Bride of the Wilderness

by Charles McCarry

  Fanny said nothing.

  “Fanny,” Rose said, “do you remember the day we went to see the Gypsies? … Fanny?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Do you remember what the old Gypsy woman told me when she read my hand? It’s come true, Fanny. The bear has found me.”

  “What bear? You mean the one Used to be Bear killed? That was just a wild bear, Rose. They sleep like that in winter, they just lie down and let the snow cover them up.”

  “I don’t mean that bear. I can’t tell you everything, but it’s horrible. You must help me, Fanny. What’s happening is not what I thought would happen.”

  Solitude gave a weak little cry.

  “Listen, the babe is hungry,” Father Nicolas said, whispering through the balsam roof. “If the child is awake, the mother is awake. Speak to her, Fanny.”

  “No, Father, she’s asleep.”

  “Wake her,” Father Nicolas said in English. “This child’s life is so new, so feeble, so threatened. It can end at any moment. If we let that happen without protecting its soul, how will God forgive us?”

  Betsy stirred and spoke in a loud, distinct voice. “I can’t bear it,” she said.

  Fanny laid a hand on her forehead. “Don’t listen,” she said. “Try to sleep.”

  Fanny climbed out of the pit and sat down on her snowshoes beside Father Nicolas. It had stopped snowing.

  “Do you think it’s possible, Father,” Fanny asked, “to be alone in the world—utterly, completely alone?”

  “But we are not alone,” Father Nicolas said. “God goes with us.”

  “But suppose He doesn’t.”

  “That is not something I would suppose, or anything you should suppose. Why do you ask such a question?”

  Fanny wanted to say: Because I always believed that my mother died for me and now I have seen how women really die.

  Instead she said, “Because I feel that I’m alone.”

  “That is because you have not had the consolation of your own faith. You have been living among God’s enemies. But soon all will be well. You are so good, so pretty, so musical, you speak Latin and Greek. You will marry, have children, and at the end of your long life you will go to heaven.”

  “How do you know I am musical or about the Latin and Greek?”

  “I know much more.” Father Nicolas chuckled, as though he had been waiting for an opportunity to tell her what he knew about her. “I told you, you are not alone. Even in Quebec, so far from France, so far from everywhere, everything about you is known—your father, your mother, your ship. Everything.”

  “Everyone knows all that? How?”

  “I did not say that everyone knows. I said that everything, or nearly everything, is known.”

  “But how? By whom?”

  “Someone is interested in you and has collected the facts. So you see, God is never absent from anyone’s life. He works in His own way to make certain that none of His children is ever alone. I assure you, my child, that God does not want you to be alone.”

  “So I have always been told. But who is this person who knows everything about me?”

  “A spy,” Father Nicolas said. “One of God’s spies—they are everywhere. Now I am very tired.”

  He had made himself a bed of balsam boughs under the open sky. He lay down on it and went to sleep.

  Fanny let herself back into the pit, where the little boy was still coughing and gasping for breath, and lay down beside Betsy. She and Solitude were asleep, breathing quietly.

  During the night, cold and wind came in from the west. The morning sun was so brilliant, shining on the snow, that it was almost impossible to open one’s eyes without being blinded. Betsy and Solitude had disappeared.

  17

  It was Father Nicolas who discovered Betsy’s trail when he woke before dawn to pray and contemplate the mysteries of Christ’s passion from the Last Supper to the Garden at Gethsemane. He had very little woodcraft, but even he could see that they were the tracks of a woman and that she was barefoot. It did not occur to him to follow her. He did not think that she would go far, and he knew that she was in no danger—no Abenaki would harm her, and if she stumbled onto her own people, an unlikely outcome, she would be safe with them too.

  Accordingly, Father Nicolas commenced the contemplation specified by Saint Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, for the first day of the third week of the Spiritual Exercises. The sun had risen by the time he had said his preparatory prayer, formed a mental image of Jesus descending with his eleven disciples from Mount Sion, where the Last Supper was held, to the Valley of Josaphat, then leaving eight disciples in the valley and going with the remaining three to the Garden at Gethsemane, where he prayed three times to his Father, arousing his disciples three times from sleep, and his sweat became drops of blood, his enemies dropped to the ground at the sound of his voice, Judas gave him the kiss of peace, he restored the ear of Malchus which Peter had cut off, he was seized like a malefactor and led through the valley and back up the slope to the house of Annas.

