Judith E. French (22 page)

Color tinted the youth’s tanned cheeks.

“He completed his trial of manhood only weeks ago,” Moonfeather explained.

Koke-wah spoke softly in Algonquian, and the peace woman translated. “Koke-wah wants you to know that the bear is his totem. He has asked his spirit guide to protect you as well.”

“Thank you,” Cailin said.

Koke-wah ducked his head and blushed, then whispered something else to Moonfeather.

“You have an admirer,” Moonfeather said. “Koke-wah wants to know if you have any unmarried sisters. It seems he is thinking of taking a wife.”

“Tell him I said he is too young for marriage,” Cailin replied.

The boy obviously understood, because he wiggled uncomfortably, then made a show of standing up, stretching, and walking to the mouth of the cave.

Cameron took his place and sat cross-legged, beside Cailin.

“I hope I didn’t hurt his feelings,” she said.

“He’ll get over it.” He pursed his lips. “I’d like to talk with you awhile,” he said. “Regardless of what you think of me, there are things you need to know.”

Instantly, she stiffened. “I appreciate your concern, but I’ve no wish to—”

“Patience,” Moonfeather said, coming to sit with them. “We’ve time to pass. We’ll rest here until dark. The rain is coming, and no one will see our fire.” She handed Cailin a browned drumstick. “Eat. Ye canna keep up if ye do not eat.”

Cailin bit into the meat. Even without salt, it was delicious. She was hungrier than she thought, but still, she didn’t miss noticing the meaningful look that passed between Cameron and Moonfeather. “You two seem to be old friends,” she said.

“We are,” he agreed.

Cailin wished that Cameron was not so charming. It was hard to dislike him, and she wanted to. He’d abandoned her when she was a babe. She didn’t need a father now. It was years too late for him to ease his conscience.

“Cameron has been my friend as long as I can remember,” the Indian woman said. “I was a small child when he first told me the story of the Eye of Mist. Have ye never wondered why it was given to you?”

She had, but she wouldn’t admit it. She’d not make it easy for this man who’d forced himself into her life—who wanted more than she could give him.

“It was my mother’s,” Cameron said, “and her mother’s before her. Always passed down through the daughters, for two thousand years and more.”

“A magic necklace,” Moonfeather added softly in her lilting English. “A thing of great power, come down to you from long ago when the world was young and innocent.”

“Pictish gold,” Cameron continued. “Did you—”

“I dinna believe in fairy tales,” Cailin said flatly.

“Then why did you keep the necklace?” he asked. “It’s solid gold—worth a fortune. There must have been times when you were tempted to sell it.”

“She could no more sell the Eye of Mist than her right arm,” Moonfeather said. “You felt the power in it, didn’t you?” she asked.

Cailin glanced at Moonfeather. She felt drawn to this mysterious woman, but she was still an enigma. It was unnerving to hear Moonfeather’s distinct Highland burr, and she could not shake the feeling that they had met before. But that was impossible. Cailin had always believed the American Colonies were full of wild beasts and savages. To find such a great lady in an Indian village was beyond her comprehension.

“You must believe what we tell you,” Moonfeather said.

“I realize that ye mean well, but the legend concerning the Eye of Mist is nothing but a story. It isn’t true. It’s an old and beautiful necklace, nothing more,” Cailin said.

“Blessed,” Moonfeather insisted. “Did ye ken? Those who possess the necklace are granted one wish, any wish—even unto the giving of life or—”

Cailin stood up. “No more.” She snatched the chain off over her head and tossed it into Cameron’s lap. “Here, take it back,” she said. “I don’t want it. It’s given me nothing but pain.”

He shook his head. “I can’t take it back, Cailin. It belongs to you. To my true daughter, my mother said. It was hers, and whatever you think of me, she was your grandmother. You carry her blood and her fire. You would have liked each other, you and my mother.” He pressed it back into her hand.

“Where we are going,” Moonfeather said, “is a place of danger. You may need the Eye of Mist. It may make the difference between your survival and—”

The amulet pulsed in her hand. She wanted to throw it to the floor, but she couldn’t. Slowly, she dropped it over her head again. “I’ll keep it for your ... for my grandmother’s sake. But you have to know that whatever power it might have possessed, it’s gone now. I tried to use it when my mother died. I sat with her and watched as she died in childbirth ... as her life’s blood gushed from her body. I called on the power of your precious necklace then, and it didn’t work. My mother died just the same.” Hot tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them away. “So ye see, I dinna believe in magic anymore. And sometimes . . . sometimes, I’m not even sure I believe in God.”

