Judith E. French (28 page)

Cailin wiped the water out of her eyes and stood with dripping hair as the gnarled old warrior laid his hand on her forehead.

“From this day, you are no longer white, born without a soul,” he said solemnly. “You are Lenape n’hackey, Indian, of the Lenni Lenape, and your name is Wing-an O-tah-ais, Sweet Spring of the Turtle Clan, and brother to Lachpi.” His heavy-lidded eyes narrowed. “And you must remember to show proper respect for your totem.”

“Never eat or injure a turtle,” Cameron finished. “In fact, you show more respect for your totem if you refrain from mentioning his name.”

“I think I can manage that,” Cailin said. Her shoulder was smarting, and she felt foolish. A turtle, she was a turtle named Wing-an O-tah-ais. She tried not to smile. Her cousin Alasdair would have thought this all hilarious.

Instantly, the image of Alasdair’s freckled face rose in her mind and she laughed aloud. A warm feeling enveloped her. Alasdair was dead, but he could still make her laugh ... and as long as she remembered him, he wasn’t really gone.

She looked at Lachpi. He’d obviously loved his sister as she’d loved her cousin. And he was trying to live with his loss as she was. She smiled at him. “Thank you for the honor,” she said sincerely. “I will try to be worthy of your sister.”

He nodded. “Sweet Spring has gained wisdom,” he said. “Tell your son of Lachpi, so that he will not be forgotten.”

“If it’s a boy, he’ll be your nephew,” Cailin replied. “You’ll always be welcome under our roof and at our table. You can tell him yourself.”

The Delaware shook his head. “The wind calls this man’s name,” he said.

“Don’t—” she started to say, but was interrupted by the abrupt arrival of the surly Mohawk woman.

“Come,” the squaw ordered. “Watch death of your peace woman.”

Kitate led the group out of the ceremonial longhouse into the dark night. They walked through the chanting, shouting Mohawks, past Ohneya and his followers, to the place where Moonfeather stood near the center of the clearing.

Cailin’s frantic gaze sought Sterling and caught a glimpse of him still tied upright to the stake. His eyes were open, and he looked alert. She wanted to call out to him, but she knew that he’d never hear her voice above the thunderous drumming and the wild cries of the inflamed Iroquois.

Instead, she whispered a prayer under her breath and tried to keep pace with Cameron, who held her firmly by the right arm. Lachpi strode directly in front of her, his rifle cradled in his arm.

Cailin had wondered why the Mohawk hadn’t stripped the Shawnee of their weapons, but Cameron had told her that it was a mark of arrogance on the part of the Iroquois. “They don’t think of us as a threat,” he’d explained earlier. “We’re outnumbered twenty to one. One reckless move on our part, and our scalps will decorate a Mohawk lance.”

Cailin didn’t think that Kitate, Lachpi, and the others looked particularly peaceful. The Shawnee had painted their faces and appeared as savage and bloodthirsty as the Mohawk. Young Koke-wah’s chin jutted out defiantly, and his eyes glittered in the firelight as fiercely as any wild creature’s. Joseph, a solid wedge of coiled muscle, kept one step behind the boy, planting each wide foot with deliberate purpose, and eyeing the Mohawk with black hatred.

Moonfeather looked up and smiled when she saw them coming. Her features were tranquil. She wore no paint, and her hair was covered with a fringed shawl of blue and red. Her feet were bare.

Stretching out in front of the Shawnee peace woman was a bed of glowing coals, a yard wide and four yards long. The Mohawk medicine man stood at the far end of the fire pit. He was garbed in an overpowering bear skin and a wooden mask of black and yellow with tufts of black hair and teeth of bone. The carved mask was huge, at least a third the size of his body. Jit-sho raised his staff and shook it defiantly at Moonfeather.

She ignored him and extended a hand to Cailin. “Sister,” she said softly.

Cailin embraced her. “You can’t do this,” she whispered. “There has to be another way.”

Moonfeather chuckled. “Believe me, I wish you were right.” She looked into Cameron’s face. “Don’t worry,” she said. “A peace woman can walk on fire.” She glanced back at Cailin. “Bear Dancer has promised me that Sterling and the rest of us can leave if Jit-sho is proved wrong.” She nodded to Kitate and said something to him in Shawnee.

