Original Death (29 page)

They had been summoned into the Council lodge after Duncan had finished examining the body of Black Fish. “This is not a time for great war between the forest tribes,” Atotarho had declared. “But it
is
a time for little war between certain men,” he concluded, and he gripped both Duncan and Conawago on the shoulder while murmuring a prayer. He took the wampum belt from Tushcona and extended it in both hands to them. “We know you will show no fear when the time comes,” he declared as Conawago accepted the belt, then he retreated into the shadows.

Adanahoe then appeared. “It had already been decided before the killing,” the matriarch announced. The belt would have indeed taken hours to weave. “The Council cannot act as the Council in this matter. But these children are the Council's great hope. A secret war is being waged against us, and we cannot stand idly by,” she had said as Conawago gazed at the belt with wide, disbelieving eyes. “This killing leaves us no time.
The half-king will think it was the work of the Council, an act of hostility against him. If things are not made right, there will be open war between the tribes. Keeping the League alive is the most sacred of our responsibilities, and we will have failed. The forest will run with blood.”

As they paddled northward, Duncan had spent much of the day trying to understand those words and the strange symbols on the belt. The killing had indeed changed everything. To have a prominent disciple of the Revelator murdered virtually in the shadow of the Council lodge would outrage the half-king and be seen as a sign of weakness on the part of the Council by the Iroquois people. The League could not declare war on the rebellious tribesmen, nor would it join the Revelator. The belt meant they would fight in their own secret way, using Duncan and Conawago as their surrogates.

Duncan had been given almost no time to ask about Black Fish, learning only that the dead man had arrived with four others in a large cargo canoe with red eyes painted on its bow, and the man in the naval jacket who had accompanied Black Fish to the Council ring was a ne'er-do-well Seneca named Rabbit Jack. Duncan kept revisiting the scene of Black Fish's arrival in his mind's eye. There had been other men accompanying Black Fish and Rabbit Jack, including one whose face had been obscured with a wide-brimmed European hat, but they had stopped abruptly and turned back. Something or someone at the Council ring had caused them to retreat. But the only thing that could have been unexpected was the presence of Duncan, Conawago, and Hetty.

Now at their campfire, Conawago kept staring at the belt, turning it over, holding the beads close to his eye as if they might hold some tiny secret. There was a hollow amusement in his voice when he finally spoke. “That's me,” he said with a low chuckle, pointing to the larger of the stick figures in the center of the belt, the one who held a spear. The three-inch-wide belt consisted almost entirely of purple beads, making it a black belt in the parlance of the Haudenosaunee, a war belt. The two figures in white beads, one larger than the other, did not signify a big man and a small one,
but a young one and an old one. Conawago pointed to the smaller figure, “And that's you. Tushcona said the image had come to her in a vision.” Over the heads of the figures was a small half-circle with rays coming out of it. The Council had decided to send the dawnchasers to war.

Two other patterns were woven at either side of the stick figures. The first was a set of wavy lines: three vertical waves then at the top right two similar but much smaller horizontal waves. On the opposite side were two white rings, one inside the other.

“Water,” Duncan suggested, pointing to the wavy lines.

Conawago nodded and gestured to the vertical lines. “The big lake, the inland sea called the shining water. Ontario. And at the northeast corner—”

“A river,” Duncan put in, grasping the simple eloquence of the lines. “My God, it's a map to a river at the northeast corner of the lake. The Saint Lawrence.” They exchanged a worried glance. The Saint Lawrence was the boiling point of the war. The long river valley was swarming with enemy troops and enemy tribes, with the British army and navy about to descend on them.

“Some of the tribes call it the River that Never Ends,” Conawago said, foreboding in his voice as he traced the concentric circles with his finger, “for it seems to have no headwaters and two great mouths, one in the inland sea and one in the salt sea.”

Duncan looked up to see Sagatchie, back from collecting firewood, staring at them. Being given a war belt was always a solemn and auspicious event, and though Sagatchie and Kass seemed confused as to its intent, they knew its source could only have been the Council.

