Original Death (51 page)

“I never had the honor of his name,” Duncan said. “I do not know what to call the creature in my prayers.” He was not sure she had heard him, and after a long silence he retreated.

“
Roghskenrakeghdekowah
,” she said to his back. When Duncan turned, a tear was rolling down her cheek.

“War chief,” Duncan translated, and he solemnly nodded. “I should have known.” He pulled out the elegant dirk Cameron had given him. With a prayer in Gaelic, he laid the dirk against the dog's body and backed away.

Hetty had sat by the scaffold for hours, oblivious to the others, oblivious even to the brief thunderstorm that swept over the island. Although
others tried, only Ishmael was finally able to speak with her and lead her back to the abbey. After a hot meal, the boy sat with her and asked her to explain the images on the doeskin.

Now the Welsh woman, looking frail and hollow, stood with the rest of them as they watched the great flotilla recede toward Montreal. It was Conawago who broke away first, followed by Ishmael. Minutes later they turned to see the two Nipmucs waiting below the knoll with shovels in their hands.

They moved in silent procession to the site of their first great fire, on the night they had burned the old torture posts. Everyone remained strangely quiet as they shifted the ashes to the side to expose the bare soil. They dug deeper, making a large square several inches deep, then they pried and loosened the packed soil until finally they exposed the first of the kegs. Following Duncan's directions, Tatamy's men had buried the kegs deep, sitting upright.

No one spoke until the kegs were lifted out, their chalk signs of the Jacobites conspicuous in the bright sunlight. Duncan, borrowing Conawago's ax, shattered the top of the nearest keg. For a fleeting moment he thought they had been terribly mistaken, for all he could see was gunpowder, but then Conawago sank his fingers into the keg and extracted a bright silver coin from the black grains.

Duncan handed the ax to Ishmael, and the Nipmuc boy, amusement growing on his face, opened the other kegs while Tushcona and Adanahoe followed, sifting up handfuls of coins from each to confirm its secret contents.

Duncan walked around the kegs. “I never thought we would get this far,” he confided to his companions, and he looked up to Woolford.

The ranger captain shrugged. “I am not the director of this particular drama.”

“We could take it back,” Duncan suggested.

“We could,” Woolford agreed. “No doubt the king would give Amherst some more initials to put behind his name.”

Duncan knew his friend was as weary of kings and generals as he was.

“The troops will be paid from the booty taken in Montreal,” the ranger reminded him.

Duncan paced around the kegs. It was more money than he had ever seen, more than he would likely ever see again. It could buy a vast plantation at the edge of the frontier. It could buy an entire town. A handful scooped from one keg could buy out his indenture, the deed of servitude that still hung around his neck. He and Conawago could make a stately home on a mountain, bigger than Johnson's own mansion, furnished with a grand library where Conawago could spend his last years reading to his heart's content. He could build an infirmary to care for the tribes.

He realized the elders, even Conawago, were staring at him. Wealth was an alien notion to them. Piles of coins had been used against the tribes ever since the Europeans arrived. Many had died, so many more had suffered, because of these very coins. The martyred father of Xavier had been right. Gold and silver worked against the spirit of the tribes. These coins in particular had only brought treachery and death.

Ishmael broke the spell. The boy stepped up to a keg and lifted a coin. “They are very heavy,” he said to Conawago, “and you can't eat them.”

For the first time in weeks, Duncan saw a smile on his friend's face. The old Nipmuc embraced the boy.

“I think,” Duncan said, “we should take these to those who paid the greatest price.”

They stacked the open kegs near the three scaffolds, on the bluff where the hell dog had fallen with the schoolmaster. Duncan listened reverently as Adanahoe spoke in her native tongue to explain to the dead how justice had been dealt to the Revelator and the poet of death.

When she finished, she looked at Duncan expectantly. He was not sure where the words came from, but he knew their rightness as soon as he spoke. “The Revelator lied when he spoke of murders on the other side,” he explained. “But it was the dreams of the Council who told us it was a lean and hungry time on the other side. When I was young, we would bury the
dead with coins so they could buy food along the long path to the spirit world. The ghosts here may have had a few corncakes, but that would never be enough to see them all the way.”

Conawago, as always, instantly understood. He lifted a shilling from a keg and handed it to him.

“This,” Duncan said, extending the coin for all to see, “buys our friends a kettle of pumpkin stew.” He threw it in a long arc over the cliff, far out into the river. The splash stirred the others out of their spell.

“We are on the island of the starving ghosts,” Kass reminded them, then she shouted out Sagatchie's name and threw another coin into the water far below.

Tushcona joined in, then Ishmael, and Hetty, and soon all the company was throwing coins, calling out names of dead they had known, including those of Bethel Church. They emptied one keg, then another. Woolford energetically lifted a full keg and dumped it over the side. Birds gathered overhead, not diving, but attentively watching. Ishmael pointed out an otter frolicking among the ripples. One keg followed another, emptied now by the Iroquois children and elders. For the first time Duncan saw laughter on the faces of the Iroquois, young and old, as they gave up the king's coins, one silver splash at a time, to the river that never ended.

Epilogue

M
rs. Margaret Eldridge was a Welsh widow whose family had been lost in the North, Duncan explained when they reached Edentown. Hetty looked every bit the part in her simple blue dress, her hair combed and pinned at the back. They had paused in Albany during their long return journey, where Mr. Forsey had readily agreed to provide several dresses for his former seamstress. His generosity, Duncan knew, in no small part reflected the relief Forsey and his neighbors had felt when the true identity of their party was revealed.