  Having fully imagined these scenes, Father Nicolas visualized every detail of the road from Mount Sion and also the Garden—their width, length, and general appearance—and finally asked for himself that which he most desired: grief with Christ suffering, a broken heart with Christ heartbroken, tears, and deep suffering because of the great suffering that Christ had endured for him.

  By that time Used to be Bear and Talks in His Dreams had seen Betsy’s tracks and followed them out of the ravine and uphill through a grove of beeches into a thick hemlock forest where the trees grew so close together that she had crawled on her hands and knees and finally on her belly to get under the trees and through them.

  There she had lain down in the snow with her baby in her arms and frozen to death.

  Solitude seemed to be dead too, her small bloodless face pillowed on Betsy’s breast, and the Abenakis were about to leave when the baby told Used to be Bear her name, Snow, and informed him that she was not dead.

  She was so small and so cold that he nearly did not hear her, and when he picked her up and put her mouth against his missing ear, which was more sensitive than the good one, he realized that she was not breathing.

  So he opened the baby’s mouth with his forefinger and blew into it several times, saying, “Here is some breath for you, Snow.”

  Then he put her inside his shirt against his skin, which was smeared with bear grease, and ran back down to the ravine through the dazzling light.

  Used to be Bear held Solitude’s body against Rose’s ear. She heard its heartbeat, but no breath. Used to be Bear, blowing into Solitude’s mouth, seized the two fattest women, Hepzibah and the mother of the coughing boy, and told them in signs to put the baby between them, against their bare skin, and wrap their arms around each other, so that she would be warmed by their bodies.

  “It’s not breathing, the fool,” Hepzibah said when Fanny interpreted.

  “Do as you’re told,” Fanny said.

  The other woman passed the naked child down though the neck of her gown, settled it between her breasts, and embraced Hepzibah. The two women looked into each other’s faces in horror, feeling the rigid little body pressing into their own chilled flesh.

  Every now and then Used to be Bear would call to the silent baby: “Are you alive yet, Snow?”

  Finally Solitude cried. Used to be Bear applied a thick coat of bear grease to the child, wrapped it up in its fur again, and handed it back to the women, making the signs for suckling and watching the child drink as the mother of the coughing boy gave it her breast.

  Father Nicolas, who had been praying all the while and measuring the time by watching the movement of the shadow of the two women on the snow, said nothing about miracles, but his face was radiant. He baptized the revived infant without delay, giving her the names Solitude Neige Martha Genevieve Ignatius. The godparents were Used to be Bear, Philippe, and Fanny.

  Watching Used to b
e Bear, who had painted black circles around his eyes, making the sign of the cross on his greased chest, Hepzibah shuddered.

  “The babe would have been better off dead with its mother,” she said.

  There was no possibility of burying Betsy even if the Abenakis had been willing to touch the body of a mad suicide. With Philippe’s help, Fanny dug a fresh trench in the snow at the base of a double beech tree, lined it with boughs, laid the body in it, and covered it up with boughs and snow.

  Philippe removed his bearskin hat and bowed his head. “No,” Fanny said. “Don’t pray.”

  Philippe opened his eyes. “But this is a dead person under the snow,” he said.

  “I know,” Fanny said. “Leave her in peace.”

  18

  Arctic cold moved across the forest on a fierce west wind that tore dead wood out of the trees and filled the air with a pall of blowing snow. Hawkes was not bothered by the cold. The two flint arrowheads embedded in the slab of hard fat beneath his skin did not trouble him greatly either. It was the layer of fat that protected him in both cases; as solid as lard to the touch, it insulated his body against the cold and made him very difficult to kill. He had been wounded by arrows before, and also by musket balls, knife blades, and the teeth of animals. Nothing had ever penetrated so far into the fat as to damage muscle or bone.

