Shadowbrook

by Swerling, Beverly

  “Haya, haya, ahseni …” The sound was low, soothing, luring him back to the pleasures of the steam. What did it matter where he left Memetosia’s gift? They were alone and Takito was blind. He could leave the pouch tucked unobtrusively under his clothes and it would be there when he returned to dress … Ayi! The steam had already turned his thoughts to smoke. “The most precious thing I have,” the old chief had said.

  The chanting stopped and the priest called him, “Cormac Shea of the People of the Fire, come. These stones are waiting for you.”

  “I am preparing myself, esteemed Priest. Only a few breaths more.”

  A short distance from the rock was a maple tree that had been three-quarters felled, probably by lightning. Most of the trunk lay along the ground, leafless and withered. A shadow-tree remained upright, a single piece of the trunk that was still struggling to grow. Its leaves were yellow and curled in on themselves. Only one branch at the very top was still green and full of life.

  Cormac grasped the skinny remains of the tree with his knees and began to shimmy up the ghost trunk It swayed and bent toward the earth. The rough and splintered bark tore at his naked legs, but he ignored the pain. The single live branch stuck out of one side and hung almost over the stream. Cormac tested it gingerly.

  “Haya, haya, ahseni …” The chant had started again. People said that a Midewiwin priest could see with his eyes closed. Maybe Takito could see with no eyes at all. But what did it matter? Takito was not his enemy. There had been trouble between the hereditary chiefs and the Midè priests since the chiefs had been unable to cope with the devastation caused by the white man’s diseases. That had allowed the Midewiwin to become more powerful, and in many of the tribes they struggled with the chiefs for power. But if Takito wasn’t loyal to the old man dying a short ways away in Genevieve’s parlor he wouldn’t be here.

  “Haya, haya, ahseni. Haya, haya, ahseni.”

  The single live branch of the maple tree dipped perilously close to the water. Ayi! He was going to fall in and make a fool of himself. He moved back a couple of inches and the branch stopped swaying. He glanced over at the steam lodge one last time. Takito’s back was to him. Cormac reached up with one hand and slipped the deerskin medicine bag from around his neck, wound it securely around the single living branch of the dying maple, and shimmied carefully back down the branch. When he was on the ground he saw that the green leaves entirely hid the treasure.

  Utterly naked, at last he approached the lodge. Takito stopped chanting and stood up. He rubbed Cormac from head to toe with bear grease, then he held open the flap of the small wigwam and waited.

  Cormac had to stoop to get inside and once there he couldn’t stand upright; the wigwam had not been built for standing. On the floor was a frame of laced-together saplings that stood about two hands high and supported a woven lattice of hide thongs. When he lay down on it Cormac felt as if he were floating. The air was already thick with moisture, but he heard the sound of liquid splashing on the rocks in the fire pit and more clouds of steam filled the little lodge. The moist heat surrounded him, entered his muscles, and began its work. He gave himself up to the healing magic of the Midewiwin.

  Chapter Eight

  MONDAY, JULY 13, 1754

  ALBANY, NEW YORK PROVINCE

  HAMISH STEWART DID not like cities in general, and Albany, for all he’d lived here going on a twelvemonth, he considered the least likable of all. Nothing to inspire a man to awe or even admiration, only squat wooden buildings, na the fine red stone o’ Edinburgh ni the impressive gray granite o’ Glasgow. Wi’ a wooden stockade around the bits that mattered, the fort and such, there were too many people crammed together in too little space, and the men all haggling and cursing and spitting and pissing at the same time into the same wee drainage ditches as ran down the dirt roads and emptied their filth into the river. The decent God-fearing sort of women turned their pinched faces away and pretended they dinna see or hear the goings-on. The wenches as lifted their petticoats out behind one or t’other o’ the town’s taverns or grog shops and bent over for any as had five copper pennies to pay for a straightforward fucking—or a bit more for something fancy—those sorts o’ lassies dinna care.

