Bone Rattler (56 page)

“It isn’t about Pike today,” Duncan said to his brother.

“He still wants me dead.”

“And me half a minute later, if he had his way. And if not Pike, then Ramsey.”

“I do not fear a lout like Ramsey,” Jamie said, though worry had entered his voice.

“If it was Pike with the Huron last year at Ticonderoga, then surely they must work together. The warning yesterday, it was Huron meant to draw your men away. Half the Ramsey Company, and Hawkins, are still missing.” Duncan turned to face the assembly at
the great tree. “Ramsey can’t abide a victory by Pike. He wants you dead, Jamie. Hawkins is his weapon. For God’s sake, take your men and leave.” But when Duncan turned back, his brother was gone.

 

 

Tashgua had been recounting the spiritual history of his people and was inviting Ramsey to speak when Duncan reached the tree. The patron seemed to have trouble controlling his emotions, and raw hatred burned in his eyes as the sachem lifted the charter from its bark tube. For a moment it seemed Ramsey was about to berate the old Indian again. But a slender figure dressed in white doeskin appeared between them. Sarah accepted the parchment from Tashgua, then unrolled it and held it in front of her father. Ramsey glanced uneasily at his daughter, cleared his throat, and began reciting the king’s words. At the end of each phrase, Sarah lowered the parchment and translated for the assembled Iroquois, now numbering over thirty. The chieftains listened solemnly, some studying the tree as they did so.

When Ramsey finished, he looked up expectantly, only to find Ravencatcher standing with one of his dress wigs extended on his bear skull stick. “Now become this one, and read it again.”

“Nonsense,” Ramsey said, in the tone he used for addressing servants.

Ravencatcher turned and indicated more wigs lined up on a log. “You will speak it as each of the people you claim to be.”

Ramsey clenched his jaw, glanced at Arnold, and accepted the wig.

It was the chief with the fox skin who stood and addressed Ramsey when he was done. “What is it you will do with the land if your lord presents it to you?” he asked in a contemplative tone.

“I will make it yield to men,” Ramsey replied. “I will build great towns. I will turn rocks into a gun, a tree into a house, a stream into a mill that feeds five hundred. What have you done with the land?” he asked, gesturing toward the wooded ridges. “It is but a wasteland in your hands. Have you improved it in all these centuries?”

Ravencatcher translated, then walked around Sarah and Ramsey as his father watched with an expression of deep curiosity. “What you say
is that your way requires you to make things from the land.” Tashgua’s son was speaking for himself now. “Is that the source of your magic?”

For a moment Ramsey seemed intrigued. “Yes. It is the destiny of men to use the tools they have been given.”

“And when all the land is gone there will be only things in your world. Will those things have life?”

“No. They will allow for more people, for stronger people.”

“So you treat the land as a dead thing. You will take the strength out of it. But without the land, without the bear, without the otter, the owl, the deer, what spirits will live in the people? Those spirits will never be stronger than they are today.”

Duncan inched away. Woolford had reappeared among the rocks.

“Ramsey’s two cargo canoes are empty,” the ranger reported when Duncan reached him. “Pike’s men carried the contents up here. I’ll search the far side,” Woolford added, and sprinted away.

Duncan moved obliquely, as inconspicuously as possible, toward the back of the oak. Boot marks, many of them, in the moist soil at the base, showed repeated back-and-forth movements. A shadow flashed over his shoulder. Pike’s ox-like sergeant, the man who days earlier had towered over Duncan with manacles, stared at him with a hungry glint, his fists opening and shutting as if preparing for action. Duncan shifted one way, then another, darting around the man’s side to appear in the open beside the seated Iroquois.

