Thieving Forest (18 page)

Johanna hesitates, and then she says, “It seems, well, not quite right. To waste powder and shot on a woman. Forgive me, I am thinking like a Potawatomi.”

“But why else would they shoot?” Beatrice asks.

Johanna hesitates again. “I don’t know.”

The wind dies away for a moment and Susanna thinks about what Meera saw, a red-haired woman with a group of Wyandots. But that doesn’t make sense, either; they were taken by Potawatomi. How does one determine the truth of a story? And yet she has never been especially motivated by truth. Luck and superstition—this is what she relies on, much to the dismay of her sisters, who do not. Johanna lifts the lid to the water cask and fills a cup. She passes it to Beatrice, who takes a sip. Beatrice has always been drawn to hardship, Susanna thinks. She wants to do big things: run a trading post in a remote settlement without a man’s help, die in her sister’s stead, convert natives to a Christian life. The idea of sacrifice appeals to her. But not to me.

Outside the rain is thinning but the sky is as dark as ever. Johanna suggests they go back to the Sisters’ Choir before the next storm hits. Beatrice looks at Susanna. Her face is soft, not the face of the overbearing older sister from a month ago, or even this morning.

“I just want forgiveness,” she says.

Susanna gives her a handkerchief. “Maybe there’s nothing to forgive.”

Beatrice hands Susanna her crumpled rag and wipes her face with the handkerchief. Then she stands up and looks for her shawl. She will be all right, Susanna thinks. She will be fine here.

“Beet,” she says. “Do you have any cedar boxes on the shelves? I need one for the Chippewa necklace. To carry it in.”

Maumee River Valley

Twelve

Back in Severne each sister had a dream but they were all different dreams.

Penelope married a man whom, she found out too late, she couldn’t abide. Thomas Forbes. When he was irritated Thomas’s breath grew bad and he was irritated often. At night coming in from the fields he never asked Penelope how she fared, he only looked for his supper. On the one hand Penelope understood that this was because he was bone tired from breaking ground all day, but on the other hand she could not help but feel lonely. She missed living with her sisters. She missed the chatter and noise. She was supposed to do whatever Thomas Forbes told her to do but he spoke to her so curtly, and she found she had too much pride for such plain commands. When Thomas died after being kicked in the head by his horse, she tried to remember the boy she’d wanted to marry but even so she could not cry. The other farmers called her hard-hearted and began the rumors that she was barren and cold.

Her dream now is no longer the dream of marriage. In her dream she does not have to marry ever again. She wants to run a store in Philadelphia with her sisters. She prefers Philadelphia because, after Thomas Forbes, Severne became the place of her failure. She dreams of leaving.

She is almost too dazed to take in the irony of this as she stumbles along the forest path that takes her farther and farther away from Severne. She is tied by the wrist to a native woman, who pulls her sharply whenever she trips. They turned west out of Thieving Forest and almost without a pause in the trees entered the next forest, this one with darker ferns and a rockier path. If it has a name she does not know it. Vines hang down from the elms on either side of her and roots as hard as stone push up through the ground. Walking is a test of avoidance and balance. The thick tree canopy casts them into a prolonged twilight, and Penelope can get no sense of passing time. She and Naomi have been separated, each tied to a different woman. They are no longer with the Potawatomi. They have been traded to the Wyandots for a few muskrat skins and a horse.

It came about suddenly. Just as the scarred Potawatomi was leading Beatrice away, another Potawatomi with small round cheekbones like early apples told Penelope and Naomi to come with him quickly. A band of Wyandots and their horses had been spotted nearby. The Potawatomi carried one of the sacks with the Quiners’ belongings over his shoulder, and he said to them in English, “Your sister traded for a horse but will be lucky to get one muskrat skin for the two with me now.”

In this way Penelope learned that Beatrice hadn’t been killed. She is grateful for that at least.

As they walked into the forest the Potawatomi signaled for them to be quiet, and he packed his rifle as they walked the last few yards, disturbing a family of bobolinks that scurried for cover. They came out of the trees to see twenty or so Wyandots sitting on tree stumps and rocks. One man was rearranging the bags on a horse and turned his head in surprise. The Potawatomi raised his rifle and shot under one horse and then over another one, perhaps to show how little he cared if these animals lived or died. A tactic. The horses shied and tried to take themselves off but the Wyandots caught them by their manes and stood possessively next to them, two to a horse. After a long negotiation—during which Naomi’s arm was repeatedly squeezed and Penelope had her loose hair fingered by several of the women—the Potawatomi ended up with the largest horse and an armful of pelts. He then pushed Penelope and Naomi toward the Wyandots, and Naomi fell over an exposed root into the mud.

Everyone laughed. She stood up, blinking, the left side of her dress smeared with black.

About two dozen Wyandots make up the group, more women than men, plus a handful of children. The women are slender and attractive with dark hair and light coppery skin. Quite a few of the men have plucked all the hair from one side of their head and wear skin kilts decorated with the Iroquois symbol: )(.

Penelope was given to a thin woman with a long, beakish nose who wears a necklace of dyed porcupine quills. Every so often the woman strides ahead and then jerks Penelope up by the arm in a show of power. Naomi is with this woman’s sister or daughter—it is hard to guess their ages. They both wear wrap-around dresses and share a dog for protection. Toward the rear of the group the horses walk without riders, their rumps slapped by one of the three men who guard them if their pace becomes too slow.

