Remember the Morning

by Thomas Fleming

  Eventually Malcolm swam ashore. He dried himself with a blanket and pulled on his clothes. “I know you love Clara. But I don’t want you to hate me. Can we manage that?” I asked.

  “We can manage that,” Malcolm said.

  He did not know he was talking to the Moon Woman. He thought he was talking to Catalyntie Van Vorst, acting like a slut. For a moment I was so ashamed I wanted to die. But I gripped my writhing heart with an eagle’s claws and vowed: No. Let the Evil Brother do what he pleases with me. I will have my heart’s desire.

  “Get dressed,” Malcolm said.

  I ignored his command—hoping he might take me again. Instead, he whirled and strode down the beach. The Evil Brother’s voice mocked me: Not a single caress. The wind remained the wind.

  At about a hundred yards, Malcolm turned and glared at me. “Get dressed!” he roared.

  This time I obeyed him.

  The next day at Oswego we stored our beaver skins in the fort’s armory under the sullen eyes of the fur traders. As we lugged the rest of our trading goods back to the canoe, we encountered a short, pompous Dutchman in a beaver hat and greasy leather coat, accompanied by Captain Hartshorne in his soiled red one.

  “Be you Catalyntie Van Vorst?” the Dutchman said.

  I nodded.

  “I am Willem Van Schenck, appointed by the Albany County Commissioners of Indian Affairs as the Right Honorable Commissary of this, His Majesty’s fort and fur-trading emporium of Oswego. You are under arrest.”

  “For what?” I said.

  “For violating the treaty which His Majesty’s commissioners have negotiated with the Six Nations of the Iroquois, limiting all fur trading to an area within five hundred yards of Fort Oswego.”

  I curtly informed Willem Van Schenck that I had negotiated permission to trade in the Seneca villages with one of their grand sachems. Malcolm summoned a few phrases from his year with lawbooks and declared that the most the commissary could do was serve me with a writ that would have to be adjudicated in an Albany courtroom.

  Malcolm asked Hartshorne if he agreed. The captain said he was no lawyer, but it sounded sensible to him. “I told the commissary that in my seven years in this post, I had yet to arrest anyone,” he said. He was obviously on our side. The commissary had no authority to make him do anything.

  “You’ll be far better off if you accept arrest and discharge here and go straight home, young woman,” Willem Van Schenck spluttered. “You won’t relish a term in an Albany jail.”

  “I’ll take that chance,” I said. “Serve your writ and be damned.”

  “You’re likely to join her in the jailhouse,” Van Schenck said to Malcolm. “With none of the access to her private parts you’ve no doubt enjoyed up here in the woods.”

  Malcolm picked up Willem Van Schenck by his greasy leather coat and slammed him against the wall of the fort. “You’ve just insulted this lady—and me,” he said. “Apologize if you want to keep your head on your shoulders.”

  “Captain!” Van Schenck squawked. “Call out the guard!”

  “I think you’ve misjudged Mr. Stapleton, Commissary,” Captain Hartshorne said. “He’s a gentleman—and no gentleman accepts an insult meekly.”

  “I … apologize,” gasped the terrified Van Schenck.

  Malcolm let the commissary slide to the floor and we resumed loading our canoe. Soon it was up to its gunwales in the water. Malcolm advised me to buy another canoe and hire some homeward-bound Senecas to paddle it. I found my old friend Leaping Deer snoring off a drunk in one of the cabins. He had lost all his furs at dice, as well as his musket and powder horn and even his moccasins. He agreed to paddle our second canoe in return for a roll of strouds and some jewelry, which might prevent his wife from murdering him. A friend from the same village, Sitting Otter, was in a similar plight and accepted the same terms.

  At Peaceful Lake’s village, we picked up Clara and Duycinck, who had repaired the local muskets at a record pace, giving him time to talk several other young women into sharing his bed at midnight in return for a portion of his supposedly supernatural powers. Clara had completed an excellent map of the villages along the lakeshore, all the way to our girlhood home, Shining Creek.

  That evening, we camped by the lake and Malcolm went into the woods with Sitting Otter, hoping they might spot a deer before darkness fell. We had left Leaping Deer trying to mollify his outraged wife and daughters, under the stern eyes of Peaceful Lake. Clara and I chopped down a small birch tree to make a fire.

