Bride of the Wilderness

by Charles McCarry

  Philippe ate some liver and smiled at the old man. In his fur hat, with fresh meat on his breath, he looked like an Abenaki, fearless and big-nosed, except that he had blue eyes and wore no paint.

  5

  The wind died on the night of the November half-moon, a Sunday. By then the drifts, piled against the walls of Alamoth, were fifteen feet deep. Cold followed the wind, so that the snow squeaked under the snowshoes of the Abenakis as they approached the stockade. Because of the bitter weather, no guards were posted on the parapets. Even the dogs were inside.

  Philippe and his Abenakis simply walked up the sloping drifts, stepped over the palisade as if it were a stile between two peaceful meadows, and fanned out into the village. The tunnellike paths, which resembled a network of trenches, concealed the Indians as they drifted through the town, taking up the posts Philippe had assigned to them.

  Two Suns’ objective was the Manor. At midnight, he stood on the crest of a snowdrift with Used to be Bear at his side, looking directly into Rose Barebones’ window. Rose stood in front of a mirror in her shift, trying on a green velvet hat with a peacock feather pinned to the crown. She wore red stockings that were gartered at the knees. A dozen gowns—red, blue, green, white, yellow—were scattered over the floor.

  The Manor was the only house in the village with the shutters down and light in the windows. Inside the next window, a big Englishman lay on a bed, sweating from a fever. A girl with a long black braid was bathing his naked torso, which was covered with small wounds. The Englishman’s right hand was swollen to nearly twice the normal size. His left foot had been cut off; the stump was wrapped in bandages.

  Two Suns recognized all these people from the stories Squirrel had told her brothers when they met her in the woods above Alamoth.

  Down below, in the shadow of the house, Hair and Talks in His Dreams were talking to Philippe in signs. A small cannon, mounted on a sled, lay at their feet. With great difficulty, because the runners of the sled kept sinking into the soft snow under the weight of the gun, they had pulled it up the path to the Manor.

  Philippe, his bayoneted weapon slung across his back, carried a shielded lantern that cast a pattern of yellowish dots on the snow. He looked upward to Two Suns and Used to be Bear and signed that the attack was about to begin. They all dropped to one knee and their Jesuit, a tiny man with a big tonsured head called Father Nicolas Laux, blessed them, waving over their bowed heads the tall cross he had used as a walking staff on the long march.

  “Remember your shields,” Philippe said in signs as he rose to his feet. “When you see an Englishman with a musket, kneel behind your shield, let him shoot, then charge with the tomahawk.”

  He pointed the cannon at the front door of the Manor, swiveling the sled and kneeling to sight along the barrel, then opened the lantern and lit the match on its flame. Two Suns and Used to be Bear peered in the windows again, looking for Squirrel. The woman was standing by the mirror, wearing a different hat.

  Philippe touched the match to the breech of the cannon. A tongue of red flame spurted from the muzzle as the charge went off with a loud bang. The recoil sent the sled hurtling backward over the snow. It disappeared into the darkness.

  A small hole, burning at the edges, appeared in the heavy planking above the lock, but the door was otherwise undamaged. At the sound of the cannon shot, the village erupted in noise—the pop of muskets and pistols, the sound of battering rams pounding against doors and shutters, the peculiar scream of English women that had frightened the Abenakis the first time they heard it, and the shrill yammer of the Abenaki war cry.

  Flames blossomed in the darkness—the wormy flicker of muzzle flashes, the inferno of barns filling up with red light and boiling white smoke as hay and straw were set alight, the weak flames of burning arrows stuck in wooden shingles.

  Used to be Bear, holding his shield before him, launched himself through the air at the window of Rose’s bedchamber. It was a double-size window, more than broad and tall enough to admit even a man of his size. The weight of his body knocked the entire sash out of the frame.

  As Used to be Bear came through the shattered glass, Rose was in the act of removing a veiled hat that was a particular favorite of hers. Looking through the veil, everything appeared softer around the edges than it really was. But as soon as Rose saw Used to be Bear’s demonic face, a blue mask with bars of yellow and red drawn across the nose and white rings around the savage eyes, she knew that she was looking at a wild Indian, and at nothing else that had ever existed in the world.