He growled a reply, and Moonfeather repeated her statement. Kitate shrugged and shoved a small French pistol into Cailin’s hand. “Don’t shoot your foot off,” he warned. “It’s loaded.”

Moonfeather smiled.

Bear Dancer came through the crowd and stopped midway between the peace woman and the Mohawk shaman at the edge of the white-hot coals. A group of dignitaries joined him. One motioned to the Shawnee.

“Go,” Moonfeather said.

Bodies pressed in around Cailin. Hands pushed and tugged at her; strange Mohawk eyes glared at her. She and Cameron were separated by the mob, and she found herself only a few feet from the Mohawk leader, Bear Dancer, in the midst of Ohneya’s warriors.

A hard hand settled on the nape of Cailin’s neck. She twisted around to see the war chief Ohneya glaring down at her.

“You will learn to like my touch, Fire Hair,” he said. “Please me, and I will make you my third wife.”

“Go to hell,” she spat. Diving between a wrinkled old woman and a Mohawk warrior in a military coat, she looked around for her father.

“Here,” Cameron called. He put a hand into the middle of a seasoned warrior’s chest and thrust him back. Cailin wiggled into the spot between her father and Bear Dancer. The Mohawk stiffened. Cailin flashed him a wide smile, and he blinked in astonishment.

Bear Dancer raised his arms over his head and began to speak. This time, his words were few. When he dropped his hands, the Iroquois shouted something that sounded like
“Hoo!”,
then they fell silent.

The drums stopped.

Several of Ohneya’s braves pressed through to the edge of the fire pit. Others surrounded Bear Dancer and the council members. The old woman that Cailin had jostled was lost from sight.

It was so quiet that Cailin could hear the breeze through the fish-drying racks, hear the hiss of the fire and the breathing of the Mohawk around her. Lachpi trod on the heels of a council member, and when the man stepped forward, the Delaware moved into the vacant spot directly behind Cailin.

“Courage, little sister,” he murmured.

Cailin looked down at the carpet of fire.

It was impossible for Moonfeather to walk over that and not be horribly burned. Cailin wanted to scream, to do anything to stop her. Instead, she waited with bated breath and thudding heart like the rest of them.

Kitate began to chant, one Shawnee voice in a sea of hostile Iroquois. The Mohawk shaman shook his rattle.

Moonfeather stepped out onto the bed of coals as lightly as a dancer. Cailin shut her eyes. When she opened them again, the peace woman was directly opposite. Her eyes were closed; her lips were curved into a faint smile.

Cameron’s whisper filled Cailin’s head.

Gooseflesh rose on Cailin’s arms. Why wasn’t the fire scorching Moonfeather’s bare feet? Why? What was happening?

Then the peace woman reached the end of the fire pit, stepped onto solid ground, opened her eyes, and smiled.

The Mohawks shouted in approval.

Bear Dancer spoke.

The Mohawks cheered.

“She is worthy,” Cameron called. “The chief has declared that we are to go in peace.”

A Mohawk brave shoved Jit-sho. His rattle fell onto the coals. Instantly, the air was filled with the scent of burning turtle shell.

“Jit-sho!” a woman cried.

“Jit-sho,” echoed a man with one arm.

The carved mask trembled.

The shaman began to sing in a thready voice, a voice that did nothing to hide the fear in the man’s heart. A warrior gave him a push. Jit-sho shrieked and leaped into the fire pit.

His scream filled the night. Cailin shuddered as the bearskin caught and became a sheet of flames. She tried to imagine the high-pitched squeal as something other than human, the awful stench of charred flesh as burning pork. Sickness rose in her throat.

She shut her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, she saw that Moonfeather was bending over something black and smoking. Her hands were touching what could have been a man’s head.

The wailing had ceased, but his feet thrashed. When the peace woman stood up, he was still.

The Mohawks shrank back.

Cailin heard a sharp hiss of breath. She turned her head and saw the gleam of a metal blade in the firelight. Ohneya twisted the knife in Bear Dancer’s back, and the old sachem’s eyes widened. He sagged forward, and one of Ohneya’s braves caught him.

Cailin seized Cameron’s arm and pointed.

Ohneya leaped into Bear Dancer’s place and raised a clenched fist. “The Shawnee have murdered our sachem and our shaman!” he shouted. “Burn them! Burn them all!”

A
n Iroquois war whoop shattered the night, and the angry Mohawks surged around them. A shot rang out. A woman screamed.

