Bride of the Wilderness

by Charles McCarry

  The warpath, describing a series of hairpin turns as it followed the contours of the mountains, wound through this vivid panorama. Philippe found a big gnarled maple that commanded a view of the path to the west, then located another tree, three hundred paces beyond the first one, that provided an equally unobstructed view in the same direction. He was now about twenty miles ahead of the Mohawk war party. If they camped where he believed they would camp, in a glade where a spring gushed out of a rock about three miles away, he would be able to hear them in the night. Then, quite early in the morning, he would see them. He climbed the first tree, stretched out in the fork of a huge leafy limb, and went to sleep.

  When he woke, the morning sun was behind him. Below him, the Mohawks walked along the trail with the glare of it in their eyes. The captives stumbled along behind, yoked together by saplings lashed with rawhide on either side of their necks; the Mohawks made no effort to guard them. How could they run? Where would they run to?

  Hawkes in his high-crowned ecclesiastical hat trudged along in the center of the file like a moose among deer. His wolf dog was nowhere to be seen, but that did not surprise Philippe; he knew that the dog hunted constantly.

  Philippe had picked out a big quartz outcropping beside the trail as his aiming point. The sun glittered on the chips of mica embedded in the white stone. Lying on his stomach on the forked branch of the maple, Philippe moved the muzzle of the jaeger rifle, to which the bayonet was fixed, inch by inch to the left of the rock until the sight was fixed on the imaginary heart that was his target.

  Eleven Mohawk warriors walked through the sights before Hawkes filled the space that Philippe had reserved for him in his plan. Philippe found himself looking directly into Hawkes’s eyes. Hawkes did not see him. Philippe moved the muzzle of the jaeger downward a bit, let out his breath in two even streams through his nostrils, and squeezed the trigger.

  Hawkes dodged sideways, then was thrown backward. The Mohawks started running up the path. Philippe, still enveloped in the smoke from his weapon, stood up on the springy branch of the maple and looked downward. The wolf dog stood on the ground ten feet beneath him, barking in its weak phlegmy voice.

  Philippe leaped straight downward. His weight, multiplied by the speed of his fall, drove the needle-pointed three-foot-long blade completely through the animal’s body and into the ground beyond. It did not kill it outright. Philippe tugged at the carved stock of the jaeger, trying to withdraw the bayonet, but the enormous dog, bred for courage and stamina, was driving itself onto the blade as it tried to attack him even as it died, and he could not back away fast enough to free the bayonet from its lunging body.

  By now the Mohawks were very close. Philippe let go of the jaeger and began to run.

  The Mohawks ran him down about two miles farther on, having worn him out by sprinting behind him at top speed one by one while the others conserved their strength by lagging behind at a dogtrot. When he turned at last, he killed one of them with a pistol, firing into the heart, as he had instructed Fanny, when the Mohawk was only three feet away, but before he could draw his knife the others had shot arrows into his thighs, so that he was paralyzed by pain.

  The Mohawks recovered their arrows by pushing them out the other side of his body, afterward wiping the blood off the fletching on his shirt. They did not humiliate him further, but packed his wounds with leaves and moss and then sat down on the roots of trees and waited for the rest of the party to come up.

  Philippe drifted in and out of consciousness many times during the hour or so that this required, seeing Fanny with her eyes closed one moment and the staring face of a Mohawk the next, hearing the Woronoco pounding through the Gorge and then hearing his own heart, tasting Fanny’s golden skin and then tasting the blood in his mouth.

  He heard English being spoken and opened his eyes to see Hawkes, pasty-faced and unsteady, standing over him. There was a big bloodstain on the front of Hawkes’s shirt and he was holding the jaeger in his hands.

  He said, “What the hell kind of a gun is this?”

  Philippe attempted to reply. He could see that Hawkes’s whole mind was concentrated on his answer.

  But the words would not come; like a stammerer, Philippe was able to visualize the objects he wished to name, but he hadn’t the strength to force the words that described them out of his brain, where they seemed to be imprisoned, and onto his tongue and lips.

