The Ransom of Mercy Carter

by Caroline B. Cooney

  French officers arrived, swords hanging at their left side, buttons polished and boots gleaming. The governor of New France came, and Father Meriel, and a dozen other priests.

  These were greeted by the Kahnawake chief, Sadagaewadeh, who was dressed in white: soft white skins, thick white furs, tall white feathers, startling white paint. He looked to Mercy like the ghost of war. He looked magnificent.

  “Savage,” muttered Ruth.

  Tannhahorens had painted his face differently than he had the night he stood on Mercy’s stairs. She wondered if each pattern had a meaning, and if so, what was the meaning of the face paint he had used today. His cross was shining on his bare chest and his single lock of black hair had been braided vertically and pierced with feathers, so that it rose a full foot above his head.

  Thorakwaneken’s chest was covered by a necklace of shells and claws so large it could have been the front of a shirt. His scalps trailed behind him like the folds of a robe.

  So this was how they left for war. Feasting and speeches and farewells from the French. Where would they attack now? Deerfield again? Hatfield? Springfield?

  Mercy thought of her father. Samuel Carter’s face and voice seemed as remote as the beginning of time. She prayed he had not stayed in Deerfield to rebuild. What if, at this very moment, he was working those fertile fields that edged the Deerfield River? Far from the stockade; far from safety. She prayed that the destruction of Deerfield had been so complete, so dreadful, that he had gone to his brother’s in Connecticut.

  Attack would hit some English town. And this time, when the Indians came, would the English be ready? Or would they have convinced themselves that the Indians would never come again?

  The feast was preceded by prayers from Father Meriel, and Mercy had plenty to offer. Dear Lord, in your loving kindness, don’t let the Indians attack Deerfield. But since they’re going to, Lord, let the settlers be ready.

  The captives gathered together, and this time nobody stopped them. Ruth was there. Eunice Williams. Rebecca and Joanna and Joseph Kellogg, all in Indian clothing, like Mercy herself. Sally and Benjamin Burt and their baby. Mercy was astonished suddenly to see Mary Harris and Mary Field, neither of whom she had even realized was in Kahnawake.

  How separated we are, she thought. How carefully our Indian families keep us among Indians, rather than among other English.

  Mercy could not cuddle baby Christopher, because he was in his cradle board, fastened to Sally’s back by a burden strap. Mercy kissed his sweet forehead but could not hold his tiny hands (those tiny hands were what Mercy loved best about babies) because his arms had been tucked tightly to his sides. “Are they nice to you, Sally?” Mercy asked. “Your Indian family?”

  Sally hesitated for a long time, and then she bowed her head. “They are wonderful to me. My own mother could not help me more with my first baby.”

  Even Ruth was silenced by that.

  It was time for the real prayers, Mohawk prayers, from the chief. The white grandmother who had been a slave for thirty unthinkable years translated for the Deerfield children.

  Listen, listen, listen as the words of the people

  ascend in the smoke of our offering.

  We return thanks to our mother earth,

  to the rivers and streams,

  to all herbs and plants,

  to winds both great and small,

  to the moon and stars

  and to the goodness of light.

  We return thanks to our Creator.

  It sounds just like a psalm, thought Mercy. I too return thanks to my Creator. But the Indians and I—we thank Him for different things, and we surely ask for different things.

  Joseph got restless, jumping from foot to foot, until Great Sky, among the warriors, frowned at him. After that, Joseph stood utterly still, like a carving. Mercy couldn’t even see him breathe.

  At last the spiritual part was over and the French presence was recognized.

  Sadagaewadeh, explained their translator, was greatly pleased by the attendance of so many French officers. He said, “We thank you for the pleasure you have given us this winter sending a party to avenge us against the English.”

  “What does he mean by that?” demanded Ruth. “We didn’t do anything to him.”

  “You breathe,” said the white grandmother.

  Mercy felt sick in her stomach when she was near the white grandmother. She did not want to know the old woman’s name, not in English and not in Mohawk. The thirty years, the slavery, the combination of helpfulness and bitterness, made Mercy so uneasy.

  “This land belonged to our fathers,” cried Sadagaewadeh. “No longer do we let the cattle of our enemy eat grass on the graves of our ancestors.”

