Sorceress (14 page)

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27

A bad time

By harvest time the war was over. Naugatuck and Black Fox were among the last of the warriors to return to the camp. They came in dusty and tired from many days’ travelling. They were thin and half starving, their clothes ragged, moccasins worn through and feet bloody, but they were alive. The whole camp came out to greet them and it was almost impossible to get near in the crush. Then the crowd parted and he came to me. The months of anxious waiting melted into a moment of pure gladness and I did not have to tell him how happy I was to see him back.

He was taken from me then, going with the other men to the sweat lodge, to be cleansed and dressed ready for the celebrations. I sent fresh garments that I had made during the time of waiting and joined the other women. We gathered all we could find together to make a feast of welcome home.

There had been precious little to celebrate in recent months, and all were invited without exception. Not everyone, however, took up the invitation. Mrs Peterson stayed by her own fireside. At the height of the festivities, I noticed someone else was absent. Ephraim had disappeared. I thought he was with the other boys, who were running here and there in wild play, but I did not find him with them. I found him in Mrs Peterson’s camp. He said that he had felt out of place now Black Fox was back.

He returned with me on that occasion, but he began to spend more and more time with the English woman. She welcomed him readily and made a deal of a fuss over him. Perhaps he felt I neglected him in my joy at having my son back again. Perhaps he was wary of Black Fox himself. My son had come back a seasoned warrior with a fierce reputation and although he held to his promise and showed no unkindness to the boy, he showed no friendship either, and I could see why Ephraim might fear him.

Now that the war was over, Wannalancet was summoned to Dover to meet with a Major Richard Waldron to formally agree the peace and to hand over such captives as had lately come into his care. It was Ephraim’s decision whether or not to go with them. I would be sad to see him go, sadder than I wanted him to know, but said that he could choose when the time came. I had given my word on it, and I am not one to go back on what I have promised.

I still thought that he might stay with me, but on the appointed day, he left with Mrs Peterson. He would have none to claim him, by his own account having no living relations in the colony, but Mrs Peterson would take care of him. Although I would hardly call us friends, she promised this to me.

Sparks Fire counselled Black Fox and Naugatuck not to go to the meeting. He thought Wannalancet mistaken in the trust he showed towards the English. ‘We are all their enemies now.’ That was how he saw it.

Good that he did and that our sons heeded his warning, for many who went never came back. Although Wannalancet acted in good faith, he was tricked. He went to make peace with the English, nation unto nation, but Waldron saw it otherwise. In his eyes, Wannalancet was harbouring fugitives and this was an act of war. Hundreds were killed and many more taken captive to be sold as slaves, either here or in the Indies.

It was an angry band of warriors who came back to the camps. Wannalancet felt that he’d been tricked and betrayed. He had been neutral before, but this made the English his enemies.

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Now Black Fox was with me, I made a new dwelling away from the long house. Sparks Fire often came to sit at our hearth, to talk with Black Fox about the war, smoke a pipe, and bring news from the council fire. He was with us one evening, just before night was falling, when there was a knock on the flap of the wigwam. It was one of Sparks Fire’s men. He struggled through the door with something clutched in his arms. I thought at first that he held a dog, or some injured animal. Then I saw the head cradled on his arm. The fair hair was shorn to stubble but I knew it was Ephraim. His feet were bloody, the moccasins worn to shreds; his arms and legs were scratched and scored by branch and thorn; his face was puffed and swollen with insect bites. His clothes smelt rank as a dungheap.

I bade the warrior lay him down and I cut the filthy skins away from him. Sparks Fire carried him to the sweat lodge and there the men bathed and tended him. He came back wrapped in furs, and was set down to sleep.

He slept until the evening of the next day. He woke ravenous, but still so weak that his hands trembled, knocking the horn spoon against the wood of the bowl. I fed him myself, and then undid his bundle to find fresh clothes for him.

‘You kept my bundle?’

‘I have thrown nothing of yours away.’

‘Good. Because I reckon I’m going to stay.’

‘What happened?’

‘I didn’t like it. Didn’t like how they was with me.’

‘Mrs Peterson?’

‘Not so much her. Her husband. The Captain.’

‘Did he not treat you well?’

‘Weren’t just that.’ He turned from me, his eyes suddenly bright with tears. ‘There were other things, too.’

I waited for him to recover and go on.

‘When I seen how it was, I changed my mind. I wanted to go back with Wannalancet, but I was held fast. That woman, Mrs Peterson, commenced fussing over me. Had me scrubbed, and none too gently, although I weren’t in need of a wash. She put me into boy’s clothes. I forgot how wool itches next to the skin, and the boots pinched my feet. I asked for my old clothes back, at least my moccasins, but it was like I asked for something dirty.

