by Lori Benton
“I also have a sister,” he surprised himself by saying. “Or one I thought of as a sister, though she isn’t in truth. Anna.” As her name hovered on air thick with smoke and the drone of mosquitoes, the rhythmic croak of frogs and the fire’s fluttering, he was blindsided by memory of Anna standing at the top of the stairs at Lydia’s house, bathed in candlelight, clutching her forgotten cap. “I left her when I came north to join Johnson’s regiment.”
A year gone. Did she think of him still, pray for him? He felt the Indian’s gaze.
“She is your sister…but not?”
“You know of me,” William said, “that I was taken—stolen—at Fort William Henry. That’s when Anna came to be my sister. She was rescued by…” He cleared his throat. “By the man who raised me. His wife had birthed a son the same night we—my twin and I—were born. That son died. Reginald Aubrey took me to replace him. He and my…”
“Who is my mother and my brethren?” He’d lashed the question at Anna, wanting no response. Now it gnawed at his soul, demanding answer.
“The Aubreys were attacked with his regiment on the wilderness road. That’s where he found Anna, her parents dead beside her. We were together on the farm until I left for Wales, still a boy. I saw Anna no more until I returned last summer.” He stopped, overwhelmed by the recital of these bare facts, though oddly grateful for the chance to voice them.
“You regret leaving her,” Joseph said, as if he knew.
“We didn’t part well, see. And it troubles me now, thinking of her in the path of…this.” William waved a hand at the dark wood, in the direction of the army encampment. “Terrifies me, if I’m honest.”
Unlike the MacKays, he’d come north seeking refuge, not revenge. The regiment had offered him a place between what he’d been and…whatever he would be. Or so he’d thought. How had he not foreseen it would come to this?
“You parted with her in anger?”
William looked at the Indian, catching in his eyes a glint of pain.
A breeze off the river met the fire, ruffling the flames. William took a sip of coffee and, finding it cold, set the cup on the ground.
“I wanted her to come with me. She’d suffered nearly as great a shock as I, discovering the truth about me, about my brother she’d befriended years ago. She guessed it, see, the moment she set eyes on me again.”
“She is that girl?” Joseph asked, a light in his eyes. “I remember now, your brother spoke of seeing her. All these years she has been between you, a bridge to each other, though she did not know it?”
William stared at the Indian. “I suppose that’s true.”
A bridge. One he’d recklessly burned?
So much they hadn’t known. Anna, I’m sorry. He flung the plea southward yet again, but for the first time sensed its echo coming back to him across the mountain wilderness, though not from Anna. William, I tell you I am sorry…
Joseph leaned toward him, his intensity disconcerting. “Listen. You must go back to this sister who is not a sister.”
A mosquito buzzed at William’s eye. He swiped it away, covering the shock of the Indian’s words and those others he must have imagined. “I cannot. And if I could, it would mean going back to…”
“Your father?”
“That’s not what he is,” William bit out, more harshly than he’d meant to because the word was wrapping itself around his heart and making him sick with longing. Regret. “My father’s an Oneida called Stone Thrower. You know him.”
The Mohawk drew on his pipe, found it had gone out, set it aside. The breeze shifted the fire’s smoke across their faces—relief from the mosquitoes. “It has been how long since you learned the truth of who you are?”
“A year.”
“And still you hold such hate?”
“Not hate.” He heard the defensiveness in his tone, even as honesty spilled forth. “Not anymore. I might still have left in the end, but I regret doing so without understanding why he did it. I thought him a good man.”
Joseph Tames-His-Horse gazed at him. “I have not lived long enough to get much wisdom. But it is my thinking that men do most of what they do for two reasons: for love or for pride. For which of these did the man who made himself your father do what he did?”
William opened his mouth, then shut it. He’d nearly told a boldfaced lie. “For love,” he said through a tightened throat. “For my…for his wife. He did love her. Once.”
