Eye of the Raven

by Eliot Pattison

  He nearly collided with his friend as he darted through the gate moments later. Conawago was frozen, staring at a huge device made of wood, leather, and bone. It was spinning about, propelling several Indians in a circle as they sat on short planks suspended on ropes. Duncan gazed in disbelief at the machine, which was built around a heavy wagon wheel mounted horizontally atop a thick post functioning as an axle. Extension poles had been strapped with leather to the spokes of the wheel and hung with the rope swings at their ends. Antlers and small skulls adorned the end of the poles. Impossibly, it was a carousel, a particularly Indian carousel. Three small Indian children swung with cries of glee as an older Indian man propelled the machine by pulling on a rope hung from one of the extension poles. Two adolescent girls and a woman sat on the other seats, making no sound, their eyes filled with wonder.

  A shriek from inside the large building broke their spell. Duncan and Conawago darted inside, past a sleepy Indian propped on a keg beside the door who sounded a surprised, halfhearted warning at their sudden appearance. Conawago’s hand was on his warclub, Duncan’s on his tomahawk, as they sprang into a large chamber.

  They were met by high-pitched laughter. It took a moment for Duncan to realize that it came from Mokie, pointing at them in amusement, as if they were performing on her behalf. She sat at a long table eating bread and honey off a wooden plate beside a man with a great black beard. With one foot on the bench beside the girl, he was tuning a fiddle.

  The stranger began a lively reel, bowing in greeting without stopping his music. He leaned over Mokie, playing with great speed and skill, finishing with a flourish and a hearty laugh that shook his well-fed frame. He nodded his head toward his two new guests. “The mademoiselle has her first sweet taste of liberty. Surely worthy of a celebration.”

  “It looks like only bread and honey to me,” Duncan observed.

  “The plantation masters are far away,” the man replied, stiffening. “The mountains are high.”

  “You are French,” Duncan said, at once embarrassed by the unnecessary observation but unable to hide his surprise.

  “A label bestowed by birth is impossible to deny.” The man pushed the pot of honey closer to Mokie.

  Conawago paced about the long table, eyeing the man with the same distrust Duncan felt. He paused at the only refined piece of furniture in the chamber, a little cherry table on which sat a solitary cross and a Bible. In the dust on the table he drew two letters with his fingertip. An S and a J.

  The Frenchman’s smile dimmed for a moment. He stepped to the table and erased the marks with a sweep of his hand. “That particular label I was able to abandon.”

  “For the profits of a merchant,” Conawago shot back.

  Duncan looked from man to man, unable to grasp what was passing between them.

  “I came into the wilderness to aid the last uncorrupted people on earth.”

  “I believe the doctrine says we all are corrupted,” said Conawago.

  “That doctrine was devised by arthritic old men in Europe who never walked in the bowers of Eden.” The man had grown serious, almost somber. “Sault St. Louis?” he asked of Conawago. “Swegatchy?”

  Conawago did not respond.

  Duncan stepped to the bench to stand behind Mokie. The girl pushed a heel of bread toward him.

  “So you left the Society of Jesus in search of Adam and Eve?” his friend asked.

  A Jesuit. At last Duncan understood. The Frenchman had been a Jesuit priest and had asked about two of the Jesuit missions that operated in the northern Iroquois lands. Though Conawago had never entirely embraced their faith, he had been in the care of Jesuits in Canada and Europe for much of his youth and had great respect for many of them.

  The Frenchman set his fiddle on the table and paced around the old Indian, studying him with a new intensity. “I came not to search for Adam and Eve but to ensure Eden might become the fortress they need to withstand the onslaught from without.”

  “A mission by another name then,” Conawago replied.

  “My name is Rideaux, old man. My Jesuit robe was ripped off my back before I had the chance to throw it off. And I tend to take criticism only from my friends, not trespassers.”

  Conawago gave a small, bitter grin.