  Used to be Bear stamped his feet on the floor and uttered a war whoop. Rose covered her ears. Used to be Bear advanced on her, shouting even louder. He smelled like a dead animal. Rose’s eyes widened, her nostrils dilated, her ears collected the tiniest sounds. All this happened against her will. Rose did not want to see, smell, or hear anything.

  As Pennock’s law required, a musket leaned against the wall beside Rose’s bed. She ran to it and picked it up.

  Wild-eyed, barely able to breathe, Rose struggled to draw back the hammer. Used to be Bear made no move to interfere with her. He stood where he was, watching her. He seemed to have no fear. Underneath his horrible paint the muscles of his face formed an expression of mockery. Finally Rose managed to cock the musket. She swung the muzzle upward, just as she had done in Oliver’s room, and just as before, there was a tremendous bang and a cloud of smoke.

  The full load of buckshot struck the doubled moose hide of Used to be Bear’s shield, ripping off many of the tanned ears that decorated it, but doing no other damage. Used to be Bear, who had been kneeling behind the shield, stood up and shouted in glee. He was untouched.

  “Squirrel, you were right,” he shouted. “The English bullets are too weak to go through an Abenaki shield.”

  Used to be Bear came toward Rose, slamming his feet onto the floor one after the other in a parody of menace, like a boy playing bear.

  She pressed her body against the wall. He rolled his eyes, bared his crooked yellow teeth, and shook his hatchet above his head. All the while he was crooning in a strange tremolo; Rose realized that he was singing. She darted one way, then another, trying to escape, but the Indian was always ahead of her.

  He went on singing in his terrifying falsetto, repeating the same phrase over and over: shonts-mwa shonts-mwa shonts-mwa.

  Suddenly, as Rose tried again to dart by him, Used to be Bear seized her by the arms and lifted her into the air. She struggled helplessly. This man was stronger, far stronger, than Oliver. He had a twisted waxy hole in the side of his head instead of an ear. He threw Rose onto the bed.

  “Have pity,” she cried. “Oh, have pity. Save me. Husband! Fanny!”

  Used to be Bear rolled Rose over onto her stomach, yanked her hands behind her and tied them together, then bound her ankles and pulled them up into the small of her back. He forced a green stick between her teeth and tied it tightly around the skull and under her chin with rawhide thongs.

  Then he turned Rose over, rubbed paint off his own face with a forefinger, and smeared a bar of white and one of yellow across the bridge of her nose to mark her as his captive.

  “Shonts-mwa shonts-mwa shonts-mwa,” he said.

  Rose screamed, a strangled sound because of the stick between her teeth. Used to be Bear gave the rawhide thongs a sharp tug. The stick acted like a bit, tearing at her lips and tongue. While she was still gagging from the effects of being bridled, he slapped her hard on the bottom, knocking her breath out of her body. Rose subsided.

  Used to be Bear put on Rose’s green velvet hat, the one with the peacock feather, snatched a burning brand from the grate, and thudded out of the room, baying like a wolf.

  Three more Indians, smaller than the first one and painted in a slightly different way, leaped into the room through the broken window. They paid no attention to Rose as they bounded across her bedchamber, baying too. She could hear them going through the house, shattering glass, overturning cupboards, smas
hing furniture.

  Terrible cold came in waves through the window. Rose knew that she was freezing to death, she knew that the big Indian was going to come back for her before that happened, she knew that the worst was yet to come.

  6

  Two Suns knew that Squirrel had taught her friend Fanny to speak in signs and that she had told her his story. Therefore, when he went into Oliver’s room, he made the sign for Two Suns, touching himself on the chest, so that she would not be frightened. He thought that this was necessary because his face was painted black, with gashes of yellow running down the cheekbones, and he was wearing his wolfskin hat with all the teeth still in the wolf’s mouth.

  Fanny recognized him at once. His hair was gray under the wolf pelt and he was squat—much shorter than she had imagined him, hardly as tall as Fanny herself, but otherwise as Thoughtful had described him.

  Fanny made the signs for I know you.

  “My daughter Squirrel will be here soon,” Two Suns said in signs. “My son Hair is looking for her. This is my other son, Talks in His Dreams.”