Cameron swore in Gaelic.

Cailin couldn’t understand Ohneya’s words, but she had seen him stab Bear Dancer with his knife. And when the war chief seized her left wrist and yanked her against him, she brought her right hand up and jabbed the barrel of her pistol into the soft place under his chin. “Breathe and I’ll blow your head off,” she threatened as she cocked the weapon.

The ominous click of the hammer stopped Ohneya in his tracks.

Cailin caught a glimpse of a flailing war club and heard an agonized groan. Another musket boomed. Fighting broke out around the fire pit between Shawnee and Mohawk warriors.

Suddenly, Cameron was beside Cailin, aiming his pistol at the war chief’s ear. “Tell them to back off,” her father ordered breathlessly.

“You cannot escape me!” Ohneya snarled.

“Maybe not,” Cailin said, “but we can give it a try, can’t we?”

Ohneya barked a command, and the Mohawks around him halted their attack on the Shawnee. Gradually, those at the back of the mob stopped shouting and grew still.

Cailin poked Ohneya’s throat with the pistol. “Free Sterling,” she said.

“The white Shawnee,” Cameron added hoarsely. “Let him go. And let the others join us. Now!”

Ohneya called out to his people in Iroquoian. A group parted, and Cailin saw Joseph and Kitate moving toward them with Moonfeather. Joseph’s face was covered in blood.

“This man will get Na-nata Ki-tehi,” Lachpi shouted. Boldly, he strode through the enemy ranks to the torture stake and slashed the leather thongs that held Sterling prisoner.

Kitate stepped behind Ohneya and knotted his lean fingers in the war chief’s scalp lock. Bending Ohneya’s head back, Kitate laid the razor-sharp edge of his knife at the Mohawk’s exposed throat. “Leave this one to me,” he growled.

Cailin glanced into her father’s face. He nodded. “Kitate will hold him fast for us.”

Slowly, she lowered the pistol. Her hand was shaking, and she felt cold. Pukasee’s voice came from the right. Mentally, she began counting the Shawnee. Kitate, Pukasee, Joseph, and Lachpi. Where was Koke-wah? And Ake?

Then Sterling’s strong arm wrapped around her shoulders, and she cried out with relief. He murmured her name, and his fingers dug into her arm. “Don’t fail me now, Highlander,” he said.

Releasing her, he grabbed a rifle from a scowling Mohawk. “Kitate,” he called. “Tell him to have them throw down their weapons.” When Ohneya passed on the order and the Mohawk obeyed, Sterling picked up a tomahawk, a knife, and a powder horn and shot bag from the gathering heap.

Using the war chief as a human shield, the Shawnee party began to move toward the outer gate of the village. Lachpi went ahead with Sterling and Ake on either side of the two women. Cameron and Pukasee followed, rifles cocked and aimed at the crowd. Kitate and Joseph brought up the rear with Ohneya, Kitate never loosening his grip on their hostage. Amid the Iroquois’ howls of rage, the small band hurried past the darkened longhouses.

One by one, they filed through the gate. As they passed the wall and stepped out into the open, an Iroquois guard fired from the top of the palisade. Lachpi took a musket ball in his thigh. Sterling swung around, aimed carefully, and picked off the sniper. Lachpi’s wound bled heavily, but he didn’t slow his pace. He crossed the river and stood waist-deep in the water, watching for other marksmen on the palisade.

When Cailin saw that Sterling was waiting for the rest to pass, she stopped.

“Go on!” he shouted. “Don’t wait for me.”

“I’m nay leaving ye to them again,” she warned.

“I’ve no intention of staying. Do as I tell you, woman. Stay with Moonfeather—no matter what. Stay beside her.” He waved his arms and shouted in Mohawk.

“He’s telling them that if anyone crosses the river, Ohneya is a dead man,” Cameron said. He squeezed her hand. “Come, lass. And I hope you’re as good a runner as Moonfeather. We must move like the wind to keep ahead of these devils.”

When they all reached the shelter of the forest on the far side of the river, Kitate slammed Ohneya across the back of his head with the flat of his tomahawk. Ohneya crumpled to the ground and lay as though dead. Sterling took hold of Cailin’s arm, and they began to run through the pitch darkness.

For nearly half a mile, they ran. Cailin’s lungs burned and her legs felt like lead. She made no effort to speak; she just ran, keeping on the trail by watching the faint glow of Moonfeather’s white doeskin dress ahead of her.

