57
A SHATTERED SMILE
Two Spears is agreeable. The matter must be spoken of before the Council, and accepted, but I think it will be done.” Jamie slouched against a pine tree, slumping a little in exhaustion. We had been in the village for a week; he had been with the sachem of the village for the greater part of the last three days. I had barely seen him or Ian, but had been entertained by the women, who were polite but distant. I kept my amulet carefully out of sight.
“Then they do have him?” I asked, and felt the knot of anxiety that had traveled with me for so long begin to loosen. “Roger’s really here?” So far, the Mohawks had been unwilling to admit either to Roger’s continued existence—or the alternative.
“Aye, well, as to that, the auld bugger’s no admitting it—for fear I should try to steal him away, I suppose—but either he’s here or he’s not far off. If the Council approves the bargain, we’ll exchange the whisky for the man in three days time—and be off.” He glanced at the heavy-laden clouds that hid the distant mountains. “God, I hope that’s rain coming, and not snow.”
“Do you think there’s any chance the Council won’t agree?”
He sighed deeply and ran a hand through his hair. It was unbound and fell rumpled over his shoulders; evidently the negotiations had been difficult.
“Aye, there’s a chance. They want the whisky, but they’re wary of it. Some of the older men will be against the bargain, for fear of the damage liquor might do to the folk; the younger men are all for it. Some in the middle say aye, take it; they can use the liquor in trade if they’re fearful of using it.”
“Wakatihsnore told you all that?” I was surprised. The sachem, Acts Fast, seemed much too cool and wily a customer for such openness.
“Not him: wee Ian.” Jamie smiled briefly. “The lad shows great promise as a spy, I will say. He’s eaten at every hearth in the village, and he’s found a lassie who’s taken a great liking to him. She tells Ian what the Council of Mothers is thinking.”
I hunched my shoulders and pulled my cloak tight around them; our perch on the rocks outside the village made us safe from interruption, but the price of visibility was exposure to the bitter wind.
“And what does the Council of Mothers say?” A week spent in a longhouse had given me some idea of the importance of the women’s opinions in the scheme of things; though they didn’t make direct decisions about general affairs, very little would be done without their approval.
“They could wish I offered some ransom other than whisky, and they’re none so sure about giving up the man; more than one lady has a small fancy for him. They wouldna mind adopting him into the tribe.” Jamie’s mouth twisted at that, and I laughed despite my worry.
“Roger’s a nice-looking lad,” I said.
“I’ve seen him,” Jamie said shortly. “Most of the men think he’s an ugly, hairy bastard. Of course, they think that of me, too.” One side of his mouth lifted reluctantly, as he brushed a hand over his jaw; knowing the Indians’ dislike of facial hair, he was careful to shave every morning.
“As it is, that may be what makes the difference.”
“What, Roger’s looks? Or yours?”
“The fact that more than one lady wants the bugger. Ian says his lassie says her aunt thinks it will make trouble to keep him; she’s thinking better to give him back to us than to have ill-feeling amongst the women over him.”
I rubbed my cold-reddened knuckles over my lips, trying to keep from laughing.
“Has the men’s Council any idea that some of the women are interested in Roger?”
“I dinna ken. Why?”
“Because if they knew, they’d give him to you for free.”
Jamie snorted at that, but gave me a reluctant lift of one eyebrow.
“Aye, maybe. I’ll have Ian mention the matter among the young men. It canna hurt.”
“You said the women wished you would offer something instead of whisky. Did you mention the opal to Acts Fast?”
He sat up straight at that, interested.
“Aye, I did. They couldna have been taken more aback had I pulled a snake from my sporran. They got verra excited—angry and fearful both, and I think they might well have done me harm, save I’d already mentioned the whisky.”
He reached into the breast of his coat and drew out the opal, dropping it into my hand.
“Best you take it, Sassenach. But I think you’ll maybe not want to show it to anyone.”
“How odd.” I looked down at the stone, its spiral petroglyph shimmering with color. “So it did mean something to them.”
“Oh, that it did,” he assured me. “I couldna say what, but whatever it was, they didna like it a bit. The war chief demanded to know where I’d got it, and I told them ye’d found it. That made them back off a bit, but they were like a kettle on the boil over it.”
