Blood Ties

by C. C. Humphreys

  The Tahontaenrat were chased out of the main gate of the village and ran into the forest. At the crossroads, a flight of arrows from skilled men stopped the pursuit.

  ‘The beach! Now!’ Tagay yelled.

  Bare feet sounded loud on the forest floor, as the shouts and the roar of flames faded behind them. Exhilarated by their success and the number of the Tahontaenrat who had escaped – he hadn’t time to count but many white warriors ran through the trees around him – Tagay led his party to the beach. If he had purchased enough time for his men there to do the task they’d been set, if the war canoes and rafts of their enemy were destroyed and the last of his people were on the water, then they had saved the tribe. Now he could save himself and return to the love he had found. To Anne.

  They ran from the trees. The rain had stopped, the clouds rolled away to torment some other part of the earth and the bloated moon was right above their heads, its beams lighting destruction – for everywhere lay the shattered hulls of the Hodenosaunee war fleet.

  ‘To the water,’ Tagay shouted and warriors ran past him and started pushing their own craft into the stream. He stood with Nishane and the other experienced men who had survived, five of them in all, each with a bow in hand, facing the forest from where the enemy would come. It was not long before the first war cry was heard, before the first arrow passed close to their heads.

  ‘Go now, Tagay,’ Nishane shouted. ‘We stay.’

  ‘No! We all go,’ the younger man replied, raising his club toward the forest path. It was as if he’d conjured a tattooed warrior from the green depths with it, who burst out screaming, his own war club flailing. An arrow through the chest cut off the sound. But more whoops came to them from the fringe of trees, deeper shadows within the shadows, massing.

  ‘They will shoot the last of us from the beach. So, go now!’ Nishane took Tagay’s arm and shoved him hard toward the water.

  ‘How can I leave you?’

  Nishane smiled. ‘You have learnt fast, War Chief, since your return. But you have not learnt everything. The elder stays to help the young man escape. It is the way of the Tahontaenrat. So – go!’

  He shoved again, just as another arrow passed between their faces. Tagay stumbled down the shale. Canoes were pushed from the shore and one of them had but a single pale shape in it. He waded through the shallows and pulled himself on board at the front. The young warrior handed him a paddle and they both began ply them. Behind, the war whoops of the enemy increased to a frenzy. But above them, he could hear Nishane’s voice, singing his war song. ‘I do not fear death. Those who do are cowards and fools. I am Nishane of the Beaver clan. Taste my war club.’

  Then the song was lost in the song of clubs through the air, the grunts of blows striking, the cries of pain. Tagay was at the front and he drove his paddle hard into the water. They were pulling well from the shore, when on an instant it became much harder. He looked back and his companion, whose name he had not known, a member of the Hawk clan, was staring at him, paddle raised across his chest. Tagay saw the arrow head poking through the neck and then, a moment later, a surge of blood streamed down the white of his chest. The Hawk fell forward, half over the edge of the canoe.

  Tagay, seeing he was dead, somehow managed to get the body into the water without capsizing the frail craft. Glancing back, he could make out a frenzy of warriors on the beach, dancing around and on fallen white bodies. As he watched, the last of their own canoes were launched from the beach, surrounded by tattooed warriors. And to his left, from around a point of land, came another boat, a larger, darker shape.

  He began to paddle, a frenzy of strokes. Ahead, the others of his tribe pulled away, the distance between them growing fast. He was just one, and he had not mastered the canoe, but for a while, his desire leant him strength and skill. For a while, he even managed to pull ahead of his pursuit as their arguing voices, jostling for precedence in their craft, faded behind him. He drove hard along the path of a moonbeam. But soon he heard the unmistakable sound of other paddles, getting closer, closer. And another sound, something that should not have been there. Wood grinding on metal.

  There was a dark shape ahead on the water. He began to make for it, he didn’t know why and it was only when he got near that he realized his mistake, realized where he’d led his pursuers. And when he was close enough to see, he was close enough to hear her voice, crying out.

  ‘Tagay! Tagay! Come!’