When they reached an outcropping of loose rock, Lachpi stopped. “There!” Cameron said. “It’s up there to the right.”

Sterling pulled her off the trail and took a firm grip on her hand. Together, they climbed a steep incline to a spot where a freak windstorm the winter before had felled dozens of giant trees. She remembered Moonfeather pointing it out to her on the way to the Mohawk village.

“It’s a natural fortress,” Cameron explained when they reached the top. “We’ll hold them off here.” He was breathing heavily, and Cailin wondered how a man of his advanced years had managed to keep up the pace.

“We can’t fight them all,” Cailin protested. “The Mohawks must have close to a hundred warriors. We’ve got to keep going. We’ll be trapped here.”

“We’re not all going on, lass,” her father said. He sat down heavily behind a downed oak and began to fumble with his powder horn.

Moonfeather spoke in Algonquian. Cameron answered her in the same language, then Kitate said something.

“What are they saying?” Cailin demanded of Sterling. “I can’t understand.”

“Quiet,” he ordered. Then he too spoke in the Indian tongue. After a few exchanges, he turned and pulled her into his arms. “Listen to me carefully,” he said, speaking slowly, as though to a small child. “I want you to take off your clothes and put on Moonfeather’s doeskin dress.”

“Why? That doesn’t make any sense,” she protested.

Moonfeather materialized out of the blackness, wrapped in Lachpi’s blanket. Her beautiful ceremonial garment was draped over her arm. “We are going to split up,” she said. “I want you to wear my doeskin because that will make the Mohawk believe you are the peace woman.”

“That’s crazy,” Cailin said. “I’ll nay put ye in danger for my sake. I canna—”

“You can and you will,” Sterling said harshly. “Moonfeather tells me that you are carrying our child.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t make me a cripple. I’m still—”

“Kitate, Joseph, and this woman will flee east and then south to the Dutch,” Moonfeather said. “In your clothing, I can pass myself off as Lady Kentington and receive safe passage to Annapolis. In Shawnee dress, this one would only be a target for white long rifles.”

“Then we should stay together,” Cailin insisted. “I can—”

“Listen to those who know what they’re talking about,” Cameron snapped. “You and Sterling will go west to the friendly Algonquian-speaking tribes. The Mohawks will expect us to go south. If we do, we’re all dead.”

“What of you and the others?” she begged. Something didn’t sound right. This was giving her a bad feeling. They weren’t telling her everything. She knew it. “Why aren’t you going with us?”

“Pukasee, Ake, Lachpi, and I will hold the Mohawk off here, long enough to give both parties a head start,” Cameron said.

Sterling’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “Be strong,” he murmured.

“No,” she cried. “That’s suicide. I won’t let you stay—”

“What you want isn’t important,” Cameron said coldly.

Frantically, she turned to Moonfeather. “Ye canna let him do this. Tell them! They’ll listen to you! Tell them it’s crazy.”

Moonfeather held out the dress.

“How can ye be so heartless?” Cailin begged. “He’s my father. He’s an old man.”

“And he’s dying,” the peace woman said in a throaty voice. “He took a knife between the ribs back in the village.”

“Dying?” Tears welled up in Cailin’s eyes. “He can’t be,” she sobbed. “He’s my father.”

“And mine,” Moonfeather replied softly. Catching Cailin’s hand, she brought it to her own throat.

“You can’t be my—” Cailin gasped as her fingers touched a necklace so like the Eye of Mist in weight and shape that she released it and grabbed her own to be certain Moonfeather wasn’t playing a cruel trick. “That’s impossible,” she said. “How—”

“Do you never listen, lass?” Cameron said. “There is little time. We can’t waste what we do have in talking. I cut the Eye of Mist into four equal pieces. If it weren’t as black as the devil’s arsehole in this woods, you’d see for yourself. Moonfeather’s necklace is a match to yours. They fit together perfectly. Each of my daughters has one; Anne, Moonfeather, Fiona, and you. You are the baby, Cailin ... a gift I never expected to receive at the end of my life.”

“But ... but ...” Cailin struggled to understand the reality of what her father had just said. “Moonfeather, my sister? Why didn’t ye tell me sooner?”

“’This woman wanted to wait until we were friends ... until you proved your heart,” Moonfeather explained. “Quickly, now. The dress.”

