Eye of the Raven amoca-2

by Eliot Pattison

  As Duncan should have guessed, the Indians had no use for the house. Blanket canopies had been erected against the brick wall of the rear courtyard, under which several mattresses had been dragged from the house, most of them occupied by sleeping members of the delegation. But those they sought were awake and sitting at a fire that had been lit in the center of the kitchen garden.

  Duncan waited as Conawago approached the chiefs and spoke in low, respectful tones. After several minutes Old Belt himself turned and gestured Duncan into their circle. He lowered himself onto a fragrant bed of sprouting chamomile and listened as Conawago completed the traditional exchange between travelers meeting after a long journey. Duncan studied the revered tribal leaders, saw that new lines of worry had been etched into their faces. At last Old Belt sighed. He raised an intricately carved red stone pipe, filled it from a pouch, then lifted an ember with two green sticks to light the tobacco. He drew deeply, letting the aromatic smoke waft over the little circle, before extending the pipe to Duncan.

  "Denighroghkwayen," he offered in solemn invitation. Let us smoke together.

  "You have made hard travel since last we met," Old Belt said when the pipe had been shared by all in the circle.

  "There is a great deal to learn and little time to do it," Duncan replied.

  "You worry much about people who have been summoned by the spirits," Long Wolf broke in. It was, Duncan knew, his way of reminding the Scotsman that questioning deaths was little different than questioning the gods.

  "In my clan," Duncan said after taking another draught of the pipe, "my sisters, my brother, my mother, in all over fifty children and helpless women, were killed by the bullets and blades of my people's enemy. They were not invited by the spirits to cross over, they were shoved into the next life without preparation, by men with evil in their hearts. Because no one stood up to stop that evil my people were destroyed. Ever since, when evil crosses my path, I resist. The spirits of my people require me to do so."

  Long Wolf seemed to consider his words, then offered a slow, approving nod.

  "That is a heavy burden," Old Belt observed.

  Duncan looked up at the stars before replying. "It is heavier some times than others," was all he could say.

  "Is it true," Old Belt asked after a long puff on the pipe, "that Stone Blossom took you to the sacred island?"

  "It is true."

  Long Wolf reached into a pouch and solemnly laid a short belt of white beads over Duncan's wrist. "We are willing to hear what you would speak about your journey."

  Duncan rested his arm on his knee and extended his wrist so that the belt was plainly visible to all. It seemed to glow in the moonlight. With the wampum on his arm he could not tell a lie.

  "I have looked into the crack in the world," he began, "and I have followed the trail of blood that flows from it."

  More than an hour passed as Duncan and Conawago explained what they had found in the north. They answered the chiefs' many questions, listening as Conawago asked them, too, of their own progress, listening to the account of great disruption as the delegation made camp at the army barracks in Lancaster only to break it a day later when summoned by the governor to Philadelphia. When some of the tribal delegation had complained about Skanawati's imprisonment, the Virginians had appeased them with demijohns of rum. Old Belt had ordered the drunken Indians home.

  There was no hesitation when Duncan explained what he needed. They left the compound with Old Belt and four of his Iroquois guards, attired and equipped as if for a predawn raid.

  The huge stone-and-timber barn had once been a magnificent structure but was now in disrepair. There were still horses, but the odor from the pile of manure in the corner of the paddock made it clear that most of the barn's occupants were human. Through the open entry way wafted the smoke of cheap tobacco, snippets of bawdy ballads in English, and slurred, drunken shouts in more than one tribal language. In the stall nearest the entry six men, four Indians and two Europeans, sat on bundles of hay covered with flour sacks, playing cards on a plank. One of the Europeans stood up, swaying as he stepped toward them.

  "Rum in the next bay, y'er honors," he declared in a Welsh accent. "If ye got the coin, it's by the mug or by the jug," he added with a guffaw at his own wit.

