He lost all sense of time and became lost in the spell of the rapid dialogue and the random images it summoned. The haunting piles of bones at Braddock’s battlefield, Captain Burke nailed alive to a survey tree. The bizarre symbols, unknown to Indian or European, on the boundary trees. Mokie about to be carried away with Burke’s dead body.
A touch at his knee brought him back. “Will you speak to us of what the dead man teaches?” Conawago asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“These chiefs from the Grand Council of the Iroquois have spoken about Skanawati, and his actions these past weeks. I have spoken of the events since the first day near Ligonier, of Skanawati’s confession, and of the trees. They are disturbed that raiders took Burke’s body. I have told them you come from a lost land, where you were taught how to make the dead speak. I told them you, too, sought out his body, touched it.”
Duncan looked from one man to the next, each face as inscrutable as the one before. Even if one of their own had confessed to murder, what concerned them most was the theft of a dead body. The oldest of the Indians, whose wrinkled, leathery face spoke of great age, nodded to Duncan.
“Old Belt of the Mohawks desires you to share your knowledge,” Conawago said.
The old chief extended the long pipe toward Duncan, gesturing, moving over to make room for Duncan at his side.
Only after Duncan had settled by Old Belt and inhaled deeply of the fragrant tobacco offered him did the chief speak, this time in English with a heavy French accent. “My people, guardians of the eastern door,” he said, using the traditional Iroquois description of the Mohawk tribe, “are accustomed to returning from a victory with a prisoner. But never have we heard of a dead man being captured as if he were alive. Did you perhaps see that one come back to life and fight those raiders?”
The way Winston Burke, days dead now, still preyed on him, Duncan was tempted to agree. The Virginian’s ghost cast a long shadow over the treaty convoy. “No. He was bound and tied inside a blanket.”
“Perhaps the blanket was writhing the way a cocoon writhes just before the butterfly emerges?”
Duncan shuddered, then studied the chiefs. He was looking at the heads of the tribal treaty delegation, he realized, and now knew why there was an empty place in their circle. They still considered Skanawati an active member of their delegation. “No,” Duncan said quietly. “He did not come back to life to fight the Hurons.”
The chief in the fox headdress spoke at last. “Not Hurons,” Long Wolf said, pronouncing his English words very slowly. “Renegades. Outlaws. What is the word when your king hires those German soldiers?”
“Mercenaries.”
The Mingo chief nodded. “Mercenaries.” He pointed to an object by the little fire, the bone-and-bead breastplate Conawago had found at the ambush. “This is Nanticoke, or maybe Conoy,” he said, referring to two of the smaller tribes that traditionally lived along the Chesapeake and its tributaries. “Most of them have lost their ways. Some would kill for the leg of a chicken.”
“But we saw them,” Duncan said. “Conawago and I were at their camp. They were French Indians.”
“Some were,” Conawago agreed. “But not all, I think. If such men were paid to kill English, might they not be friendly with the French?”
“But who would use such killers?” As the question left his lips Duncan realized it was what the men around him had been asking themselves. By the worried glances they exchanged he realized they thought it possible it was someone within their own confederation.
They sat in silence.
“The great chiefs of the Iroquois League,” Conawago finally said to Duncan, “will never sign a treaty without understanding what the dead man was trying to say to you. Those on the other side are watching what is done here.”
Duncan reminded himself that these chiefs too would have heard that there was a crack in the world that seemed to be spewing out ghosts. The English members of the treaty party desperately wanted to forget the killing at the tree, dismiss it as something unrelated to their mission. But the Iroquois knew all things were related, and ghosts from the Warriors Path had joined their negotiations.
With an outstretched hand Old Belt cupped smoke and directed it to Duncan, letting it wash over him before offering the pipe again. He meant to bring the spirits into Duncan’s heart before he spoke. But Duncan could find no words.
“If it is as you say,” said the Mohawk, doubt lingering in his tone, “then they took him so he would stop sharing his secrets with you.”
Duncan realized the Indian had grasped the truth that had been eluding him. “They are taking him to another who understands the language of the dead,” he agreed. But why? he desperately asked himself. What on the body had he missed?
“Captain Burke was a man not used to physical labor,” he began, at least offering what he knew, “a man not at ease in the forest.” The Indians were much more interested in the details of the murder than the English had ever been.
“What did his tattoos speak of?” Old Belt asked.
“He had none, only a little scar like a bolt of lightning.”
The announcement triggered a worried exchange among the Iroquois.
“His hand was nailed to the tree,” Duncan continued. “He could not stop his killer from cutting away his silver buttons. And this—” He lifted his pouch, pulling out the lump of copper and dropping it onto the ground in front of him. “This was in his throat.”
The announcement was punctuated by a gasp. Long Wolf seemed to have stopped breathing. Old Belt sagged. “That explains it. Why he does not speak with you.”
“You mean it blocked his tongue?” Duncan ventured.
“No.” Long Wolf lifted a kindling stick and pushed the lump back toward Duncan, gesturing for him to put it away. The copper scared him. “It is his soul,” he declared matter-of-factly, “shriveled and melted. Without a soul the dead will never speak, never see, never find the other side.”