As his companions laid out their blankets and dropped wood on the fire, Conawago kept staring at the belt, as if he could see things in it that were invisible to Duncan.

Suddenly Sagatchie grabbed his gun and sprang into the shadows. Duncan instinctively pushed Ishmael down and checked the powder in his rifle's firing pan as Conawago and Hetty stepped behind trees. A low growl rose from the hell dog at Hetty's side.

Duncan's heart clenched as he heard the determined chant that came from the river, but then he realized it was no war chant but one of the harvest songs used in Iroquois fields.

Conawago broke from cover, running to the bank with waving arms, then stepping in knee-deep to pull the canoe ashore.

“Custaloga!” Sagtachie said in surprise as the chieftain stepped onto the bank. The Mohawk ranger gave a respectful nod to the elder and watched in mute amazement as Adanahoe and Tushcona the belt weaver climbed out behind him.

Adanahoe set a bulging pack down, clicking her tongue in disapproval as she saw the carelessly laid fire. She knelt and began rearranging the logs, then she crisscrossed several more from the nearby pile. “There are huckleberries on the bank downstream,” she declared, pointing to Duncan and Sagatchie.

“Grandmother,” Duncan said, “why have you left the castle?”

The old woman stood tall, straightening her doeskin dress. “Jacob Pine,” she said, tapping her breast with her hand, then pointed to Custaloga then to Tushcona, reciting the names of Noah Moss and Hannah Redfern. “They are our children's children. Their parents are dead or away in the fighting. The other grandparents are too weak to travel.”

“You don't understand,” Duncan protested. “Where we go will be a place of great danger, a place of death.”

The old woman's face burned bright with determination. “Those who wage a little war still need a little army. Long before he was a peace chief, Custaloga was a great war chief.” As she spoke Custaloga stepped to her side, touching the war ax on his belt with a fierce glint in his eye.

Duncan looked at Conawago, then Sagatchie, in exasperation, hoping they would know the way to ask the elders to return to their town. “We cannot,” he said. “I mean, you are too valuable to the Haudenosaunee people. We can't risk—” Kassawaya stepped beside Adanahoe, as though in warning, her face as stern as those of the elders. Duncan turned to Conawago with a plaintive expression. “Tell me what to do,” he pleaded.

“I think what you need to do,” the old Nipmuc said with a grin, “is go pick huckleberries.”

A STRONG NORTHERN wind stirred the surface of the great inland sea called Lake Ontario, covering it with short choppy whitecaps. Duncan studied the small fleet of warships trapped by the wind in the harbor below Fort Oswego. Three sloops of war with a dozen guns each lay anchored close to shore, and strung between them like beads on a necklace were two dozen of the long boats used for transporting troops on the inland waters. The fort was being used as the launching point for the troops that would invade French Canada up the Saint Lawrence from the West.

If the solid, symmetrical stone fortress overlooking the harbor was the perfect symbol of England's military order, the town below was the symbol of the chaos of the frontier. A handful of small inns and taverns, some little more than large huts, rose up along the rutted roads. Ramshackle lean-tos, log houses, even small bark lodges sprawled along muddy paths that led toward piers built along the wide river. Only half a dozen stone houses at the mouth of the river offered any sense of permanence. Scores of tents lined the long flat field on the east side of the fort, with soldiers erecting more as they watched. Militia and regular troops were arriving, assembling for the northern campaign. Duncan looked uneasily back toward their own camp, a quarter mile upstream. They could never maneuver their canoes on the lake in such a wind. They would have to wait in hiding, Duncan told himself, but then Sagatchie touched his arm and pointed to the log piers jutting into the river. The wide cargo canoe with red eyes painted on its bow was beached by the nearest pier. Rabbit Jack and the other traders who had fled from Onondaga Castle were in the town.

“I don't know if I would recognize him,” Duncan said.

“He loves that jacket.” Sagatchie surveyed the riverfront as he spoke, then his gaze settled on a rundown log structure built into the bank. “And he will bear the mark,” he added, and set off at a trot back toward their camp.