  Old Belt whispered to his escort, and two of the men took up station at the entry. The drunken Welshman seemed about to protest but halted as he looked at the axes on the warrior's belts and hastily retreated to his game. One of the two remaining escorts lifted a dim lantern from a peg and led Old Belt, Conawago, and Duncan down the central bay of the barn. The warriors knew Red Hand by sight, Old Belt had explained, so Duncan did not interfere as the two Iroquois led the search of the musty stalls. In the first, half a dozen Indians lay in drunken stupor on piles of straw. The next was much the same, though two Europeans in tattered, soiled clothes were present as well, one of them performing an unsteady drunken jig to earn a swig of an Indian's jug. In the third an angry warning snapped out, and a naked Indian woman threw a man's shoe from her pallet as she covered the head of the European beside her with a blanket, leaving the rest of his chalky nakedness for all to see.

  The heads of two horses extended from the half wall of the last stall, and from the low moans arising from the stall before it Duncan expected to see more rum drinkers. But at the sight of the forlorn shapes in the straw he rushed forward. Three Indian women and three children lay in the dim light. One woman propped against the wall was in the discomfort of pregnancy, but she watched them silently, making no complaint. Another was clearly stricken with fever, lying between two children who held her hands, trying to console her. The third cradled a boy of four or five in her arms, rocking him back and forth, trying to make him forget his obvious pain. Duncan knelt first by the fevered woman, gesturing for the lantern to be held closer, taking her pulse, lifting an eyelid, laying a hand on her forehead, then stroking it as her body was wracked with violent shivering.

  "Hold there!" boomed an angry voice. "No one be touching the squaws but if I-" The stout, heavily whiskered man who stormed into the stall hesitated as he saw Old Belt. "This be private property," he said more tentatively. "No one-" his protest completely died away as the two braves stepped from the shadows. These were not the city Indians, weakened from drink and sickness, that he was accustomed to, but towering warriors of the wilds, in their prime. One of the Iroquois slipped behind him, blocking the door.

  "T'ain't no public thoroughfare is all," the man muttered.

  Duncan fought the impulse to strike him. "You will get fresh water for these people, now! Then fresh straw."

  "Ye have no right."

  "Now!" Duncan repeated. Conawago quickly gave instructions to one of the braves to escort the barn's proprietor, who lost all color when he saw the warrior remove the war ax from his belt. He nodded and backed away.

  "She has malaria," Duncan explained. "Shivering fever. With Peruvian bark we can cure the symptoms." He turned to Old Belt. "Magistrate Brindle would no doubt be responsive if you requested a physician to bring some tomorrow." The Iroquois chief nodded his agreement. "Ask him for a large supply. She needs to be out of here, back in the Iroquois towns, where she can be cared for away from the miasmas of the city."

  The woman with the boy was reluctant to let Duncan touch her son until Old Belt stepped closer. She uttered an exclamation of awed surprise, obviously recognizing the great chief, then nodded to Duncan. Instantly he saw that the boy had a broken arm, the skin an ugly mass of green and blue from coagulated blood, one end of the bone protruding into the muscle.

  Conawago spoke with the woman in a comforting voice, then explained to his companions. "The boy was carrying food up the ladder when he fell. She fears he will never be whole again. In the village of her youth a boy who could not shoot a bow was considered worthless, abandoned by his people."

  "He will shoot a bow again," Duncan promised, then spoke to Conawago. "I need some of the broken harness I saw hanging on the
wall, two small planks, and some of the flour sacking from the first stall."

  By the time Conawago returned Duncan had the boy stretched out on the straw, his mother holding his good hand. He cut a fourinch piece of the heavy leather and told the boy to bite it whenever he felt the pain grow sharper, then began shaping the splint as Conawago ripped apart the sacking. Duncan began singing a low song, a Scottish sea shanty of his youth, repeating the chorus in a soft voice. He rubbed his fingers along the broken bone then, nodding at the boy to bear down, with a single smooth stretching motion snapped the bone back into place. He wrapped the arm in one layer of the makeshift bandage, then tightly wrapped the splints with the remaining sacking, and finally made a sling out of the leather.

  "For two moons," he said to Conawago, not trusting his own translation, "tell her to keep it like this for two moons and the boy will be whole again."

  Duncan smiled as the woman gripped his hand in both of hers and thanked him, again and again.

  "He broke his arm taking food into the loft," Conawago observed.