  “Do you still love Malcolm?” I asked, as we hacked the tree in pieces with hatchets.

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you give yourself to him, after the Eagle Dance? I could see he wanted you.”

  “I can’t—I’m not sure I can ever be with a man again,” Clara said. “What happened was so terrible.”

  “On the way back to Oswego, I let him take me. He wanted a woman so badly. Do you hate me for that?”

  Clara split a piece of wood in a single blow. “You know I can never hate you.”

  “Why not? I almost hate myself for letting it happen. I … I wanted him—as much as he wanted me.”

  Clara split another piece of wood with the shining hatchet. She could bury it in my skull with the same swift motion, I thought. I studied the sinewy brown flesh of Clara’s arm. Why doesn’t she kill me, I wondered? She knows I’m lying. She knows I seduced him.

  If I died now, my soul would be seized by the Evil Brother. But I did not care. All I wanted was my heart’s desire. The Seneca years stormed in my soul. The years of the Moon Woman. Then Robert Nicolls’s betrayal. Didn’t I have the right to some happiness?

  My conscience tormented me. How could I compare my petty suffering to Clara’s? My only hope of escaping the Evil Brother was her forgiveness. But I could see Clara was not ready to forgive me. Perhaps she would never be ready. That would mean I could never escape the Evil One.

  “Since you can’t please him that way, would you care if I did now and then—presuming he’s willing?” I asked.

  Clara split another chunk of wood. Did she see it as the Moon Woman’s lying heart? Her orenda gave her almost infallible judgment in such matters. But the grip of the Evil Brother was so strong, I did not care if Clara loathed me. Nothing mattered but my heart’s desire.

  “Why would he be willing?” Clara said. It was clear by now that she was very angry. But I still did not care. The wind was the wind. Anger was anger. I only wanted my heart’s desire.

  “Because he’s a man,” I said.

  “Oh,” Clara said. She split another chunk of wood. “Why wasn’t he willing with the women in Peaceful Lake’s village? A half dozen offered themselves to him after the Eagle Dance.”

  Clara knew everything. Her orenda was implacable, irresistible. “He was willing with me. Very willing,” I said.

  “If he’s that way again, of course I have no objections. How could I?”

  Clara threw down her hatchet and walked off along the shore, leaving me sitting there, filled with shame and self-hatred. The Evil Brother grunted and heaved in my soul like a sow giving birth. He was laughing at the Moon Woman’s dream of escaping him.

  Tears blinded me. When Malcolm and Duycinck and Sitting Otter emerged from the woods with a young deer on a sapling, they found me crouched beside the still-unlit fire, sobbing uncontrollably, smashing my hatchet into the sandy earth again and again.

  “What the devil are you chopping up? Ants?” Malcolm said.

  “Go to hell!” I said and fled down the shore in the opposite direction from the one Clara had taken, leaving the three men to puzzle over what was wrong with their female employers.

  FIVE

  THE REST OF THIS TRADING TRIP was a peculiar blend of misery and triumph. Clara barely spoke to me and Malcolm Stapleton frequently glared at me as if he was only waiting for an opportunity to strangle me. At some point Clara had told Malcolm what she had learned about our trip back to Oswego. Meanwhile, at vi
llage after village, our strouds and blankets and jewelry were received with wild approval by Seneca women, who eagerly traded beaver and marten and even bearskins for them, ignoring the occasional feeble protests of their husbands.

  By this time, summer was replacing spring on the lake and in the forest. We paddled through days of dazzling sunshine and slept beneath the stars with only a single blanket. Lying a few feet away from Malcolm on the lakeshore or in a village, my soul was crowded with images of surrender, tenderness. I saw us alone in the forest, the sun gleaming on that magnificent male body, while I whispered how much I adored him. But Clara’s presence mocked these febrile hopes.

  Once, in near despair, I got up at dawn and wandered into the woods and clutched a pine tree and rubbed my face against the bark until my cheek was almost raw. Above me in the branches, a blackbird went caw caw caw. The Evil Brother was mocking me. I would never escape his grip.