“Why are you wanting me to take it?” The stone was warm from his body, and felt smooth and comfortable in my hand. Instinctively, my thumb ran round and round the spiraled carving.
“They were shocked when they saw it, as I said—and then angry. One or two of them made as though to strike me, but they held back. I watched for a bit, wi’ the stone in my hand, and I realized that they were afraid of it; they wouldna touch me while I held it.”
He reached out and closed my fist around the stone.
“Keep it by ye. If there should be danger, bring it out.”
“You’re more likely to be in danger than I am,” I protested, trying to hand it back.
He shook his head, though, the ends of his hair lifting in the wind.
“No, not now they ken about the whisky. They’d not harm me until they’ve heard where it is.”
“But why should I be in any danger?” The thought was disquieting; the women had been cautious but not hostile, and the men of the village had largely ignored me.
He frowned, and looked down toward the village. From here, little was visible save the outer palisades, with trails of smoke drifting above them from the unseen longhouses beyond.
“I canna say, Sassenach. Only that I have been a hunter— and I have been hunted. Ye ken how when something strange is near, the birds stop singing, and there is a stillness in the wood?”
He nodded toward the village, eyes fixed on the swirl of smoke as though some shape might emerge from it.
“There is a stillness there. Something is happening that I canna see. I dinna think it is to do with us—and yet…I am uneasy,” he said abruptly. “And I have lived too long to dismiss such a feeling.”
* * *
Ian, who joined us shortly at the rendezvous, seconded this opinion.
“Aye, it’s like holding the edge of a fishing net that’s underwater,” he said, frowning. “Ye can feel the wriggling through your hands, and ye ken there’s fish there—but ye canna see where.” The wind ruffled his thick brown hair; as usual, it was half plaited, with strands coming loose. He thumbed one absently behind an ear.
“There’s something happening among the people; some disagreement, I think. And something happened last night, in the Council house. Emily willna answer me when I ask about it; she only looks away and tells me it’s naught to do with us. But I think it is, somehow.”
“Emily?” Jamie lifted one eyebrow, and Ian grinned.
“It’s what I call her for short,” he said. “Her own name’s Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa; it means Works with Her Hands. She’s a rare carver, is wee Emily. See what she’s made for me?” He reached into his pouch and proudly displayed a tiny otter carved in white soapstone. The animal stood alert, head up and ready for mischief; just to look at it made me smile.
“Verra nice.” Jamie examined the carving with approval, stroking the sinuous curve of the body. “The lassie must like ye fine, Ian.”
“Aye, well, I like her too, Uncle.” Ian was very casual, but his lean cheeks were slightly redder than the cold wind could account for. He coughed and changed the subject slightly.
“She said to me that she thinks the Council might be swayed a bit in our favor, if ye were to give some of them a taste of the whisky, Uncle Jamie. If it’s all right wi’ you, I’ll fetch up a cask and we’ll have a wee ceilidh tonight. Emily will manage it.”
Jamie lifted both eyebrows at that, but nodded after a moment.
“I’ll trust your judgment, Ian,” he said. “In the Council House?”
Ian shook his head.
“Nay. Emily says it will be better if it’s done at the longhouse of her aunt—auld Tewaktenyonh is the Pretty Woman.”
“Is what?” I asked, startled.
“The Pretty Woman,” he explained, wiping his running nose on his sleeve. “One woman of influence in the village has it in her power to decide what’s done wi’ captives; they call her the Pretty Woman, no matter what she looks like. So ye ken, it’s to our advantage if Tewaktenyonh can be convinced the bargain we offer is a good one.”
“I suppose to a captive that’s been freed, the woman would seem beautiful, regardless,” Jamie said wryly. “Aye, I see. Go ahead then; can ye fetch the whisky by yourself?”
Ian nodded and turned to go.
“Wait a minute, Ian,” I said, and held out the opal as he turned back to me. “Could you ask Emily if she knows anything about this?”
