a space of night sky between the trees. She stumbled on in the blackness. The swamp was fetid here. With each step, she sank deeper into the mud. Swamp gas, smelling like rotten eggs, bubbled up around her legs. The air was hot and heavy with the smell of decayed plant life. The black mud had already sucked a moccasin off her foot. She thought she caught another smell: It was the smell of putre­fied flesh, an animal that had died here in the swamp. Maggie drew the skinning knife they had given her and stepped ahead.

  She stepped into a deep hole and went down in the muck, tasting it in her mouth. She dropped her knife. When she tried to wipe her mouth clean, she saw that her hands were covered with the black ooze as well.

  Then she caught hold of herself. "Hold up now," she said to herself. "No need to walk anymore. I'll just stay here until daylight, then get my bearings and head southwest. By now I've left the men far be­hind."

  Maggie found a high piece of ground, big enough for her to lie down on. She pulled the dress over her head and slept like that, off and on, until dawn.

  When the first light came into the swamp, Maggie was encouraged. Up ahead, through the trees, she could see a clearing. She thought she must be on the other side of the swamp. She pulled herself to her feet and slipped through the brush, coming out into the clearing. There was a stream here, and a trail, recently traveled. This was a good sign, she thought, this must lead somewhere.

  A few steps later she saw a footprint in the mud that looked strangely like her own. Lifting her eyes, her heart sank as she recognized the stream where the deer had been killed the night before.

  Sitting under a tree a few feet away, watching her with patient eyes, were the two hunters. She realized she had spent the entire night walking in a great circle through the black cedar swamp.

  Humiliated by her defeat, fighting back tears, she waded up the stream and climbed back into the canoe. Her dress was torn and soaked with mud, her arms and legs were scratched, one moccasin was gone, her face and neck were puckered with insect bites.

  At that moment, Maggie realized that it wasn't just the Seneca who kept her captive in the valley. Every living thing, down to the smallest insect, con­spired against her, keeping her captive in this strange land.

  Chapter Seven

  Maggie expected some sort of punishment for wan­dering off into the swamp, but none ever came. The moon-faced woman and her daughter simply cared for her wounds, whispering words of admonishment or concern, she couldn't tell which. In all the time she had lived among the Seneca, Maggie had never understood a word.

  It was late summer and Maggie went to the fields ever
y day now, hoeing the weeds back from the tall corn and the bean plants. The soil was rich and black under her bare feet. She worked with the other women, bare chested in the sun. In the afternoons they went to the women's swimming place, where they shed their clothes and swam in the cool waters of the Genesee before going back to their cabins to prepare the evening meal.

  When harvest time came, Maggie was amazed at the crop: stands of corn with stalks eighteen feet high, ears three feet long and longer; beans that grew long and sweet; squash too big for one person to carry; sunflowers that raised their great faces to the sky.

  In October, the Seneca held their annual harvest festival: four days of ceremony, prayers, dancing, and music. The village was awake all night, dancing to the heartbeat of the drum. Maggie felt something stir in her. There was something unsettling but beautiful about the high-pitched, wailing chants of the women and insistent beating of the drum. She felt on the edge of being swept away by it. But she clung to her own way, drawing back from the dance and the music, as if she were protecting some part of herself.

  On the last night of the festival, the moon-faced woman raised her arms and made an announcement to a knot of women standing around her. She ges­tured toward Maggie as she spoke and then to a woman who stood nearby, an old crone with a nose hooked down like an owl's beak. In her toothless jaws she clenched a short-stemmed clay pipe. She was beaming with joy. The women smiled at Maggie. She smiled back, uneasily.

  The next morning, the moon-faced woman took special care in plaiting Maggie's hair and dressing her in a new trade-cloth dress.

  "Oh, no," Maggie thought. "Whenever they start beautifyin' me, I get nervous."

  The moon-faced woman took a loaf of corn bread Maggie had baked and placed it in a wooden bowl. She motioned for Maggie to pick up the bowl and follow her down the avenue.

  The women of her clan were already waiting out­side the cabin. They walked together to a cluster of cabins along the stream, a short distance away. The women there seemed to be expecting her as well. The pipe-smoking matron was there, beaming at Maggie. The moon-faced one motioned for Maggie to hand the corn bread to the older woman. Maggie obeyed. The older woman responded by giving the moon­faced woman a dried haunch of deer meat. The women gave a joyous shout. Then the crowd fell back, revealing a doorway to one of the cabins.

  "Great God," Maggie thought, "am I bein' sold to these people?"

  A woman came from the darkness of the cabin, someone Maggie hadn't noticed before. She was dif­ferent from the others—dressed Seneca but with hair as blond as corn silk and skin light like Maggie's. In the crook of her left arm, she held a tiny infant wrapped in rabbitskin.

  The woman extended her right hand. "Come in, Redwing, I've been waiting for you."

  There was a little of the French lilt in her voice, but Maggie understood the words clearly. It was the first English she had heard spoken in three months.

  Maggie took the woman's hand and stepped over the doorsill into the cabin.

  It was dark, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light. The first thing she noticed were the smells, pungent and rich but not unpleasant. Then she saw: Bundles of herbs hung drying from the rafters overhead. She recognized sassafras roots and the leaves of the horsemint, but the others were strange and unknown to her. She smelled the wood smoke from the fireplace and the milky-sweet fra­grance of the baby.

  "This will be your home now. We will share the work, eh?" the woman said.

  "Thank you," Maggie said, not quite sure what she was thanking her for. It felt very good to hear some­thing in her own language.

  "I am Frenchgirl—that is what the English call me. Until you learn the Seneca, I will help you along in English."

