Blood of the Oak: A Mystery Page 6

  Her attempt at another smile was forced, but it reminded him enough of his sister that he had to look away. She looked longingly at the smoldering ashes.

  “Breakfast,” he conceded in a stern voice, “but then you go back.”

  “Bien sûr. Of course,” she replied, then bent to coax the embers back to life.

  He watched the French girl uneasily, chastising himself for sleeping so soundly. It could have as easily been the murderers who had stalked into his camp in the night.

  “Do you pray, Analie?” he asked as she handed him his mug of hot tea, with the promised peppermint. He had to grudgingly acknowledge her skills in the forest.

  She cut her eyes at him. For a moment her ever-changing countenance was that of a cunning fox. “To the blessed virgin, naturally!” she replied with the fervor of a choir girl, then crossed herself as the priests would have taught her. “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” she added, then nibbled at a piece of his jerky.

  “Then swear it. Swear in the name of the Holy Mother that you have finally told me the truth and that when we extinguish this breakfast fire you will follow the trail back to Edentown.”

  “I swear it so, Duncan McCallum,” she said solemnly, crossing herself again. “Back to Edentown. Back to Miss Sarah.”

  Duncan nodded and gestured for her to sit on a log by the fire. “Tell me how you came to be with the Oneidas. How old were you?”

  “I had just had my sixth naming day when some old British officer, stinking of wig powder, came to say we had twenty-four hours to pack and leave. My papa and uncles got us into boats that night, for he said he would never have us become slaves of the British. Forty or fifty of us fled, along the Bay of Fundy. One boat overturned and no one swam away. One couldn’t sail fast enough and was taken by a British sloop. A score of us made it to Castine on the Penobscot Bay, and my father started a new farm among the French who lived there. For just a couple years, he said it would be, then we would go south, ’cause he said some of our cousins were going to the Carolinas where they would be safe. But the British kept sending troops to search for us. One night we had to flee into the woods with only the clothes on our backs. My father and brother went one way and told my mother and me to meet them in three days at the trading post in the north. We had an Indian, an Abenaki, who helped us on the farm and my father sent him with us. He kept us safe. But when we had to swim a river, he said my mama must take off her skirts or the water would pull her under. She refused, out of modesty.” Analie looked into the flames. “She never came out. She was swimming one moment and was gone the next, like a beast had swallowed her up.

  “My papa and brother never came to that post. We waited five days. A trapper came and said they had been shot. I became an Abenaki for a few months, and went to their big settlement at St. Francis. Then an old Dutch fur trader offered a kettle for me.”

  It was a rich price, Duncan knew. “Why so much?”

  Analie grinned. “My singing. They all liked my singing. But that one put a slave collar on me and made me work in the fields at his cabin. One day Red Jacob saw me. He offered three otter pelts for me. The Dutchman said I would be worth a lot more when I ripened. So Red Jacob gave him three mink pelts too. When we returned to his village by Lake Oneida he said there was no honor owning another human, and he took the collar off me.”

  “But you stayed with him?”

  Her face grew melancholy. “He made me laugh. His wife kept me fed and warm. I was accepted as one of his children.”

  “Still, you left them.”

  She nodded as she chewed more jerky. “Red Jacob was a ranger with Long Runner. They came into our lodge one day and asked if I would like to see the great Johnson Hall and the school Sir William had there for orphans. But I didn’t get to see the school because they went south.”

  “And you followed them. Like you followed me.”

  She looked into the fire. “I sang for them. I could sing for you.”

  “Someday. When I return to Edentown. Go sing for Conawago and the Long Runner as they heal from their wounds. They would like that.” Duncan finished dropping his kit into his pack and hoisted it onto his shoulder. “I will keep an eye out,” Duncan promised. “If I find any Acadians I will tell them about you, let them know you are in Edentown.”

  “My family name is Prideau. My mother was a Cyr.”

  Duncan made a show of taking out his writing lead and jotting down the names. Minutes later they parted, Analie again waving farewell as she walked back up the trail. Duncan ran out of sight then hid behind a large oak. When she appeared he tripped her again, but this time he had a switch in his hand. He put her over his knee and delivered several rapid, stinging blows. “You are going to Edentown! Did you not swear to the Holy Mother? Do you not remember what happened to Red Jacob?” he barked. “You are going to go to Sarah and apologize for making her fret over you!” He delivered one last emphatic blow. “This is the end of your games, girl, do you hear me?”