“Aye, Auntie Claire, I’ll mention it. Rollo!” He whistled sharply through his teeth, and Rollo, who had been nosing suspiciously under a rock shelf, left off and bounded after his master. Jamie watched them go, a slight frown between his eyebrows.
“D’ye ken where Ian’s spending his nights, Sassenach?”
“If you mean in which longhouse, yes. If you mean in whose bed, no. I could guess, though.”
“Mmphm.” He stretched and shook his hair back. “Come on, Sassenach, I’ll see ye back to the village.”
* * *
Ian’s ceilidh got underway soon after dark; the invited guests included the most prominent members of the Council, who came one at a time to Tewaktenyonh’s longhouse, paying their respects to the sachem, Two Spears, who sat at the main hearth with Jamie and Ian flanking him. A slight, pretty girl, who I assumed must be Ian’s Emily, sat quietly behind him, on the keg of whisky.
With the exception of Emily, women were not involved in the whisky-tasting. I had come along, though, to watch, and sat at one of the smaller hearths, keeping an eye on the proceedings while helping two of the women to braid onions, exchanging occasional politenesses in a halting mixture of Tuscarora, English, and French.
The woman at whose hearth I sat offered me a gourd of spruce beer and some kind of cornmeal mush as refreshment. I did my best to accept with cordiality, but my stomach was knotted too tightly to make more than a token attempt at eating.
Too much depended on this impromptu party. Roger was here; somewhere in the village, I knew it. He was alive; I could only hope he was well—well enough to travel, at least. I glanced at the far end of the longhouse, at the largest hearth. I could see no more of Tewaktenyonh than the curve of a white-streaked head; a queer jolt went through me at the sight, and I touched the small lump of Nayawenne’s amulet, where it hung beneath my shirt.
Once the guests were assembled, a rough circle was formed around the hearth, and the opened keg of whisky brought into the center of it. To my surprise, the girl also came into the circle, and took a place beside the keg, a dipping gourd in her hand.
After some words from Two Spears, the festivities commenced, with the girl measuring out portions of the whisky. She did this not by pouring the whisky into the cups, but by taking mouthfuls from the gourd, carefully spitting three mouthfuls into each cup before passing it to one of the men in the circle. I glanced at Jamie, who looked momentarily taken aback, but who politely accepted his cup and drank without hesitation.
I rather wondered just how much whisky the girl was absorbing through the lining of her mouth. Not nearly as much as the men, though I thought it might take quite a bit to lubricate Two Spears, who was a taciturn old bastard with a face like a dyspeptic prune. Before the party had got well underway, though, I was distracted by the arrival of a young boy, the offspring of one of my companions. He came in silently and sat down by his mother, leaning heavily against her. She looked sharply at him, then set down her onions and rose with an exclamation of concern.
The firelight fell on the boy, and I could see at once the peculiar hunched way he sat. I rose hastily to my knees, pushing aside the basket of onions. I knelt forward and took him by the other arm, turning him toward me. His left shoulder had been slightly dislocated; he was sweating, his lips pressed tightly together in pain.
I gestured to his mother, who hesitated, frowning at me. The boy made a small, whimpering noise, and she pulled him away, holding him tight. With sudden inspiration, I pulled Nayawenne’s amulet from my shirt; she wouldn’t know whose it was but might recognize what it was. She did; her eyes widened at the sight of the tiny leather bag.
The boy made no more noise, but I could see the sweat run down his hairless chest, clear in the firelight. I fumbled at the thong that held the pouch shut, digging inside for the rough blue stone. Pierre sans peur, Gabrielle had called it. The fearless stone. I took the boy’s good hand and pressed the stone firmly into his palm, folding his fingers around it.
“Je suis une sorciere,” I said softly. “C’est medecine, la.” Trust me, I thought. Don’t be afraid. I smiled at him.
The boy stared round-eyed at me; the two women at the hearth exchanged a look, then as one, looked toward the distant hearth where the old woman sat.
There was talk from the ceilidh; someone was telling an old story—I recognized the rise and fall of the formal rhythms. I had heard Highlanders tell their stories and legends in Gaelic, in just that way; it sounded much the same.