“You can admit he maybe did this thing unthinking, or thinking only of his pain in that moment, or the pain of the woman he loved? Maybe as you felt when you left your sister, a thing you now regret?”
The words were said without condemnation, yet William’s face burned. He nearly rose to bolt back through the trees to the safety of his tent, to men who asked nothing of him but obedience and duty and the keeping of the oath he swore. Instead he blurted, “What of you and your sister? Do you regret leaving her?”
Anguish rippled over the Indian’s features before it was suppressed. “I cannot be with her as I would wish.”
“Be with her?”
Joseph Tames-His-Horse hurried to say, “You must understand how the Haudenosaunee reckon kinship. My sisters are not only those born to my mother but every woman in my mother’s clan. Burning Sky was not born to my mother or any woman of the Wolf Clan, but she was adopted by one. That makes her my sister, no matter her blood.”
“Your sister is adopted?” William asked, startled by the revelation.
Joseph nodded. “Born white but taken, like you. Only she was made Indian where you were made white.”
William gaped at the man seated cross-legged beside him, the planes of his face shining in the firelight, the tail of his scalp-lock tied with feathers—aside from wearing no war paint, as wild an Indian as William could picture. And his sister, this Burning Sky, was a white woman.
“At what age was she captured?”
“Fourteen summers.”
No infant. A girl near grown who would remember—her name, her life, her family.
“You wish to ask of her?” The Indian watched him closely. “Ask. I will answer, if it will help.”
William heard his breath coming loud through his nostrils, breathing in the smoke from the fire. “Has she found peace? Has she forgotten? Or…forgiven?”
The questions might have been poised on his tongue, waiting to be called forth.
Joseph briefly closed his eyes, opening them to stare into the flames, as if in them he could see the sister called Burning Sky. “It was hard for her, at first. I left Kanowalohale and returned to our village soon after she came to be there. I’d had a dream of her and thought that meant…” He paused, shook his head. “Dream paths do not always lead where it seems they will.”
The Indian didn’t explain the statement.
“I did all I could to be a brother to her, reminding her that Creator is over all, and in all, and with her always. She learned to be content. I believe in her heart there is peace. But there is also grief. Maybe soon there will be children to fill her heart.”
The man wouldn’t look at William now. “Dream a lot, do you?”
Joseph took up a stick and pushed at the fire’s embers. “Too much.”
A coldness opened in the pit of William’s belly. “You said you dreamed of me.”
“I did.” The Indian shoved the stick into the flames, sending sparks toward the shadowy branches above. “In my dream you turned your coat,” he said. “You turned your coat inside out and went another way.”
William felt as if he’d been slapped. Heat flared in his face, beading sweat across his lip and brow. “You speak of desertion?”
“What I said is what I saw.” Joseph Tames-His-Horse met his gaze square but said no more about the dream. “Those Oneidas who are your family, to them you are known as He-Is-Taken of the Turtle Clan. Your place among them has been long empty, but you are not forgotten. That place is waiting for you. Think about that. And there is this about that man w
ho took you—this Aubrey. You cannot see his heart. You did not stay to let him speak it to you. There is no going forward for you until you first go back and clear that path between you. But there is hope.”
William glanced into the dark. Hope? “Not if I invade with this army.”
The Indian raised his brows. “Maybe that is not a thing you should be doing.”
“I haven’t a choice. I’m not free to leave, and I’m no turncoat.”
Wasn’t he though? He’d deserted Anna. And those Oneidas who’d grieved his absence for nineteen years without even looking upon their faces. His father, mother, brother.
William stood to his feet. “What of you? Will you ever go back to your sister?”
He hadn’t meant to ask it in such a mocking tone, but Joseph didn’t flinch. “One day I will go back. Unless Creator calls me to Himself first.” He looked up then, bronzed face reflecting sorrow. “I am still her brother.”
Joseph Tames-His-Horse held the canoe alongside the bateau a moment more, then dipped his paddle with his companions’. The bark vessel veered off, vanishing back into the mist with no more than a cutting wake to show it was ever there.