‘They commenced to pray over me and sermonise. I’d forgot how hard wood benches are, and the minister up there telling lies. Mrs Peterson, I didn’t mind her so much, but her husband had set ideas on how a boy should be and they did not sit well with me. He begins speechifying about order and discipline and all the time he has a switch and he’s beating the words out into his other hand. I looks at the girls, his daughters. They listen with their heads down, and don’t dare catch his eyes, mine neither.

‘That night, I’m in bed and I’m weighing one side along another. My pa weren’t that way, and it’s bin a long time since anyone told me what to do, or ordered me about when I don’t see no reason for it. She says I ain’t a servant, but that’s how it feels to me. So, I creep out dead of night, I can see in the dark and move with no noise. I find my clothes, the ones you made, put on the midden pile. They don’t smell so good, but I put ’em on anyways, thinking they will hide my own scent if they send dogs after me. Daylight sees me take the trail north. I’d taken good note of which way we’d come, like Sparks Fire taught me.

‘I ain’t alone in that. A whole army been on the move. English men on horses. I came across what they’d done. Shot ’em down like dogs. Some were Nashua, I reckon, by the markings on ’em. But some I knew. Been here the whole time, never took the war trail at all, but the soldiers weren’t asking, just shooting. They shot some right in the back. That’s how much cowards they are. No man would do that. Scalps taken too, what kind of white folks would do that?’

‘How do you know it was not another tribe?’

‘They was white all right. I seen the hoof prints milled about in the mud and blood and I came across their camp later that night. Sight farther on there’s a village all burnt. I pushed on past, leaving myself no time to rest. I feared what I’d find. I feared you’d be gone, I feared ... ’ He bit his lip to crescent redness, trying to hold his tears back. ‘Glad you ain’t, that’s all.

‘I came back because ... all I got by way of family is right here.’ He looked at me. ‘You’re the nearest I’ve ever known to a mother. And ... ’ He looked at Sparks Fire now, his eyes glittering with unshed tears. ‘And I figured, since my own pa’s dead now, I figured I could choose my own, and it weren’t going to be Captain Peterson.’

Sparks Fire smiled and reached out his hand to touch the boy’s stubbly head.

‘A man would do well to have such a one as his son. Naugatuck will be proud to call you brother.’

‘I too would be proud.’ Black Fox had been listening all the while, resting on his sleeping platform. He rose from his place in the shadows and came towards the boy. ‘You have shown yourself to be as brave and cunning as any warrior among us. You have suffered much to come back and you are here because you have chosen your people. You are one of us now.’

He took out his scalping knife, testing the thin, finely honed blade as he squatted next to Ephraim. The boy did not even wince as the knife sliced through the flesh at the base of his thumb. Black Fox cut himself in the same manner and clasped their two hands together, binding them round with his head cloth so their two bloods ran together.

‘Now we are of one blood. We are brothers, you and I.’

Ephraim opened his mouth, but no words came. Instead tears spilled down his cheeks. Black Fox waited until the storm had stilled, then he lifted the boy and carried him to his sleeping place.

Sparks Fire shook tobacco from his pouch and relit his pipe. ‘Our fires in the south have been quenched with blood. We cannot go back.’

‘We cannot stay here.’ Black Fox came back. Ephraim was now sleeping. ‘I know of this Peterson. Ephraim did well to get away from him, but he is ruthless and he does not like to be beaten. He will come after the boy.’

‘Wannalancet talks of going north, to the land of the French.’

‘To Canada?’ I asked.

‘Some of his people are already there, at a place the French call St François.’ He reached forward and took a brand from the fire to light his pipe. ‘The French have no love for the English. There can be no peace now.’

‘We must join them.’ Black Fox squatted down by the fire.

Sparks Fire grimaced. ‘The place is full of Blackrobes, they crawl over it like fleas on a dog.’

‘Blackrobes?’ I had not heard the term before, but I was taken by a sudden coldness, as when a shadow passes over the sun.

‘Jesuits.’ He laughed but there was no mirth in it. ‘They make your Puritans look like a bunch of fat partridge.’

‘Where will we go then?’ Black Fox was finding it hard to contain his impatience.

‘It is for each one to decide. It is a hard thing to leave the land of one’s birth, of the birth of one’s grandfathers and their grandfathers. I thought it would be the land of my children, my children’s children, but that is not to be. We are torn up like trees in the forest. It is as if a great wind twists us from our roots.’

His eyes became dull, like chestnuts left from one season to another. He squatted on his heels, elbows on his knees, head resting on his forearms, and stayed that way for a long time. He rose and left us without another word.