  Analie did not cry out but tears were streaming down her face when she looked up and nodded.

  He left her there but stopped after another quarter hour to confirm she was not following. He prayed she would reach Edentown before nightfall.

  THE SUSQUEHANNA WAS A GOLDEN RIBBON UNDER THE SETTING sun as he came down out of the hills, so weary from hours of running that his hands shook. He knelt at a stream, sluicing cold water over his head, before carefully scouting the broad, sandy landing place.

  Half a dozen oversized cargo canoes and two dugouts were beached at the river’s edge. Ragged, weary men, including a handful of natives, were arranging the bales of cargo around a circle of smoking wood where a heavy, bearded man knelt, blowing onto the flames.

  Duncan waited for the fire to illuminate the camp before venturing to the edge of the clearing. He stood behind the cover of an ancient sycamore and called out. “Hullo the camp!”

  His shout sent several men scrambling for weapons. In an instant three muskets were aimed in his direction.

  “One man only,” he called. “A friend.”

  The thickset, bearded man held a heavy horse pistol at the ready, but did not aim it. “That remains to be seen.”

  Duncan slowly stepped into the light, leaning his rifle on a log. “I seek swift passage to Shamokin, or Harris’s Landing if that be your destination. I can pay.”

  The big man spat tobacco juice toward Duncan’s feet. “I don’t run a damned ferry,” he groused, a Dutch accent heavy in his voice.

  Duncan calmly studied the men. Four appeared to be Iroquois, who stood together, hands on their weapons. Seven Europeans, including a huge ox of a man with black curly hair, were passing around a gourd filled with spirits. “You gentle your men with easy liquor. It makes them slow to react and slow to reach full strength in the morning. I won’t touch your spirits. I have paddled the length of Lake Ontario with Mohawk friends. My rifle, and my eye, were trained by the best of the rangers.”

  One of the natives, a tall sinewy man wearing a tattered brown waistcoat over his naked chest, stepped closer to study him.

  The bearded man rubbed his hand through his long, unkempt hair, wincing as if he had a headache.

  “My name is Duncan McCallum,” Duncan offered.

  Instantly the tall tribesman darted forward. Duncan did not resist as he unbuttoned the top of Duncan’s shirt to expose his shoulder. The muscular native, wearing the scalplock and shaved pate favored by the Mohawk, studied Duncan’s tattoo of a rising sun for a long moment, then offered a quick, respectful bow of his head to Duncan and murmured several words to his tribesmen. They moved to Duncan’s side, smiling, patting him on the back. The dawnchaser tattoo, symbol of an ancient and tortuous ritual, had been earned by only one European and it meant most of the Iroquois accepted him as one of their own. “You are the one who walks with the Nipmuc elder,” the Mohawk declared.

  “I am honored to be able to call Conawago a particular friend,” Duncan replied.

  “I
am Tanaqua,” the Mohawk explained, and clamped his forearm against Duncan’s in a tribal greeting. As he did so, he revealed his own tattoo, an intricate design of snakes and birds on the inside of his arm.

  “I guess we’ve decided,” the trader said with a reluctant grin. “Hans Bricklin” he offered, and gestured Duncan to the fire, where a stew pot was suspended on an iron tripod.

  He found unexpected camaraderie at the campfire. Two of the Iroquois had seen Duncan introduced at the fires of the Grand Council in Onondaga, and all knew of his frequent aid to the tribes, more than once finding them justice when colonial governments offered none. They spoke of mutual acquaintances among the tribes and the rangers. Tanaqua had served with the rangers and his face flickered with pride when Duncan mentioned the legendary deeds of Woolford’s and Major Roger’s men during the recent wars.

  Bricklin, a veteran of thirty trading seasons, was carrying bales of pelts, casks of maple syrup, and, in the big dugout that was his personal craft, a box of specimens for Dr. Benjamin Franklin and his circle of scientist friends in Philadelphia. Duncan eased into the questions he had for the trader, sharing some of his precious tea leaves and talking about the weather and poor state of the fur trade before asking about other travelers on the river. Since leaving the headwaters of the river, Bricklin explained, no other southbound travelers had passed them other than a family of Iroquois who, when hailed, said they were en route to relatives in Shamokin, the town at the junction of the Susquehanna branches that served as southern capital of the Iroquois Confederation.