  “You redeem the Indians by building carousels and fur presses?” Duncan broke in. “Your mission has a decidedly commercial feel.” He studied the man’s huge beard, which covered most of his face. “You are the great bear?”

  Rideaux’s eyes flared. “Who are you?” he demanded, his gaze shifting from one man to another. “No one invited you inside my walls.”

  “Like you,” Duncan offered, “seekers of truth. Believers in new beginnings. Escorts for a young slave girl.”

  “Slave no longer. Virginia property rights do not extend to our country.”

  “Your country?” Duncan asked.

  “Iroquoia.”

  “I thought we were in the province of Pennsylvania.”

  “You are misinformed. This land has never been legally surrendered. Technically the colony’s boundary ends miles to the south. We recognize no European sovereignty here.”

  “We?”

  Rideaux did not answer, but looked past Duncan. Duncan slowly turned to see a dozen Indians, both men and women, watching from the shadows at the back of the chamber. “Your business is done here,” the Frenchman muttered. “We thank you for delivering the girl.”

  Mokie linked her arm with Duncan’s. “We were promised supplies,” she said. “In Shamokin there would be supplies.”

  “Not here, mademoiselle. In town. The log cabin with two floors. I will take you there.”

  Mokie shook her head. “I am with them. If they say I must return to the Virginians I will do so,” she said with a conviction that quite astonished Duncan.

  Rideaux’s expression darkened. Something seemed to pass between him and the Indians. Duncan rose and stood beside Conawago. The questions that had leapt to his tongue suddenly seemed far less important than finding a safe egress from their host’s strange compound. Several of the men, sturdy warriors all, began advancing, one with a length of rope, one with an iron bar, one with an ax.

  “Skanawati!” Mokie suddenly blurted out. She darted from Duncan’s side to stand between himself and the Indians. She pronounced the name again, like a loud command. The company froze.

  Rideaux stared as if dumbstruck. “What did you say, ma petite?”

  “We come from the Great Chief of the Iroquois!” She spoke still loudly but faster, as if rushing to get all her words out before her nerve broke. “Mr. McCallum and Mr. Conawago are trying to keep him from being hung from a Pennsylvania gallows! Mr. Conawago was going to die when my master was nailed to a tree, and Mr. Skanawati took his place, and the Hurons attacked us in a field of skulls to take an old smelly body, and they tried for my scalp but I fought them off with stones!”

  Rideaux’s eyes grew round with wonder, then he shot several quick syllables toward the Indians in the shadows. Two of the men darted out the door. A woman came forward with a heavy clay jug and several wooden cups. The Frenchman’s dangerous glint softened, and a narrow grin returned as he gestured to the table. “I think we shall have some cider,” he announced.

  The telling of a story, Indian fashion, was never in the linear style of Europeans, Duncan had learned. Now he saw that their taking of a story was much the same. He began to explain the death of the Virginia officer, then one of the Indians insisted on hearing about the field of skulls. He described Conawago’s arrest and the trial at Ligonier only to be interrupted with questions about whether Iroquois were scouts at that garrison. When Mokie mentioned Penn’s birth the night before the chief’s confession, an Indian woman broke in to inquire about the stars and moon that night, to Conawago’s approving nod. At last, after nearly an hour the violent and bizarre events of the past week were out, spread on the table before them as it were, where they continued to be dissected and digested.

/>   “Did Skanawati wear paint when he confessed?” one of the men asked.

  Duncan’s confirmation brought a flurry of quick, worried whispers among the Indians.

  “The trees you speak of,” an aged woman asked. “Are they all on the old Warriors Path?”

  Conawago slowly nodded.

  “They tried once before,” she replied.

  “Tried what exactly?” Duncan wanted to know.

  “The Virginians attempted to take our land. In 1744. They came to a treaty conference and took away a piece of paper from some Oneidas that said they owned all the Ohio country.”

  “What happened?”

  “Everyone lied,” the woman replied.