  Anne had watched the canoes bearing the white warriors go past them. Even at a distance and with only the moonlight to see by she knew that none was her love. She’d prayed that maybe she’d missed him, that he had preceded her, was waiting for her upstream at the rendezvous. So many had escaped the attack, why not him? Then she’d seen the lonely craft and those that closed on it remorselessly. And she’d known.

  There was little those few on the raft could do but steer with the current. But the canoe’s occupant, having hesitated, now drove straight toward them, the enemy a scant fifty lengths behind.

  ‘Tagay,’ she said, her hands reaching out as he fell aboard. But he turned immediately, bow in hand toward the pursuit. Beside him, the three others put down their paddles and grabbed weapons. Do-ne hopped on his withered leg, clutching a bone knife before him. Tangled stepped beside him, a javelin in his hands.

  ‘Come to my arms, Coyotes, tattooed scavengers. Feel the kiss of my war spear,’ the old chief cried.

  Then something spat flame from the larger of the pursuing vessels, and the air filled with screams and flying metal. Something struck her, high up on the head. As she fell she saw a man’s back, white painted, and a muscle that she’d run her fingers down in another life. Something was wrong with it, something protruded from it that shouldn’t have, breaking its beautiful symmetry. But darkness came before she could see what it was.

  TEN

  DEATH SONG

  The world was washed clean. The thunderclouds had long since passed away, leaving the sky to itself, an immense and nearly undisturbed expanse of blue. Only against the far shore were there threads of darkness, rising up from the forest. She had heard the tattooed warriors around her talk of how their village had been almost destroyed in the fight. But it did not concern them. They would build their new village here, a clifftop fortress in a conquered land.

  A gentle breeze touched her, still hot with summer but within it the hint of something else, a finger of coolness within the caress. Autumn coming, the recognition bringing her a memory, of Montepulciano, the grapes as they would be now in her father’s vineyards, fat globes of fruit fast approaching their moment of transformation into wine. There were grapes in this land too, though there the similarity ended, the sweeping river valley, the huge pines and maples so different from the slopes and the cypresses of Tuscany. Except for the oak, the one that she had sat in twice, that she looked at now. That tree could have been in the forests near their home. She and Gianni could have climbed one just like it.

  The memory was chased away by the crack of a ship’s cannon, the third in so many minutes. Uncle Pierre had kept his promise and returned for her the day after the full moon.

  Too late! For now she looked again at the man standing at the edge of the covered pit, dwarfed by the tall warriors around him, for he was smaller of stature, like his father. Next to Gianni stood another man, leaning on a stick, a black cloak wrapped around him despite the heat, the man she’d last seen in the Tower of London, in another world and time. If she hadn’t felt so numb, she might have been surprised at the sight of him. And at Thomas Lawley’s feet, a boy with a withered leg crouched terrified. The only other survivor of the raft, Do-ne.

  The head of the dying man in her lap rolled, blood bubbled at his lips and at the rent in his chest where the shaft of jagged metal still protruded. It looked strangely like a length from a barrel hoop. She knew she could not pull it out without killing him; it was too near his heart. So she just wiped the blood from his wound, from his mouth. Tagay murmured, something
she couldn’t catch.

  She realized someone had asked her a question. ‘What?’ she said.

  The black-cloaked figure limped toward her. She remembered that in another world she had bound this man’s leg.

  ‘Anne,’ said Thomas, gently. ‘They need to know – what became of the hand?’

  ‘The hand?’ She raised hers, brushed hair away from her face. He saw the jagged cut near her temple where metal had struck her a glancing blow. ‘Oh, that hand.’

  ‘Where is it, Anne?’ Gianni had moved beside Thomas, his voice a harsh contrast to the Englishman’s. ‘It is your last chance for redemption. Give it to us.’

  ‘Redemption?’ Before she could answer further, a weak voice came from her lap.

  ‘It is beyond your reach, Gianni. It has begun its journey to the Village of the Dead. Your queen travels with other spirits, now. Leave her be.’

  Anne looked down. It was the first words she had heard Tagay speak since they had been brought to the cliff top. She’d feared she might not ever hear that voice again.