  The grizzled Dutchman gave orders for the night watch then laid out a groundcloth for Duncan in front of the canvas-wrapped bales. In the warmth of the fire, reflected off the bales, Duncan’s exhaustion quickly overwhelmed him.

  He awoke suddenly, not in heart-pounding fear but with an unfamiliar, empty feeling. This had not been one of his nightmares of dead Highlanders. He had been in the Iroquois lodge where the sacred masks lived—they were always deemed to be as alive as any man or woman—and the hideous masks had started a death chant, a chant used in battle by those who knew they were about to die. He stared for several minutes at the brilliant carpet of stars overhead, pushing down the foreboding brought by the dream, then finally rose. It was past midnight. A solitary figure sat on a log at the water’s edge. It was Tanaqua’s turn as sentinel.

  Neither man spoke as Duncan sat beside him. Out on the river a silver ribbon erupted and, as quickly, merged back into the water. “My Nipmuc friend insists that fish try to touch the stars on nights like this,” Duncan finally observed.

  Tanaqua nodded. “I am certain of it. Have you never done the same?”

  Duncan smiled. “When I was a young boy I burned my hand trying to catch a star. My father said I was a fool not to realize it was a flying ember. My grandfather said to keep trying.”

  Tanaqua gave an amused grunt.

  “Bricklin says he hasn’t seen other travelers except an Iroquois family,” Duncan observed.

  “This river has always been a place of shadows, full of islands, cliffs, coves, and swift currents,” Tanaqua said. “A man can disappear at sunset and reappear thirty or forty miles away at dawn.”

  Duncan hesitated, careful about his reply. Tanaqua did not drink spirits, and carried a bow. He was one of the few, Conawago would say, who still walked the ancient paths. Talking with such men was like talking to the forest, the old Nipmuc once told him, for the threads of their souls were woven into the fabric of nature. The warriors of the old ways saw life differently, experienced the world in ways unknown to Europeans. Sitting beside the man Duncan felt very small, and saddened. They both knew his breed was disappearing from the earth. “Are you saying I should not trust Bricklin?”

  The Mohawk shrugged. “We keep watch. It is what we do.”

  Duncan turned back and surveyed the sleeping camp, wondering whom Tanaqua was including in his reference to “we.” Bricklin slept with his pistol, rolled in his blanket against his dugout. The big-boned, curly-haired man, an Irishman named Teague, slept nearby with a musket at his side. Why, Duncan wondered, did the Dutchman keep a box for Dr. Franklin guarded in his dugout?

  “Tomorrow the water becomes moving land. Quicksilver land,” Tanaqua observed after another long silence. “Some of the gods still favor us.”

  Now Duncan was certain he did not understand. “Captain Woolford was attacked and nearly killed while coming into Edentown,” he ventured. “An Oneida with him named Red Jacob died in an ambush, shot in the back.”

  Tanaqua, like Conawago, could express volumes in single syllables. “Ahhh,” he said, drawing it out, filling it with pain and sorrow. “Sakayengwaraton will be missed at the Council Fire.” Duncan realized it was the first time he heard Red Jacob’s tribal name. It meant Mist that rises from the ground in autumn. The Mohawk murmured something toward the stars, then turned to Duncan. “It is why you are here.”

  “You ran with the rangers.”

  Tanaqua nodded. “In the French war, yes. Elders in our clan said we had to choose one king or the other.”

  “Rangers are missing, some of them Oneida and Mohawk. Red Jacob and Woolford set out to look for them.”

  “It is a bad death for a warrior, to be shot in the back,” Tanaqua observed. “Whoever did such a thing is less than a man.”

  “The killer left four slash marks on his face. His arm was taken. His belly was sliced open and his severed hand placed inside. Conawago said it is the sign of the Trickster. Two days before this I was in Onondaga. Grandmother Adanahoe told me the Trickster had been stolen from his home. Her grandson was killed trying to recover the mask. She asked me to get Conawago and find the Trickster. But then the killers came to Edentown. They tried to kill Woolford but missed and killed a woman and wounded Conawago.”