“He’s real enough,” Moonfeather assured her. “And no matter what you believe, He will never stop loving you.”

I
t was the first week of July by Sterling’s reckoning when the deer trail widened to a well-worn path. His Mohawk captors had paused in mid-morning to repaint their faces and bodies with red and black stripes, and Ohneya had fashioned his eerie skull face with the aid of a lady’s mirror stolen from a Dutch farmhouse.

Fresh scalps dangled from Ohneya’s belt; three brown, one russet, another white ash-blond. The stench turned Sterling’s stomach. Two days running in the hot summer sun with only brief smoking over a campfire made for poor curing.

He had not witnessed the deaths of the Dutch farmer, his wife, and his servants, but he had heard the screams of the women and the ceaseless wail of a baby. The babe was still crying when the war party had jogged away. Sterling wondered if a quick death would not have been more merciful for the infant.

One Mohawk carried a prisoner on his shoulders, a sweet-faced boy of six or seven. The child had not wept or uttered a single word, but his stare was vacant. Sterling had whispered to him at the morning stop, but received no reaction. Either the small captive didn’t understand English or the shock of what he’d seen had caused the temporary loss of his wits.

Sterling was heavily laden with booty taken from the farmhouse and the isolated cabin the war party had destroyed a week earlier, but he had no trouble keeping pace with the Mohawk. His strength had returned in the long days of walking, and despite his captors’ efforts to starve him, he’d managed to snatch enough meat to keep himself from suffering.

Yes, he mused, it was either the last of June or the beginning of July. The first part of the forced march had been hazy; he couldn’t be certain how long he’d been out of his head. But he’d counted the days since his mind had cleared. July 3, he decided. Right or wrong, it would give him a date to reason from.

Ohneya stopped short and emptied his rifle into the air. His companions were quick to imitate their leader, and Sterling found the barrage of firing near deafening. Off to the right, out of sight, an answering volley of muskets and then cheering echoed through the trees.

The war party began to chant at the top of their lungs. Someone produced a small hand drum; an-other brave struck the flat of a tomahawk against the stock of his rifle. A woman carrying an armload of wood appeared from the forest. She dropped her firewood and fell in behind the last brave, dancing from side to side and clapping her hands in time with the drum. Ohneya strode proudly in front, chest out, chin up, grotesque painted features immobile.

The path dipped into a gully, then climbed a rough grade to open into a clearing. Sterling felt his heart plummet as he sighted the high stockade surrounding the Mohawk town. Double walls of upright logs honed to deadly points followed the circular course of a swift-moving river. Another river, or a second channel of the first, came in from the right so that the palisade was surrounded by water except for a narrow strip of grass that jutted out at the front. That tongue of land was guarded by a triangular wall of logs with no visible entrance. Hundreds of wooden spikes of various lengths were set into the earth at an angle, to form a wicked barrier around the perimeter of the fortified town and to guard the land approach.

Women and children came running from the cornfields. Men waded the river, waving and shouting cries of welcome. Ohneya and his warriors pretended not to hear them and continued their fierce song as the war party moved on toward the village. More people spilled out of the palisade and clustered around the returning braves.

Sterling watched in silence as a dark-skinned woman in a blue dress ran to Ohneya and hugged him. A boy shouted
“ra-ken-iha,”
the Mohawk word for “father.”

The war party reached the crossing and began to wade across the stretch of river in front of the stockade. Icy water lapped up to Sterling’s chest, but the bottom was gravel and offered firm footing. He was still naked, but the swift current felt good as it washed away the dust and sores of travel. Taking advantage of the river, and not knowing when he’d be given water again, he lowered his head and drank. A brave behind him hit him in the center of the back with the butt of his rifle. Sterling pretended to stumble and went under, reveling in the cold, clear water.

Another brave grabbed Sterling’s carrying strap and yanked him up. Sterling resumed his place in line and tried not to show emotion as a half-grown girl in braids splattered an egg on his bare chest. Instantly, a group of jeering children surrounded him. One boy dashed in and whipped him across the buttocks with a switch; another flung a stone that glanced off his elbow.