  We sold the last of our goods before we even got close to our childhood village of Shining Creek. Nevertheless, I wanted to press on to it, because I was determined to begin the search for our parents’ killers. To my surprise, Clara objected strenuously. “We know who they are,” she said. “The very same people we learned to love and respect. I don’t want to face them with such a question on my lips.”

  “I mean the white men who lied the Senecas into the raid,” I said. Clara shook her head. “The whole idea makes me see the wisdom of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. It’s better to pray for your enemies. Far better than blundering back into the past in search of revenge. Hatred wounds and disfigures both sides in a quarrel.”

  “What do you think, Malcolm?” I said.

  His mighty brow furrowed, his soldier’s brain tried to comprehend loving an enemy. “I’m inclined to agree with Catalyntie,” he said. “A crime—especially murder—demands punishment.”

  It was a glimpse of how far we two ostensible Christians were from Clara’s vision of life. But the more we debated the decision, the less enthusiastic I became. For one thing, we had no presents left to give our mothers and grandmothers and the village leaders. There was also something to be said for getting our furs to market as quickly as possible.

  Finally, in two overloaded canoes, we turned our backs on Shining Creek and began our return to Oswego. At Malcolm’s urging, I hired four muscular Seneca warriors to help us paddle our weighty cargo of skins. Toward the middle of the first day, one of the warriors, a sharp-featured man named Little Wolf, pointed to the horizon of the lake. “French!” he said.

  Malcolm followed his pointing finger and shouted to Duycinck: “Load your gun!” He quickly loaded his gun and told me to urge the Senecas to load their guns as well.

  I peered into the noonday glare and saw a ship at least as big as a Hudson River schooner heading toward us. Its white sails were taut in the strong breeze. “What is it?” I asked.

  “A French gunboat. They have two on the lake,” Malcolm said. “They may try to seize your furs.”

  “Why in the world?”

  “Because they consider this the territory of their king. They’ve told Hartshorne they plan to knock down Oswego the minute a war starts. They don’t want anyone coming this far west to mess with their Indians.”

  “The Senecas aren’t their Indians.”

  “Sometimes they aren’t, sometimes they are. You better make damn sure these warriors are on our side.”

  I turned to the warriors, unnerved and uncertain. Malcolm was right about their divided allegiance. Who could testify to it more bitterly than Clara and I? The Senecas had murdered our parents in the service of the French and their treacherous Dutch collaborators in Albany.

  “Brothers!” I said. “A ship of the French king approaches. I hope you will stand by me and my sister, Nothing-But-Flowers, if they try to seize our furs. Otherwise I will not be able to pay the money I promised you when we reach Oswego.”

  “The French give us many presents,” Little Wolf said. “They have obliged us to consider them friends.”

  The other warriors nodded, obviously confused by the possible confrontation. “All these guns are from the French,” one of them said, holding up his musket. “It would be treachery to kill a Frenchman with one of them without an act of war on their side.”

  “We can’t let them shoot first,” Malcolm said. With some help from Clara and me, he had learned quite a lot of Seneca, although he could not speak it very well. “Tell them to load their guns.”

  “Clara—?” I said, confessing the Moon Woman’s inadequacy again.

  “Brothers!” Clara said. “We think it would be best to load your guns because the French have treacherous hearts. They may make war on us without warning. They secretly hate the Senecas for our allegiance to the King of England. For the sake of your wives and children, and the honor of the Senecas, load your guns and prepare to defend yourselves.”

  “The woman speaks well!” Little Wolf said. All four warriors loaded their guns. We continued paddling toward Oswego, staying about a half mile from the shore of the lake. In an hour the gunboat was close enough to hail us.

  “Who are you?” called a blue-coated officer in French, using a tin speaking horn. Beside him, two sailors waited beside a cannon, whose ugly black snout jutted from a gunport. In the stern, a helmsman steered the ship. A half dozen other men lounged on the rails.

  “Talk to him, Duycinck,” Malcolm said.

  “English subjects, trading for furs with the permission of the Grand Sachem of the Senecas,” Duycinck replied in halting French.

  “You are violating the territory of the King of France,” said the Frenchman, whose voice resounded through the horn like the buzz of a giant hornet.