  Talks in His Dreams, a leathery middle-aged man who had painted his face red and his nose white, stood outside in the passage.

  Inside the bedchamber, Oliver’s musket still stood against the wall. Two Suns picked it up and cocked it. He tossed his shield to Talks in His Dreams, who crouched hastily behind it. Two Suns pointed the musket at the shield and pulled the trigger. The weapon, which had not been reloaded after Rose fired it, did not discharge.

  Two Suns grunted and threw the musket out the door. Talks in His Dreams returned his father’s shield, then vanished. Used to be Bear and Hair could be heard shouting and breaking things elsewhere in the Manor.

  The noise did not interest Two Suns. He sank to the floor, crossing his legs as he went down, to wait for Thoughtful.

  Oliver had slept through all this. He was awake only fitfully. Ash had prescribed large doses of opium to dull the pain of the amputation and to induce sleep. Now Oliver opened his eyes and saw Two Suns.

  “Who the hell is that?” he asked.

  Fanny did not answer. She hoped that Oliver would think that he was imagining Two Suns. He had been hallucinating for two days. He stared at Two Suns for a long moment, then lost interest and closed his eyes again.

  Oliver’s right hand, the one the cat had bitten in its death throes, had become infected. In the excitement of the amputation, nobody had told Ash about this wound, so he had not cleaned it when he tended to Oliver’s other injuries.

  Oliver woke again and looked out the window. It was filled with the red light of the burning town. Not more than half an hour had passed since the attack began, yet every structure in Alamoth except the Manor seemed to be in flames. Oliver heaved himself up on his elbows and gestured with his swollen hand.

  “They’ve lit the fires along the Thames again, the bloody fools,” he said. “Smoke doesn’t bother the corpses or the rats. All the cats are killed, the lord mayor paid out tuppence a cat, did you know that, Fanny-my-love?”

  “Yes, Oliver.”

  He tried to get up and cried out in pain when the weight of his body came down on his stump. Fanny held a cup to his lips. The medicine, more opium, dribbled down his chin. Oliver tried to wipe it away and knocked the cup out of Fanny’s hand.

  Fanny covered him up. Oliver, sweating from the effects of opium and fever, threw off the blankets. He squeezed Fanny’s hand and looked idly out the window. Screams floated up from the village, the figures of Indians flitted among the fires. One of Rose’s hunters, an arrow stuck in its rump, bucked furiously up and down the steep path between the Manor and the town.

  “Something should be done about the horse,” Oliver said. He seemed to notice nothing else.

  Two Suns lifted his blackened face, sniffing and listening. Thoughtful’s deep voice, speaking Abenaki, came down the passageway. In a moment, Thoughtful herself came in, followed by Talks in His Dreams and two other Indians. One of them, who wore Rose’s green velvet peacock-feather hat and was almost as large as Oliver, had no left ear. Fanny recognized him as Used to be Bear. Oliver lay on his back, asleep.

  Two Suns took Thoughtful by the forearms for a moment, then ran his hands over her head, arms, torso, and legs, as if to make certain that all her bones were in place. With tears running down his painted cheeks, he delivered a long singsong speech. The other Abenakis grunted from time to time or sang little songs of their own.

  Thoughtful turned to Fanny. “Two Suns thinks that we had better leave now, before the ghost dogs come back,” she said.

  “Thoughtful?” Oliver said.

  Fanny drew Thoughtful away from the bed. “Just go,” she said. “Don’t say goodbye to Oliver.”

  “We are waiting for you,” Thoughtful said. “The four of us can travel very fast.”

  “What four?”

  “Two Suns, Hair, you, and I. But we must leave now, before the others.”

  “What others?”

  Thoughtful gave her a puzzled look. “Women and children,” she said. “The Abenakis will take the ones they want.”

  Two Suns was already tugging at Thoughtful’s hand, pulling her out of the room. Talks in His Dreams took Fanny’s hand. She snatched her hand away. Oliver uttered a loud snore and woke himself up.

  Fanny leaned over Oliver’s bed. His face was running with sweat. She wiped it with a cloth.

  “You know, Fanny,” he said, “there’s something wrong. I smell smoke and there are all these damned painted Indians around the bed.”

