Original Death (25 page)

“The old ones say the piper and the Nipmucs speak for them! They must bring the truth of the Revelator to the Council!” she cried when she stopped again, then relapsed to the strange language.

Suddenly Duncan recognized the tongue, if not the words. Hetty was speaking Welsh.

“With the piper and the Nipmucs, we will reach across and bring them the truth of the Revelator!” she screeched, then she collapsed in a cloud of feathers.

THE CANOES SANG the waters, the Haudenosaunee were fond of saying in describing swift water passages. For two days their narrow bark vessels did indeed sing. They had help from the half-king's men over the ancient carrying place to the shore of the lake called Oneida, and their two canoes had then raced over the smooth waters and into the river that would take them to the central hearth of the Haudenosaunee at Onondaga Castle. Duncan and Macaulay, whom the Revelator had insisted would escort them, paddled the first canoe with Conawago lying on blankets, tended by Ishmael. Sagatchie and Kass, themselves representatives of the Haudenosaunee whom the oracle had said the half-king must respect, propelled the second with Hetty between them, nearly as weak as the old Nipmuc. She too had an attendant, who lay beside her, sometimes licking her like a docile puppy. The hell dog had leapt into the canoe when they had laid her inside, and no one had been inclined to resist him.

After nearly sinking when an old patch on the canoe had sheared away, Duncan insisted they make camp in the early evening to allow Conawago a hot meal and a comfortable night's rest. They had pulled their vessels onto an island where a grove of pines provided a soft carpet of needles near a sandy beach. Duncan's old friend had been rapidly improving, confirming his suspicion that his condition had been caused by something ingested, not physical injuries. When he had awakened in the canoe and realized who the youth at his side was, Conawago's joyful cries had echoed over the lake.

Duncan and Ishmael settled Conawago against a tree. Then, as Ishmael sat at the old man's side, Duncan followed a path down which Hetty, also much stronger, had disappeared. He found her kneeling beside the river's edge, rubbing wet sand through her matted, tangled hair. Farther down the beach, Sagatchie and Kass were repairing the damaged canoe with fresh bark and pine pitch. The leak had started so abruptly Duncan had thought they had collided with a log. Had Duncan not quickly stuffed a blanket into the hole they surely would have sunk in the deep water.

“What you did at the half-king's camp,” he said to her back, finding it oddly awkward to speak to the woman. “I'd be tied to a post missing parts of my body by now if you hadn't . . .”

“I warned you, son,” she said without turning. “You didn't know how to speak to the Revelator.”

“Meaning I should have poured honey over my body and rolled in feathers and moss?”

The Welsh woman made a grunting sound that may have been a laugh as she rubbed sand on her skin. “That old Seneca woman who tended us knew me from years ago. She told me the half-king was feeding your friend mushrooms that kept him on his back and brought his visions. Everyone was talking about how he had just appeared in the Lightning Lodge, speaking in a tongue no one could recognize. If the half-king had been alone I'm sure he would have killed him, but his men were scared and insisted Conawago had come across for a reason. They would not touch the sacred knife he clutched, for they said it was a weapon of the old gods.”

Duncan cocked his head in surprise, not at the word of Conawago but at Hetty. She was speaking to him like some elderly aunt.

“I made her stop those mushrooms.” Hetty kept clearing the dried honey from her hair as she spoke. “He is one of the old ones who must be preserved. The knowledge of all the forest people resides in his heart.”

“I had a grandfather who kept our old ways alive,” Duncan said. “I would have given my life to preserve him. But the English army hanged him.”

Hetty glanced over her shoulder. “You weren't going to preserve Conawago by taunting the Revelator. You were a fool to seek him out.”

“I wasn't necessarily seeking out the half-king, Mrs. Eldridge. I was following you and Ishmael.”

“So you would throw your life away in pursuit of an old woman and an orphaned boy?”