  Duycinck translated and Malcolm said: “Tell him if he wants to start a war, we’re ready for it.”

  “Are you crazy? That cannon’s pointed straight at us,” Duycinck said.

  “My gun will be pointed at those sailors in exactly one second if they try anything,” Malcolm said.

  “The territory belongs to neither the King of France nor the King of England. It is the territory of the Iroquois,” Duycinck shouted.

  “You will surrender your furs and come with me to Fort Frontenac,” the Frenchman said. “There French justice will decide the matter.”

  Duycinck translated this ultimatum. “Tell Little Wolf and his men to shoot at the sailors. I’ll take the officer,” Malcolm said. “Duycinck, go for the helmsman. Wait until I shoot.”

  I passed along the order to Little Wolf. The warriors cocked their muskets. Was Malcolm right, I wondered? How could we survive a fight with this ship, armed with cannon, in our frail canoes? We would all end up at the bottom of the lake.

  A second later, Malcolm’s gun boomed in my ear. The speaking horn fell from the officer’s hand and he crumpled to the deck. In the same instant, Little Wolf and his fellow warriors fired at the sailors manning the cannon and Duycinck shot at the helmsman. The cannoneers and the helmsman toppled, killed or wounded. Shouts of anger erupted from the ship. Men ran down the deck toward the fallen officer. Without a helmsman, the ship slewed off course and lost the wind. Her sails flapped helplessly, like the wings of some great crippled bird.

  “Head for the beach!” Malcolm said.

  We leaped to our paddles and in ten minutes our bows grated on the sand. “Unload everything. Get it into the trees,” Malcolm said.

  In another ten minutes of frantic work, we had the bales of skins well into the trees. We dragged the canoes after them. By this time, the French gunboat had regained headway and sailed toward us. They stood offshore and their cannon boomed angrily. Ball after ball whistled into the trees. Malcolm told everyone to lie down. “You’d have to be very unlucky to be killed by this kind of shooting,” he said.

  The French lowered a small boat and a half dozen sailors armed with muskets got into it and rowed for shore. When they were about two hundred yards off the beach, Malcolm ran out of the woods and knelt on the sand to take aim at them. T
he ship’s cannon boomed and a ball flung up sand only a few yards from him. If he dies, I’ll kill myself, I told the Evil Brother. Preserve him and I’ll be your servant forever.

  Malcolm’s musket crashed and one of the oarsman tumbled into the thwarts. The rowboat slewed to the right and sailors fell into confusion. The Senecas were amazed. It was considered impossible to hit a man at such a distance. Few muskets could hit anything beyond fifty yards.

  “That fellow has great magic on his side!” Little Wolf exclaimed.

  “Is it from the crookback, or from the women?” one of the other warriors asked.

  “I don’t know,” Little Wolf said. “But I would not want to face him in battle.”

  The rest of the Frenchmen in the rowboat had an agitated conference, while the cannon from the ship flung more balls at Malcolm. The rowboat returned to the ship, where they lifted aboard the wounded man and sailed up and down, silently proclaiming their determination to sink us if we dared show ourselves on the water.

  “Now what do we do?” I said.

  “Wait until dark,” Malcolm said, “then load up and pull away, staying close to the shore. If they come after us again tomorrow, we’ll just run ashore and repeat the performance. But I don’t think they’ll bother chasing us. They’re beaten and they know it.”

  “How did you hit that man at such a distance?” I asked.

  “Adam deserves the credit,” Malcolm said. “He made this gun for me. It’s got a rifled barrel.”

  He explained that a rifle’s barrel was full of grooves that gave the shooter far better control over a bullet. “It’s got twice or three times the accuracy of a smoothbore musket,” he said.

  So it was human ingenuity, not the Evil Brother, who saved him, I thought. In my soul, the Evil One mocked this attempt to evade him. You promised me, he whispered. Anyway, without me you know you will never have him again. How else can the Moon Woman hope to overcome Clara’s orenda?

  As darkness fell, the French ship sailed off to the north, probably to Fort Frontenac. Their wounded men needed a doctor’s skills. Malcolm announced we would paddle all night to try to reach Oswego before the French returned with reinforcements.