Arnold was speaking, the rolled charter in his hand now, his words like some rehearsed homily. As he finished, he stuffed the charter into the sleeve of his coat, draped it over the log he had been sitting on, then stepped toward the soldiers who, as if on cue, rose from the log some of them sat on and parted, pulling away the blanket that had covered the log to reveal two wooden kegs. The sergeant appeared by the kegs, lifting one onto a rock, and with a flat stone pried up the sealed ring of willow that had secured the cap. Arnold began lifting objects out, unwrapping the leather scraps that covered many of them, passing them out among the Indians. Combs. Flint strikers. Horn cups. Pewter spoons.

A murmur of excitement moved through the Iroquois. Ravencatcher watched with chagrin. Tashgua remained expressionless. The sergeant lifted the second keg, settled it onto two logs, and pulled out the bung at the bottom. A thick yellow substance oozed out. Honey.

Arnold gestured the Indians forward, led them back to the tree and into its dark hollow. Duncan, every instinct screaming alarm, followed. The soldiers had turned the hollow into a warehouse. Kegs were stacked five high, thirty kegs, perhaps forty, all stamped with the Ramsey
R
—the very kegs he had seen in the Ramsey cellar. As Arnold began speaking about how the gifts would be distributed among all the tribes, Duncan watched soldiers tending a new fire two hundred feet away, holding up tin mugs for the Iroquois.

Duncan lingered as the chieftains filed out for the hot tea being offered by the soldiers. In the light that filtered through the holes and slits along the base of the tree, he quickly searched for hidden weapons. There were none, only the stacks of kegs packed with bribes for the Iroquois, proof of the power of Ramsey’s protecting spirit. He exited the dark chamber and circuited the massive trunk again, to no avail. On the log in front of him were Arnold’s coat and hat. Lying nearby was the carved drum log Tashgua and his son had used the day before. Arnold was at the fire, beside Ramsey, serving out tea from a tall kettle. Tashgua was ten feet away, his eyes closed now as he chanted in a whisper. With one swift motion, Duncan pulled the charter from Arnold’s sleeve and slipped it into the log drum. He lifted the log, a hand at both ends, and ceremoniously carried it into the tree chamber, kneeling to set it in the center of the pool of light cast through the entry. He glanced up to see Arnold watching him now. He offered the vicar a nod, then solemnly ran his hand along the log drum. Arnold shot him a peeved glance, took a step toward Duncan, then was interrupted by Sarah’s outstretched hand. She looped her arm through Arnold’s, then led him in the opposite direction, back toward the fire.

Suddenly Duncan spotted Woolford splashing across the stream, sprinting at a desperate pace up the trail to the camp. With terrible
foreboding Duncan watched him disappear behind the outcroppings. He dared not follow, dared not leave Ramsey with the Indians.

The Iroquois were admiring the gifts from the keg, hefting some of the powder horns the sergeant had produced, responding when another of Pike’s soldiers set the keg of honey on a root at the foot of the tree and gestured for them to come and sweeten their cups.

“Your heart,” said a quiet voice at Duncan’s side. “She has your heart in her dreams.”

Duncan turned to see Tashgua, sitting in his chair of roots. The old Indian’s wrinkled face seemed beyond age, so ancient, so full of secrets from other centuries, other worlds. Duncan longed to sit with him for hours, for days, to learn something of life in the forest before the Europeans came, to absorb some of the things that could not be spoken. Then he realized that in the middle of the long-awaited ceremony, the old shaman wanted to speak of Sarah.

“There was a terrible storm at sea,” Duncan said. He had never felt more humbled, more insignificant, before another person.

“A mother storm,” Tashgua declared, as if he had been there.

“I was going to die. Then she was going to die. Then the storm swallowed us and spat us back out.”

“We know,” the shaman murmured. “It was the first miracle. The water miracle.”

Duncan’s breath caught in his throat. The Iroquois had decided that his saving Sarah had been one of their prophesied miracles.

“Part of both of you died in that storm,” Tashgua said before Duncan could respond.