“I won’t do it,” Cailin replied stubbornly. “If Cameron—if Father’s hurt, we must do something. We canna—”

“Take those clothes off,” Sterling said, “or I’ll rip them off.”

“You must,” Moonfeather said.

“But if the Mohawks think you are me, I’m putting you in danger,” she argued.

“Put on the damned dress!” Sterling grabbed hold of the hem of her skirt.

“All right, all right. I’ll change with ye. But I’ll nay leave Cameron. If the rest of you are too cowardly to stay with him, I’ll stay by myself. I can shoot a rifle.”

Moonfeather didn’t answer. Instead, she helped Cailin out of her English clothing and into the deerskin dress. It was so dark that Cailin didn’t give a second thought to disrobing in front of the men. Only the white fringed gown was visible in the starless night.

“Don’t forget the shawl,” Cameron reminded them. Moonfeather made a sound of agreement and draped the cloth over Cailin’s hair.

Cailin dropped to her knees and embraced Cameron. “I’m nay going to leave ye,” she promised. “We can patch up your wound, carry ye, and—”

Cameron’s arms encircled her. He hugged her hard, then kissed her on the forehead. “Go with God, child. And don’t worry about me. I’d rather meet my maker smelling of gunpowder than being wheeled into heaven in a dogcart.”

“No ... no,” she protested.

Moonfeather knelt beside them, and for a long minute, Cameron hugged them both. “Ye must go for the sake of the babe,” her new sister reminded Cailin. “Our father’s life is used up; the little one you carry has yet to draw breath.” She tucked a shell bracelet into Cailin’s hand. “Wear this, so that all who are not Iroquois know that you are kin to a Shawnee peace woman. If anything happens to Sterling, that bracelet will bring you safely home. You can go to any village. As long as you do not offer violence to the tribes, you will be welcomed as a daughter and given aid.”

Sterling tugged at her arm. “It’s time, Cailin.”

“I canna,” she sobbed. “Dinna make me.”

“Remember what I said about your mother,” Cameron reminded her. “She loved you as I have come to love you.”

As Sterling pulled her to her feet, Cailin felt another hand on her other shoulder.

“Among the Delaware are no words for goodbye, my sister,” Lachpi said in his quaintly accented English. “Follow sun’s path west and do not forget another who loved you.”

“Lachpi ...” Words failed her.

“This man stays to give good fight,” the Delaware said. “Mohawk will sing about this place and the Shawnee who held it.”

“No! No!” Cailin cried. But Sterling’s hand was welded to hers.

“We must go now,” Sterling said harshly, “or they will give their lives in vain. Make it worth something, woman. Make their sacrifice count.”

Blindly, Cailin stumbled after him. “Take care,” she murmured. “Take care.”

“And you, little sister,” Moonfeather called after them. “Do not forget the power of your amulet. Use it to bring your new son safely to the Chesapeake. This woman will be waiting.”

Cailin didn’t understand how Sterling could see to walk, let alone run, or have any idea what direction they were traveling. There had been no time for a joyous reunion with her husband, no moment when she could relax in his arms and tell him how much she loved him. Instead, they kept moving, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and the hilltop fortress before the Iroquois found it.

She didn’t know how far she and Sterling had come, but they were still close enough to hear the first volley of rifle fire echo through the valleys.

“The Mohawks!” Her belly knotted, and she swayed on her feet. “Sweet Jesus.”

Sterling’s only reply was to sweep her up in his arms and begin to run.

 

Dawn found Cailin and Sterling wading through the debris of a burned-out section of forest. The blackened trees and heaped ash seemed all too appropriate to Cailin. The landscape around her seemed as bleak as her hope of eluding the Mohawks.

“It was wrong,” she argued with Sterling for the fifth time. “It was wrong to leave them, and I was wrong to take Moonfeather’s dress. ’Twas done for my safety, not hers. Do ye think me stupid? She proved her power in front of the entire Mohawk village. They might be afraid to shoot her.”

“That’s true enough,” he admitted. “But what she said about the Dutch was true, too. She’ll need to look English if she wants the help of any white settlers.”

“Why did she choose Kitate and Joseph to go with her? Why did Lachpi and Ake and Pukasee have to die with my father?”

“Lachpi couldn’t have run much farther with that bullet in his leg. Joseph and Kitate were the strongest and best able to protect the peace woman. Besides, Kitate is her son.”