The Ransom of Mercy Carter

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Because she knew that Sarah’s Mohawk was not good enough and that Eben was too stirred to speak, Mercy gave the flowery thanks required after such gifts.

  “God bless us,” she said to Sarah and Eben, and Eben said, “He has.”

  Chapter Ten

  Kahnawake

  November 1704

  Temperature 44 degrees

  Mr. Williams’s second visit occurred in the morning before the celebration for Flying Legs.

  Again he came with soldiers, stood on the jetty and begged to see Eunice. Again the Indians said Aongote was with her mother.

  Mr. Williams argued.

  Cold Sun listened politely.

  Ruth stormed up and Mercy edged closer, while guests arrived in canoes and dugouts, bearing gifts and food.

  Mr. Williams seemed not to notice the extraordinary differences in hair and dress and tattoos that marked one tribe from another; not to hear the astonishing flow of many languages and the shouts of greeting.

  Sadagaewadeh, the chief himself, had been coaxed by the French to discuss the problem of Aongote. The chief, however, did not believe in discussion. Sadagaewadeh said that the last time Mr. Williams came, he had made Munnonock cry. Therefore he might make Aongote cry. Therefore he must go back where he had come from.

  “Mercy cried because she was glad to see me!” said Mr. Williams, but Indians did not cry for such a reason.

  Aongote is safe and happy, Mercy wanted to say, but Mr. Williams did not want to hear that. Children should be safe and happy only with their own parents.

  “Eunice is doing all too well, Mr. Williams,” Ruth said grimly. “She is sliding so fast into being a savage you would not recognize her.”

  Mr. Williams failed to be grateful for Ruth’s information.

  Ruth alone among the captives had fought wearing Indian clothing. When they had reached Kahnawake last spring, her wool skirt and blouse had been shredded and stained, but she would not exchange them for deerskin. As always, Ruth had triumphed. Her Indian family had gone into Montréal and bought her French clothing. So while Mercy wore deerskin, Ruth had flounces and ruffles, a yellow silk cape and a mauve bonnet to keep off the sun.

  “They won’t let you see her,” said Ruth flatly. “Now tell us, Mr. Williams, why has ransom not come? Do people have short memories or no memory? Why do they not rescue us? I get so angry sometimes.”

  Sometimes! thought Mercy.

  “Our sins provoke God to do dreadful things,” said their minister sadly.

  Does he mean that ransom will not come because we are still sinners? thought Mercy. She knew she sinned. She participated in Mass. She laughed with her Indian family. Was she, Mercy Carter, preventing ransom?

  They were jostled by shrieking Indian children vaulting out of a dugout and racing into the village to see what there was to eat.

  “You know what else they’re celebrating today?” Ruth said to Mr. Williams. “Along with giving out a savage name to a little girl? The Indians attacked an English village in Maine. They caught the settlers unaware, just like us. Took scalps. They’ll be showing them off.”

  Mercy’s heart sank. She had not known this. At least it couldn’t have been Tannhahorens, she thought. Or Thorakwaneken. Our men haven’t gone anywhere.

  She caught her thoughts. Our men. No, no, she corrected herself. Our men are the white settlers.

  “My children,” Mr. Williams told them when he was forced to leave without seeing Aongote, “do not surrender. Think constantly of home. Our task is to get home, not make this home.”

  He was looking at Mercy and seemed even sadder.

  HUNDREDS DANCED after the feast, arranging themselves in long lines, endlessly repeating the same steps. The foot patterns were simple: left left, right right, left right. Toe toe, heel heel, toe heel. The rhythm poured down Mercy’s bones and shook through her feet. How she loved the drums and rattles and clappers.

  Mercy ached to dance. But she kept herself still. Think of home, Mercy reminded herself. Puritans do not dance. Dancing is a sin. Do not surrender.

  Snow Walker was dancing more on one side of the line than on the other. Her face turned far more often to her left than to her right.

  Mercy studied the line. A dozen dancers to Snow Walker’s left was a young warrior named Garionatsigoa, Great Angry Cloud. It was an honorable name whose history Mercy did not know. But he certainly did not look angry now. He was as captured by Snow Walker as Eben had been by Sarah.