The mother nodded; her sister went quickly down the length of the house. I didn’t turn, but felt the stir of interest behind me as she passed the other hearths; heads were turning, looking toward us. I kept my eyes on the boy’s face, smiling, holding his hand tightly in my own.
The sister’s footsteps came softly behind me. The boy’s mother reluctantly released her hold on him, leaving him to me. Permission had been received.
It was a simple matter to put back the joint; he was a small boy and the injury was minor. His bones were light under my hand. I smiled at him as I felt the joint, assessing damage. Then a quick bending of the arm, rotation of the elbow, whipping the arm upward—and it was done.
The boy looked intensely surprised. It was a most satisfactory operation, in that pain was relieved almost instantly. He felt his shoulder, then smiled shyly back at me. Very slowly, he opened his hand and held out the stone to me.
The minor sensation created by this occupied my attention for some time, with the women crowding close, touching the boy and peering at him, summoning their friends to stare at the murky sapphire. By the time I had attention to spare for the whisky party at the far hearth, the festivities were well advanced. Ian was singing in Gaelic, very off-key, accompanied in a haphazard way by one or two of the other men, who chimed in with the weird, high-pitched Haihai! that I had heard now and then among Nayawenne’s people.
As though my thought had conjured her, I felt eyes on my back, and turned, to see Tewaktenyonh watching me steadily from her own hearth at the end of the longhouse. I met her eyes and nodded to her. She leaned across to say something to one of the young women at her hearth, who rose and came toward me, stepping carefully around a couple of toddlers playing under their family bed-cubicle.
“My grandmother asks if you will come to her.” The young woman squatted beside me, speaking quietly in English. I was surprised, though not astonished, to hear it. Onakara had been right, some of the Mohawk had some English. They would not use it, though, except from necessity, preferring their own language.
I rose and accompanied her to Tewaktenyonh’s hearth, wondering what necessity impelled the Pretty Woman. I had my own necessities; the thought of Roger, and of Brianna.
The old woman nodded to me, inviting me to sit down, and spoke to the girl, not taking her eyes off me.
“My grandmother asks if she may see your medicine.”
“Of course.” I could see the old lady’s eyes on my amulet, watching curiously as I took out the sapphire. I had added to Nayawenne’s woodpecker feather two of my own; a raven’s stiff black wing quills.
“You are the wife of Bear Killer?”
“Yes. The Tuscarora call me White Raven,” I said, and the girl jerked, startled. She translated quickly for her grandmother. The old lady’s eyes flew wide and she glanced at me in consternation. Evidently this was not the most auspicious name she’d ever heard. I smiled at her, keeping my mouth closed; the Indians usually bared their teeth only when laughing.
The old lady handed me back the stone, very gingerly. She studied me narrowly, then spoke to her granddaughter, not taking her eyes off me.
“My grandmother has heard that your man bears a bright stone also,” the girl said, interpreting. “She would hear more of this; what it is like, and how you came to have it.”
“She’s welcome to see it.” The girl’s eyes widened in surprise as I reached into the pouch at my waist and drew out the stone. I held out the opal to the old woman; she bent and peered closely at it, but made no move to take it from me.
Tewaktenyonh’s arms were brown and hairless, wrinkled and smooth as weathered satinwood to the eye. But as I watched I saw the prick of goose-flesh rising, raising vanished hairs in vain defense. She’s seen it, I thought. Or at least she knows what it is.
I didn’t need the interpreter’s words; her eyes met mine directly and I heard the question clearly, for all that the words were strange.
“How did this come to you?” she said, and the girl echoed it faithfully.
I let my hand lie open; the opal fit snugly in my palm, its weight belied by its colors, glimmering like a soap bubble in my hand.
“It came to me in a dream,” I said at last, not knowing how else to explain.
The old woman’s breath went out in a sigh. The fear didn’t quite leave her eyes, but was overlaid with something else—curiosity, perhaps? She said something, and one of the women at the hearth rose, digging in a basket under the bed frame at her back. She came back and bent by the old lady, handing her something.
The old lady began to sing, quietly, in a voice cracked with age, but still strong. She rubbed her hands together over the fire, and a shower of small brown particles rained down, only to rise up again at once as smoke, thick with the scent of tobacco.