An unnatural chill gripped Duncan’s spine. He too was now strangely scared to touch the metal. He pushed it back into his pouch with a fingertip.
Old Belt produced a little bag of deerskin and upended it by the fire. Three more molten lumps dropped out. “The killer did the same to the warriors Skanawati sent,” he said in a mournful tone. “We cannot let this happen to Skanawati.” He stared pointedly at Duncan. “He is the best of us. We will need him on the other side.”
Duncan looked to Conawago for help. But the expression on his friend’s face said he too was frightened, more than Duncan could have imagined.
“Tell us what the words of the dead say on the trees. Perhaps it is how they speak when they have no tongue.” Long Wolf tossed wood on the fire, making it flare up for more light. He then carefully extracted and unfolded a square of finely tanned doeskin, laying it beside the fire. The skin showed signs of wear, of being folded and unfolded and handled often. A shiver ran down Duncan’s spine as he saw the geometric shapes painted on the skin. The treaty chiefs had recorded eight groupings of the shapes from the trees. He returned the somber gaze of each man in turn. The chiefs were trying to reconcile the deaths in their own way.
“I have not unlocked the magic of these shapes,” Duncan replied, “but I can tell you each set marks a death along the Warriors Path. I think it is the killers, not the dead, who make them. And,” he added, “I am aware of only four, maybe five.” He reminded himself that the surveyor Putnam had never been accounted for.
“The three members of the turtle clan Skanawati sent down the trail late this winter,” the old Mohawk chief said in a heavy voice. “They were killed at such trees as they tried to clean the old shrines.”
“Why?” Duncan asked. “Why would he have sent them?” He stared at the molten lumps. They would be a perfect shield for a murderer among the Indians. Any body discovered with such a lump would be taboo. No one would have touched it, no one would ever have tried to learn more about it.
“Skanawati told
them the old trees, the marker shrines, needed to be cleansed, needed to have the dust removed from their eyes and ears.”
Duncan looked at Conawago. The chief was referring to a greeting ceremony, like that performed at the edge of the woods between travelers. It was what Conawago had performed at the western tree. Skanawati had guessed the other trees were also ancient shrines.
“None of this explains why they wanted the dead Virginian,” Conawago pointed out.
Long Wolf frowned. “There is a French shaman who could put more of those wheels in his chest and make him live again,” he said. “Neither warrior nor soldier could stop such a creature.”
The words hung in the air. Duncan wanted to dismiss them as absurd. But then he saw the frightened way the other chiefs reacted to them.
“Before he left for the western lands,” offered Old Belt, “Skanawati argued to the Grand Council that the world was coming to an end, that the Iroquois had brought it upon themselves by ignoring the ancient, honored ways. There is an old tale told at our campfires of how our world will end with a great monster of rock eating everything.” The chief paused, drawing deeply on the pipe, letting the smoke slowly waft out of his mouth as he seemed to consider his own words. “After Skanawati left, an old woman of our tribe had a dream that a monster came to her village, some sort of European man machine with a chest of metal, and he began eating the village, starting with the children.”
Duncan wanted to shake the chiefs, to reason with them, to tell them it was impossible. But he dared not break through the solemn, anxious atmosphere. Dreams could never be ignored or denied, for they were considered messages from the other side. And the moment a man had been found with a gear in his chest, the terrible vision had become possible.
“You are the one who possesses the power to reach across the edge of the worlds, to the spirits of your tribe,” Old Belt declared to Duncan. “You must ask them to speak with the Iroquois spirits on that side. Ask what we must do so our children will not die.”
It was Duncan’s turn to despair. He did not know how to say yes, was not certain what was being asked of him, yet could not bear to refuse the wise old man, who reminded him of so many Highland chieftains he had known, vital, courageous men, now in the ground, whose children, whose world, had been destroyed. He found himself struggling against one of his recurring visions of his dead family, reaching out for him.
“We will need more tobacco,” Duncan said at last.
The despair that seized him every few weeks was like a living thing, a beast that burrowed into him, devouring his vital organs so that Duncan could not see, could not feel, was sometimes not even conscious of his whereabouts. It was a cold winter dusk when he had found himself sitting on the lip of a hundred-foot cliff with Conawago an arm’s length away, ready to grab him.
“You need to let them go, Duncan,” the old Indian had said. “You need to let your dead family go.”
Duncan flinched. As ever, Conawago’s arrow had hit the mark. “It’s a dark, cold spot in my heart that seems to ebb and flow like the tides. I don’t think it will ever go away.”
“How old were you? Eleven? Twelve?”
“Ten,” Duncan replied. “I was ten when the English killed them.”
“And hundreds of miles away at school. Do you possibly think you could have stopped it?”
“I would have died with them. I should have died with them.”
“I was the same age when the Jesuits took me away,” Conawago said after a long silence, “promising I would return with knowledge to help my people. When I finally came back I had all the knowledge but my people had vanished. I spent most of my life looking for them. You must not spend the next fifty years looking for ghosts.” The old Nipmuc extended his hand to guide Duncan back from the edge.