  There were plenty o’ that sort in this place. The taproom belonged to a Dutchman, Peter Groesbeck, and as in the rest of Albany, you were as likely to hear under its roof the Frankish speech of Holland and the other Low Countries as the bloody king’s English. Groesbeck, like most, spoke both tongues. What set him apart was that he let the whores do as much business as they liked out o’ his establishment at the Sign of the Nag’s Head, long as they paid him his share at end o’ day. Hamish had no quarrel wi’ that. You survived how best you could. What bothered him about Groesbeck’s taproom was that geneva could be had for a ha’penny the glass and rum for a penny, but you couldna get a dram o’ real whiskey at any price. None to be had anywhere in the town. A pox on Albany. Once Shadowbrook was his he wouldna come again to this miserable excuse for a town. He’d send his slaves to do whatever business he had with Albany.

  Hamish finished his rum and called for a refill. Old man Groesbeck himself brought the jug and filled the Scot’s glass. Hamish put a wooden penny on the table and the Dutchman took it and went away.

  Slaves. God’s truth, it was a mighty strange notion. He dinna think he’d ever be really comfortable with it. Men and women running about doing whatever they were bid for no pay, and no reason for it other than that the slaves had black skin and the masters had white. Could be this whole slave business was a heretic Protestant notion. On t’other hand, St. Paul himself said that slaves should be obedient to their masters. Besides, slaves and Shadowbrook went together. First time he’d seen the one was first time he saw t’other. And God’s truth, Shadowbrook was meant to be his.

  He’d known that back when he still had two eyes, the first time he saw that glorious piece of God’s creation called the Hale Patent. Shadowbrook was his destiny. That’s why the Almighty had let him live through the sinkhole o’ death that was Culloden Moor. It was why he’d survived the bloody slaughter o’ the hunt the Sassenachs mounted after the battle ended, pursuing the Highlanders up every brae and down every ben, killing them wherever they could be found. After Culloden the Highlanders were na permitted e’en to wear the plaid, God help them all. But Hamish Stewart still had his plaid, woven for him by his own grandmother in the soft blues and rose reds o’ the tartan o’ the Stewarts o’ Appin. He would wear it again, by God, when he was laird o’ Shadowbrook.

  His destiny, Hamish reminded himself, and pushed away the faint unease he felt each time he thought o’ how it was he’d gotten enough brass to make it all happen. By Christ, had he gone to London and paid the ass-licking court flunky as was supposed to get it, what would ha’ happened then? Nothing. Whatever the wee favor the Sassenach was supposed to do for the poor bedeviled crofters who dispatched Hamish Stewart to pay the Englishman their life’s savings, he would na ha’ done it. No Sassenach can be trusted. Ach, what was the point o’ thinking on all that now. “Landlord! Another rum. A man can be dead o’ thirst in this place and you’d not notice.”

  “And will you treat me to one as well?” a woman’s voice asked from somewhere over his shoulder.

  “Aye, glad I’ll be to do it, Annie. If you’ll sit yourself down and talk a wee while.”

  “The talk’s easy enough, Hamish. But the sitting is another matter.” Annie Crotchett was on the wrong side of twenty-five. She was missing two front teeth and her skin was beginning to look like badly tanned hide. Aye, but her breasts were still fine things. They rose above her bodice like a pair o’ ships in full sail. Hamish had heard she charged tuppence extra to unlace her dress and let a man suckle. He couldna say for sure because he’d never gone with Annie out behind the Nag’s Head. A man shouldna shit in the same place he ate, a lesson he’d learned early on. Annie was a matter o’ business.

  She sat gingerly on the bench beside Hamish, keeping her weig
ht more or less on one cheek. “I keep telling meself it’s not worth letting a man ram his cock up yer arse for a guinea, much less a shilling,” she sighed, “but I give in every time.” Groesbeck appeared and gave them each a tot of rum. Hamish put tuppence on the table and the landlord scooped it up and turned to go. “Hold on.” Annie reached between her breasts and extracted three sixpences. “Here’s your share of me day’s earnings, Peter. I’m done work until tomorrow. Got to give me poor bottom a bit of rest or they’ll be burying the whole of me by week’s end.”

  Hamish waited until the landlord had left them before asking, “What about John Hale? Does he like to ram it up your backside, as well?”

  Annie laughed. “Lord no. Wish he did; I’d hold my shit for a month if I thought I could bury that bastard’s cock in it. It’s other things John Hale likes.”

  “What things?”