  Hawkes held out his hand, as though Philippe’s answer was something that had long been owed to him. Blood ran down his right sleeve and dribbled from the tips of his fingers. He swayed, nearly losing his balance. His eyes were clouded and his breath wheezed in his lungs like an exhausted runner’s. His Roundhead hat was missing and his thick hair was matted on his skull

  He looked down at the blood in his hand, noticing it for the first time. Philippe was still struggling to speak. Hawkes gave him a reproachful look.

  “To hell with you, then,” Hawkes said.

  His eyes stopped seeing, and still holding the bayoneted rifle across his chest, he fell forward with a crash.

  14

  Because Philippe did not recover the power of speech for a long time, the details of the massacre at the beaver pond were not immediately known to the French or to Fanny. She knew only what the Abenakis had learned by reading the sign a week after the fight was over. Two Suns and Hair, having run all the way from the Saint Francis River, found the scalped bodies of the men they had come to warn floating peacefully among the dead golden leaves that now covered the surface of the pond.

  They followed the tracks of the Mohawks and their prisoners westward over the war trail as far as the Taconic Mountains, identifying the Abenaki captives by their moccasin prints and reconstructing Philippe’s actions by the signs he had left.

  They found the bayoneted wolf dog half-eaten by birds and small animals, but Hawkes was untouched. His thick body, naked to the waist, sat upright under the ancient maple where he had fallen at Philippe’s feet. His Puritan hat was square on his head and his eyes were open, so that he looked like a Calvinist patriarch waiting for someone of his own religion to come along so that he could accuse his murderer. His face was pallid and angry. His arms were folded across his chest, and the silver crucifix he had taken off the drowned Frenchman’s skeleton dangled from the fingers of his right hand.

  Two Suns and Hair watched Hawkes for a long time from hiding. When they were sure that he was dead, they came out in the open and approached him. The dead-white skin of his torso, which was as hairless as an Indian’s, bore many puckered scars of old wounds. His chest and belly were caked with dried blood. An open bullet wound about a hand’s breadth to the right of the sternum had been stuffed with moss and leaves. A huge bruise had formed around this wound that Two Suns knew could only have been inflicted by Philippe’s jaeger rifle.

  Hawkes said, “You’re the one that keeps on stealing Thoughtful Pennock. Why?”

  Hawkes spoke in a harsh whisper, as if the words were coming out of his wound instead of his mouth. Even though he was sure that Hawkes was dead, Two Suns was not surprised to hear him speak: Hawkes was a ghost; he had always been dead. Two Suns did not recognize Thoughtful’s English name, but he knew that Hawkes must be talking about Squirrel.

  “She is my daughter,” Two Suns said.

  Hawkes sat as he was, every muscle frozen.

  “Give her this,” Hawkes said.

  Still Hawkes did not move, but Two Suns realized that he meant the silver crucifix. The beads were wound around Hawkes’s blunt fingers and it took several minutes to untangle them. Two Suns never forgot any object once he had seen it, and he recognized the crucifix at once. He supposed that Hawkes had met the drowned Frenchman in the next world and stolen the silver cross from him, or traded for it.

  “She’s my wife,” Hawkes said.

  This time he spoke in English and Two Suns did not understand his words. Two Suns hung the crucifix around his neck and left. Because the trail ran uphill for a l
ong distance, he and Hair were able to see Hawkes sitting under his tree as they went away. His massive figure grew smaller and smaller, but it did not move.

  When news of the disaster that had overtaken Philippe’s expedition reached Quebec, Armand de Grestain took it as a personal affront. Why should he be put into the position of sending news of this kind to the king?

  “Every man dead, himself captured, and nothing to show for it,” Grestain said to Fanny. “Your husband has ruined the family, madame.”

  “Then he is free of it,” Fanny said.

  “Oh, he’ll be ransomed in two years’ time. By then it will be safe. The palace will have forgotten him.” “Sooner than two years,” Fanny said.