  Hawkes was not the first member of his family to be protected by this buckler of lard. On the morning of August 11, 1674, his father, John Pennock’s faithful sergeant, was shot twice in the chest with wheel-lock pistols while strangling a French cannoneer during the Battle of Senef in the Netherlands. He fought on until both the Protestant and Catholic armies withdrew during the night. Pennock dug out the two .56-caliber lead balls with a penknife.

  Because nerves were not usually involved, wounds in the lard caused little pain. If Hawkes moved his head too quickly, he felt the flint arrowhead buried in his shoulder, but this caused no inconvenience. The arrowhead in his chest was a different matter. Any pressure on it disturbed the anterior supraclavicular nerve, filling Hawkes’s whole upper body with searing pain and depriving him momentarily of the power of movement.

  Hawkes’s mind was not occupied with these facts as he and his wolf dogs moved eastward on a contour north of the great bend in the Pocumtuck, looking for the Frenchmen and their captives. He knew that they had not gone west along the river, because he had inspected every party of Abenakis and captives that came that way before heading back. It was twilight. Hawkes, half-blinded by the blowing snow, was passing along the edge of a ravine when the surviving mongrel, who had been foraging through a stand of white birches in the bottom of the ravine, found the carcass of the bear that Used to be Bear had killed. It was spread-eagled in a tree, swinging in the wind. The wolf dogs, who had not eaten anything substantial in days, pulled it down and tore it apart. There was little left but the bones.

  As soon as he descended into the ravine, Hawkes realized that Abenakis had camped here. The new snow and the wind had not obliterated footprints inside the sleeping pits. Hawkes examined these carefully, looking for some sign that Thoughtful had been here. Three sets of footprints toed inward, and the rest, including one set of male prints, toed outward: three Abenakis, one Frenchman, Six Englishwomen, probably a child or two—and one half-grown boy. It was possible that Thoughtful, who had large feet for a girl, had left one set of the Indian prints; it was difficult to be sure when she wasn’t wearing her own moccasins.

  While the dogs crushed the bear’s bones, Hawkes ranged back and forth across the ravine in the failing light, looking for some sign that would tell him which direction the Frenchman had taken. The wind had erased most signs, but at last he found two sets of moccasin prints, those of the Frenchman and a small-footed English female, in the shelter of a huge double beech tree. There were only the four prints; all the rest had been blown away. Farther on, he found the place where the two had put on snowshoes and struck out toward the north. Still farther away, near a deadfall that sheltered the trail from the wind, he found the tracks of the larger party, all heading northwest.

  Hawkes was now satisfied that the Frenchman was heading for the Naquag. When he came to the headwaters, two days’ march to the north for a party held back by women, he could run in three main directions—to Lake Champlain along the rivers, up the valley between the green mountains to Lake Memphremagog, or up the Connecticut. But for now, he could only go along the Naquag, moving slowly. Hawkes called the dogs into the sleeping pit the women had used and lay down on the balsam boughs. The wind howled through the trees, and as he fell asleep in a huddle of dogs, he heard wood splintering and branches falling all around him.

  When the moon rose, bigger and brighter now as it fattened into its third quarter, Hawkes headed north, again following the trail along the contour just below the ridge of the little valley that the Naquag had carved in the schist and granite. It was a good trail, free of brush, tamped into the hillside by tens of thousands of years of use by hoofed animals. Just before dawn, in a tiny meadow along the Naquag, he found the Frenchman’s camp. There was nothing to show that it was a camp—everyone was hidden in sleeping pits and the wind had blown away their footprints. The wind was blowing toward the camp, so the mongrel did not pick up the Indians’ scent.

  Hawkes might have missed it, but Father Nicolas was kneeling in the snow, contemplating the events of the passion from the house of Annas to the house of Caiaphas, where Peter denied Jesus twice, Jesus looked on Peter and wept bitterly, Jesus was left bound the entire night, and those who held him prisoner blind-folded him and struck and buffeted him and said to him, Prophesy, who is it that struck thee? Hawkes at once recognized Father Nicolas in his black robes as a Jesuit. Every now and then his small figure was obscured as the wind drove a cloud of snow across the campground.