  Old Belt needed no further prompting. An unfamiliar energy had entered his eyes, the fire of an aging horse remembering tricks of his youth. He bent over the oldest of the children for a moment, whispering. "There is a secret room up there," he reported as he straightened. "With chairs and pallets and Europeans belongings. And there is a ladder at the far end that will take us up without being noticed."

  Duncan was inclined to ascend the ladder alone but did not object when one of the Iroquois braves shot past him and stealthily disappeared into the darkness above. As they gathered near the top of the ladder moments later, they could plainly see the sentinel at the far end, cocking his head toward them, and just as plainly see the long arm that materialized around his neck, dragging him into the darkness.

  The second brave pressed ahead, taking up a station on the other side of the door, as Duncan pushed past to enter the chamber. The room had been cleverly built of rough planks on the exterior but was lined with finished boards on the inside, giving it the character of a comfortable habitation. Sacking had been tacked to the floor for a crude carpet, castaway furniture scattered around the room. One Indian was in repose, his head sagging onto the back of his chair, and another four were sitting at a blanket in the center of the floor, rolling the colored stones that were the Indian equivalent of dice, each with a stack of European coins beside him.

  The four men on the floor shot to their feet as Duncan entered, hands to the knives that hung on their chest straps. Duncan watched uneasily as they spread out, their muscles coiling, the blades suddenly out of their sheaths. They did not mean to parlay, did not even mean to challenge their intruders before attacking. The man closest to Duncan lifted a long tapered wooden club, a marlin spike used in ships' rigging. It was lethal looking, and Duncan crouched to defend himself against a certain blow, when suddenly the four men froze. They stared in amazement at Old Belt, who had appeared in the doorway, fixing each in turn with a stern, disapproving gaze. As recognition sank in they sagged, lowering their weapons, two muttering low, reluctant syllables of respect for the revered Iroquois leader.

  "We will have the Shawnee called Red Hand," Old Belt quietly declared.

  Duncan bent to a pallet by the wall. "Still warm," he reported.

  The man in the chair, a Nanticoke, judging by his oyster shell adornments, awoke and cast a sour look at the intruders. "We know no one by such a name, old man, just get-" He never finished his sentence. One of Old Belt's escorts tapped his head with the ball end of his war ax, and the man collapsed to the floor. No one reacted.

  "We will have the one called Red Hand," Old Belt repeated.

  Duncan sprang forward the instant one of the Indians glanced toward a shadow in the far corner. In two leaping strides he found himself going down a short, narrow passageway into a storeroom, then spotted the open hatch used for loading supplies by pulley and rope. He leapt to the opening, steadying himself by grabbing the rope that still swung in the darkness.

  Red Hand, having made good his escape, stood in a pool of moonlight fifty paces away, his arms thrust toward the sky as he taunted Duncan. There was no hope of catching him. By the time Duncan slid down the rope and reached the pool of light the Indian would be lost in the labyrinth of the city.

  "He comes and goes," Conawago reported as Duncan returned to his friends. The Nipmuc dropped onto the table a tattered pouch on which lewd figures had been drawn over old tribal decorations, the pouch Red Hand had carried at Shamokin. "His kit."

  Duncan upended the pouch onto the table. A deck of stained and dog-eared playing cards. A gold cross on a strand of beads. The remaining two silver buttons from Winston Burke's uniform. Three of the crosshatched nails from Shamokin. The chipped head of a small china doll. Several soiled silk ribbons, two tied around locks of delicate blond hair. The meager, macabre belongings of an Indian outlaw. Duncan pushed the ribbons aside and lifted an object from underneath them. A glass ball, nearly an inch in diameter, larger and more refined than a gaming marble, identical to the one found with Ohio George.

  He pocketed the ball, then turned toward the Indians who had been in the room, lined up against a wall now. As he did so one of the Iroquois guards appeared, shoving another Indian in front of him, speaking quietly to Old Belt.

  "This one was in the jakes," the chief explained, "using this." The guard extended a black book, a prayer book. Nearly half the pages had been torn out, starting in the rear.

  "Some will take such books because they are sacred," Conawago said with a sigh. "Others take them for pages to wipe themselves in the jakes."