  ‘Oh, my love,’ she said, rocking him. She had whispered to him what she had done with Anne Boleyn’s legacy. She’d thought he’d been too close to death to hear.

  ‘Other spirits?’ Gianni straightened in sudden understanding. ‘It’s there, isn’t it? With the bones of all the other savages. There!’ His finger jabbed toward the smoothed over earth of the pit.

  He didn’t need an answer. He turned. ‘Then we will dig it up.’

  Thomas said, ‘It’s impossible, Gianni. There will be hundreds of bodies down there.’

  ‘Impossible?’ he screamed. ‘It was impossible to cross the world, do all that I have done. And now I stand with only this little earth between me and my salvation?’

  He fell to his knees at the pit’s edge and began to scrabble in the dirt. Hands like twisted iron grabbed him, hauled him back. The face of the interpreter, Hair Burned Off, appeared before him.

  ‘Falling Day asks what you do?’ He gestured to his chief who stood, arms folded, on the other side of the pit.

  ‘It is buried, here, what I seek. The mighty witch’s Oki. Help me. Help me!’ Gianni tried to brush off the hands that held him, to throw himself forward and burrow straight down to his desire. But his own loss of blood, from Tagay’s cut to his hip, had weakened him. And the warrior’s grip was unbreakable.

  Falling Day talked rapidly and the interpreter nodded, then spoke. ‘He says that if the witch’s spirit was here then she is gone now. She is with the dead and it is the dead who must fight her. Those buried here were our enemies, yes. But we do not disturb their burial place.’

  ‘No! Don’t you see? We must … we must.’ Gianni started to sob, struggling against the hands that held him.

  Thomas was at his side in a moment. ‘Rombaud,’ he whispered fiercely. ‘It is over. Do not show them any emotion. They kill men for weakness.’

  The chief spoke rapidly again. Anne heard and understood the words, before they were translated. Tagay too, and he tried desperately to raise himself up on his elbow.

  The interpreter said, ‘But Falling Day knows this woman is a witch too. So we will kill her now, before she can do us any harm.’

  A spoken command and Gianni was released to fall forward, while Anne was seized, dragged to her feet, Tagay’s weak fingers reaching for her, losing her. One man pinned her arms, a second moved before her with a knife.

  ‘Wait!’ Thomas didn’t know where the speed, the strength, came from. But he was beside Anne in a moment, his stick striking the knife from the hand, a blow knocking the warrior who held her aside. He placed himself before her, braced himself, as arrows were notched, strings pulled back.

  Another guttural command. The weapons eased, slightly. Words were spoken and the interpreter came up to him.

  ‘Falling Day asks why you help her, Black Robe? Is she not a witch? You said your gods, as ours, hate such bad Oki.’

  If ever Thomas had needed his Jesuit training it was now. He breathed deeply, calmly, and looked straight into the war chief’s eyes.

  ‘No,’ he said, calmly. ‘She is not. She is a Dreamteller, that is all.’

  ‘But this man is her brother and her brother say she is witch.’

  ‘Her brother lies.’ Thomas raised his arm, pointed at Gianni. ‘He wants her Oki, her power.’

  Everyone there turned to look at the prone man. Gianni knelt, hands muddied with earth. He stared back but not at them, his eyes wild, unfocused.

  Then his sister stepped from around the black cloak. She had something in her hand and she threw it before her brother.

  Gianni looked down. A little cross with double bars had fallen on its end, landing upright in the earth of the grave. With trembling fingers he reached for what he saw. But it was not until he touched it that he knew for certain what it was.

  A groan came, a memory – of his father’s rough hand running through his hair, handing him this piece of silver. Then another, of tears falling onto its shiny surface as he nailed it to a tree. And a third memory, of his father’s sword raised in the air, an inverted crucifix on a harbour wall.

  He looked up. Anne was staring at him, and in the darkness of her eyes, he could see Jean and Beck staring back. His father as he’d been, fighting him, dying because of him. His mother on the pier, cradling her husband’s body, giving her son the look she’d give a stranger. He looked past Anne’s eyes, past the memories, to the silent, tattooed warriors.

  Heathens.

  Suddenly, it was all so simple. A calm came over him, a vision of bliss eternal.