  “None of yer business. I told ye afore I took yer poxed money, I’ll tell you anything he says, not what he does.” She was too ashamed to tell what Hale made her do the two or three times a month he came to see her. The Scot had offered her a golden guinea to loosen her tongue, but no amount of money would make her. “ ’Sides, I ain’t seen John Hale at all this past fortnight” And glad she was of it, much as she missed the shilling Hale paid her for each visit.

  “When you did see him last, was he talking about the harvest? Did he say how—” Hamish stopped speaking. Nearly everyone in the taproom stopped speaking.

  A huge redheaded man had walked in. There was a lassie with him, a wee scrap o’ a thing. Half undressed, she seemed, so tattered was her frock. The man sat at a table near the door and called loudly for a pint o’ ale for himself and a glass o’ Rhenish wine for the lady; if he noticed how quiet the taproom had become, he dinna let on. Hamish felt a cold hand grip his bowels and damped his teeth tight shut to keep from groaning aloud.

  “Only drinks wine.” Annie didn’t seem to have noticed Hamish’s distress. “Lady is she? Don’t look like it to me.”

  Hamish wasn’t interested in who or what the lassie might be. “That’s Quentin Hale, isn’t it?”

  “That’s him,” Annie confirmed.

  People had started speaking again, rather more loudly than was normal. And making a point of not looking at the newcomer or his companion. “The Red Bear. That’s what they call him, isn’t it?”

  “Uko Nyakwai, the savages say. Practically one of ’em hisself, if the truth be told. Married a squaw, and in a proper Christian church, if you don’t mind. And when—”

  “I thought he was gone. I heard after the squaw died, Quentin Hale left Shadowbrook for good and went to the Ohio Country.” To Hamish’s ears his voice sounded hoarse and unnatural.

  “Not right away. Stayed up there on the Patent for maybe a year, then he had a huge fight with his pa and left. Doesn’t matter anyway. Shadowbrook was never going to be his. John’s the elder brother. That’s how rich folks do things, isn’t it? The first one gets the best of whatever there is, and the rest are left to squabble over the leavings.”

  “That’s how it happens sometimes,” Hamish said.

  God-rotting hell! He’d been sure he wouldna have to deal with Quentin Hale. Leastwise not until long after everything was settled and he had the law and possession on his side. God-rotting hell, but sometimes a man’s destiny was a hard thing to live with.

  Nicole was glad to leave Albany. The women of the town had looked at her in surprise, then quickly looked away in disapproval. Her dark hair hung in a plait down her back like a squaw’s, because she had lost all her pins. She had no petticoats and no chemise, and her dress was little more than rags. The lingering glances of the men were worse. She could tell what they were thinking. If Quentin Hale wasn’t with her she’d have been mauled like a common whore. “Where are we going now?” she demanded when they quit the town. “Where is Monsieur Shea? You said he would rejoin us.”

  “He will, when he can.” She’d have to stop asking so many questions if she was going to be Cormac Shea’s woman. Not his worry, Quent reminded himself. Corm had claimed her; it was up to him to break her to his ways. “We’re going the same place we’ve been going right along,” he said. “Shadowbrook. We’ll be there before midday tomorrow if you’ll stop talking so much and keep walking.”

  “That’s your family’s home, isn’t it? I have heard you and Monsieur Shea talking about it.”

  “That’s right.” He said no more and they walked in silence for what remained of the day.

  At dusk they descended a steep hill to a shallow cove beside the broad river. There was a narrow strip of sandy beach that ended in an outcropping of rocks, the whole protected by a half circle of willow trees growing at the foot of the cliff. Quent waited and kept watch while Nicole bathed. “Stay this side of the rocks,” he told her. “There’s an undertow.” When she came out, refreshed and ravenous, he had already stripped to the waist and taken off his moccasins. “I’ll bring back supper,” he called over his shoulder as he moved off. He dropped his breeches, stepping out of them, and bent forward to gather them up. Nicole’s cheeks grew hot and she quickly turned her head. By the time she turned back, the bare backside of the Red Bear was nowhere in sight.