“See that?” said a soldier behind him. “Fair made my skin crawl.”
A hand nudged William’s shoulder. “That big one looked straight at ye, Aubrey—like he fancied your scalp. Glad he’s on our side, aye?”
William glanced aside at Sam, silent beside him on the bench. Sam had seen the Indian, no doubt, but was gazing now at William, a question in his hazel eyes.
“Glad enough,” he said to satisfy whoever had asked but wondered if, out in the mist in his canoe, Joseph Tames-His-Horse felt the same screaming dread building inside him, or the growing conviction that he was advancing toward the worst mistake he would ever make and no way out of it with his honor intact.
“You turned your coat.”
“Creator is over all, and in all…” Maybe so. For even on the edge of the wilderness, the Almighty had found him—sent a praying Indian, of all things, one who knew both his names.
William Llewellyn Aubrey. He-Is-Taken of the Turtle Clan.
Neither name seemed claimable as his own. Nor did he know what manner of man he was becoming, only that there was no path forward from that shadowy place between without his betraying someone.
21
Green Bean Moon
Fort Oswego, Lake Ontario
The day the ravens darkened the sky over Oswego was the day Two Hawks saw his brother for the first time.
He witnessed what happened with those birds from the forest where he waited, watching the fort and the field encampment outside it busy with the comings and goings of warriors. Mississaugas were coming in over the lake in canoes. From the south came Senecas—two hundred at least. From the east, passing near the rock outcrop where Two Hawks hid, had come Thayendanegea leading some whites willing to follow him and over three hundred warriors from Oquaga and other towns loyal to the British.
Earlier that morning, down from the north along the lake, had come the first of St. Leger’s army. With leaping heart Two Hawks had seen the great bateaux disgorge soldiers in green coats onto the shore, seen them march into the fort behind its earthen rampart. More warriors came with them, Caughnawagas in their canoes. These didn’t go into the fort but joined their brethren on the field outside, an impressive number—nearing a thousand, Two Hawks guessed. Down among them were Louis Cook and Ahnyero, pretending to be like minded, learning all they could of what the British leaders meant next to do.
Though too far away to hear what the warriors outside the fort were saying, Two Hawks knew they weren’t happy. Supplies promised at Niagara were nowhere to be found at Oswego. Some had come without muskets or with no powder and ball. Many needed clothing, food, hatchets, blankets, things they’d come to expect from armies that invaded their lands and enticed them to fight. Thayendanegea and Colonel Butler and the one called Daniel Claus had assured the warriors that soon their needs would be met. Wait for St. Leger to come with the bulk of his army and its supplies, they said. Then they would see British promises kept. Then they would see British might.
Maybe such talking went on still as evening came down again. Two Hawks couldn’t know. It was while he stewed on it with unraveling patience that he saw the ravens.
They came out of nowhere it seemed, thousands of them darkening the sky above the fort, their grating calls and thrumming wings a cacophony that made Two Hawks clap his hands over his ears. The ravens didn’t pass over the fort and fly away. They circled back, covering the summer sky. Masses of them bulged and dipped like black smoke billowing, blotting out the sunlight, casting false dusk. Never had Two Hawks seen ravens behave so, or so many come together in one place. That it should be here above this fort, with all these warriors gathering…
With a prayer on his lips to drive back the horror raising every hair of his body on end, Two Hawks ducked from behind the rock and stood looking, listening. Some of the ravens alighted in the trees above him, cawing to each other. Fighting unreasoning panic, he asked Creator if this was a sign and if so what it meant, but the birds or their noise seemed to block his prayer.
When true dusk threatened and still the ravens circled and Ahnyero didn’t come, Two Hawks’s patience failed. Their supplies and extra weapons he pushed inside a hollow stump. Gathering only his rifle and his courage, he stepped out under an orange sky banded with shifting black, headed for the fort.