By the time Duncan reached him, the Mohawk ranger was already speaking with their companions. Duncan was about to explain that they could not travel on the lake that day when he saw Adanahoe unrolling their blankets, and he realized Sagatchie had broken the news. Conawago straightened and motioned Duncan in the direction of the settlement. “If someone killed Black Fish for telling the story of the half-king and the spirits, we must know why. Those from that canoe will know.”

“Perhaps he didn't die for telling the story,” Duncan suggested. “He had a heavy scent of rum about him. Maybe it had more to do with him getting drunk after telling it.”

Conawago stared at the river as he weighed Duncan's words. “You mean he may have divulged something his killer did not want others to know.”

“A drunk man can boast. A man who played a trick on the Council might be very proud of himself.”

“No!” Conawago shot back. “You saw him. He held the beads, Duncan!” In the old Nipmuc's world it was not possible to lie to the Council.

“A man with a dark heart may not speak with honor,” Duncan pointed out. “Words can become snares for the unknowing.”

“Stop this!” Tushcona cried out. “I thought you understood our ways. Do not pretend a member of the League could speak other than the truth to the Council. It is the sacred duty of all. It is not possible to hold the beads and lie.”

“He spoke and then he died,” Duncan replied.

Conawago frowned at him, unhappy that Duncan would press the elders.

“Whatever the reason he died,” Duncan continued, “word will get back quickly to the half-king that on the very the night the Council was asked to support him his disciple was murdered. No matter what words we use now, that will be the message the half-king will hear. Vengeance is in his blood. We have seen what he does to those who anger him.”

Sagatchie slowly led Conawago and Duncan back toward the docks, pausing to step into shadows whenever boats carrying soldiers and militia
passed by, then stopping at the wide canoe. Two wooden chests of cargo covered with blankets were still in the vessel, though no guard watched them. The Mohawk stepped into the canoe, threw off the blanket on the first chest, and opened it. There was nothing inside but four small bags of cornmeal and half a dozen of the cheap axes used in trade. The second held nothing but a smaller chest packed in straw. Wooden panels divided the inner chest into half a dozen compartments, holding nothing but sawdust. Sagatchie ran his fingers through the sawdust, lifting some in his palm and watching with a confused expression as it blew away. “Those who belong to this canoe were supposed to be traders, who called at the Iroquois castles to spread the promise of the half-king. They received nothing in trade. Their cargo was a ruse,” he said with a pointed glance at Duncan. “Onondaga Castle was their last stop. They are traveling back to the half-king.”

A cool anger grew on the Mohawk's face. He covered the chests again and pointed toward the hut built into the side of the bank. Sagatchie and Duncan stepped through its flimsy leather-hinged door into a smoky, foul-smelling chamber where several Indians and rough looking trappers were tossing white and black pebbles in a circle marked with flour on the dirt floor.

“They have to bet to play, but first they pay the owner,” Sagatchie said. As he spoke a stout man in a leather apron took a coin from a tribesman, who then extended his forearm. The proprietor reached out with a stick of chalk and left a broad white mark on his skin then dropped the coin into a bowl on the table beside him. “With that mark he can play all day,” the Mohawk explained and gestured Duncan toward the plump man's side.

“Five men from that red-eyed canoe woke me up this morning to buy a jar of rum,” the proprietor explained, “and to begin their games.” Duncan saw that his bowl held not just coins but silver links from jewelry, brass pins, and even a piece of crystal rock. “My customers usually play for hours. Those five left around noon, the only ones to leave so far today.”

“Meaning the only ones with the mark will be those from that canoe,” Conawago observed when Duncan reported the news, and he gestured Duncan onto the muddy street.

The settlement was alive with activity. They found themselves weaving around women carrying huge piles of firewood on their backs or dragging branches on the ground. An old tribal woman sold fish strung on vines, another small pumpkins stacked at her side. A boy carrying a bundle of sassafras roots on his shoulder passed by, leaving a scented trail. Conawago and Duncan had reached the end of the outermost street and were about to continue their search closer to the fort when Sagatchie stepped out of the shadows. “Two of them are in the stable below the fort, sharing a jar of ale.”