  Grestain raised a forefinger. “I forbid you to spend money belonging to the family on this matter,” he said. “Ransom is the responsibility of the intendant.”

  The Pamela was still in her berth below the city. Fanny sailed in her on the next tide.

  15

  Because it was impossible to penetrate Iroquois country from French territory and live, Fanny sailed in the Pamela to New York, then traveled up the Hudson to Albany in a riverboat. It was late November by the time she arrived. With the help of the English authorities, who seemed to have a regular postal service between Albany and the Mohawk villages, she sent word that she was prepared to ransom her husband. Hawkes’s Mohawks came to Albany to negotiate: the war-party leader (who carried Philippe’s jaeger), the English-speaker, and two gaunt women covered with ornaments.

  Philippe, his arms bound with braided rawhide rope to a stick thrust between his elbows and his back, looked like what he was, a prisoner. He was bearded and ragged and he limped very badly, pausing at every step to concentrate on his balance as he swung one leg forward, then painfully lifted the other.

  “Cut his bonds,” Fanny said.

  Evidently Philippe belonged to the women, because the English-speaker looked to them for permission before he did as Fanny demanded. Fanny took Philippe by the arm and helped him to a chair. He was still very weak from his wounds, and there was a look in his eyes, as if he were trying to hide the light of his intelligence, that Fanny had never seen there before.

  “He has not been mistreated,” the English-speaker said, vouching for the goods. “But his wounds are not yet healed.”

  Fanny ignored the man. Speaking French, Fanny told Philippe how much ransom she had been advised by the English to pay, and what plans she had made for them after he was released. Philippe listened to what she said but did not reply.

  “Does all that suit you?” Fanny asked.

  Still Philippe did not reply. He closed his eyes, concentrating, then opened them. His head twitched like a mute’s. He bit his lip. Fanny was afraid that she understood what was happening, but to be sure, she spoke to him in Latin.

  “If you are trying to tell me not to speak before these people, close your eyes,” she said.

  Philippe stared at her, unblinking.

  “Are you telling me that you cannot speak?” she asked, again in Latin.

  Philippe blinked. Fanny doubled her fists tightly and drew as much breath into her body as it would hold. Behind her, the English-speaker was saying something.

  “He does not talk,” he said. “We don’t know why.”

  The negotiations were very brief. The ransom was one thousand pounds. Fanny handed them a letter of appraisal from a Dutch jewel merchant in Manhattan, and then showed them the ruby necklace. The Mohawks understood its value. One of the women spoke in Mohawk.

  “My sister wants to see the necklace around your neck,” the English-speaker said.

  Fanny tried it on. The woman came close, looking for a long time at the necklace and then at Fanny’s face. She unhooked the necklace, examined every stone, then held it against Fanny’s cheek. She turned her head and spoke again; all the Mohawks laughed.

  “She says we captured the wrong spouse,” the English-speaker said.

  The woman put the necklace around her own neck. “Done,” said the English-speaker.

  “There are conditions,” Fanny said. “My husband and I and our child must be able to live in peace from now on near the Gorge on the Woronoco and travel there from here without being molested.”

  “It’s a poor place to go in the winter.”

  “Nevertheless, we wish to go there. And you must give back the jaeger rifle.”

  “What else will we be given for these things?”

  “Only the necklace. It is worth more than you asked, and my husband is not the same as before.”

  The leader of the war party laid the jaeger on the table along with its bayonet and Philippe’s bullet pouch and powder horn. The Mohawks, standing in a row, stared at Fanny for a long moment, as if memorizing her features. Then they left. Fanny put her hand on the stock of the jaeger. The carved grapes and other ornamentation, once so familiar to her, seemed strange to her eye and touch, as though she had recovered a duplicate instead of the original object. The baby moved, drawing a line with its hand or foot along the interior of its mother’s body. Fanny followed this movement with her own hand.