Days passed and Sparks Fire stayed in his state of melancholy. He shunned company, walking by the lake, or taking his canoe out from first light to night falling. Black Fox was all for leaving, but I argued to stay a while longer. Sparks Fire had been a good friend to me. I would not desert him now.

On the third day, Naugatuck came to me. He was worried about his father.

‘He looks to decide what to do. Can’t you help him?’ the young man asked. ‘You are strong in spirit, so Black Fox says.’

‘The future is as closed to me as it is to you or anyone. Sparks Fire seeks solitude because he looks for a sign.’

He nodded. The copper discs swinging from his ears and spaced round his neck glowed in the firelight.

‘So do his people. Other bands are leaving. Let us hope the spirits speak to him soon, or he may find that he is the only one left at the lake.’

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A week went on like this, then Sparks Fire came to me just at sun rising. I knew straight away that something had happened. His step was light, not heavy and dragging, and when he pushed the flap to my wigwam open, his eyes were full of their old fire.

I bid him break fast with us and then sent Ephraim to join the other boys at play.

I could see by his face that he had received the sign he wanted. We sat in silence until he was ready to tell me what he had seen.

‘Last night as I walked by the lake, I heard the wild geese calling. Later, I dreamed I stood in the same place and, looking up, I saw the great lines of them flying over me, spread across the sky like broad beaten arrowheads. In the dream I could understand their words to me. They spoke of the lake and the Place of the Flint.’

I frowned and shook my head. Dreams are of the greatest importance in divining what to do; but I was at a loss to know what this one meant.

‘What does it mean?’

‘We will go to Missisquoi, the place the Abenaki call Mazipskoik, the Place of the Flint. They have a village there on a great water that they call Bitawbagw, the lake the French have named Champlain.’

‘Have you told Naugatuck?’

Sparks Fire nodded. ‘I have told him my dream and such a plan was in his mind too.’

Black Fox spoke up. ‘He and I will spend the winter hunting and trapping, getting furs for trading. To carry on this fight we need powder and muskets, to get them we must go to the French at Mount Royale.’

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28

Alison Ellman

Alison loved Montreal. It was doubly foreign, being Canadian and French at the same time, and she liked that. Seemed like she hadn’t been out of the Institute for months, let alone out of Boston. It was good to get away. She had booked into a hotel in the Latin Quarter. She had to confess to enjoying herself, even if her researches weren’t going too well. She was relying on local knowledge and her contact at McGill didn’t sound too hopeful. She was meeting him for dinner, by then he might have something for her. In the meantime, she was free to spend the day sightseeing, walking round the old port and Vieux Montréal, reacquainting herself with the city.

‘Your girl is an enigma.’ That’s what her friend Glen told her when she met him in one of the old- town restaurants. ‘If she was here, there’s no trace of her.’

Alison poured herself a glass of wine and tried to hide her disappointment.

‘But she
could
have come here?’

‘It’s entirely possible.’ Glen took a bite of his steak. ‘Especially if she got caught up in King Philip’s War. It was a pretty vicious confrontation. The New England tribes took a pretty good whipping down there and many of them did come north, some of them bringing white captives.’

‘But she would not have been a captive.’

‘White woman with a native band? She’d have been noticed.’

Glen finished his
frites
and dabbed his napkin to his lips.

‘I’ll see if I can find out more for you. I’ve a colleague at UQAM. He could know something. It’s more his field. I checked with his office. He’s been at a conference but is expected back in a day or two.’

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There was nothing to do but wait. Alison decided that she might as well go up to Quebec. She had friends in the city and she’d promised herself some time with them. She could stay over and then hit the libraries, searching the archives herself for any reference to Mary.

She returned to Montreal empty-handed and feeling more than a little dispirited. When she got into her room, the message light on the phone was winking. She rang down to the front desk.

‘Mademoiselle Ellman? We have a fax for you.’

Alison stood up, then sat down, then stood again. She paced the room, fax in her hand. Mary had been here. Maybe she’d walked the very same streets Alison had been walking. Glen’s friend had given him a reference to a white woman, English, travelling with a native band fleeing New England after King Philip’s War. He’d even suggested a possible route they might have taken to get here.

Alison stood at the window, trying to conjure Mary’s presence. Ordinarily she liked being near the heart of the city, but now the sounds coming up from the streets all around only served to make her agitation worse. Mary was an enigma, Glen was right. What he’d found out just added to that. It asked more questions than it answered. How did she get here? What happened to her along the way? Where did she go after that? The solution to this, to Mary, did not lie in the modern city; neither did it lie in books, museums and libraries. It lay with Agnes.

Alison sat down on the bed, pondering the importance of the girl. Agnes had made no contact; Alison didn’t even know where she was for sure, but she would have to find her. It was time their researches came together.