“Yes,” Fanny said, “if you let her talk to the women.”
Used to be Bear was listening to the gunfire. In the skimmed light of the dawn, Abenakis and the panting captives were running toward them, slipping and staggering on the ice.
A young woman carrying two small children in her arms fell down. The Indian at her side pulled her to her feet and pushed her forward. She fell again. He snatched the larger child, a boy of about two, out of her arms and flung him over the snowbank. The woman tried to climb the snowbank.
The Indian pulled her down and pushed her forward over the ice. She refused to move her feet and fell down again. He threw the other child over the bank. She crawled toward the snowbank, clawing at the ice. The Abenaki tried again to make her run, but she flung her body back against his strength, reaching for her children. He split her skull with his hatchet and left her where she fell, with blood gushing onto her bright yellow face.
Neither the woman nor the Abenaki had uttered a sound during their struggle, but one of the children could be heard crying convulsively, “ah-lah ah-lah ah-lah,” as the rest of the captives and Indians ran upriver, everyone suddenly in step like soldiers marching in double time.
11
The Abenakis of the rear guard, scouting two or three miles downriver from the main party, encountered the English rescue column almost immediately. They let it go by, counting the smelly noisemaking militiamen as they lumbered upriver. Then they slipped past them and dashed across the snow to report to Philippe.
“Do they have scouts out ahead?” Philippe asked. “Do they have snowshoes?”
The Abenaki said no, the English were moving all together in a column of fours and had no snowshoes with them.
Philippe ordered two snow caves dug in opposite banks of the river. He hid six warriors with bows and arrows in each cave, concealed the entrances with snow, and fell back around the bend in the river with another twenty men.
The twenty lay down, head to foot, along the banks. The river made a sharp bend to the east here. With the rising sun behind them, shining into the eyes of the advancing English, they would be virtually invisible.
Although he did not intend to use them unless everything went wrong, Philippe loaded both small sled-mounted cannon with grapeshot and pointed them downriver. Then he unslung his musket and replaced the priming. One of the Abenakis hooted like an owl to let him know that he could hear the English coming. Philippe heard the enemy too, coughing and rattling and jingling like infantry anywhere.
Making no attempt to conceal himself, Philippe waited in the middle of the frozen river. The spot he chose for himself was somewhat more than two hundred paces, or four times the range of the most accurate musket, above the bend in the river.
The English came into view, powder horns jouncing, muskets at the slope, heads turning nervously in fear of ambush. Philippe recognized their leader by his full boots: clearly he was the local squire. He wore a sword belt diagonally across his chest with a big silver buckle just over the heart.
Philippe remained standing in plain sight until he was certain that the oncoming English saw him. Then he dropped to one knee and cocked his weapon, placing the sight on a point just to the left of the English captain’s silver buckle. He took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger while he let it out. The hammer fell on the flint, the priming ignited, and as Philippe slowly released the last of his breath through his nostrils, the weapon fired, making a flat report like the crack of a whip.
The bullet penetrated the chest of the booted Englishman an inch below the buckle, piercing the left atrium of his heart. It then passed through his ribs and the muscles of his back, tearing out a chunk of flesh the size of a kidney as it exited, and smashed into the abdomen of the man immediately behind him.
The next militiamen in the file stumbled over these two instantaneous corpses, causing the column to collapse on itself. At this point, the Abenakis who had been lying on their faces along the riverbanks leaped to their feet and charged, barking the Abenaki war cry. The English broke apart, firing a ragged volley at the Abenakis. The balls, flying in all directions from the smooth-bore muskets, fell dozens of paces short.
The enemy fell back with empty weapons. The Abenakis hidden in the snowbanks burst into view, launching arrows. The English formed into a protective scrum, with men on the outside bravely taking arrows in their bodies while their comrades reloaded their muskets, a process that involved pouring a measured amount of powder into the barrel, pushing a greased patch of cloth or leather and a lead bullet after it with a wooden ramrod, and finally filling the priming pan with powder. During the forty or fifty seconds that this sequence required, the Abenakis continued to launch arrows, causing many painful wounds but no deaths because the arrowheads were deflected by the heavy woolen clothing of the troops.