  Nobody except the priest seemed to be up. The Naquag ran nearly due north and south through the meadow, with steep hills on either side. Hawkes was sprawled on his stomach just below the opposite slope of the western ridge, about two hundred paces from the camp, with the dogs lying down around him. In the camp, an Abenaki rose up out of a sleeping pit, then another. One by one, the rest of the party got up. Hawkes recognized them all, even the Abenakis—Talks in His Dreams and a younger man from the same village.

  There were only four females—Fanny, the Clum girls, and a woman named Jean Judd who was nursing two babies. The Frenchman was missing. Where was the third Abenaki? Hawkes searched the camp and the woods around it, moving his eyes very slowly so as to cover one small patch of ground in every detail before moving to the next. He saw nothing except what might be a trail of filled-in tracks leading upstream along the course of the Naquag. Maybe the Frenchman and the third Abenaki had taken the most valuable captives, Thoughtful and Rose Barebones, and gone ahead by moonlight.

  Off to the right, the bleached winter sun was beginning to rise. This was the moment to attack; he couldn’t have these Abenakis and the Jesuit at his back while he pursued the Frenchman. He could leave the women here and collect them when he came back down the Naquag with Thoughtful and Rose Barebones. The Indians were not armed with muskets. They could not possibly get away from the wolf dogs.

  Hawkes stood up on the skyline, a little stiffly because of the arrowhead in the back of his neck, and clucked to the dogs. The Abenakis saw their silhouettes and began to sing; Hawkes could hear nothing because the wind was so strong, but he knew that was what they were doing. Hawkes never looked forward to anything, but when this moment came in all its intense pleasure, he was always happy. He felt the dogs around him, whining and smiling and gathering their huge bodies for the attack.

  Hawkes opened his mouth and called on the muscles of his throat and tongue to produce the call of a jay. As this sound formed, but before the dogs heard it, he saw a peculiar blossom of flame bursting from the snow on the opposite hillside.

  With his eyes still fixed on the flame, which was turning into a cloud of powder smoke, Hawkes heard a
hollow sound, like a palm slapping the ribs of an animal. The wolf dog nearest to him, the one that had torn off Dancing Beaver’s head beside the Connecticut, rose onto it hind legs, waved its paws in the air, and fell over backward, with a gushing wound in the place where the hairless spot behind its near front leg had formerly been. The deafening crack of Philippe’s jaeger rifle echoed from the hills.

  The two remaining dogs, having heard Hawkes’s imitation of the jay, attacked. The Abenakis below held their ground as the dogs came for them. Hawkes plunged down the slope after them, his eyes fixed on the point where the shot had come from. He could see the Frenchman, who had risen up out of the snow under which he had concealed himself.

  He was frantically reloading his weapon, pounding the bullet into the barrel with a steel ramrod that blinked in the sun. He was about two hundred paces away. Even on snowshoes this was a run of less than a minute. If he could get within twenty paces of the Frenchman before he reloaded, Hawkes could kill him with his musket. If he could lay hands on him he could break his neck. The two Indians on the other side of the river threw something at the dogs, then leaped into a sleeping pit and pulled the balsam roof over top of them. The confused dogs stopped, bolted several lumps of meat that the Indians had thrown to them, skidded to a stop, and attacked again.

  Hawkes had covered half the distance to the rifle and was gathering himself to leap across the Naquag when Used to be Bear, dressed only in a breechclout, rose up out of a sleeping pit in the snow directly in front of Hawkes. He held a tomahawk in his left hand and a long glittering bayonet in his right. Hawkes, holding his musket aloft in both hands, had already left his feet to make his leap. Rose Barebones’ perfect face looked at him out of the sleeping pit. He tried to turn his body in flight to avoid a collision, but it was too late.

  He crashed into Used to be Bear, knocking him backward. The impact, which drove the flint arrowhead against the nerve in Hawkes’s chest, made him scream in agony. He felt another fiery pain in his left arm, the wrong place. He heard another rifle shot. He and the Abenaki, who was the largest Indian Hawkes had ever encountered, came down in the snow. Blood spurted from the Indian’s nose. He was snatching at Hawkes with his right hand and swinging a tomahawk with his left. Hawkes wrenched the Abenaki’s hatchet from his hand and chopped blindly at him. A wolf dog appeared behind Used to be Bear and seized him by the arm, dragging him off Hawkes. He could not see the other dog.