It was a quiet night; I could hear the rise and fall of voices and loud laughter from the far hearth, where the men were drinking. I could pick out the odd word in Jamie’s voice—he was speaking French. Was Roger perhaps close enough to hear it too?
I took a deep breath. The smoke rose straight up from the fire in a thin white pillar, and the strong sweet scent of tobacco mingled with the smell of cold air, triggering incongruous memories of Brianna’s high school football games; cozy scents of wool blankets and thermoses of cocoa, wisps of cigarette smoke drifting from the crowd. Farther back were other, harsher memories, of young men in uniform, in the shattered light of airfields, crushing out glowing fag ends and running to their battles, leaving no more of themselves behind than the smell of smoke on winter air.
Tewaktenyonh spoke, her eyes still on me, and the girl’s soft voice chimed in.
“Tell me this dream.”
Was it truly a dream I would tell her, or a memory like these, brought to life on the wings of smoke from a burning tree? It didn’t matter; here, all my memories were dreams.
I told her what I could. The memory—of the storm and my refuge among the red cedar’s roots, the skull buried with the stone—and the dream; the light on the mountain and the man with his face painted black—making no distinction between them.
The old lady leaned forward, the astonishment on her features mirroring that of her granddaughter.
“You have seen the Fire-Carrier?” the girl blurted. “You have seen his face?” She shrank away from me, as though I might be dangerous.
The old lady said something peremptory; her startlement had faded into a piercing gaze of interest. She poked the girl, and repeated her question impatiently.
“My grandmother says, can you say what he looked like; what did he wear?”
“Nothing. A breech-clout, I mean. And he was painted.”
“Painted. How?” the girl asked, in response to her grandmother’s sharp question.
I described the body paint of the man I had seen, as carefully as I could. This wasn’t difficult; if I closed my eyes, I could see him, as clearly as he had appeared to me on the mountainside.
“And his face was black, from forehead to chin,” I ended, opening my eyes.
When I described the man, the interpreter became visibly upset; her lips trembled, and she glanced fearfully from me to her grandmother. The old woman listened intently, though, her eyes searching, straining to discern meaning from my face before the slower words could reach her ears.
When I finished, she sat silent, dark eyes still fastened on my own. At last she nodded, reached up a wrinkled hand and took hold of the purple wampum strings that lay across her shoulder. Myers had told me enough so that I recognized the gesture. The wampum was her family record, badge of her office; speech made while holding it was tantamount to testimony made upon the Bible.
“At the feast of Green Corn, this many years ago”—the interpreter’s fingers flashed four times—“a man came among us from the north. His speech was strange, but we could understand him; he spoke like Canienga, or maybe Onondaga, but he would not tell us his tribe or village—only his clan, which was the Turtle.
“He was a wild man, but a brave one. He was a good hunter, and a warrior. Oh, a fine man; all the women liked to look at him, but we were afraid to come too close.” Tewaktenyonh paused a moment, a far-off look in her eye that made me count back; she would have been a full-grown woman then, but perhaps young enough still to have been impressed by the frightening, intriguing stranger.
“The men were not so careful; men aren’t.” She gave a brief, sardonic glance at the ceilidh, growing louder by the minute. “So they would sit and smoke with him, and drink spruce beer and listen. He would talk from midday till the dark, and then again in the night by the fires. His face was always fierce, because he talked of war.”
She sighed, fingers curling over the purple shell strands.
“Always war. Not against the frog-eaters of the next village, or the ones who eat moose dung. No, we must lift our tomahawks against the O’seronni. Kill them all, he said, from the oldest to the youngest, from the Treaty Line to the big water. Go to the Cayuga, send messengers to the Seneca, let the League of the Iroquois go forth as one. Go before it is too late, he said.”
One frail shoulder lifted, fell.
“ ‘Too late for what?’ the men asked. ‘And why shall we make war for no cause? We need nothing this season; there is no war treaty’—this was before the Time of the French, you understand.