  It’s true, thought Mercy. My father’s cattle did graze on the old Indian burying ground.

  “We drink war from our birth and now our young men have tasted the joy of the fight. We give thanks, O men of France, that you guided us in battle. On this day we celebrate our return to our families and the beautiful sight of our homes.”

  Mercy looked at the rows of windowless bark huts. In any language, then, and for any people, home was beautiful.

  “Thanks be to God,” whispered Sally Burt. “This isn’t a war party. It’s just a party. They’re celebrating what they already did, not what they’re going to do.”

  “Good,” said Joseph. “I hope we eat soon. I’m starving.”

  But first the exchange of presents must occur, and in the fashion of Indians, every gift required a speech.

  The French gave the Indians muskets and pistols, and a speech, and more muskets, and a speech, and chest after chest of bullets and powder. They gave bright blankets and armloads of jewelry, tool after iron tool, pot after brass pot.

  “We’ll never eat,” Mercy said glumly. “Next we have to stand here while the Indians give the French their presents.”

  Ruth looked at her oddly. “The Indians have already given the French a present, Mercy. Deerfield.”

  THERE WAS VENISON AND FISH, bear meat and beaver tail. Cider and a strange delicious tea. The French had brought hundreds of loaves of real white bread and real berry jam to spread on it. They ate for hours.

  At last, Mercy found out what the honored field was for, the one that had finally dried out from the mud of spring. It was a ball field.

  Almost every adult Indian male stripped off his finery and played more or less naked. There were two hundred on each team. Everybody had a stick with a cup sewn on, and the game involved throwing hard balls back and forth from cup to cup, trying to reach the goal and score. Father Meriel called it lacrosse, and he placed bets and cheered the plays. There were a few white men playing, but they had been adopted and were Indians now.

  Four hundred men played for hours, racing full speed up and down a court that was all but a mile long. Mercy had never seen grown men play. She tried to imagine Mr. Williams or Deacon Sheldon celebrating a victory by running around naked and throwing balls.

  The women and children and guests raced up and down the sidelines with their men, cheering or booing. Nistenha collected Mercy, having seen how much English was being spoken, and Mercy found herself racing up and down too, shouting for Tannhahorens.

  · · ·

  SPRING, or possibly the party, made everybody cheerful and energetic. Nistenha and her mother and sister began sewing tunics from hides tanned last fall and making baskets for gathering corn and berries and nuts and squash later on. It took Nistenha no more than a few hours to make a gathering basket and sometimes she whipped the reeds together so quickly she produced a basket in an hour.

  Whatever else Mercy might be, she was not a slave. Nobody made Mercy do anything. Either she was considered a child—children in Kahnawake had no chores, ever—or too white and too useless to complete a task.

  There was nothing to do and nobody to do it with, and Nistenha stopped letting her visit the other captive girls. She saw quite a bit of Joseph, though, because his longhouse
was next door.

  A boy among Indians was special. He was a person who would become a man.

  Joseph was always being taken somewhere. The Indians loved to wander through the woods and over the streams, into the marshes and beyond the hills.

  Joseph was already part of a group of boys who were wrestling and running and learning to hunt, and Joseph’s mother let him use Great Sky’s lacrosse stick, which was beautifully carved. Whenever Great Sky took him rambling, Joseph would lord it over Mercy, who never got to do anything.

  Boredom forced Mercy to ask if she could help Nistenha.

  By evening, she had made her first basket; a plain serviceable thing for field work. Nistenha showed off Mercy’s basket to everyone who stopped by. They complimented her creation as if it were worthy of being sold in Montréal. “Daughter!” they exclaimed. “This is a fine basket.”

  With the excuse that she needed to show off her basket, Mercy managed to slip away and talk to Joseph, and wonderfully, his sister Joanna was with him. The girls hugged and hugged. How Mercy savored speaking English.

  “Does Ruth have a new Indian name?” asked Joseph, who never glanced at the basket. “They don’t call her Fire Eats Her anymore. Is she being adopted?”

  “Who would adopt Ruth?” Joanna wanted to know. “You did a fine job on the basket, Mercy. I’m learning too, but my first one was pitiful.”

