All True Not a Lie in It (42 page)

—I will go. We will.

He does not let up:

—And when, I must ask, will you do so?

I shrug and look at the ceiling: no scalps hanging. A cobweb drifts in the light. I say vaguely:

—My Indian father knows. Women and children will travel easier in the spring.

—Black Fish is not an unkind man. For one, it is good of him to lend you to me for the afternoon.

Hamilton’s arms clamp again to his sides and his face opens, he is near smiling. My hands are cool beneath their coat of black powder. I say:

—Not sold?

—No. He will not sell you. Not for any price I named. He says you are a good son and a good hunter and gunsmith as well. You must be very proud.

—Is that so?

—It is.

—Well then. I am proud.

Hamilton turns and looks out at the sky with its fat grey underbelly. He puts his hands behind him and says in a soft, more Irish manner:

—Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

More rain, more mud, more cold coming. The cold will preserve you, Rebecca, Jemima, boys, Squire. Neddy. At this time I do struggle with the thought of you being preserved, Ned, I will admit it.

Now Hill’s grey eyes appear in my mind, all curious. I say:

—What are you going to do with the whites my Indian father did sell you? Sell them on?

Hamilton looks at me from the side and says, still soft:

—It is a surprisingly cold country. A cold quite different from any I have ever known. I was born in Dublin, which is wet, but here it is not the damp, it is the ice in the air. It crystallizes on the skin remarkably. I dare say you find it as hard to sleep here in winter as I do.

His carefully dull face is almost beseeching. His hands go back to his elbows. Do not fall into this small trap, this small invitation to confidences. See his long waxy fingers with their yellowy nails. See him on top of his mountain of old hair. He says almost absently:

—A strange country. People simply go off and vanish here. It happens so often. Quite odd.

Oh, is that your game, Governor? He slips two fingertips under his wig for a scratch. See regiments of vanished people marching about, changing clothes and giving themselves new names, as easy as pie. Or being hidden in vanished graves. Easier still. He goes on:

—Your daughter was returned safely to you, however. I was pleased to know of it. Her story is quite a sensation in Europe, I hear, as is her father. Paintings, books, poems about her. They do
take an interest in the more romantic aspects of our wild territory. Have you seen any?

Hill, I think of your stories spreading from you like clouds and drifting across the whole of the world, infecting all of it. But you are locked away here, hidden now. I say nothing, but Hamilton sees me looking at him and his face takes on the slyness of a cat who has seen a bird but is pretending not to see it. He says:

—Here is another question for you. Tell me, is it true that you were born the same day as the Queen of France?

He gives another boxy laugh. His question is real and eager. I answer slowly:

—The Queen of France. If they say so of me, it must be true.

—Then perhaps you will be living in a glass palace soon enough. Speaking
en français
. Do you know, I can quite see it. Destiny is a capricious mistress. And why not French? You seem to have a knack for the Shawnee tongue.

The lines of his face stretch out and I am put in mind of a net hanging underwater. A snap, a tightening, and it closes again.

T
HE
Q
UEEN
of France would eat her liver for my horse. Glossy white it is, with a waving white mane and tail. It looks like a painting of a horse, it looks quite varnished.

—Is that where Hair-Buyer got his wig from? A fine gift for Sir Turtle.

Pompey strokes the horse’s mane with a slow hand. The horse rolls her eyes and dips her lashes.

—Too beautiful for me, is that right?

—That is right enough. You have everything you wish as it is. Why did he give her to you? You were no help to him.

—He wants to keep me sweet. He thinks I might change my mind.

—Will you?

—I might. Make free and jump on, Pompey. That pony of yours looks as though it suffers beneath you.

I am walking beside the tall animal. It moves like water. It is morning and we have left Detroit behind. Callaway and Hill and the rest remain, they cannot see us now, but I do not ride the beautiful horse nonetheless. At this time I cut these prisoners from my mind. I cut them out like holes in wool. I do not wish to be their saviour even if I could. This is the truth.

People vanish here. A simple recipe.

I do not wish to see them. I do not wish to think.

Here is what I have. This white horse. Gunpowder on my hands and a few dregs in my pouch. A bag of silver trade trinkets and sweets from the Governor’s secretary, handed over at daybreak with the message that I was to make use of them with the Indians. I said:

—They treat me well enough.

The secretary looked as if he had something else stuffed beneath his white shirt and his snappish politeness. He said:

—They refuse to sell you yet. Will you not sell yourself?

He touched his pocket gently as though by chance. And this was my chance, as I know. I might go back to the British, or act as if I had. Live at Detroit and have feather pillows and be praised all day long. Ride to Boonesborough with a column of redcoats behind. Secure a safe passage to Fort Detroit for the families, turn all of them British again. The Bryans would like it. Feather pillows for all, why not. Another new life.

But it was an impossible picture, it smelled dry and bad. It was a turning back, which I have never liked. And a recklessness had me by the neck. Hamilton had reminded me of the war going on. War makes people want to dig in and win. This is the way I explained it to myself, stupid as it is, stupid as a mallet banging on a rock.