  “It’s all right,” Fanny said. “They’re just friends of Thoughtful’s.”

  “Jesus,” Oliver said. “Is that Rose?”

  Used to be Bear had brought Rose into the room. She was still trussed up, with the bit still in her mouth, dressed in her shift and red stockings, but now she wore her fur-lined cloak and unbuttoned boots.

  Thoughtful put her arm around Fanny, the first time she had ever made such an English gesture, “Come,” she said. “We must go now, Fanny.”

  “Go?” Fanny said. “How can I go? He’ll die if he’s left here.”

  Oliver said, “If you had looked like your father instead of your mother, Fanny, you and Thoughtful would look like sisters. God, but I miss Henry.”

  He smiled up at the two girls, wiping his eye with the back of his hand.

  Thoughtful looked impassively out the window at the burning town. She was paying no attention to Rose.

  “Two Suns says it is time to go,” she repeated. “He’s afraid of the ghost dogs.”

  Fanny gave her a long look. “Then why didn’t you poison them?”

  Thoughtful did not resent the question. “It will be better if the Abenakis kill them,” she said. “Then they will be sure that they are dead.”

  Two Suns said something in Abenaki. Suddenly Talks in His Dreams put his arms around Fanny’s waist from behind and lifted her off her feet. The force of the grip on Fanny’s diaphragm expelled the air from her lungs and turned her face red.

  Oliver lunged, seizing Fanny’s wrist with his good hand. Talks in His Dreams set his feet and pulled, shouting. Oliver was a powerful man even now, but the force of the tug-of-war pulled him over onto his side, throwing weight onto his stump, and he screamed in agony.

  “Oliver, let go,” Fanny said. “It’s all right.”

  She looked around frantically for Thoughtful, but she had disappeared. So had Two Suns and Hair and Rose and Used to be Bear. Talks in His Dreams grunted and tightened his grip around Fanny’s waist. Oliver, his face contorted with pain, held on to her wrist and tried to get a grip with his swollen hand on the bedpost, but the hand was useless. He shrieked as his raw stump was twisted under his own body, and concentrated every bit of his strength in the hand, huge and horny, that held Fanny’s wrist.

  Talks in His Dreams kept walking backward, planting his feet and throwing his weight and Fanny’s weight against Oliver’s grip.

  Inch by inch, Oliver was being pulled
off the bed. Fanny knew that he would bleed to death if he fell out of bed and his stump burst open.

  “Oliver, let go,” she said.

  He bellowed in pain and anger. His locked hand quivered violently. Fanny closed her eyes, then twisted her wrist against Oliver’s thumb, breaking his grip.

  Talks in His Dreams fell over backward, arms still gripped around Fanny’s waist. Oliver fell back on the bed, then pushed himself up again and reached out again for Fanny.

  Talks in His Dreams ran out the door, carrying her like a sack, and plunged down the stairs and out into the snow.

  7

  “Your ordeal is over,” said Father Nicolas Laux, the little Jesuit. “You’re safe among those who love you now. Let us pray.”

  “A man is dying,” Fanny said. “You must let me help him.”

  Father Nicolas made a gesture, dismissing her words. “Many men are dying,” he said.

  Holding on to the staff of his long cross with both hands, he fell to his knees in the snow and then pulled Fanny down beside him.

  He had a small man’s voice, sibilant and uncertain. It could barely be heard above the noise made by the burning town. Fed by swirling drafts of chilly air, the fires made a throaty choirish sound.

  Fanny did not listen to the Jesuit’s prayer. Her eyes were fixed on the Manor. She expected it to burst into flames at any moment with Oliver inside it. The picture of this disaster formed in her mind: the paintings, the tapestries, the furniture, the harpsichord and spinet, John Pennock’s great bed, all afire, and finally, Oliver, drugged and crippled, trying to escape the flames.

  “Father,” she said, “I must go back.”

  Her hands hung inert in her lap. Father Nicolas clasped them together, lacing the fingers as if she were a very small child.

  “Of course you must, God wants you to,” he said, misunderstanding. “But there are many dangers ahead. When was your last confession?”

  “More than a year ago. In England.”