When the English began priming their muskets, the Abenakis broke contact, scrambled over the snowbanks, put on snowshoes, and set off across the fields on a straight line for the next bend in the river. A moment afterward, when the English looked up from loading their muskets, the river was empty of Indians, and fifteen of the fifty men in the column lay dead or wounded on the bloodstained ice.
Although the troops in the front ranks had clearly seen Philippe fire the shot that killed their leader, those who survived assumed that he had been shot at close range by an Abenaki who had buried himself in the snow. That was a more believable explanation of the event than that a man kneeling on the ice two hundred paces away had put a bullet through another man’s heart.
Philippe’s weapon, a .70-caliber jaeger rifle made specially for him by the famous gunsmith Haaslak, was a revolutionary weapon, firing a precisely molded bullet with a precisely measured charge of black powder out of a rifled steel barrel that was only thirty-two inches long. Accurate at ranges that had not hitherto been imagined, the Haaslak jaeger was also a beautiful object, with an octagonal chased barrel and a carved walnut stock decorated with grapes, the noonday sun, heads of wheat, the Cross of Jesus, and other symbols of France, eldest daughter of the church. There was no other firearm like it in the New World.
12
Fanny could not take her eyes off the dead girl. Out of sight, the child that the Indian had flung over the riverbank was still crying. All around Indians were beating and kicking women, driving them upriver, away from the sound of the muskets. Used to be Bear, no longer interested in the noise of the battle, was making the sign for run over and over.
Betsy Ash, lumbering over the ice with her hands locked beneath her swollen, pendulous belly, had just fallen down. Fanny threw herself down beside her.
“Betsy,” she said, “you must try to run. Rose and I will help you.”
Fanny was not certain that Betsy could hear what was being said to her. Her eyes were unfocused; her chin quivered convulsively. An Indian whose paint matched Betsy’s poked her, hard, between the shoulder blades with the handle of his tomahawk.
“Rose,” Fanny said. “Help me.”
Rose smiled. She behaved as though the Indian attack were some sort of fancy-dress ball at which she was wearing the cleverest costume. Fanny wondered if, at last, Rose had lost her mind altogether.
“Take her other arm,” Fanny said.
Rose did so and the three women started dogtrotting, with Used to be Bear and Betsy’s white-faced captor running backward in front of them, shouting for them to move faster. Soon they had settled into a steady rhythm.
Betsy moved her limbs automatically, obeying the pressure of Fanny’s hand when it squeezed her arm to warn her of some object in her path, but responding to nothing else.
Late in the afternoon, just as they were passing the junction with the Pocumtuck River, a large stream that joined the Connecticut from the west, Betsy’s waters broke. She gave a little cry and tried to stop running. Fanny looked around for Philippe, but he was far behind with the rear guard. Betsy stopped in her tracks. Fanny and Rose stopped along with her.
Fanny crouched on t
he ice with her arms around Betsy.
“Don’t tell them what’s happening,” Rose said. “They’ll kill her.”
Betsy’s eyes had rolled back in her head.
“The women won’t help,” Rose said. “They say you’ll give the child to the Jesuit and it’s better off dead.”
The Abenakis were standing over them now. Fanny didn’t know the signs for this situation. She signed “baby coming, water running.”
The two Indians covered their mouths with their hands, hissed in surprise, and stepped backward. Then, as the whole company came to a halt, they turned around and trotted into the woods, beckoning the women to follow.
Evergreen forest came down to the edge of the river here—balsam and hemlock along the banks and huge pines standing on the bluff to the seat. Used to be Bear climbed a balsam tree and began chopping off branches. Betsy’s owner cut down half a dozen willow saplings and constructed a frame, roofing it with balsam bows. He drove other boughs into the snow, while Used to be Bear crawled around inside, weaving a floor from the spring tips of the dark green boughs. When they were finished, they had constructed a lean-to, just large enough for two people. Its open end faced the woods. Used to be Bear and the other Indian went away to the far side of the river and sat down with their backs to the lean-to.