Cur dogs ran barking at him, then slunk close to growl and snap at his ankles. He kicked at the nearest animal. An old woman beat the dogs off with a beanpole, and when the animals fled yipping, she used the pole to try to trip him. Sterling jumped the stick and laughed, setting off a flood of verbal abuse from the hag and other gapers.

As the procession neared the vee of logs, Sterling saw that a curtain wall concealed the entrance. He had to crouch over and squeeze through a low doorway, then zigzag through a narrow passageway to the outer stockade. Two reinforced gates led into the town, which covered more than an acre of ground. Rows of bark-covered longhouses stretched in precise patterns inside a third fence of six-foot-high stakes woven tightly together with vines.

Ohneya led the way past a group of eight multiple-dwelling houses on one side and seven on the other, all marked over the doorways with clan symbols. A blind ancient, so old that Sterling couldn’t guess if he was male or female, sat in the shade of one hut smoking a pipe while babies played in the dust by his feet. Turkeys scratched for insects, and a tame owl swiveled its head around to stare as the war party strode by.

The deep boom of a log drum echoed through the town. Everywhere, the people left their chores to come and gaze at the returning warriors and prisoners. Sterling kept his eyes fixed on the center of Ohneya’s back, but he could not ignore the smells of drying fish, Indian tobacco, and baking bread.

The village of his Mohawk enemies smelled surprisingly like the Shawnee towns of his boyhood.

Sterling swallowed the lump in his throat. So many years wiped away in an instant. A small child ran out of a house and was quickly snatched up into the arms of a pretty Iroquois woman who could have been Sterling’s mother. Until she spoke . . . Not the soft lilt of Algonquian but the guttural tones of the Mohawk tongue.

Most of the rough Iroquois phrases he could not understand—but some meanings lingered in the shadows of his memory, left over from a grandfather’s stories of captivity among the Cayuga.
Prisoner. Englishman. Kill.

The war chief, Ohneya, had ceased to sing. Now, he was boasting loudly of his deeds as he strode across a wide, hard-packed dirt street, and then led them past another cluster of longhouses bearing wolf effigies. In the middle of the town was a large open square with a charred post set in the center. Sterling saw three drummers near the torture stake. One man beat a repetitive rhythm on the hollow log drum, while two others were just taking their places beside a large round water drum with a taut-stretched, painted skin cover.

At the far end of the clearing stood an imposing longhouse of logs. Seated on mats in front of the structure was a solemn group of elaborately dressed Iroquois elders. Ohneya made one complete circle of the square in what Sterling could only assume was a final display of his triumphant procession before coming to a halt in front of the dignitaries.

A gray-haired man in a red military coat and tall beaver hat rose to his feet and began to speak to the war party, obviously praising Ohneya and his followers. The villagers crowded close, cheering whenever the sachem paused in his oratory.

Suddenly, a crow screeched, and a hunched figure in a carved wooden mask scurried from the longhouse. He was dressed all in black with a red waist-length horsehair wig. The mask, painted red and black, was a grotesque oversized caricature of a human face with round exaggerated eyes, a broad nose, and hideous teeth.

The onlookers shrank back and grew silent. Only the war party and the men and women on the mats seemed unaffected by the strange apparition.

The medicine man stared directly at Sterling and shook a turtle-shell rattle.
“O-neg-we-a-sa!”
he hissed.

The word echoed in Sterling’s brain.
Blood.
The masked man shook his rattle again and drove his staff of office—a black-painted stick with the carving of a raven on the top—into the soft earth. He left the staff quivering there and began a curious side to side shuffling around Sterling. He circled twice, then produced a handful of ashes, seemingly from thin air, and tossed them into Sterling’s face.

Sterling had closed his eyes when the medicine man had thrown the ashes. Now he opened them and glared back at the face behind the mask.

A child began to cry and was hustled away. As the two moved through the crowd, people muttered. A woman cried out the name Jit-sho, and another Mohawk word that Sterling recognized as meaning “shaman.”

The medicine man, whom Sterling now assumed must be this Jit-sho, brought the carved face close to his and whispered ominously.