  “The Six Nations agreed to sell rights to the valley called Shenandoah,” Rideaux explained. “Afterward the Virginians said the wording included all the lands in the west.”

  Conawago and Duncan exchanged a worried glance. There seemed too many reasons why an Iroquois chief might want to kill a man from the Shenandoah.

  “The Six Nations had no right,” the woman interjected. “It was always Shawnee country, not that of the Iroquois.”

  Her words stilled all conversation. One of the men with his hair in the Mohawk fashion snapped an irritated word at her. For the first time Duncan realized the gathering included members of several different tribes.

  “Is he safe?” Rideaux asked at last.

  “Skanawati? For now he is protected as part of the convoy en route to the Lancaster treaty talks. But then there will be a trial.”

  “You said he confessed.”

  “Even if he were the killer there could be circumstances that might avoid a hanging.”

  “You act as though you don’t believe him. He is a chief of the Grand Council.”

  “The killings continue. At the southern boundary tree we found two who had been murdered last summer. Was Skanawati on the Monongahela last summer?”

  Rideaux chewed on Duncan’s words. “He stayed close to his family’s village,” he revealed in a low voice. “There was sickness, much sadness.”

  “But you misunderstand the Virginians,” the Frenchman added after a moment. “To their leaders the world is divided between those who have land and those who are slaves in one fashion or another. They are wise to the ways of the tribes.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “A powerful chief like Skanawati is the perfect killer as far as they are concerned.”

  “But hanging him will only excite the tribes against them,” Duncan countered. “They could hope for no more land, no more treaties.”

  “To the contrary, Skanawati will never be permitted to die,” Rideaux said. “Have you not heard of condolences? When someone in the tribes is slain the killer’s family has the right to offer payment. Blankets. Flints. Baskets of corn. When the victim’s family accepts the gifts the murder is resolved, harmony is restored.”

  “The Virginians have no need for blankets and corn.”

  The Frenchman rolled his eyes upward as if praying for patience to deal with the thick-skulled Scotsman before him. “For Virginia, this new treaty is all about perfecting its claim to the western lands. The Iroquois have protested that the new contract is not valid, that it was signed by minor chiefs in some tavern. But apart from Old Belt himself, Skanawati is the most revered chief in all the Six Nations. They will do most anything to save his life.”

  “Land.” Duncan whispered. “They would play with his life over land?”

  “Based on what you have explained lives have been played with for several months over that land. And now Skanawati has made himself the most important bargaining chip of all in the treaty talks,” Rideaux concluded. A strangely sad air seemed to descend over the former priest. “You come on a fool’s errand. The murders are unimportant. The land is everything.”

  “Skanawati would not barter away Indian lands for his freedom.”

  “He might for his life, and that of his village.”

  Duncan studied the Frenchman. “You said there has been great sorrow there.”

  “Thirty miles up the western branch. Their suffering this past year has been of Biblical proportions. Disease. Dissent. Crop failures. A flood. Ten of their people crossing the river ice this winter broke through and were swept away. If the Iroquois open up negotiations for condolences his life will be saved, meaning the treaty will be saved, and he will get the supplies to save his people.”

  “Except,” the Shawnee woman noted. “He was wearing paint.”

  Duncan turned and looked at her questioningly.

  “War paint,” was all she said.

  Duncan stared into his cup a long time. He had not heard the whole truth, he was certain, but much of what the renegade Jesuit and his flock had told him had the ring of truth. He absently looked toward the hearth. Mokie was petting one of the large black dogs that slept there. Conawago was gone.

  He rose from the table, uneasy for his friend, taking a step toward the door. Then Mokie screamed.

  In a blur of panicked motion the girl launched herself onto the top of a nearby barrel as one of the dogs began barking and leaping up at her. Rideaux cursed, and two of the Indians ran for the second animal, which ran braying in fright toward the door. It was not a dog, but a young bear.