  Snow Walker danced out of line and over to Mercy. “It’s all right to dance, Munnonock. Anyway, Fire Eats Her went back to her house. No one will tell on you. Come. Dance with me.”

  Snow Walker’s face was bright with vermilion borrowed from her father’s war paint and her arms were decorated with circling rows of tiny dots, like a hundred bracelets. Her black hair was woven spectacularly with bear claws. She wore a new tunic painted with leaping red stags.

  She was beautiful.

  Mercy danced. How wonderful it was! Her feet shouted to the ground and every beat of the percussion seemed meant just for Mercy.

  Snow Walker whispered, “Is he looking at me?” She tilted her head toward the young brave.

  “Yes,” said Mercy. “He’s looking at you.”

  They stamped and spun. Every half turn, Mercy and Snow Walker shifted one place closer to Great Angry Cloud.

  Dancing was a sin, and she knew it, but the dark fear that used to descend over Mercy when she offended the Lord did not come. The Lord was not ignoring her dance; it was more that He saw no offense to worry Him.

  MERCY’S SECOND TRIP to Montréal was on a raw and chilly day when the wind off the river bit her skin and hurt her eyes. Nistenha had lost all her metal fishhooks in the course of the fishing season and wanted to replace them.

  It was a large party that went shopping: Snow Walker, Joanna, Mercy, Eunice Williams and all their mothers. Mercy was a little surprised that Eunice was going. Mr. Williams was known to be in Montréal; he had been purchased by the French, who let him come and go as he pleased within the city. But Ruth was correct: Eunice had slid so completely into being a savage that Mr. Williams would not, in fact, recognize her. She was just another small Indian. She really was Aongote.

  The mothers loved shopping. Wrapped in their blankets and cloaks, they fingered every strange object, exclaiming over it, rejecting it, laughing at it or negotiating for it. Joanna, Eunice and Snow Walker were equally eager to go into every shop and inspect the goods of every vendor.

  But Mercy scanned the crowds. Running into Eben and Sarah had been like being reborn. There were so many captives she’d never seen again; so much news she yearned for. Perhaps a little boy would dart from the crowds and she would recognize Daniel. And one beautiful day, surely, she would see her brothers Benny and Sam among the Indians, and John among the French.

  And so while the others were admiring themselves in looking glasses to see what color wool they liked best, Mercy studied the passersby. Many buildings had high stone steps and Mercy climbed up to get a better view.

  The person she recognized, however, was Eliza, the widow of Andrew, walking between two nuns. French syllables spilled among them. Eliza, safe and happy. Talking easily.

  Mercy leaned out toward Eliza as, a lifetime ago, she had leaned out her bedroom window toward the hills of Deerfield and seen the taking of Zeb and John. And just as she had said nothing that time, she said nothing now. Why remind Eliza of Deerfield and the terrible death of Andrew?

  Mercy dropped her eyes so Eliza would not see her before she remembered that the golden hair that usually gave her away was covered by a fur cap. She too was merely another Indian. There was not a risk that the nuns or Eliza would even think of examining her.

  Nistenha bought everyone a hot French pastry from one street cart and sweet hot tea from another, while Aongote’s mother tried to come to a decision on wool colors.

  Mercy slipped away, threading through the crowds to the center of the square, and sto
pped short.

  Not ten feet away, Mr. Williams was arguing with a Jesuit priest. They looked almost identical, their arms flailing, deep frowns marring their faces.

  Mercy was back among the Indians in a moment, whispering to Aongote’s mother, “Aongote’s white father is coming this way. See him with the priest?”

  Aongote’s mother set the woolens down without buying anything. “Come, daughters,” she said calmly. “We go back to the wharf.”

  “Oh, let’s stay longer,” pleaded Aongote. “I wanted the yellow cloth. And I thought we were going to church to hear the trumpet. You told me all about the trumpet.”

  “Another day,” said her mother, taking her hand.

  They did not hurry and the high disappointed voice of Aongote continued. But Mr. Williams would not recognize the voice, because Aongote spoke in Mohawk, and he would remember only Eunice speaking in English.