“ ‘It is our last chance,’ he said to them. ‘Already it may be too late. They seduce us with their metal, bring us close to them in the hope of knives and guns, and destroy us for the sake of cooking pots. Turn back, brothers! You have left the ways of years too great to count. Go back, I say—or you will be no more. Your stories will be forgotten. Kill them now or they will eat you.’
“And my brother—he was sachem then, and my other brother war chief—said that this was foolishness. Destroy us with tools? Eat us? The whites do not consume the hearts of their enemies, even in battle.
“The young men listened; they listen to anyone with a loud voice. But the older ones looked at the stranger with a narrow eye, and said nothing.
“He knew,” she said, and the old lady nodded emphatically, speaking almost faster than her granddaughter could translate. “He knew what would happen—that the British and the French would fight with each other, and would seek our help, each against the other. He said that that would be the time; when they fought each other, then we must rise up against them both and cast them out.
“Tawineonawira—Otter-Tooth—that was his name—said to me, ‘You live in the moment. You know the past, but you don’t look to the future. Your men say, “We need nothing this season,” and so they will not move. Your women think it is easier to cook in a iron kettle than to make clay pots. You don’t see what will happen because of your laziness, your greed.’
“ ‘It’s not true,’ I said to him. ‘We are not lazy. We scrape hides, we dry the meat and the corn, we press the oil from sunflowers and put it in jars; we take heed for the next season—always. If we didn’t, we would die. And what have pots and kettles to do with it?’
“He laughed at that, but his eyes were sad. He was not always fierce with me, you see.” The young woman’s eyes slid toward her grandmother at this, but then she looked away, eyes once more on her lap.
“ ‘A woman’s heed,’ he said, and shook his head. ‘You think of things to eat, what to wear. None of this matters. Men can’t think of such things.’
“ ‘You can be Hodeenosaunee and think this?’ I said. ‘Where do you come from that you don’t take heed of what the women think?’
“He shook his head again and said, ‘You cannot see far enough.’ I asked him how far then did he see, but he would not answer me.”
I knew the answer to that, and my skin prickled with gooseflesh, too, in spite of the fire. I knew too bloody well how far he’d seen—and how dangerous the view was from that particular precipice.
“But nothing I said was any use,” the old lady continued, “nor what my brothers said. Otter-Tooth grew more angry. One day he came out and danced the war dance. He was painted—his arms and legs were striped with red—and he sang and shouted through the village. Everyone came out to watch, to see who would follow him, and when he drove his tomahawk into the war tree and shouted that he went to gain horses and plunder from the Shawnee, a number of the young men followed him.
“They were gone for the rising and setting of a moon, and came back with horses, and with scalps. White scalps, and my brothers were angry. It would bring soldiers from the fort, they said—or revenge parties from the Treaty Line settlements, where they had taken the scalps.
“Otter-Tooth answered boldly that he hoped this was so; then we would be forced to fight. And he said plainly that he would lead such raids again—again and again, until the whole land was roused and we saw that it was as he said; that we must kill the O’seronni or die ourselves.
“No one could stop him doing what he said, and there were a few of the young men whose blood was hot; they would follow him, no matter what anyone said. My brother the sachem made his medicine tent, and called the Great Turtle to counsel with him. He stayed in the tent for a day and a night. The tent shook and heaved, and voices came out of it, and the people were afraid.
“When my brother came out of the tent, he said that Otter-Tooth must leave the village. He would do what he would do, but we would not let him bring destruction to us. He caused disharmony among the people; he must go.
“Otter-Tooth became more angry then than we had ever seen him. He stood up in the center of the village and he shouted until the veins stood out in his neck and his eyes were red with rage.” The girl’s voice dropped. “He shouted terrible things.
“Then he became very quiet, and we were afraid. He said things that took the hearts from our bodies. Even those who had followed him were afraid of him, then.
“He didn’t sleep or eat. For all of a day, and all of a night, and all of the next day, he went on talking, walking round and round the village, stopping at the doors of the houses and talking, until the people in the house drove him away. And then he left.
“But he came back again. And again. He would go away, and hide in the forest, but then he would be back again, by the fires at night, thin and hungry, with his eyes glowing like a fox’s, always talking. His voice filled the village at night, and no one could sleep.
