Original Death (19 page)

“We are bound to an old Nipmuc who protects the old spirits in the wilderness. And to five children captured by Mingoes.”

Kass seemed unhappy with his words. “That is no binding at all. That is a wish for death,” she declared, and without another word she stepped away, the ranger cap still in her hand.

“Mind your feet!” a good-natured voice called out, and a bucket of water was tossed onto their hands. Duncan looked up into the broad walnut-colored face of the man who handed him a towel. He smiled at the African and nodded toward Kass's departing figure. “Colonel Johnson seems to enjoy the company of Iroquois women.”

The servant laughed. “The Colonel, he enjoys the company of all women, but Mohawk and Oneida most of all. Miss Kass, she's just a friend. Miss Molly, she's the mother of two of his children. They play and learn alongside those of his first wife, a good German who was taken by a brain fever.”

By midafternoon, the banquet was underway. Colonel Johnson, seated with Molly at the head of the table, was a man who laughed much and deeply enjoyed the motley assembly of neighbors, Iroquois, militiamen, and traders who were perched around the table on stools, kegs, and upended logs. Molly had brought the Colonel to Duncan for a hasty introduction before the meal. His greeting to Duncan had been cordial if perfunctory, but he had turned back as if in afterthought. “There was a young Scot who visited that Welsh woman who kept dying. But he was imprisoned so that cannot be you,” he observed pointedly. “I'd like to chat with someone who met the witch of Albany. Mingo runners came through here urgently looking for her. Now people say enemy tribesmen attacked her cabin there,” Johnson added.

Duncan studied the man with new interest. It was too early for the colonel to have picked up casual rumors. Johnson had specific intelligence sent by courier from Albany. He had to remind himself that the affable head of the household was also the most important military figure on the frontier. “People?” he asked.

The big Irishman shrugged. “The king looks to me in matters of the tribes. Reports of Huron raiders in Albany would not only be inaccurate but irresponsible.”

“I agree. They were Mingo. At Albany and at Bethel Church.”

“That, sir, is not possible.”

As if on cue Ishmael pulled the stub of the Mingo arrow from inside his shirt. Johnson's brow furrowed, and he reached out for the arrow. The white chieftain studied the fletching with intense interest. “You could have gotten this anywhere.”

“We have not come for your food, sir, nor to ask for men at arms,” Duncan said. “We only seek information and will be on our way. The Mingo half-king is approaching from the west. Where is he now?”

“You speak of matters that are the concern of the government.”

“Our concerns with the half-king are private.”

Johnson grimaced. “Lad, there is no private business with that
damned renegade, and you will never reach him alive. There was only one who had a chance of acting as intermediary, and I was about to send for her when I learned she had burned alive in her cabin. I've heard half a dozen stories about her deaths through the years. She turned into a skeleton when Shawnees were chasing her, got eaten by a bear another time. This time witnesses swear she burnt alive.”

“And didn't we see the earth give her up again last night at the witch's hole!” Ishmael shot back.

Johnson's breath seemed to catch in his throat. He quickly looked about as though to be sure no one else had heard then put a hand on the boy's shoulder and seemed about to usher them back inside the house when Molly pulled him away, declaring that forty hungry guests waited his arrival at the table.

Duncan stayed at the feast for Ishmael's sake, but he watched with interest as the tribesmen listened with rapt attention to the colonel's flowery speech about the covenant chain that bound the Iroquois and British peoples. For the first time he saw the boy relax, enjoying himself as an adolescent should. Duncan knew the young Nipmuc was in sore need of good food, and he grinned with pleasure as the boy consumed huge servings of mashed pumpkin, succotash, roasted venison, and corncakes.

One of Johnson's sons, who was nearly of an age with Ishmael, struck up a conversation with the Nipmuc boy, and when the young Johnson announced he had an albino raccoon in the barn, Ishmael looked up at Duncan, who nodded his consent. As the boys scampered away, Duncan too rose, grateful for the chance to explore the estate. Soon he found himself at the mill, first admiring the big waterwheel then following the sounds of the great gears through the open door.