  “He is very troubled since his mother died,” the Frenchman offered with a shrug, then he darted outside after the animal.

  Mokie’s screams quickly subsided as Duncan lifted her from the barrel and took her to a window perch, where she could see the chase for the bear. The beast spun around the piles of fur, tipping several kegs over, knocking down a stack of furs, then a rack of drying fish as its pursuers kept slipping on the soft, wet earth. Low giggles began to replace Mokie’s sobs, and soon she wiggled free of Duncan and ran outside to join the pandemonium.

  Duncan was about to follow her when he realized he was the only one left in the room. Quickly he explored the doors on the far side, finding first a kitchen, its beams hung with dried apples and quarters of venison, its table bearing baskets filled with wild onions and fern fiddleheads. A dry pantry held baskets of grain on the floor, tobacco on its beams.

  The third room was lost in shadow. He took a step inside, pushing the door open to allow enough light for him to discern three benches and a table. Beyond these was deeper shadow that had the feel of a cavernous space. He took another tentative step then pushed back against the wall, his heart suddenly racing. Something alive lurked in the darkness beyond the table. He could not make it out, but sensed its presence, could even, incredibly, hear a low sound like the beating of a heart.

  Pressing against the wall, Duncan sidestepped to the door then slipped out and shut it. He closed his eyes for a moment, gripping his fear, then lit a candle and opened the door again.

  The flame illuminated a circle of only a few feet. He edged along the benches, studying the careful drawings of animals on the walls before lifting a paper from a bench with words in three columns. Moon, lune, ehnita, read the first words in each column. Man, homme, ronkwe, and water, eau, ohneka, the next two lines. Someone was not only teaching English and French but they were also devising a system for writing down the Iroquois tongue.

  The table, he now saw, was more of a workbench, covered with wood shavings, carving knives, files, the small bars of lead used for making bullets, plus a number of oily rags.

  He halted, gazing into the darkness. The heartbeat was growing louder. Knowing the crowd outside might return at any moment, he clenched his jaw and stepped forward.

  After two steps he gasped in terror, nearly dropped the candle, and would have fled if he had not been paralyzed by the monster before him. His heart was in his throat, his feet were leaden.

  It was some primeval beast of the forest, a bear and more than a bear, a black fanged thing of nightmares, its jaw moving up and down as if preparing to consume Duncan, its yellow eyes shifting back and forth as if to see what other fresh meat might be approaching.

  Yet curiosit
y began to overcome his fear. The eyes moved without ceasing, the jaw shut in time with the eyes, and with the heartbeat. He lifted the candle higher, advancing, seeing now how a bearskin had been stretched over a frame that gave exaggerated bulk to the shoulders and kept the forelegs extended like encircling arms. It was a bear and not a bear. Over its shoulder were draped other skins, with heads intact, of a red fox, a mink, and a marten. Here and there feathers from birds of prey had been sewn along the forelegs. He stepped warily around the creature, discovering that the rear was uncovered, exposing the intricately constructed frame of carved wooden struts joined with straps of sinew that gave it its shape. Its heart was a box of clockwork gears, from which a wooden pendulum swung, its shaft extending through the gearbox into the head, so that each swing not only gave motion to the black and yellow discs suspended in the eyeholes but also tripped a lever that opened and shut the jaw. From the rear the rhythmic ticking of the clockworks was unmistakable. The fur had muffled the sound, softening it to the heartbeat he had heard.

  He returned to the worktable, setting down the candle as he lifted the rags. Underneath was another gearbox, this one largely disassembled, its gears, pinions, and screws piled beside it. With a thrill of discovery he lifted one of the gears, equal in size and shape to the largest one he had found at the murders. As he spun it between two fingers a floorboard creaked. Too late he sensed the movement at his back, too late he smelled the animal grease with which braves anointed their skin. As he turned, a club slammed into Duncan’s skull, and he sank onto the floor.