“We began to know that he had an evil spirit in him; perhaps it was Atatarho, from whose head Hiawatha combed the snakes; perhaps the snakes had come to this man, looking for a home. Finally, my brother the war chief said that it must stop; he must leave or we would kill him.”
Tewaktenyonh paused. Her fingers, which had stroked the wampum continuously, as though she drew strength from it for her story, were now still.
“He was a stranger,” she said softly. “But he didn’t know he was a stranger. I think he never understood.”
At the other end of the longhouse the drinking party was growing riotous; all the men were laughing, rocking to and fro with mirth. I could hear the girl Emily’s voice, higher, laughing with them. Tewaktenyonh glanced that way, frowning slightly.
Mice were creeping briskly up and down my spine. A stranger. An Indian, by his face, by his speech; his slightly strange speech. An Indian—with silver fillings in his teeth. No, he hadn’t understood. He had thought they were his people, after all. Knowing what their future held, he had come to try to save them. How could he believe that they meant to do him harm?
But they had meant it. They stripped him, said Tewaktenyonh, her face remote. They tied him to a pole in the center of the village, and painted his face with an ink made from soot and oak galls.
“Black is for death; prisoners who are to be killed are always painted so,” the girl said. One eyebrow lifted slightly. “You knew this when you met the man on the mountain?”
I shook my head, mute. The opal had grown warm in my palm, slick with sweat.
They had tortured him for a time; prodding his naked body with sharpened sticks, and then with hot embers, so that blisters rose up and burst, and his skin hung in tatters. He stood this well, not crying out, and this pleased them. He seemed still strong, so they left him overnight, still tied to the pole.
“In the morning, he was gone.” The old woman’s face was smooth with secrets. If she had been pleased, or relieved, or distressed by the escape, no one would ever have known.
“I said that they should not follow him, but my brother said it was no good; he would only come back again, if we did not finish the matter.”
So a party of warriors left the village, on Otter-Tooth’s track. Bloody as he was, it was not difficult to follow.
“They chased him to the south. They thought to catch him, time after time, but he was strong. He ran on. For four days, they followed him, and finally they caught him, in a grove of aspens, leafless in the snow and their branches white as finger bones.”
She saw the question in my eyes at this, and nodded.
“My brother the war chief was there. He told me, afterward.
“He was alone, and unarmed. He had no chance, and knew it. But he faced them nonetheless—and he talked. Even after one of the men had struck him in the mouth with a war club, he talked through the blood, spitting out words with his broken teeth.
“He was a brave man,” she said, reflectively. “He didn’t beg. He told them the same things he had said before, but my brother said this time it was different. Before, he had been hot as fire; dying, he was cold as snow—and because they were so cold, his words terrified the warriors.
“Even when the stranger lay dead in the snow, his words seemed to go on ringing in the warriors’ ears. They lay down to sleep, but his voice talked to them in their dreams, and kept them from sleeping. You will be forgotten, he said. The Nations of the Iroquois will be no more. No one will tell your stories. Everything you are and have been will be lost.
“They turned toward home, but his voice followed them. At night, they could not sleep for the evil words in their ears. In the day, they heard cries and whispers from the trees along their trail. Some of them said it was only ravens calling, but others said no, they heard him plainly.
“At last, my brother said it was clear this man was a sorcerer.”
The old lady glanced sharply at me. Je suis une sorciere, I’d said. I swallowed, and my hand went to the amulet at my neck.
“The thing to do, my brother said, was to cut off his head, and then he would talk no more. So they went back, and they cut off his head, and tied it in the branches of a spruce. But when they slept that night, they still heard his voice, and they woke with shriveled hearts. The ravens had picked out his eyes, but the head still spoke.
“One man, very brave, said he would take the head, and bury it far away.” She smiled briefly. “This brave man was my husband. He wrapped the head in a piece of deerskin, and he ran with it, far to the south, and the head still talking under his arm all the time, so he had to put plugs of beeswax in his ears. At last he saw a very big red cedar tree, and he knew this was the place, because the red cedar has a strong spirit for healing.