  "When were you captured?" Maggie asked.

  Frenchgirl laughed. "A very long time ago, when I was very small. My father was a fur trader, of the French. My mother was English. But now I am Seneca."

  Maggie shook her head. "But how can that be?"

  "I was adopted, just as you have been. And to the Seneca, I am as much a relative as if I had been born here. It is the same with you."

  "I see," Maggie said slowly. "And the name you called me—what was it?"

  "Redwing. That is the English for your Seneca name. But listen, my girl is falling asleep. Let me put her to bed and we can sit by the fire and string beans. We will talk as we work, eh?"

  Maggie nodded and watched as Frenchgirl ten­derly laid her baby on one of the beds.

  She glanced around the cabin. She could see much more clearly now. It was well repaired and everything was in order. Along both sidewalls she could see platform beds, piled high with woolen blankets and warm winter furs. There was a fine stone fireplace with iron pots and kettles, wooden spoons and drink­ing cups. Thick rawhide, stretched drum tight over the window frames, let in a warm yellow light.

  Frenchgirl brought a birchbark basket of string beans, needles, and thread. They began to string the beans into a long chain to be hung from the rafters to dry.

  "When you came to this village," Frenchgirl began, "you were adopted by the Turtle Clan women to replace someone they had lost last year—a young man who died on the war trail. They gave you a new life then—as a Seneca. With a new name: Redwing, for the red of your hair, so much like the feathers of a songbird that catch the sunlight."

  They talked. They talked for hours, stringing beans. After a while, Maggie forgot she was deep in Indian country, far from home. For that afternoon, it seemed to her that they could have been two young women anywhere, sitting by the fire, working and talking.

  The next morning, they worked outside in the brisk autumn air, pounding corn with the mortar and pestle that stood outside the cabin door.

  As they worked, Frenchgirl smiled. "You haven't asked about my brother. Are you shy about asking?"

  Maggie wasn't aware she had a brother. But, eager for any kind of conversation, she simply nodded. "Tell me about him."

  Frenchgirl wrinkled her brow. "You don't sound very curious."

  "No," Maggie said, not wanting to offend. "Tell me everything."

  Frenchgirl smiled and went back to pounding corn. "That's more like it!"

  "He is a runner, a messenger, who carries dis­patches from one end of the Iroquois country to another. He is called Firefly. That would be his En­glish name.

  "He runs with my husband, Cornstalk. They run together, as a team. They travel light and move very fast. They will be returning soon."

  Frenchgirl paused.

  "Good," Maggie said absently.

  Frenchgirl laid her wooden pestle aside. "Red­wing, is there no blood in your veins?"

  Maggie continued pounding. "I don't under­stand."

  "You don't seem anxious to meet my brother."

  "Not to cause offense, but why should I be?"

  Frenchgirl wrinkled her brow. "You might take an interest in him, now that he is your husband. . . ."

  Maggie stopped the corn pestle in midair. "My husband? I don't have a husband."

  "Of course you do. Why do you think you came to live with me? Surely you knew. Or at least you expected—the announcement and the ceremony yes­terday morning—the exchanging of gifts. What did you think was happening?"

  "I thought I was being sold," Maggie answered.

  Frenchgirl threw her head back and laughed. "A Seneca woman can't be sold!"

  Maggie felt the ire rising in her. "Well, how was I to know that? How am I to know anything? I haven't understood anything for a long time—" She felt tears of frustration welling up in her eyes. "Look," she said slowly, "you can explain this to them.. You can make them understand. They will see that it was all a mistake and that I didn't give my consent. Besides"—Maggie laughed—"I can't possi­bly be married. I don't even know your brother."

  Frenchgirl shook her head gravely. "That does not matter. I didn't know my husband before we were married either. Here the marriages are arranged by the mothers. But they make a good match. I assure you
, you will be pleased."

  "And if I refuse?"

  "Redwing, don't make life hard for yourself and others. Don't shame the ones who have planned so well for you."

  Maggie felt her anger erupting. "I don't want any­thing planned for me—"

  "But Redwing—"

  "And stop calling me that name!" Maggie shouted. "My rightful name is Maggie. I am a Calla­han, I'm Irish. I was born that way, I will die that

  way!"

  Frenchgirl shook her head patiently. "No, Red­wing, you are wrong. This Maggie person you speak of—she is dead. The women of the clan could have taken your life. But they didn't; they decided to spare you and give you a new life—as a Seneca. Do not throw your life away foolishly."

  As FrenchgirPs words sank in, Maggie flashed back to the horror and fear she had felt back on the war trail. She knew that Frenchgirl was right; they could have taken her life.

  "Our men will return in a few days. They are now to the east, on a war party," Frenchgirl explained. "When they return, the season for war will be over, and we will leave for the winter elk hunt.

  "We will pack a canoe and go southwest, to the river the English call the Allegheny. Do you know of this river?"

  The Allegheny! This was the missing link! Maggie tried to make her voice sound calm. "I have heard the name, that's all," she said.

  They worked quietly then, Maggie's mind racing through the possibilities. Now her escape plans fell together quickly. She would go with this hunting party, allowing them to escort her out of the village and across the wild, unknown terrain until they reached the Allegheny. It would be much easier to slip away from them if she appeared to enjoy the trip.

  But how would it be, Maggie wondered, being wife to a Seneca man, if only for a week or two? She had to admit she knew very little about men, less about marriage, and wasn't sure how much she was willing to learn.

  "All right," Maggie thought, "I will marry this man, this Firefly. I will become the model Seneca wife for a week or two. Then—gone, gone home to Franny and my own people."