I think of Old Chillicothe. But we do not go straight home. We accompany the other chiefs back to their winter towns first. The route is longer and muddier also. Spring.

Do not think.

Well I do not think. I get on the horse.

The violet-blanketed chief has a small village, a poor enough place in a hollow, but all of his people come out to see us arrive. They stand at the doors of their huts. The older ones look shrunken or sick, their hands tight about their ribs. A couple of the boys point
at Pompey, and one makes a sign at me, his small fingers turn to small horns on his forehead.

—Your reputation precedes you.

I make no reply to Pompey. I am an empty house where sounds echo and have nothing to catch upon.

The trees sharpen before the late sky. All the village youths dance indifferently, their heads spiked with turkey and crow feathers, nodding and shuffling in a row. The women serve hominy with chunks of last year’s pumpkin in it. Their faces are proud but it is the sort of proud that goes with being too poor. I wonder again about their chief’s marvellous blanket, which I have never seen him without. He might sell it and feed them. I wonder what he traded for it. Perhaps a piece of this country. But perhaps it is the best thing he has ever got and he cannot give it up, the purple scrap of a dream of betterment. He tucks it about himself now with care.

I eat my plateful but I am struck with a sudden desire for grapes, or apples, or plums. Something fresh from a plant or a tree. Too early yet. But it is something to think of, a plum with a white bloom all over it, and yellow flesh inside the blue skin. And a stone at the heart, of course. Plums are well-made things. Near perfect things.

I see an orchard of plums in Kentucky, that is to say the Kentucky of my dreams, but the shreds of my old dreams do not help me. The violet-blanketed chief is smoking and talking intently with the others, a mixture of tongues. Shawnee, Cherokee, something other. I pick up a little, but I do not try much.

I sit with Kaskee, who is tossing a small stone from hand to hand. Pompey wanders over from the chiefs and says:

—They talked of you first tonight, big man. Beloved of the Governor.

—Did they? This should not surprise me, I suppose.

—Does it surprise you?

I am weary. I say:

—Need you ask? You seem to know everything about me. What am I thinking of right now? You tell me. You are the interpreter, my friend.

—I am not your friend. Do you miss your white friends? The ones Black Fish sold?

I shake my head. I set my eyes on the children dancing, and I say:

—He might have sold you.

—He did not.

He looks ruffled, he blinks long. I say:

—You must be quite special to him. Pompey, beloved of the chief.

Pompey grunts and says:

—A special possession. A curiosity. So special he will not let me go.

—And where would you go?

—Where could I go?

—Anywhere you like. I am not stopping you.

He gets up and walks off. What he is thinking I cannot tell, and I do not care. The dancers start up again as the chiefs rise from their circle.

One of the boys, quite a tall boy, is at the centre of the line now. He raises his arms stiff as planks above his head. His top teeth grip his bottom lip. He stands still. He is meant to do something but cannot do it or cannot remember it. He keeps his arms up. Then at once he lunges to the left and his ankle bends over. He topples and balls himself up. The other dancers stop. I am sorry for him, I know how he must feel. I look to Pompey, sitting across the fire, but he for one is watching me instead, considering, and tapping his knuckles on the ground as if testing ice.

The warriors go on and on about the white horse, they offer me anything in exchange. Houses, shirts, beads, wampum belts miles long, favours, wives. When we stop at the towns we are entertained and the chiefs are good to me, but the warriors keep up their teasing with serious faces. They say:

—My wife I give to you for this horse.

I say:

—No.

This does not quiet them. They laugh at my Shawnee accent and kiss the animal’s neck and sigh and whistle after her: I will love you better than he does. I will love you under your tail. Name her after your daughter, Turtle, I will ride her.

Kaskee grins. I would murder them all, him too, at this time if there were some instant way to have it done.

In the morning when we set off, a pair of the warriors set into the same talk. My horse, my daughter. They whistle and hoot as they are always doing. But Black Fish turns and halts his mount. He looks back at me for the first time since we left Hamilton. Now he looks at the rest in turn and they are quiet.

The horse stalks on as if blind to mud and other horses and anything walking on two legs. She has dark, damp eyes. She drops a mass of dung without breaking her high stepping. The warriors laugh themselves sick, and she carries on without a flicker. Perhaps she is deaf truly. There is always a flaw, as it seems to me. Stewart, for a moment I see you. Your flaw also, deafness. One I would not mind having instead of all my silver and sweets, all my gifts.

For five days Pompey keeps back from me as we go on to other towns. Then he rides up on his Sweet Apples into the wood where I and Kaskee and two others have been dispatched to shoot some dinner for
the night’s camp. We are at the edge of a narrow clearing, readying our shot. Black Fish has given me some powder. I have not told him of the handful I took from Detroit, some of which I have sprinkled out in a little trail as we have gone. A trail to nothing in particular.