  “Thank you,” said Mercy. “And Ruth does have a new name. Spukumenen, ‘Let the Sky In.’ ”

  This was the word for the opening in the roof through which the smoke rose. When the fire was low and the weather clear, you could see sky through the hole. The hole could be covered with curls of bark to keep out rain, but the Indians preferred to let the sky in.

  “I’m still calling her Fire,” said Joanna. “She doesn’t let any sky into my life.” Joanna bounded off to join Eunice Williams. Joanna was eleven and Eunice seven, but they lived in the same longhouse and whatever happened, they had an English friend to share it with. How Mercy envied them.

  Mercy’s only hope for friendship was Nistenha’s cousin’s daughter, Snow Walker, who was a frequent visitor and pleasant enough. But Indians were less likely to talk for the sake of talk and Snow Walker hardly talked at all. Snow Walker for a friend would be like a fence post for a friend. The only friend Mercy really had right now was Father Meriel. After Mass, he never failed to greet her. “Bonjour, Marie.”

  She loved the soft musical sounds of French. How different they were from English sounds and Mohawk sounds. But it was Latin that Father Meriel was teaching her, and the first two words she learned were Pater Noster. Our Father.

  His Bible, from which she studied, was not just printed words on a page, but had letters in gold with swirls of indigo and scarlet at the start of each chapter. “It’s the same Bible your English father read to you,” Father Meriel explained, “but in Latin.”

  Wherever Catholics were in the entire world, they did not use their own language. They used God’s language, and every Catholic anywhere said “Pater Noster,” even the Kahnawake Indians.

  Most Kahnawake could speak at least something in six languages: Mohawk, Abenaki, Huron, French, Latin and English.

  Mohawk was shaped differently than English. Names were made up of pieces of words strung together. Her own name eluded her. Munnonock, its m’s and n’s humming in a friendly summery way, contained syllables she had not heard elsewhere.

  Father Meriel, however, called her Marie, and in his presence, so did the Indians. Every Indian had a French Catholic name as well as an Indian name. Nistenha’s name in Catholic was Marguérite; her sister was Claire and Snow Walker was Jeanne.

  Whether they called her Munnonock or daughter or Marie, it always seemed to Mercy that they must have somebody else in mind. The word nistenha did not offend her any longer. She used it to address any older woman and nothing in it seemed to mean mother.

  IT WAS TYPICAL that Ruth was the most difficult captive but nevertheless the first to be taken into Montréal. Not one English child from Deerfield had ever seen a city and they were aching to visit. When she got back, Ruth came straight to Mercy’s longhouse to tell her everything. Ruth plowed to a stop and stared in horror.

  “They pierced my ears, that’s all,” said Mercy quickly.

  “Mercy! You are a Puritan! You cannot adorn yourself. Rip those out.”

  Mercy’s aunt, grandmother, Snow Walker and three friends of Nistenha’s had been discussing earring choices. It was time for a trip to Montréal, said Nistenha, so Mercy could choose earrings at the French market. Indian women had whole baskets of earrings and Mercy must have at least one pair of her own.

  Sadly, Mercy put her hands up to remove the earrings. Snow Walker very gently stopped her and positioned herself between Mercy and Ruth.

  Instead of giving Snow Walker a shove, Ruth said, “Montréal is wonderful, Mercy. It’s a real city. Wait till you see what French women wear. Their dresses shine, and they have tiny little shoes and their hair is full of ribbons, and Mercy, they even wear scent! The buildings are stone and the nuns who have Eliza live in a building four or five times as large as our meetinghouse in Deerfield. Maybe ten times larger. The nuns dress like Father Meriel. Long black gowns with hoods and white collars and huge crosses and knotted cords at their waists.”

  “No English,” said Nistenha.

  “I’ll say anything I want,” Ruth told her. “Anyway, nothing about Montréal matters. Even your earrings don’t matter. I have news, Mercy.”

  “News?” My brothers, thought Mercy. She leaped up, hope racing from heart to feet. “Sam?” she whispered. “John? Benny?”

  Ruth yanked her outside.

  “My brothers!” cried Mercy.

  Nistenha and Snow Walker came outside with them.