They had caused quite a stir at the outskirts of Albany. Sentinels on the wall of the fort had raced for their officers. Townspeople had taken one look at their party and shut themselves in their houses. A church bell rang in alarm. Only by Woolford running forward to explain the apparent invasion did the army call off its confrontation.

Their company had lingered a week at Onondaga Castle in condolence ceremonies for the heroes who now stood perpetual watch at the Isle of the Ghosts. On their last night at the Haudenosaunee capital, Adanahoe had called for a celebration. The old matriarch had waxed eloquent about the successful return of the children, the bravery of those who had died at Bethel Church, the reconciliation with the northern Mohawks, even
Duncan's discovery of his protector spirit. Afterwards the Council had insisted on dispatching an honor guard of two dozen warriors to escort Duncan, Conawago, Ishmael, Kass, and Hetty to the Hudson. The Iroquois, wearing amused expressions, had filed into Albany between ranks of nervous soldiers.

When they finally emerged from the forest onto the open lands of Edentown, Sarah Ramsey ran barefoot from the field where she had been harvesting maize. She paused before him, examining him from head to toe as she pushed back her auburn curls, then rushed forward for a long, silent embrace before warmly introducing herself to Hetty and Ishmael. A smile slowly grew on the boy's face as he took in the sturdy stables, the stonewalled smithy, and the simple cabins. Edentown, Duncan realized, was not unlike Bethel Church. The young Nipmuc shyly tugged at Conawago's arm and asked to go see the great oxen that worked the fields.

“Ishmael would fit well in our little school,” Sarah said to Duncan as she sat with him on the porch that evening. They had enjoyed a simple but joyful supper on a table set up outside the stone great house.

“He could help the younger ones,” she added. As town proprietress she had decreed that every student learn both English and a tribal tongue.

“I would like that,” Duncan replied. “Conawago would like that.”

“The children will be eager to hear Ishmael speak about the heroes of the spirit war.”

“Spirit war?”

“Do not be so modest, Duncan McCallum,” she chided. “The tale is for all to see on the kitchen table.”

When Sarah saw the confusion on his face, she took his hand and led him into the kitchen. Kass sat at the table speaking in the tone of one of the Council storytellers to a spellbound gathering of settlers, both tribal and European. Before her was a broad doeskin of the kind Duncan had seen on the walls of the Council lodge, one of the chronicles of historic events in the centuries-long saga of the Haudenosaunee. Except Duncan recognized the scenes painted on this one. The figures were small, for there
were a dozen separate panels—a church, a cave, a dog, a prisoner bound to a post, a circle of people listening to an orator, a fortress, a ship, an island in a river, a city, a battle between warriors, ships crashing into rocks, and three grave scaffolds with a spirit gate over them.

“The Council said it should be shown to your people first,” Kass explained to Duncan. “Then I am to take it to every Haudenosaunee town so the tale lives in the hearts of all the Iroquois. By the time I am done, I will have Sagatchie's son with me.”

It was their skin, their chronicle, the tale of their quest to find the truth and rescue the lost children. Duncan looked up after studying it to see Sarah and Conawago smiling at him. Your people, Kass had said.

Kass was pointing to the crashing ships now. “Then on the shore of the great river, the Scottish warrior at last discovered who he was, and his protector spirit showed him the way to save hundreds of lives.”

It was deep in the night when their gathering broke up. Through his fatigue, Duncan became aware of Sarah and Hetty speaking in the tongue of the Iroquois on stools by the smoldering hearth. Hetty had been uncomfortable being thrust among so many strangers, but Sarah's easygoing nature had won her over. One ghostwalker, orphan of the tribes, had recognized another.

He found Conawago on the front porch, looking up at the moon beside a pile of blankets. Sarah knew they always had trouble adjusting to beds after weeks of sleeping under the stars. Conawago motioned him toward the stable where Ishmael already slept on a mound of straw, and they bedded down beside the boy.

Duncan woke to the sound of a hammer ringing on iron in the smithy. The day was already hours old. He sat up to find Sarah on a stool, watching him with the fragile smile he knew so well. He accepted the mug of tea she extended then looked about. She spoke before he could ask where his companions were.

“Ishmael had a dream, Duncan,” Sarah announced.

His grin faded. He darted to the entry, looking anxiously up and down the settlement's only road.

Sarah appeared at his side, took his hand, and silently led him to the schoolhouse where as a fearful ghostwalker she had once been Duncan's student. The classroom was empty. A piece of heavy paper lay on the instructor's table, folded into a letter with Duncan's name inscribed in Conawago's elegant hand. With a sinking heart he settled into the chair and opened it.

I found Ishmael outside after midnight staring at the moon. He told me he had the same dream the past five nights. Hickory John was shivering on his scaffold. He told the boy he needed one of the old robes from the Nipmuc hearths. I explained to Ishmael that his grandfather meant a buffalo robe, but that I had not seen one for many years. Then we saw a shooting star in the western sky
.

I am taking the boy west, Duncan. I mean to show him the great spirit mounds in the Ohio country and keep going west until we find buffalo. We will make a robe and carry it to Towantha on his scaffold above Bethel Church, then find a safe place to hide the flint knife of our people. I will write in two or three months if I can
.

Duncan felt a terrible emptiness in his chest. It was a long time before he looked up. Sarah was sitting at the desk where she had been a student. “He told me,” she said.