  The words shook Tanaqua. He abruptly rose, stepped down the pebbly beach to the water’s edge, and lowered himself to his knees. He reached into the river, cupped water in his hands and offered it to the moon, then held the water close to his face and murmured to it.

  When the Mohawk did not move for several minutes Duncan cautiously approached and stood beside him.

  “Not stolen,” Tanaqua said. “A kettle gets stolen. Captured. I only hope he was captured. Otherwise it means he fled.”

  Something cold gripped Duncan’s heart. The Iroquois were glimpsing the end of their world. Conawago had shared a terrible secret with him months earlier. Several of the elders of the League suspected that the life had gone out of some of the sacred masks, as if the ancient spirits were abandoning the Iroquois.

  “I should have gone on a purification ritual before I left,” Tanaqua whispered. “I should have summoned all the members. But there was no time. And there are only four of us left. The oldest of the guardians, my half brother, knows the words to be spoken for calling the ancient ones like the Trickster. He keeps vigil in the lodge of the bear god in the west hills, and is supposed to teach me when he returns.” He looked up with a forlorn expression. “To kill like that means the old Trickster is angry. Now that he has tasted blood he will keep shaking his rattle and killing. He will dance with the bodies of the dead everywhere he goes.”

  Duncan struggled to understand. “You knew,” he said after a moment. “You knew about the stolen mask.” He heard a deep despair behind the Mohawk’s voice. He spoke as if he had some responsibility to the mask. Duncan’s breath caught in his throat as the strange words suddenly connected. He recalled the tattoo on Tanaqua’s forearm of snakes and birds, messengers of the gods. The Mohawk belonged to one of the secret Iroquois societies whose sacred duty was to protect the masks.

  “Red Jacob was killed by a musket, fired by a man,” Duncan said. “Two guns were fired at Edentown. They were not held by a god.”

  “If the Trickster passes close to a man it can seize him to do his work. Even among Christians I have heard of possession of a soul by an angry spirit.”

  “The Blooddancer did not kill a young Scot
tish woman at Edentown.”

  Tanaqua seemed not to hear him. There was nothing he could do to ease the Mohawk’s pain.

  After several minutes Duncan stepped back to his blanket. He stood with his hands over the smoldering fire, remembering nights spent in the lodges of the Iroquois elders, witnessing rituals handed down over many generations that were meant to keep the link to their gods strong. As he knelt and pulled back his blanket, something like a ceremonial rattle sounded in his mind and he looked up, half fearful that the Blooddancer was approaching.

  What happened next he remembered only as a blur of something long and sinewy. The huge rattlesnake coiled underneath his blanket lunged, aiming for the exposed flesh of his neck. The war club that knocked it aside was thrown from behind him, and Tanaqua followed it an instant later, grabbing the stunned snake by its head.

  The serpent was nearly as thick as the warrior’s arm, and at least six feet long. Its head seemed cocked in curiosity, not anger, as Tanaqua stared into its eyes. The rattle in its tail slowed, then stopped.

  Duncan spoke over his thundering heart. “If I had known this old grandfather wanted my bed I would have gladly yielded it.”

  The warrior nodded. His toss of the club had had no force in it, and he had pounced on the snake as much to rescue it as to help Duncan. In the tribes there was no worse luck than that which came from killing a snake. The snake was not the only small creature that served as a messenger to the gods, but only the snake brought dreams, and dreams were the way the gods sent messages to humans. Conawago would have insisted the snake was beside him when he had dreamed of the Iroquois spirit lodge.

  Duncan lifted a burning stick like a torch. “Up the trail,” he explained as the snake curled around Tanaqua’s arm, “I passed a field of boulders. He would find a dry bed there.”

  They walked in silence to the boulders, then Duncan waited as Tanaqua held the serpent’s head close to his own and whispered in a comforting tone. As he bent to release it, Duncan touched his arm and extended his own hand. With a look of surprise Tanaqua let Duncan take the huge snake from his hands. Duncan steadied himself, knowing that if he slipped, the viper could end his life in an instant. He put the snake’s eyes inches from his own and it strangely quieted. He whispered in Gaelic, then repeated the words in English. “The spirit of my mountain and the spirit of my forest join in you. Find us life, not death before its time.” Tanaqua kept his gaze fixed on Duncan, not the snake, as he released it.