  “I didn’t see your brothers,” said Ruth. “I didn’t see anybody. But we’ll all see each other soon. It turns out that Boston has a very important French prisoner. A man named Batiste, who has been sinking English ships for years, but they caught him. They should have hanged him as a pirate, but instead he’s in jail. The French want him back. The whole reason they came to Deerfield and got so many prisoners was so they could force Boston to exchange Batiste for us!”

  “My brothers, Ruth. Did you learn anything? Sam? John? Benny? Did you see any of the fathers and mothers? And Daniel—I’ve never stopped worrying about Daniel.”

  “Munnonock,” said Nistenha sharply, “no English. Spukumenen, go home.”

  “My name is Ruth,” said Ruth, who never cared if they got angry with her. “What right do you have to take away my language?” she snapped at Nistenha. “You’re just a nasty old squaw.”

  Squaw was more of an English word than a Mohawk word, and it was neither polite nor friendly. Mercy didn’t like hearing it used for Nistenha. Besides, Indian daughters did not talk back to their mothers or aunts. It was as bad as swearing had been in Deerfield. Mercy looked away from Ruth.

  “Munnonock, go indoors,” said Nistenha. “Spukumenen, no English.”

  “No!” shouted Ruth. “You Mohawks took my family, my home and my town. You will not have my tongue as well.”

  Mercy felt as if they were both slapping her face.

  Ruth’s eyes were fierce. She grabbed Mercy with hands that were hot and fevered. “Mercy, stop letting things happen. Tannhahorens and Nistenha want you for their daughter. You cannot let that happen. If they adopt you, they will not sell you home. You will be here forever. Thirty years, even! They will marry you to an Indian boy. Tannhahorens and Nistenha don’t have children, Mercy. You would be their hope for sons. Do not cooperate. Remember that Tannhahorens is nothing but a murderer. Do not allow them to put earrings in your ears or baskets in your hands. Don’t pray with Father Meriel. Don’t kneel during Mass. Ransom is coming.”

  Chapter Eight

  Kahnawake

  August 1704

  Temperature 75 degrees

  By summer, Kahnawake children had stopped we
aring clothing.

  Mercy could not get over the sight of hundreds of naked children playing tag, or hide-and-seek, or competing in footraces. The boys—naked!—went into the woods to shoot squirrels and rabbits and patridge. They used bow and arrow, since their fathers did not like them using guns yet. Even the six- and seven-year-olds had excellent aim.

  Joseph didn’t go entirely bare, being a little too old, but wore a breechclout, a small square of deerskin in back and another square in front, laced on a slender cord. The boys played constantly. They were stalking, shooting, running, chasing, aiming, fishing, swimming—they never sat down.

  The men, however, mainly rested. They liked to smoke and talk, and when they were showing a son or nephew or captive how to feather an arrow or find ducks, they did it slowly and sometimes forgot about it in the middle.

  A Puritan must rise before dawn and never take his ease. Puritans believed in working hard. But for an Indian man, working hard was something to do for an hour or a week. After he killed the moose or fought the battle, an Indian took his ease. Hunting men and animals was dangerous; he deserved rest afterward, and besides, he had to prepare himself to do it again. A Deerfield man didn’t risk much plowing a field. A Kahnawake man risked everything going into a cave to rouse a sleeping bear.

  Mercy was outdoors more than she had ever been.

  She had thought that after the horrifying journey of ice and snow, she would never want the outdoors again. But spring and summer were joy.

  “You’re not joyful because you love the outdoors,” said Ruth. “It’s because you don’t have to be afraid of the Indians anymore. Anything they could do, they’ve already done.” Ruth was in a terrible mood because ransom had never arrived.

  Joanna said Ruth was in exactly the same mood she had always been, and if only fire would eat Ruth, everybody would be happier.

  Every night, Mercy obeyed her uncle Nathaniel and remembered. She was careful about it, though. Some memories must not be taken out, or they brought on homesickness. It hurt to pull up the misty image of her mother sitting at the loom, smiling as the pattern of her weaving appeared. She did like to remember her father’s deep voice as he read the Bible, working his way through all sixty-six books and then starting over as soon as he finished. She would remember the children falling asleep in laps; flames casting soft shadows over beloved faces. Her memories were sweet and warm. But when she shared this, Ruth demanded, “Tell me one thing sweet and warm about the attack.”