“And five lost children captured with their schoolmaster. You are the one who sought the half-king,” he reminded her. “You expected the half-king to have your son. Did you see signs of him, or the children?”

The Welsh woman sluiced water through her long greying hair before finally turning to Duncan. “I have never had need of money, but I went to the settlements because those damned lawyers only respect money. All these years I stayed in that cramped town sewing lace so English prigs would look pretty at their dancing balls. I hate towns. I only did it for my son.” She grabbed a handful of hair and began wringing the water from it. There was no longer anything sinister about her. She was just a tired old woman.

Duncan hesitated, confused by the remorse in her voice. He realized he had missed the most important point. “The half-king also sought you. Why? How did he know you?”

She ignored his questions.

“Then why do this, why change your path? You should be going north, to the Saint Lawrence, that has to be where the raiders went, where your son and the children are. Runners came from the North with drawings from the children. They are alive. Henry Bedford is the strength of those children. He's been keeping them safe, at God knows what cost.”

She did not reply. Something at the camp had changed her mind about where to search for her son or how to obtain his release. Her performance as the screeching oracle had been calculated to free them to go south.

“You must be very proud of him,” he ventured. “He's very brave.” He could not bring himself to share what he had read on Hannah's note. The schoolmaster was being tortured to save the children.

She found a piece of moss knotted in her hair and bent to untangle it.

He realized she would talk no more of her son. “When you spoke to me in Albany,” he tried instead, “you said White George stumbles. I did not understand then. You meant King George. You knew about the Revelator when no one else in Albany did.”

“I am a witch, boy.”

“When I was young a band of mummers came to the market town near my home. My father took me. They had an African witch who danced
and shook rattles and terrified me. Later I looked under her tent and saw her preparing for a performance. It was just an old hag who was blacking her skin with burnt cork.”

“You are a fool if you believe only what your eyes see.” She straightened, and her eyes narrowed. “Shall I tell you how you will die, Duncan McCallum?”

“I want to know how five children will not die.”

The words brought a hard, intense stare from the woman. “There's an island in the North,” she replied. “The children will enter, but no children will leave.”

A shiver ran down Duncan's spine. He could not tell if it was the old aunt or the witch who spoke now. “Then tell me this: Why did you go west toward the Mingoes when Mingoes tried to kill you in Albany?”

Hetty's uneven grin revealed a missing tooth. “You don't think I know how to make a Mingo arrow, boy? I burnt my own cabin down.”

He stared at her in disbelief. A dozen questions leapt into his mind, but then he saw Hetty looking over his shoulder. He turned to see Ishmael standing on the bank above them, looking at them with a pleading expression. “I don't know what to do,” the boy said.

Conawago was bent over Macaulay. The big Scot had lain down for a quick rest but wasn't getting up. He seemed to be in a restless sleep. Duncan checked his pulse. “He probably hasn't slept in two or three days,” he said. “Just exhaustion. Leave him be.”

When Macaulay awoke in the evening, he accepted a mug of one of Conawago's teas then leaned against a tree to listen with the others as Sagatchie and Conawago told tales of heroes who were now constellations in the sky. Even Hetty offered a legend, of dragons that fought in the skies of a long lost land called Wales, flying so high they became creatures of the stars as well. Ishmael, lying on his blanket and pointing out shapes in the sky, took delight in learning that while he had always known the cluster of stars overhead as the Dancers, the Welsh called them the Pack of Dogs, the Scots called them the Sisters, and the English called them the Pleiades.

The moon was high when Duncan awoke in a sweat. He had been dreaming of dead Scots again, but this time his father had not pointed at him from the gibbet but toward a dull glow beyond a hill. When he reached the top he discovered Conawago tied to a post, singing his death chant as flames consumed him. Huge warriors encircled the fire, joining in his chant, facing outward to assure no one disturbed his dying.