  She turned around. Philippe, seated on a low stool, looked up at her with eyes that she still did not quite know. She took his face in her hands and turned it to one side, placing his ear against her belly, and while he listened with his eyes closed, began to weep.

  16

  Living beside the Gorge, Philippe gradually became himself again, except that he did not speak and could not run. After the first few days, he stopped struggling to form words. He would not even speak in signs. Fanny had to guess at his intentions. She talked to him in French as she had always done, and sometimes, at night, sang French songs that made him smile.

  Fanny had seen the muscles, nerves, and blood vessels of the human leg laid open by a scalpel, and she knew that Philippe was lucky even to be walking. He still limped severely, but this was no handicap to him in stalking game. He never used the bow now, but hunted with the jaeger, despite the noise that it made. The Mohawks had made their bargain; there was no need to fear discovery.

  Just as the February thaw was beginning, Philippe saw the tracks of a moose leading into the trees, and then glimpsed the animal itself walking through the beech grove. He and Fanny followed, thinking that they could kill it close to home and carry the meat to the cave at their leisure, but the moose stayed ahead of them hour after hour, turning away from them as they circled around to intercept it.

  Finally the moose stopped walking. Swinging its clumsy head as it sniffed the air, it stood within a hundred feet of them and regarded them with an unwinking stare, as if seeing his pursuers for the first time. The air had become progressively warmer during the long stalk, and now a glimmering rain was falling. The moose’s antlers glistened.

  Philippe started to lift the jaeger. Fanny placed a hand on his arm. The moose gazed mildly at them as it waited patiently for the bullet. Philippe lowered the rifle. The moose watched, still interested and unafraid, as Philippe and Fanny walked away among the beeches over a crust on the snow that buckled like leather beneath their moccasins.

  Rain was falling more heavily as the light failed. By the time they reached the cave, which was only a couple of miles away, the rocks were coated with ice. When they took off their coats they saw that these, too, were frozen stiff.

  About midnight Fanny felt a mild sensation in the muscles of her abdomen. It was more noticeable than the movements of the baby, but not quite a pain. She lay quietly, with Philippe sleeping beside her, and listened to the rain pattering on the rocks outside the mouth of the cave. Philippe murmured in his sleep as he often did. Evidently the power of speech came back to him when he dreamt.

  The sensation now involved Fanny’s back as well as her abdomen and was stronger. The waters broke, the contractions became stronger. Soon they were hard enough to prevent her from using her mind while they were going on, but between the pains she followed the instructions that were given to Abenaki girls and
began singing the story of her child’s ancestors, her great-grandfather the Christian soldier whom she had never known, and the Hardings and Fanchon, whom she had only known through her father’s story. So as not to disturb Philippe, and because she wanted to be alone with her baby for a few minutes longer, she whispered, telling the child Henry Harding’s story and her own story and as much of Philippe’s as she knew.

  Now the pains were very powerful. She got to her knees, then crouched. The movement woke Philippe. Knowing at once what was happening, he kneeled, facing her as they had done when rehearsing this moment, and she locked her hands behind his neck.

  He was smiling at her, so she supposed that she must be smiling at him too. She tried to continue with the story but instead let out a cry that filled up the stone cavern, and then many more, one after the other so that she mistook them for echoes. She could not stop the noise she was making or anything else that was happening to her.

  Fanny’s body and the strong body of her child carried her away into some place, strange yet well-known to her, where her mother had been before her, and as her son left her body, so did her grief for Fanchon. She was sure that her mother’s breath, after its long years of captivity in Fanny’s heart, was passing into the breast of the newborn child.

  Fanny came back. She watched Philippe tie and cut the umbilical cord. Smiling radiantly, he made the sign for son with glistening hands, then mutely held up the baby. The child was dark, like Fanny.

  Fanny reached for him. At that moment, without warning, the birth pains began again. She shouted in surprise and seized Phillipe instead, pulling herself into the crouching position. Philippe’s face was very close—the deep blue eyes, the white sword cut on the left cheek, the blue buckshot wound on the other.