An hour after leaving the council fire Duncan sat on a solitary ledge, the moon high overhead, scanning the low starlit horizon of the lands below. He gazed down at the Indian camp three hundred feet beneath him, where he had sat in silence after the haunting words of the chief, letting the tobacco smoke waft around them, until finally Conawago had turned to explain.
“I spoke about you,” he had said in a near whisper, “and of our time in the great woods. Old Belt believes there is a reason men like you and me survive the loss of our tribes, believes that we have special voices that reach the spirits. He says the Iroquois must learn all the ways to connect to those spirits. Word has come to him of a plaid man who can make the voice of the old ones.”
When Duncan had raised his brows in confusion Conawago motioned toward the shadows. There he saw his friend had brought his tattered haversack into the lodge.
Understanding at last, Duncan had taken the bag and disappeared into the darkness, alone. Conawago knew well the solitary communion Duncan now needed as he unpacked the bundle wrapped in tattered muslin. With slow, reverent motions he laid the intricately crafted pieces in a pool of moonlight before assembling them. The first test of a reed brought a reply from a whippoorwill.
“You are clan chief,” a familiar voice called from inside him, in the tongue of the Highlands, “which means you must show the others the right thing to do.” Though he had first heard them spoken at his father’s investiture many years before, his father often repeated them to him in his dreams. “Never mind that we will never see the Highlands again,” an exiled countryman had declared to him the year before. “Your clan is all those under the boot of the world.”
At last the bladder bulged with air, the reeds were wetted and set, the drones tuned. He clamped the blowstick in his teeth and began fingering the chanter. He could not have foreseen how every fear, every resentment, every longing for the justice that always seemed to elude him would crest in that moment when the first notes sounded, sweeping over him in a heart-thumping crescendo. By the end of his first tune he thought he would weep. By the end of the second he was no longer mournful, he was fighting, he was standing against the world, he was the last pipe speaking for the lost clans and dying tribes, and in that moment he would have charged a line of infantry alone, sword in one hand and pipes in the other.
He did not know when Conawago arrived to sit on a moonlit rock nearby, did not see the painted Iroquois bucks who had earlier assaulted him arrive to sit facing outward as if to protect him. He played the rally songs of long-ago battles, the airs from Highland romps, the ballads of women sending their men to do battle against impossible odds. As the moon crested he discovered the great brute McGregor sitting beside him, sobbing like a bairn.
Chapter Six
MAGISTRATE BRINDLE WAS ill-pleased with Duncan’s musical performance, his nephew Felton reported as Duncan rose up from under the wagon after a few hours’ sleep. Horses had been spooked. Several of the Welsh teamsters had insisted a banshee was descending on the convoy. As more grievances were recited, McGregor appeared at Duncan’s side. Something like rancor flashed across the gangly young Quaker’s face, then he shrugged, offered an exaggerated bow of his head, and retreated.
As Duncan made ready for travel he glanced up at the high ledge where he had played the pipes. Conawago was there, stretching in the dawn light, waking with the Iroquois chiefs. They had arrived the night before with wondering eyes to listen as he had played, had nodded solemn approval when he had finished. When Duncan had left them they were settling down on a bed of moss as Conawago pointed to the sky. “Ootkwatah,” he had heard his friend say as he stepped away. “Pleiades.” He was explaining to the chiefs the European names for the constellations.
Van Grut now approached, extending a tin mug of tea, which Duncan ravenously swallowed. He uneasily eyed the four young red-painted warriors who had followed him back to the magistrate’s camp. They had been highly animated since hearing his pipes, pointing at Duncan and making low exclamations to each other, words that might have been praise or might have been the opposite. He no longer knew whether they plotted to protect him or harm him, though he had no doubt about their intentions for the break
fast the Quakers had been cooking.
“Yo ha!” one of them suddenly moaned and held his cheek, dropping a piece of bacon he had furtively lifted from the breakfast pan. When a companion bent to retrieve the meat a pebble flew from under the wagon and hit him in the temple. He cursed, but the other bucks laughed and pointed to a diminutive shape hiding behind a wagon wheel.
“Mokie!” Duncan called out and scooped up the girl as she darted toward him. He found himself embracing the girl with more emotion than he would have expected. He released her, turning her around to examine the wound on her head. “I proclaim you healed,” he offered good-naturedly.
“They say it was you making that music last night,” the girl said. “I heard it like in a dream, far away but asking me to come to it. Something kept pulling me back, but I went toward the music. Then suddenly I opened my eyes, and I was in Mama’s arms.”
“Bagpipes, lass. I breathe into a little pipe, and the voices of all my grandfathers come trilling out the other end.”
She embraced him again, then insisted he sit while she brought him a meal of bacon and bread, the best breakfast he’d had in weeks. She disappeared inside the wagon with more food, but was chased out by her mother, who declared they would eat in the fresh air. Becca climbed down from the high gate then reached up. To his surprise it was Skanawati who handed down the infant, Penn, then with a rattling of chains the Onondaga chief climbed down. He smiled not with his mouth but his eyes as he recognized Duncan, then cupped his hand over his heart and swept it toward the sky. “I too heard your grandfathers,” he said. “My heart was soaring.”
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