He sat in the moonlight, trying again to link the pieces of the puzzle before him. Dead Mohawks at Bethel Church. Captive children being taken north to be killed. A missing treasure of the British king. A witch who sought out the half-king. He threw wood on the fire and by the flickering light examined once more the slips of paper he had brought from Henry Bedford's school. The raiders had only killed the children whose names matched those of the families at the settlement. What was different about these children? Why did the raiders trouble over them? He turned the papers over and not for the first time puzzled over the lines and arcs drawn on the original side of the paper. The strokes were bold and deliberate. They could have been part of a design, a drawing for a mechanical device. He extracted the musket ball he had cut from Conawago's shoulder and rolled it between his fingers, gazing up at the moon.

With a sudden start he found the hell dog at his side, but the creature simply settled down with his head on Duncan's leg. A nighthawk trilled from a nearby tree. A woman laughed. A duck called out from the river.

A woman laughed
. The hell dog was suddenly up and alert, circling the fire. It glanced at Duncan then looked toward the river. Duncan grabbed his rifle and together they stole down the path. They halted in the shadows as two figures rose up out of the water, thirty feet apart. Instinctively he raised his gun, then he slowly lowered it.

The water glistened on their naked bodies as Sagatchie and Kass approached each other on the sandy beach. The dog cocked its head in curiosity. Kassawaya spoke softly, Sagatchie laughed, and the Oneida woman pulled him down with her onto the sand. The moon would not be refused.

Duncan touched the dog's head, and they retreated back to camp.

The corporal was not inclined to stir in the morning, and Conawago insisted he was strong enough to paddle, so they laid Macaulay in the canoe. By early afternoon he had a raging fever and was thrashing about so much they had no choice but to pull onto the riverbank. Duncan clenched his jaw as he studied the soldier. He was hot to the touch, and pustules were erupting on his face.

“I'll be fine,” the corporal said in a hoarse voice. “Just a bit of tea, lad.”

They stayed on the shore, making an early camp. The tea Conawago brewed from several different leaves quieted Macaulay's ragged breathing, but Duncan knew it would bring only temporary comfort.

“A little rest,” the burly corporal kept repeating. But Duncan had seen the misery in his eyes, and he conferred with Hetty then urgently ordered Sagatchie and Kass to stay away, to make their own camp down the river.

As the setting sun washed the camp in a coppery light, Macaulay asked to be propped up against a tree. “I was only in that damned death cave less than an hour,” he groaned. “It's like that cursed darkness followed me out of the ground.”

“People can get smallpox by brushing someone on the street or standing in a tavern crowd,” Duncan said in a tight voice.

“Standing in a tavern,” Macaulay repeated. “Let's say it was from kissing a bonny lass,” he added, forcing a smile. Duncan saw fear in his eyes now. Hetty, who had confirmed that she had survived several smallpox epidemics in the past, had stayed in camp and now appeared with a small birch bark pail of water. She tore off a patch at the bottom of her skirt and began wiping Macaulay's brow.

“I survived Ticonderoga,” the corporal said, as if in protest. “Every man in my squad died, but I swore I wouldn't let that damned fool English general get me killed. I fought the French up and down the lakes.”

“Is he dying?” Ishmael asked as they gathered more firewood.

“He began dying the moment he followed us into the lower depths of the iron hole.”

“But he's built like a bull.”

“The army loses more men to disease than it does to battle.”

Ishmael jerked around as a sudden roar burst from the camp. Duncan ran back, expecting a bear. It was the Scottish bull, raging at the hand fate had dealt him. Macaulay, impossibly, had hauled himself up and was stumbling toward the river, bellowing his anger. He faltered as Duncan arrived, staggering toward the river, struggling to lift one leg, then the other. As Duncan reached him he collapsed with his arm in the water.

“The damned fever . . . If I can but cool the flames in my head,” Macaulay moaned as Duncan hauled him upright. He had used up his strength. They had to half-drag the big man back to his pallet of pine needles, where he dropped into unconsciousness.