  At the wharf, all three oceangoing vessels were now loading fur for the return voyage to France. There was great wealth here. Beaver skins were distinctive: flat ovals of soft shining brown. Their bales were smaller than bales of other skins, but all hides stank, and the smell of the ships was intense. The Atlantic was dangerous to cross in winter. The longer they waited, the greater the risk. They must set sail soon.

  Nistenha piled furs on the bottom of the dugout’s deep well and told Joanna, Aongote and Mercy to take naps. Aongote was grumpy but obeyed after a sharp look, curling at her mother’s feet and vanishing from sight. Joanna and Mercy tucked themselves at the other end, while the mothers and Snow Walker sat up patiently to wait for the men. The women seemed happily entertained by the ships. Nobody asked Aongote’s mother why it had been necessary to leave so quickly.

  Joanna breathed in Mercy’s ear, “Why did you do that? It was mean and wrong. You know her father would give anything to see Eunice!”

  “How did you know Mr. Williams was there?” Mercy whispered back. “You can’t see that far.”

  “I heard you tell on him. Mercy, that was her father! Eunice loves him. She needs to see him. Just as we need to see our fathers.”

  Mercy buried her face in the mink blanket. She had committed a terrible sin. She had been a dutiful daughter to the wrong set of parents.

  Mercy had let herself believe that Eunice was Aongote and her father was Cold Sun—not Mr. Williams. She had let herself believe that Nistenha and Tannhahorens were—

  In one terrible cold moment, Mercy Carter understood what the name Tannhahorens meant. It meant “He Splits the Door.”

  She muffled her scream of rage and comprehension against the mink.

  At some point in his warrior life, Tannhahorens had taken a hatchet to a wooden door and broken through. It must have been a great event, presumably with many scalps, to deserve a new name in its honor. The scalps could have been Iroquois, but Iroquois doors, like Kahnawake doors, were curtains of skin. It did not take a hatchet to break an Indian door. So every time Mercy said his name, she honored the moment that her master had smashed through an English settler’s door. And into his house. And into his head.

  The waters lapped, the cold wind blew, the bales were hoisted into holds and the sun lowered.

  At last Tannhahorens and the others returned. Mercy feigned sleep, and the adults maneuvered around her. She could not look at Tannhahorens. She could not look at herself: not just becoming Indian—but betraying the English.

  The boats crossed the water under a sky black and moonless and strewn with stars. Nistenha entertained the girls by naming the star families living in the sky. The Indian syllables tumbled and fell, and having understood Tannhahorens at last, now Mercy understood Munnonock.

  Alone Star.

  She flopped on her back on the mink rug and stared straight up. Many stars in that black sky also lay alone, far from their brothers and sisters; not part of a family.

  Lord, no! cried Mercy in her heart. That’s a terrible name, a cruel and mean name. Lord, save me from being a girl named Alone! Forgive my sins, especially against Mr. Williams and Eunice. Send a ransom, Lord.

  They reached the jetty at Kahnawake and piled out of the boat, gathering the many purchases. The town glowed and smoked with fires of welcome. If Mercy turned Indian before ransom came, in some dark wilderness way, she would never climb out of this prison, and it would be, as Ruth had predicted, her own doing.

  Mercy lagged behind, unwilling to enter the longhouse she had actually been calling home.

  Tannhahorens rarely paid attention to Mercy, because capturing prisoners was men’s work, but raising them was women’s. But now he turned back. “Daughter?”

  Daughter!

  Never.

  He was no father; Indian men didn’t do that. He was exactly what Ruth and Mr. Williams said. A killer. A thief of babies and children. A savage. He dared call her daughter, this man who had given her the name Alone.

  She walked around Tannhahorens without speaking, an act of great rudeness that she found satisfying, and went into the house where he did not live, and which he infrequently visited. Ruth was right about that too; Nistenha and Tannhahorens were not really married because married people lived together and shared a hearth.

  In the smoky half dark, Mercy thought, Why wait for ransom, which shows no sign of arriving? Why not escape?

  She flung out of her mind the cherished word ransom.