All progress had halted while these preparations were being made. Mothers nursed children. Women in their sweat-soaked nightclothes crossed their arms and gazed into the distance. One of the warriors made the bickering call of the blue jay and was answered by another jay downriver. A short while later Philippe came into view, his rifle cradled in his arms, the Abenakis of the rear guard jogging along behind him.
Rose had gone with Used to be Bear, leaving Fanny alone with Betsy. She had a clear view of the whole group of Indians and captives clustered together on the ice, and, beyond them, of a frozen waterfall. A tiny figure that might have been Father Nicolas stood at the crest of the waterfall, signaling with the blade of a knife.
On the other side of the river, the Abenakis had built a big fire and thrown a chunk of beef into it. Fanny smelled the cooking flesh and watched Philippe as he walked from one group of women to the next.
Finally he crossed the ice and climbed the riverbank. Inside the lean-to, Betsy moaned. She lay on Fanny’s cloak in the open air, outside the lean-to. She was already in hard labor, grinding her teeth and digging her fingers into the cloth.
“I have been asking the women, but they say there is no midwife among them,” Philippe said. “Do you know enough to assist her?”
“No.”
“Do you know anything at all?”
Fanny shrugged. “I’ve never done it. I’ve read medical books and Thoughtful told me how the Abenakis do it.” Philippe looked at her gravely.
“The others will not help,” he said, “and I cannot help. The Abenakis are superstitious about men witnessing childbirth.”
Fanny looked across the river. The women of Alamoth stood in a row, arms crossed, as they stared across the river at the lean-to.
“Can you help me get her inside?” she asked. Philippe picked Betsy up and carried her to the mouth of the lean-to. Fanny followed with her cloak.
“It would be better to put the cloak on top,” Philippe said. “The balsam is quite comfortable and fragrant, but you must walk on it on your knees, not your feet, or the twigs will break and poke into your back.”
“Thank you,” Fanny said.
“In any case, the Abenakis won’t move until the baby is born,” Philippe said.
He unslung his pack and unrolled his cloak, which had been tied up with thongs. He shook it out. Fanny watched, examining the garment closely. He saw what she was doing and smiled.
“It’s the same one you borrowed the last time,” he said. “Your man Pietro di Gesú returned it to me.” Fanny gasped. “You’ve seen the Pamela?”
Philippe nodded. “At Honfleur.” Betsy began to sob. Fanny crawled into the lean-to and held her hands.
“Are the pains close together?” Fanny asked.
Betsy nodded. Then she looked upward into Fanny’s face and said, “You must promise me there’ll be no praying.”
“All right.”
When she looked outside, Philippe was gone.
The baby, a girl, was born at sunset. It was a violent labor. The books that Fanny had read had not prepared her for this experience. Thoughtful, who had described the Abenaki method, as she described everything else about the life of the tribe, had told her the story of the birth of Hair, who got his name by reaching between Thin Ice’s thighs and tugging her long hanging braids as soon as he emerged from the birth canal. In the methodical Abenaki way, she had also described each stage of the birth. Fanny struggled to remember what she had heard.
Very little happened as it should. Fanny knelt between Betsy’s upraised legs, holding her hands.
“It won’t come,” Betsy said at last. “Why would it want to come?”
“Of course it wants to come. I see its head, Betsy.” Betsy lay on her back, taking shallow breaths, with the crown of the child’s head showing. Fanny stroked her face. “Betsy, try something for me.”
“I’ve no more strength.”
“Please try, Betsy. Let me help you before the next pain comes.”
Betsy was too weak to resist. Using every bit of her strength, Fanny helped her into a crouching position. Then, like Thin Ice in the story about Hair’s birth, she crouched opposite her so that Betsy could lace her fingers together on the back of Fanny’s neck.