Duncan swallowed hard. He looked up at the massive tree and with a strange sense of release knew it to be true. Since the hour he had saved Sarah there were parts of his life that were indeed dead, never to go back to, just as new parts had been created. “I am not strong enough to be in Sarah’s dreams.” The words came out unbidden, and Duncan looked up with an expression of surprise.

Tashgua, strangely, smiled. “Her dreams are for all of us. We do not control them. She does not need our strength. She needs our
understanding. It is not an easy thing to live in this world and another at the same time.”

Duncan realized he did not know for certain which worlds Tashgua spoke of. But then he gazed out among the Iroquois and knew they would have to speak of it another time. “You must tell them to leave,” he pleaded.

Tashgua offered another small, serene grin. “We will all be the same, you know, all of us linked forever by this day.”

“The soldiers and Lord Ramsey, they . . . .” His voice trembled as he felt the quiet power of the man beside him. “Please,” he added in a whisper, beginning to lift the stone bear from his pocket.

Tashgua, seeming to anticipate his intention, raised a hand to stop him. “We came so the spirits could speak to us. Nothing else matters,” Tashgua said, then lifted his hand and gently placed his palm on Duncan’s heart. “Do I have your blessing?” the shaman abruptly asked him.

Duncan stared in disbelief as the stiff old hand reached down and clasped Duncan’s. He returned the grip, squeezing tightly, then the aged prophet rose and stepped inside the tree. Tashgua gazed at the log drum in the pool of light in wonder, as if it had magically transported itself into the center of the tree cave, then sat beside it, his fingers running along its ranks of carved animals, the motion slowly converting to the quiet, steady heartbeat sound.

The final realization came in pieces as Duncan walked out among the Iroquois gathering before the tree, some taking honey, some settling onto the ground as Tashgua’s drumming grew louder, amplified by the hollow chamber of the tree. For the first time, he noticed a grenadier’s match case on the chest belt of one of the soldiers. He saw the soldiers all moving, though not in the same direction. One, with a long horn from the keg of gifts, stepped into the shadows at the side of the tree. There was a faint scent of sulphur in the air. Pike stood with Ramsey by the fire, far from the tree. The images came faster. Something red flashing on the rocky cliff above them. The soldier with the match case moving toward the tree. Arnold retrieving his
coat from the log by the tree. Conawago, searching among the rocks by the stream, waving something at Duncan. A tool, a large hand auger. As the soldier disappeared around the tree, Duncan saw that the match case was off his belt, in his hand now.

His feet reacted faster than his mind, propelling him toward the shadows as a long, anguished moan escaped his lips. He tackled the soldier from the back, knocking the man to the ground, but as he fell, the soldier adeptly tossed the piece of smoldering match cord to the burly man, Pike’s sergeant, who was emptying the contents of the horn into a hole drilled into the tree wall.

Duncan struggled to his feet and launched himself at the sergeant, who spun about and kicked him as the slow match did its job, lighting the line of black powder now leading into the oak. As the soldiers sprinted away, Duncan staggered to the front of the tree. Arnold shouted at him, holding up his coat, his hand in the empty sleeve, his face draining of color as he understood what Duncan had done. The vicar dropped the coat and flung himself toward the drum in the tree chamber.

Duncan cried out for the Indians to flee. Most of them stared at him uncertainly, then looked back toward Tashgua. Pike snapped furious orders and two soldiers charged at Duncan. There was a sharp crack from the hillside, and the old chief wearing Jamie’s wolf pelt stumbled forward, caught by his companions. Some of the Indians began to move as Conawago took up the warning, then another figure dashed through them, calling frantically in their own tongue. Duncan spun about as Sarah paused in her sprint to push some of the chieftains away, then launched herself toward the opening through which Arnold had disappeared.

Duncan leaned forward as he reached her, his shoulder to her belly, scooping her off her feet, maintaining his frantic pace as she pounded his back, screaming out the same Iroquois word, over and over. He threw her behind a boulder, covering her with his body as with a massive roar the world came to an end.