  Escape was a richer, finer word. For ransom, the captives must wait. They might wait thirty years, like that white grandmother.

  But escape!

  She considered it seriously.

  On the second day of the march, the Indians had threatened their captives with being burned alive should there be another escape. But Father Meriel said that kind of thing didn’t happen anymore, it was an empty threat. In any case, months had gone by. It was long past the time when such a punishment might occur. The only person at risk was Mercy herself.

  There was no way she could retrace the three hundred miles they had followed to get here. Like the ships, she must leave by the only road that existed in Canada: the St. Lawrence River.

  Those ships being loaded with beaver were probably leaving tomorrow or the next day for France. She would get passage. She did not know how yet. But it had been done once. Several years ago, a Deerfield boy named John Gillett had been captured and made a slave to the Indians here. He hadn’t been adopted, just used for rough work. He had fled, boarded a ship bound for France and once there, escaped the French too. He had made his way to London, coaxed a church to pay his passage across the ocean to Boston, and from Boston, John Gillett walked home to Deerfield.

  When he married, though, he wisely moved his bride south to a Connecticut farm. No Gillett would be caught in another Indian attack.

  Only Carters, thought Mercy grimly.

  Such an escape would be harder for a girl.

  She must find a protector. Perhaps a priest returning to his French cathedral. A French wife returning to visit her mother in Paris. A kind, fatherly sea captain.

  It won’t be hard to leave Kahnawake, she thought. They trust me. Especially after today, warning them about Mr. Williams.

  Mercy decided to act immediately, before she thought about it too long and the attempt seemed too frightening.

  Nistenha was stirring the stew that had been simmering since the shopping party left in the morning. “May I go back to Montréal by myself tomorrow?” Mercy asked. “I have my two baskets of sassafras to sell. I didn’t see anybody else in the market with sassafras. I want to buy presents for everybody.”

  Buying gifts for others was always smiled upon. And the French loved sassafras, believing that it cured anything.

  “Yes, Munnonock, you may,” said Nistenha.

  As easy as that. Mercy marveled. Tomorrow she would escape. It would be another unknown, but it would be in the direction of freedom.

  Mercy Carter was going home.

  IN THE MORNING, of course, there was Mass.

  Mercy was able to look at Fathe
r Meriel and see that Mr. Williams was correct. In his swishing black robes, the priest skulked around trying to grab the souls of children whose bodies had already been grabbed by Indians. You almost had me, she thought.

  After Mass, the Indian men took advantage of the soft earth to dig out corn barns. These were pits the size of mass graves, to be lined with sheets of birch bark, into which hundreds of baskets of dried corn kernels would be poured. Covered with pine straw, then another layer of birch bark, and mounded with dirt, the corn would stay dry and sweet all winter.

  Everything here was corn. Boiled, roasted, baked, ground, dried; combined with squash or kidney beans; with meat; with syrup.

  Mercy turned her back on Tannhahorens as he dug out a corn barn. I will never see you again, she thought.

  In the longhouse, Nistenha’s stew pot had kidney beans, chunks of venison and of course corn. While everybody else went to out to shell more corn, Mercy ate heavily to prepare for her escape. She would need money. Sassafras was a good excuse to go into Montréal, but it would not buy her passage.

  She could hardly carry off the beaver skins stacked and waiting for Tannhahorens to sell in Albany. But lying beneath Nistenha’s platform was her jewelry box. Tannhahorens was a very successful hunter and trapper, and his wife had fine adornments. Nistenha’s cross was almost as magnificent as Father Meriel’s. Studded with real gems, it had been bought one year when Tannhahorens came upon a great many beaver furs.

  Now Mercy wondered exactly how a person “came upon” beaver furs. Did a person slaughter the trapper? He splits the door, she thought, raging all over again.

  Mercy pulled out the jewelry box and stared down at the splendid cross. Nistenha never wore it in the fields lest the chain break. In the firelight, the facets of the jewels glowed like embers.

  I can’t steal, she thought. Certainly not from Nistenha. She never hurt me. I cannot pile that sin on top of my other sins.

  Ruth would say: They stole your life! Your family! Your home! Of course you can take their stupid Catholic cross.