As he opened the shuttered window to admit the fading light, a thick timber materialized from the shadows and slammed into his belly. He lost his wind, lost part of his meal, and was on his hands and knees when his assailant flattened him with a kick to the ribs and a knee on his chest.

Duncan's raised fist froze as a blade touched his throat.

“I could save the king a lot of trouble,” the man snarled.

“Hawley!” Duncan gasped.

“Slowly lad,” Sergeant Hawley instructed as he pulled Duncan up by his collar. “General Amherst needs yer tongue to work, but he won't mind at all if the rest of ye be in pieces.”

Duncan staggered to his feet, the blade pressed against his chest. “I didn't—”

Hawley pushed the knife, the tip stinging his flesh. “We know ye killed that escort to the payroll. They have my sworn statement to prove it. But ye know much more, we're thinking. Amherst will pay me richly to have ye in chains before his lordship. Now pick up that rope by the gears and—”

Duncan twisted out of the sergeant's grip, threw out his foot, and shoved him backwards onto the rolling grist stone. Hawley gasped as he saw the heavy stone roller advancing toward his head, then rolled onto the floor. As he rose, his knife was in his hand, aimed at Duncan's belly. He swung, Duncan ducked, he swung again, and then he froze at the sound of a gun being cocked.

“Fort Johnson is a sanctuary, sir,” Molly Brant declared as she stepped through the entry, holding a heavy pistol. Ishmael and his new friend were at her side.

“I am on General Amherst's business, woman!” Hawley hissed and ventured a step closer to Duncan.

Molly ignored him. “William will be so disappointed when I tell him I had to kill a man at my own birthday celebration.” She moved the pistol up and down as if deciding where to aim. “I am a crack shot, sir. Shall I just take an ear for now?”

“One shot is all ye'll have,” Hawley growled. “I'll have my knife in both of ye before ye can reload.”

Molly sighed and aimed at Hawley's groin. “Be gone, sir. If I see you again I will call some Mohawk friends who will not be nearly so gentle with you.”

For an instant Duncan thought Hawley was going to test her skill, but the ranger thought better and lowered his blade. He cursed and slipped out into the dark.

“Once more, I appreciate the hospitality,” Duncan offered.

Molly smiled and handed the gun to her son. “Thank the boys. They saw him lurking about like a thief,” she said, and she rubbed Ishmael's head.

As the sun set, they took food to Hetty and Macaulay at the landing, and as their companions ate, Ishmael helped Duncan make pine bough beds near their fire. Duncan lay down beside Ishmael but knew he had unfinished business at Fort Johnson. He waited until slumber overtook the boy before rising to study the grounds for any sign of Hawley, then he warily worked his way along the path to the blockhouse on the hill.

He soon found himself at a ledge overlooking the river where a log bench had been erected. Behind, he had a clear view of the compound of Fort Johnson, lit by lanterns and pitch torches. To the front, a long expanse of rolling hills glowed under a purple and golden sky.

“This is the way Eden dies,” a deep, contemplative voice said over his shoulder.

Duncan could not hide his surprise at finding William Johnson standing beside him. He offered a respectful nod to the Irish baronet, then he turned back toward the spectacular landscape. “I can't but wonder if Eden was so beautiful.”

Johnson lifted a pipe to his lips, coaxing smoke out of the smoldering tobacco. “I was a year or two younger than you, McCallum, when I first traveled up this river. My knees trembled like a frightened child's. I was terrified of its beauty. It was so majestic, so powerful, so untamed. A world different from any I had ever known.”

“Inhabited by a very different people.”