  And he said, ‘He is right. I want her Oki. I lied to you. I am the witch. It’s me you want, not her.’

  The words were translated. Hands hauled him upright.

  The interpreter was before him, doubt on his face. ‘You know what you say? You know what happens to a witch?’

  The calmness had not left him. ‘I know.’

  Anne cried, ‘No, Gianni. No! It does not have to be this way.’

  ‘It does, sister. These pagans …’ He looked around him. ‘They will have their blood sacrifice.’ He paused and then he suddenly smiled, sadly, shyly, like a boy she’d once known. ‘Not so different from me, then.’

  Before she could speak again, she heard a groan from behind her. She turned just as Tagay was dragged upright and she heard the chief say, ‘He is a brave warrior, the leader of the Ghosts who fought us. We will honour him with a brave warrior’s death.’

  Behind her they stripped Gianni of his clothes and he let them, unresisting. Thomas went to him, laid a hand upon his shoulder, bent his head. Their lips moved in murmured question, in response. Tagay was near naked anyway, his body streaked both red and white. She ran to him and, at a nod from the chief, the men who held him up let him go. He slumped forward into her arms. His eyes were open.

  ‘Anne,’ he said. ‘White Cedar.’

  ‘I cannot … cannot let them …’ Over his shoulder she saw warriors forming the lines of a gauntlet. Flames had been kindled, sharpened stakes thrust into them.

  ‘What did I say to you, after Black Snake?’ Tagay whispered. ‘That if it came, I would also choose to die this way. Like a warrior. I am only sorry that I am so weak …’ Blood bubbled again at his mouth. ‘I will not sing my death song very long.’

  She pulled him hard against her body, her arms reaching around him, keeping him upright. ‘And did I not say to you that I would not watch you die?’

  He nodded. ‘You did. So go. Let the Black Robe take you. Uncle Pierre stays his boat for you in the river. Let me die – but without your eyes upon me. Just remember: for ever, you are my love.’

  Somehow she kept her voice calm. ‘And you are mine. And you die a warrior of the Tahontaenrat, as you always dreamed you would.’

  She turned his face toward the sunrise, reached around him, found what she sought. Her fingers closed over jagged metal. It cut her, but she jerked it upwards anyway, then pulled it from his body. He
gasped, his eyes widened, she felt his blood pour over her hand. She tucked the piece of metal into her pouch, where it clinked against stone – Donnaconna’s Oki, Tagay’s Oki now – then lowered his lifeless body to the ground. She began to walk, looking straight ahead, through the press of warriors that opened for her, toward the cliff path. She did not look around, though she heard the steps of a limping man, and a limping boy, behind her. As she passed under the oak, the drums and the chanting began. And she listened to a death song, unsung till then in that New World – Gianni’s voice, beautiful, clear, rising in the first notes of the Te Deum.

  ‘Die well, my brother,’ she said, her own voice still strong. ‘Die well.’

  EPILOGUE

  The sound of the flute accompanied Thomas in his dawn search. With a strong wind bellying the Sea Feather’s sails, there was time now for music; and Do-ne, under the tutelage of the old fisherman, Gaspard, had progressed rapidly from the ear-piercing shrillness of his first lessons. Four weeks at sea and he could carry, and carry well, half a dozen tunes.

  He found her at the prow of the ship. It wasn’t hard, the ship was small, even for a caravel. But for the first month of the voyage he would always go straight aft if he wanted her, because each day she would be there, looking back, weeks after the last giant pine had disappeared. Then, yesterday, he’d found her at the bow for the first time, her eyes as fixed on the horizon before them as they had been on the one behind. When he asked her what she scanned for, when they were yet some weeks from any harbour, she had simply said, ‘My future.’

  She smiled when he sat beside her, then returned her look ahead. He was content to stare with her until he felt her gaze once more upon him.

  ‘This suits you.’ She leant toward him to pull at the blue material of his shirt.

  ‘I hope so,’ he said, ‘because it’s undoubtedly the most expensive shirt I’ve ever had – if you figure that the robe I gave Gaspard for it cost me twenty scudi in Milan.’