“So he buried the head under the tree’s roots, and when he took the beeswax from his ears, he could hear nothing but the wind and water. So he came home, and no one has spoken the name of Otter-Tooth in this village, from that day until this one.”
The girl finished this, eyes on her grandmother. Evidently this was true; she had never heard this story.
I swallowed, and tried to get a clear breath. The smoke had ceased to rise as she talked; it had gathered instead in a low cloud overhead, and the air was thick with narcotic perfume.
The hilarity from the drinking circle had lessened. One of the men got up and, stumbling, went outside. Two more lay on their sides by the fire, half asleep.
“And this?” I said, holding out the opal. “You’ve seen it? It was his?”
Tewaktenyonh reached out as though to touch the stone, but then drew back.
“There is a legend,” the girl said softly, not taking her eyes from the opal. “Magic snakes carry stones in their heads. If you kill such a snake and take the stone, it will give you great power.” She shifted uneasily, and I had no trouble imagining with her the size of the snake that might have carried a stone like this.
The old lady spoke suddenly, nodding at the stone. The girl jumped, but repeated the words obediently.
“It was his,” she said. “He called it his tika-ba.”
I looked at the interpreter, but she shook her head. “Tika-ba,” she said, enunciating clearly. “This is not an English word?”
I shook my head.
Her story finished, the old woman sat back in her furs, watching me with deep speculation. Her eyes rested on the amulet around my neck.
“Why did he speak to you? Why has he given you that?” She nodded at my hand, and my fingers closed over the opal’s curve in reflex.
“I don’t know,” I said—but she had taken me unaware; I had had no time to prepare my face.
She fixed me with a piercing look. She knew I was lying, all right—and yet how could I tell her the truth? Tell her what Otter-Tooth—whatever his real name—had been? Much less that his prophecies were true.
“I think perhaps he was a part of my…family,” I said at last, thinking of what Pollyanne had told me about the ghosts of one’s ancestors. There was no telling from where—or when—he had come; he must, I supposed, be an ancestor or a descendant. If not of me, then of someone like me.
Tewaktenyonh sat up very straight at that, and looked at me in astonishment. Slowly the look faded, and she nodded.
“He has sent you to me to hear this. He was wrong,” she declared, with confidence. “My brother said that we must not speak of him; we must let him be forgotten. But a man is not forgotten, as long as there are two people left under the sky. One, to tell the story; the other, to hear it. So.”
She reached out and touched my hand, careful not to touch the stone. The glitter of moisture in her black eyes might have been from the tobacco smoke.
“I am one. You are the other. He is not forgotten.”
She motioned to the girl, who rose silently and brought us food and drink.
When I rose finally to go back to the longhouse where we were lodged, I glanced toward the drinking party. The ground was littered with snoring bodies, and the keg lay empty on its side. Two Spears lay peacefully on his back, a beatific smile creasing the wrinkles of his face. The girl, Ian, and Jamie were gone.
Jamie was outside, waiting for me. His breath rose white in the night air, and the scents of whisky and tobacco wafted from his plaid.
“You seemed to be having fun,” I said, taking his arm. “Any progress, do you think?”
“I think so.” We walked side by side across the big central clearing to the longhouse where we were lodged. “It went well. Ian was right, bless him; now they’ve seen this wee ceilidh did no harm, I think they’ll maybe be disposed to make the bargain.”
I glanced at the row of longhouses with their floating clouds of smoke, and the glow of firelight from smokeholes and doorways. Was Roger in one of them now? I counted automatically, as I did every day—seven months. The ground was thawing; if we traveled partway by river, we could perhaps make the trip in a month—six weeks at the most. Yes, if we left soon, we would be in time.
“And you, Sassenach? Ye seemed to be having a most earnest discussion wi’ the auld lady. Did she ken aught of that stone?”
“Yes. Come inside and I’ll tell you about it.”
He lifted the skin over the doorway, and I walked inside, the opal a solid weight in my hand. They hadn’t known what he had called it, but I did. The man called Otter-Tooth, who had come to raise a war, to save a nation—with silver fillings in his teeth. Yes, I knew what it was, the tika-ba.
His unused ticket back. My legacy.