The baby slid out, puckered and silvery and mysterious, with every part of it—fingers, toes, eyes, ears—already perfectly human.
Fanny tied the umbilical cord with a string from her bodice and cut it with the knife that Talks in His Dreams had given her. A moment later the baby cried. Betsy put it on her breast.
Fanny took away the balsam boughs that had been beneath Betsy and replaced them with dry ones. She knew that Thin Ice would have dug down through the snow and buried the umbilical cord in the earth, so that the child would never fly away from its own people.
Fanny turned her back and looked to the west. Beyond the forest, the sun was sending up shafts of light through a lowering sky. The evening star, a very small one like an English star—Mercury? Jupiter?—hung motionless while dark clouds swept by.
For no reason that she could understand, Fanny began to weep, covering her mouth so that Betsy would not hear her. When she was done, she turned around. Philippe was standing ten feet from her, still as a deer.
“I’ve brought you and the lady some food,” he said, showing her a chunk of scorched beef impaled on a sharpened stick.
There was just enough light to see the tears drying on Fanny’s cheeks. Her nose was bleeding slightly because Betsy in the last of her labor had smashed her skull against it. Fanny picked up a handful of snow and washed her face with it. She was wearing Philippe’s cloak.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling at him.
His eyes changed. “You’ve never smiled at me before,” he said.
A few snowflakes were falling. They clung to Philippe’s bearskin cap.
“Up to now there’s been very little to smile about,” Fanny said.
13
Betsy’s daughter was crying. Dancing Beaver, their captor, heard her voice in his sleep.
A moment later he felt the teeth of a big animal sinking into his leg and then into his arm. A third reeking mouth closed over his face, crushing his cheekbones and blinding him. Because he lost his eyes before he could open them, he died without fear, believing that he was being killed by a three-headed animal the Abenakis had never heard about.
Philippe was half-awake, planning the next day’s march, when he heard the mongrels barking among the lean-tos. He picked up his weapons and ran toward the noise. The wolf dogs had disjointed Dancing Beaver’s corpse and were tossing the severed parts playfully into the air.
Philippe realized at once that these were
the same dogs that had driven him and his scouts off the moose by the lake. They were even more beautiful than he remembered—enormous, muscular, big-eyed, intelligent. But they were ill-kept. Their ribs showed under their skin and their coats were rough, as if they had just had an enormously long run after a stag. They would never tire. Nothing like them existed in France; he had not known that anything like them existed in the world.
The dogs saw Philippe almost as soon as he saw them. They stopped what they were doing and turned, standing all in a row. He had his jaeger rifle, two Belgian pocket pistols, a bayonet, and a knife. The wolf dogs were about five paces away. He knew he could kill one of them with the rifle, but would not have time to use the other weapons.
To his surprise, the dogs did not attack. They gave a string of low sore-throated barks, opened their bloody jaws and panted, and gazed at him out of their liquid, inquisitive eyes. Philippe had the feeling that the dogs would come to him to be petted if he called. They were emaciated and it was clear that they had not eaten for a long time, but they did not offer to eat the dead Indians.
Abenakis were all around now, stringing bows and climbing trees. One man blundered into the small clearing where Philippe stood. The wolf dogs attacked him at once, splitting into two units as they swerved around Philippe as though he had no more meat on him than a tree. Philippe realized that the dogs were trained not to attack white people. He set off at a run for the river.
After they had eaten all the beef they wanted around the big fire, the Abenakis had hung the rest up in a big maple tree beside the river to keep it from being stolen by animals. The meat was half-frozen, but it was still raw meat. Philippe, slinging his rifle across his back, leaped into a tree, and climbing from one thick branch to another cut the rawhide from which the beef was suspended. Half a dozen slabs thudded onto the ice. A dozen more still swung from the branches of the maple.
Bride of the Wilderness Page 39