As he wove through the fires that edged the field like a scattering of stars, most of the warriors around him were too intent on watching the sky to notice one more Indian passing by. Though overall the camp was eerily silent, except for the swelling grate of bird voices, he heard mutterings of bad omens and premonitions and death. Unease weighed like the pressure before a storm breaks. Two Hawks moved among them, pretending he had a place to go and was going there. His breath came hard. William would be inside the fort. Probably staring at the sky like those outside.
Looking ahead through the warriors standing in clutches by their fires or arrested in their passage to stop and stare, he spotted a few green-coats and soldier hats among the shaved heads and painted faces clustered near the fort gate. His heart was a drum beating, his grip on the rifle a clench. Should he find Ahnyero, or dared he go inside the fort and look for William?
Brother, I am close. I am here, coming to you. Sending his thoughts ahead, he strode toward the gate. No one stopped him. Other Indians were going into the fort, some coming out. He could do this. He could find—
“Go no farther!”
The hard grip on his arm, the hissing in his ear, shattered his focus so abruptly he yelped in surprise. Ahnyero had him by the arm. Beside him was Louis, his darker face radiating censure.
The scouts propelled him toward a stack of casks waiting to be hauled away to somewhere, out of the path of those passing through the gate in the falling twilight. There Ahnyero released him. “It is too much risk, going in there. Go back to the wood and wait.”
Two Hawks put his back to the gate and stood straight, taller than Ahnyero if not Louis. “My brother is here, unless not all Johnson’s regiment have come?”
“They are come,” said Louis. “If your brother is part of that regiment, he is here.”
“I can find him. I will be careful.” He thought Ahnyero began to shake his head, but whether or not the scout would have relented, Two Hawks never found out.
“Spencer?” a voice said behind him. Ahnyero’s English name.
The scout’s gaze flew past Two Hawks, recognition lighting his eyes. He thrust Two Hawks aside and stepped past him. Two Hawks turned to see the pale-haired rebel spy, Sam Reagan.
Much recovered from his ordeal back in spring, Reagan was clothed in the green of his regiment but nearly as desperate looking in the eyes as he’d been then. So intent was he on Ahnyero, he didn’t notice Two Hawks standing silent by the casks, a pace or two removed and partly blocked by Louis Cook’s large frame.
“I didn’t think to find you again. I’ve news…” Reagan dropped his voice. “There’s to be an advance column sent out. Word’s come from St. Leger, back at the Little Salmon River. Thinks he can take Stanwix without artillery, based on his presumption the fort isn’t fully manned.” He grinned crookedly at that, having been one of those to give him that misinformation. “I’m ready to take this news myself to Gansevoort—I’ve but moments to make my break before I’m looked for.”
“You are sure of this advance?” Louis asked in English, stepping in closer to the pair. Two Hawks leaned sideways to see Reagan look with suspicion at this new face.
“He is a friend,” Ahnyero said.
Two Hawks kept his shoulder partly turned, his gaze on a group of Butler’s rangers straggling past into the fort. Twilight was thickening, the air still filled with bird noise, drifting feathers, droppings, though the ravens had thinned, leaving gaps of deepening blue.
Reagan gestured at the sky filled with ravens. “Butler and Brant just got the Indians settled over not having supplies enough to go round and now this. Captain Watts is about to call assembly, but I can slip away if I don’t go back for anything. Is there a guide can take me to Stanwix?”
Two Hawks at last drew near enough in the deepening twilight for Reagan to recognize him. “I will take him, after I find my brother.”
“You.” Reagan took a half step back, gaze darting over Two Hawks’s features. “Does William know you’re here?”
“No,” Ahnyero said, addressing Two Hawks. “You will not do it. I am sorry, brother. As for you,” he added, turning back to Reagan, “better you stay for now. Do not alert your officers by deserting. I will stay and attach myself to the Indians here for as long as I can safely do so. I will be your guide.”
He turned, questioning, to Louis, who nodded. “I will remain until St. Leger comes or I see with my own eyes men marching to meet him, know their number, the way they take.”