  Nicole wondered why he hadn’t made a fire for her to cook the fish he clearly intended to catch, but when Quent returned he was carrying a basket woven of willow reeds. He came clambering over the rocks, wearing his breeches, droplets of water still clinging to his shoulders and chest and red hair. “Supper,” he said, depositing the basket at her feet. It was full of rough-shelled oysters, each almost as big as her palm. “Biggest and sweetest you’ve ever tasted,” he promised. He bent over to reclaim his dirk from the things he’d left on the shore, pried open the first mollusk, and handed it to her.

  Nicole downed the shimmering oyster. “Delicious,” she agreed. “I love oysters. Maman did not approve. Not fit food for a lady, she said. Only for common folk.”

  “What would your maman say if she saw you now?” Quent asked, slurping down two oysters and opening two more for her.

  “She would wag her finger,” Nicole admitted. “But she would understand after I explained that it was oysters or nothing, and that I am very hungry. Where did you get that?” She nodded toward the willow-reed basket, grayed with age and long soaking.

  “There’s a cave beneath those rocks. The entrance is underwater and it’s hard to find unless you know where to look. The basket was in there.”

  “You knew where to look.”

  “Yes. We’re on Shadowbrook land now. I’ve been swimming here since I was a boy.”

  “You and Monsieur Shea?”

  “That’s right.” Damn the woman. Every conversation he had with her ended with Cormac Shea.

  In the morning they left the riverbank and cut inland. “Straight up the bank would get us there faster,” Quent said, “but there’s a stretch of marshland between here and the house where the mosquitoes are the size of your fist. Better if we avoid that.”

  Nicole was grateful for the shade of the woodland route, and Monsieur Hale seemed to enjoy pointing out various landmarks and features of the Patent as they came into view. More for himself than her, Nicole thought, as if he needed reminding.

  “That road there leads to the sawmill. Used to be only half as wide, but we broadened it some years back. This is the back road to the mill. Round the other side there’s what we call the big road, the one my grandfather built when he first got here.” Quent squatted and studied the rutted track. “Doesn’t seem to have been scraped or graded for the last couple of seasons.”

  A league or so further on there was another break in the trees, and another path wide enough for a horse and wagon. “That’s the back way to the gristmill and the sugarhouse,” he said. “But if you’re not driving a wagon, quickest way’s to take the cutoff by a pair of white pines. Takes you by way of Big Two.”

  “What is made at a sugarhouse? And what is Big Two?”

  “Sugar�
��s how you make rum.”

  “And Big Two?”

  “Pair of hills.” He didn’t explain that the hills had gotten their name because of their resemblance to a woman’s breasts.

  A bit farther on they climbed a rise that gave them a view over what appeared to be an inland sea, or perhaps a lake. Only when she looked more closely did Nicole realize it was a field of wheat, the tall stalks rippling in the early morning breeze.

  They stood for a time while Quent shaded his eyes with his hand and gazed at the crop. “Almost ripe by the smell of it,” he said after a few seconds. “But there’s far too many weeds been allowed to take root. Can’t think why—” He broke off.

  “Why what?”

  “Nothing.” No point in telling her that it was perishing strange that the sun had been up for nearly four hours and there were no slaves pulling the weeds from the field. He didn’t look forward to telling Nicole about Shadowbrook’s slaves.

  It disturbed him that he’d seen no one on the sawmill road, or heading to or from the sugarhouse or the gristmill. More than fifty people lived in this southern part of the Patent; if you counted the folks up north at Do Good, there were close to three times that many on the place. But they hadn’t passed another human being since they set foot on Shadowbrook’s land. The hairs on the back of his neck were prickling. Quent took his gun from his shoulder and began pouring powder down the muzzle while they walked.

  Nicole watched him, her dark eyes nearly black with concern. Quent said nothing, and for once she didn’t ask any questions.

  An hour or so later, when the sun was directly overhead, the house appeared. “That’s Shadowbrook,” Quent said softly.

  Because of the detour they’d taken to avoid the marsh, they approached the house from the side, but that wasn’t much of a disadvantage. Like most houses she’d seen here in the New World, it appeared foursquare, planted solidly atop a rise and fronting on the river. As far as she could see, Shadowbrook was without wings, though it seemed to sprawl out the back for some ways, as if bits had been added on year by year. It was built of wood and gleamed white beneath a slate roof, with shutters the same dusky blue-gray color. She counted four chimneys, though she expected there were more. “It looks to be a fine house,” she said.