Sterling summoned up his entire Mohawk vocabulary.
“Jit-sho, wah-et-ke-a,”
he replied.
“Wah-et-ke-a o-ne-soh-rono.”
Jit-sho, you’re an ugly devil!

The medicine man jumped back as though he’d been hit, and a murmur rippled through the war party. Ohneya spun around and struck Sterling across the face with the flat of his tomahawk. He fell to his knees. Ohneya swung the weapon over his head to deliver a death blow.

The old high chief in the tall beaver hat spoke.

Ohneya halted in mid-swing, muttered something in Mohawk, and turned away. Sterling got to his feet and spat blood from his split lip.

“How is it that an Englishman speaks in the language of our brothers the Cayuga with a Shawnee voice? And how is it that he knows the name of our honored shaman, Jit-sho?”

Sterling had known his accent was atrocious. He was surprised that anyone understood him at all. “My father is English,” he explained. “My mother was daughter to the Shawnee. At her fireside, I learned some of your language from one who had been a captive of the Cayuga.”

“So.” The gray-haired leader turned to the woman beside him and said something in Mohawk. She whispered back. He glanced at a second woman sitting two positions down on his right.
“Egh-ni-ta?”

She nodded. “Shawnee mother,” she said in bad English. “Shawnee son.”

The medicine man spat out an objection, but the old chief shook his head. “You are Shawnee,” he said to Sterling. “Now let us see if you are a man.” He looked at Ohneya. “Make for him a gauntlet,” he said. “We will see if mother’s blood or father’s flows stronger.”

Shrill cries rang from the throats of men and women alike as the Mohawk hurried to form a double line down the left side of the open square. Armed with lengths of firewood, whips, and war clubs, they laughed and taunted him, waving their weapons and daring him to pass between them.

Someone cut the straps holding the pack to Sterling’s back, and the heavy bundle tumbled to the ground. He strained against the leather thongs that bound his wrists behind his back, but they held tight. Ohneya shoved him toward the howling column. Only men had taken their places in the game, but the women would miss none of the sport. They rushed at him, shouting insults and pointing rudely.

“I want his gourds,” Ohneya’s woman called to him in English.

“And the rest of it?” the war chief retorted. “Shall I pluck it for you, wife?”

“Yes!” Her companions shrieked with laughter. “I’ll make you a tobacco pouch of it,” she promised.

“Run swift and straight,” the sachem advised.

Ohneya’s wife darted in and jabbed Sterling sharply in the ribs with the butt of her wooden corn pestle. “Run well,” she echoed. “If you do, we will burn you at the stake.”

“And if you do not,” Ohneya said, “we will skin you alive and then burn you until your eyes roast like chestnuts on a winter fire.”

Sterling glanced back at the chief. The fear had left him, and he felt strangely calm, almost as if he were watching another man face the Mohawk gauntlet. “What is your name, sir?” he demanded.

“Bear Dancer.”

Sterling nodded in respect.

“How is it that you do not know our leader?” the masked man hissed. “And who are you, a death-marked slave, to question him? What use has a dead man for names?”

Sterling gave the medicine man a cold stare. “Among the Shawnee, knowing a man’s name gives you power over him. Is it not so, Jit-sho, mighty shaman of the Mohawk?”

“Who told you my name?” The ugly mask bobbed up and down as if the man behind it quivered with rage.

“I have a powerful spirit guide,” Sterling answered. “Perhaps I learned your name—”

“Enough!” Jit-sho said. “You are nothing, and you. will die as nothing.”

“You are wrong,” Sterling answered softly. “I am Na-nata Ki-tehi, Warrior Heart of the Shawnee, and I will teach the Iroquois how to die like a man.”

 

Cailin shifted her shoulder pack and looked nervously around her. That morning, not long after they’d started the day’s journey, she’d seen a huge wolf standing in the trail in front of her. Lachpi, the Delaware, was walking at the head of the column. When the beast appeared without warning, directly ahead of him, she’d tried to cry out a warning. To her dismay, no sound came from her throat, and then the animal leaped into the trees and was gone as silently as it had come.

She’d been so shaken that she’d stopped short in her tracks and pointed. To her dismay, Lachpi claimed he hadn’t seen a wolf, and neither had anyone else.

“You’re tired,” Koke-wah said.