In Severne the Wyandots are said to be horse thieves. But the farmers called all natives horse thieves. Penelope’s main worry is this: how can she and Naomi prove their value? Only if the Wyandots believe that they are useful will they be fed and kept alive.

When they come to another clearing, the women begin to search for groundnuts. Penelope and Naomi are untied and told to help. Penelope wants to impress them by finding more nuts than anyone else, but her Wyandot mistress keeps scolding her for straying too far. When she thinks no one is looking she hides one in her pocket.

Back with the others she empties her apron of nuts and is pleased to see that Naomi has found a good many as well. Out of the large pile Naomi and Penelope are given only one each. They eat them quickly, and then Penelope licks the inside of the shell. One man laughs at her.

“
Gwi gishgama
,” he says, and pantomimes a big belly. He thinks she is fat? Penelope blushes and looks at Naomi, who looks back without expression. Both of their dresses are torn almost to shreds. Penelope’s armpits are wet with sweat. For her part she thinks these Wyandots odious and uncouth. They use no water pouches but drink straight from puddles with their hands.

As the sun is setting they come to a stream too fast and deep to wade across, so the men fashion rafts by cutting down dry saplings and overlaying them with brush. When Penelope and her mistress are settled on one, two men sitting on the bank push them off with their feet. But by the middle of the stream the raft is a good three inches under the water, and although it does not sink entirely Penelope’s legs get soaked to the bone. By this time the sun has sunk below the horizon and she cannot make out if the vines on the opposite bank are grapes or poison ivy.

They disembark, abandon the raft, and walk only far enough to get clear of the line of scrub along the water. This is where they will spend the night. The women begin peeling dry bark from the birch trees to make little shelters. Their dogs, excited and hungry, run back to the stream bank and stand there barking.

Naomi and Penelope are told to build a fire and carry up water. They are made to understand that they will do their mistresses’ work for them every day: fetching water, making the fire, cooking. If they do all this to their mistresses’ satisfaction then they will be fed.

“We will starve to death, then,” Naomi says in a flat voice. She has finished her chores but not quickly enough and has been given no food. Her red hair has come out of its braid and is hanging loosely down her back.

Penelope puts her arm around Naomi’s shoulders. They are sitting a ways back from the fire, farther away even than the dogs. A few bright stars are out, and bats swoop in jagged circles above their heads. She gives Naomi the groundnut she has been saving. Taking care of her sister is now her first responsibility. She pulls off her wet stockings and stretches them out beside her to dry. She tries not to despair although there is no chance of escape and nowhere, in any case, to escape to. They might run miles in any direction and find nothing but more wilderness. She thinks of Severne, a long way behind them.

“We must submit to them entirely and do what they tell us. Maybe some opportunity will come.” If we live long enough, she thinks.

Naomi lays her head against Penelope’s shoulder. “I’m so hungry,” she says.

It is no good wishing she had something more to give her but Penelope wishes it anyway, feeling in her pocket as if some morsel of corncake or nut might still be lodged deep in its corner. Can it really be that just this morning they were all in their cabin? And now one sister is surely dead and the rest have been traded around like horses. Penelope thinks of Susanna. She is all right at least.

Penelope kisses the top of Naomi’s head. Back home Naomi usually ate her supper quickly in a rush to get back to her violin, but she has no violin now. They are sitting on the moist ground, and one Wyandot woman passing by takes pity on them and gives them a blanket to share. Some hours later, when the camp is still and there is no sound except for the rushing stream behind them, Penelope wakes to find that Naomi has thrown off her portion of the blanket and is sleeping on her side with one arm over her head, just as she always slept at home.

The next day the Potawatomi attack.

They come in the morning after most of the Wyandots have bathed in the stream and are drying themselves and their clothes near little campfires scattered around the clearing. A layer of cottony clouds is spread out above them, peeled back in one spot like someone starting on an orange. Penelope feels stiff and bruised all over. When she checks her stockings she finds bits of debris sticking to them but at least they are dry.

On impulse, she shows them to a young Wyandot woman nearby. She asks, “Do you like?” Like all of her sisters, she knows some Iroquois from working in the store, and the Wyandots speak an Iroquois dialect, Wendat, with a few Algonquin words mixed in and once in a while some French.

The woman, shorter and younger than Penelope with a thick cloud of loose dark hair, comes over to feel a stocking. She runs a cupped hand down the length of it. Her heart-shaped face reminds Penelope a little of Aurelia.

“
Skanotawa
,” the young woman says, signaling with her hands to show that she is smaller than Penelope.

“I can ravel them out and knit them to fit you,” Penelope says. She mimes what she will do. “But you must help me find my knit bag.
Ajera
. Bag.”

The knitting bag, she hopes, is in the sack of their goods tied to one of the horses, part of the trade. The young woman has to speak with two older women and a man before she is allowed to untie the sack.

“I wonder if we could get your violin, too,” Penelope says while she and Naomi watch the young woman go through their belongings. “You could play something.”

“It isn’t there,” Naomi says. “The Potawatomi kept it. Besides, I don’t have my bow anyway.”

“Maybe you could fashion something, a flute or a drum...”

“A flute! You must be mad. What would I do with a flute? Just because I play the violin doesn’t mean I can play the flute.”