Johnson looked at Duncan in surprise, then nodded. “Aye. I fear we are the Romans, and the ancient tribes crumble before us. We want to treat the land like it is just one more little vale off the Thames. But the biggest mistake is that we treat the natives as if they were just cruder
versions of ourselves. It took me years to understand how wrong that was. The more I understand the people of the woods the more time I want to spend with them.” Johnson bent and picked up a feather from the ground. He studied it as if it might hold some secret message. “I've been given royal gifts, anointed as a baronet, installed as a colonel. But all of that is as dust compared to the day the Haudenosaunee adopted me as a chief of their longhouse.”

A flock of geese flew past, so low and close the two men could hear the wingbeats.

Duncan broke the silence. “From the day the English destroyed my clan nearly fifteen years ago,” he said, “my heart was in a shadow. Then I learned to walk at the side of an old Nipmuc.”

The man beside him had none of the airs of the loquacious baronet who had lorded over the feast. He spun the delicate feather between his fingers, then looked out toward the setting sun.

“I owe you an apology, McCallum. It was only in the past hour that an Onondaga friend found me. I had no idea you were the Scot who stands with Conawago. You would have sat at my right hand today had I known. I envy you. He is one of the last of his kind.”

“Last of the Nipmucs.”

“Not just that, but yes.”

“So you are acquainted with him?”

“He has dined at my table more times than I can count. We have passed happy hours together in my library debating the Greek philosophers while blizzards howled outside. He and my wife played scenes of Molière in our pavilion one summer. A lifetime ago.” Johnson spoke toward the feather now. “I would give much to spend a week or two at his side in the woods.” He looked up at Duncan with a sad, sheepish grin.

“I lost my chance fifteen years ago,” he continued. “He had spent some nights under my roof, reading my books, then announced he was leaving for Lake Champlain, on a straight path through the mountains instead of along the rivers. I had never seen that high country. He wanted
to borrow a volume of Aristotle. I said I would gladly give him the book if I could travel with him. He agreed, though he insisted we must leave before dawn. But I encountered a coppery lass under the moonlight. Iroquois women are formidable, lad. They know their own skin. She grew amorous. The women have a saying on such nights: The moon will not be refused. I woke up midmorning and Conawago was gone. He had left the book on the table, open, with a feather pointing to a passage. ‘A man is the origin of his action,' it said. I wanted to weep.”

Johnson paused and looked out over the glowing hills. “I have often thought of that lost journey. It's strange, but I think I would have been a different man if I had chosen differently that night. A better man. It's preyed on me all these years, though I've never spoken of it to another soul until now.”

“Why do so now?”

“Maybe because I see so much of myself in you. Because you still have choices ahead of you. Because Conawago is in grave danger, and you and the Welsh witch are his only chance of staying alive. We think she may know the half-king, think he may have even summoned her.”

Duncan's heart seemed to stop beating for a moment. “What danger?”

“Conawago met one of my scouts in the North, an old acquaintance of his. Conawago gave him a message for the Council of elders at Onondaga Castle. He told them they must protect the old shrines, that nothing was more important than protecting the old shrines. Why would he say that?”

Duncan studied the Irishman for a moment, wondering how much he knew about the Nipmucs. “Old shrines are where the tribes speak with the old gods.”

“I think the half-king wants the gods for himself.”

“I don't understand,” Duncan said.

“He claims to be the voice of the old gods, and that the old gods want him to lead a new nation of tribes.”

“But that has nothing to do with Conawago.”

“I wish you were right.” Johnson nursed his pipe for a long moment.
“Old legends of the Haudenosaunee speak of a place in the North where there's a passage to the other side, where men and tribes were taken for judgment in another time. The Lodge of Lightning, it is called in the old tales, for they say it is where lightning gathers out of the sky. The elders speak of it as the most sacred of places, so sacred it is kept a close secret. Only a handful of the old ones are said to know where it is and how to open the passage. The Council has been debating these months whether to reopen the shrine, and they have finally sent warriors to protect it. If that damned Revelator took it for his own use, he would become the most powerful chieftain for hundreds of miles.”