  Duncan lifted the bloodstained book and opened it to the first page. Inscribed in a refined hand across the top were a date, 1749, and a name. Henry Bythe.

  Conawago paced along the Indians at the wall, who fearfully watched Old Belt, then spoke in low, terse syllables to each, striking up a conversation with the last man in line. "Red Hand owes this one much money," he related after a moment, "and told him he would soon have it. Red Hand bragged about what fun he would have earning the money."

  "Fun?" Duncan asked.

  "Red Hand said to expect the money tomorrow night since he had to earn it before Skanawati's trial. He said," Conawago explained ominously, "that he is going to kill a black girl, a runaway from Virginia."

  It was Old Belt himself who insisted they stop at the magistrate's house despite the late hour. Brindle was sheltering Becca, Mokie, and the infant, Penn, in his own household pending the decision of the governor on their fate. What's more, the magistrate had confided to the Iroquois chief that he was keeping hours past midnight every night with his law and philosophy books, seeking an answer to his treaty dilemma.

  The door to the large clapboard house was quickly opened by an austere woman wearing a white apron over her black dress. She did not greet them, did not react to the tall warriors who positioned themselves on either side of the door as sentries, simply ushered the visitors into a spacious room lined with bookshelves. Magistrate Brindle sat staring at the embers in his fireplace, the candlelit table by his chair heaped with documents bearing the wax seals of the courts, beside a law book whose pages gently stirred in the breeze coming from the open window beyond the fireplace.

  Old Belt, motioning for Conawago and Duncan to wait, stepped forward. The Quaker looked up with a melancholy nod. "My servants say I should be abed. But we workhorses feel the harness every hour of the day."

  The chief said nothing, just placed Bythe's prayer book on the table. The magistrate's hand trembled as he lifted the bloodstained volume. He opened it and stared at the inscription for a long moment before looking up.

  "Your brother-in-law discovered the killers," Conawago declared as he approached. "But they were not the French, as he sought."

  Duncan hung back in the darkness, acutely aware that he was a fugitive in the house of a high-ranking judge. When Brindle spoke it was in a near whisper, directed toward the little Quaker book. "W
hen we took his body down there was a long spindle gear hammered into his eye." His voice cracked. "There were bloodstains around the eye. I think your medical friend would say it means he was still alive when it was done."

  "We have seen other such gears," Conawago reminded the judge. "And in Shamokin we have seen the death of one of those responsible. Another walks these very streets. Perhaps in the employ of a merchant named Waller."

  Brindle's countenance swirled with dark emotion. "I am no longer responsible for dealing with the deaths. With the murder of a family member I was considered too close to the crimes."

  "A great benefit for those behind the killings," Conawago observed.

  Brindle looked up. "I do not understand."

  "Are you not still responsible for the treaty negotiations?"

  "That duty has not yet been removed from me. We speak for hours every day, but little seems to get done," Brindle acknowledged. "We arrange and rearrange chairs at tables, organize meals, listen to speeches about why each of the delegations deserves the greater esteem."

  "Not all at the table are telling the truth," Conawago ventured. "What does the Psalmist say? The words of his mouth are smoother than butter, but war was in his heart."

  "His words were softer than oil," Brindle continued the verse, "yet were they drawn swords." He leaned forward. The Iroquois had their wampum for assuring a listener's attention. Magistrate Brindle had his Psalms.

  "Your removal from the murders keeps you from seeing that they are just one more device being used to manipulate the treaty.

  Even from the shadows Duncan could hear the Quaker's sharp intake of breath. After a moment he rose from his chair and laid another log on the fire. "Day unto day uttereth speech," he recited, and night unto night showeth knowledge." He lifted a quill to continue the notes he had been taking, then nodded to Conawago. "Speak to me, my friend."

  As the old Nipmuc began to relay the events of the past ten days, the log flared and Duncan stepped back, deeper into the darkness. His heart shot into his throat as someone touched his elbow. The stern woman who met them at the door had materialized beside him, gesturing him into a spacious kitchen with an immense stone fireplace, then lifted a glass of milk from the counter and handed it to him. Duncan was about to whisper his thanks when he saw a figure huddled on a stool by the remains of a small fire in the huge hearth.