The Ransom of Mercy Carter

by Caroline B. Cooney

  The Indian pulled her to her feet, brushing the snow and ice from her neck and face, and put Daniel back in her arms. Daniel’s feet had been bare, but now he too wore Indian slippers—just the right size for his little feet.

  The rock-hard wetness of her heavy leather shoes had frozen her toes and blistered her heels. But now her feet were cozy inside the soft moccasins. She felt guilty about the others, still suffering, and then, astonished, saw that all the prisoners were being given moccasins.

  She and Eben Nims stared at each other.

  “They knew they would take this many prisoners, Eben,” whispered Mercy. “They have enough moccasins to go around. They have little pairs and big pairs.”

  She thought of them back in Canada, around their fires, among their French allies, planning how many pairs of moccasins they would need when they sacked Deerfield.

  They mean us to live, thought Mercy. But why? What will they do with all of us?

  EBEN’S MOCCASINS were lined with thick black fur. His boots were abandoned at the edge of the trail. Eben thought of Deerfield men getting this far in pursuit and finding a hundred pairs of shoes.

  It made him feel slightly better about the odds of survival. People who brought enough shoes would also have considered how to feed their prisoners.

  Three hundred miles with, he guessed, a hundred prisoners, two hundred Indians and—somewhere, not here—perhaps two hundred French. A stupefying number of people to feed.

  Eben tried to convince himself that the Indians had provisions waiting somewhere. But who could move enough food for hundreds of people all the way from Canada to Massachusetts? And how could that food be stored in the wilderness? And if they planned to hunt down meat as they marched, they’d have to leave the prisoners to do it. And they’d have to find a lot of deer.

  He studied his Indian, trying to find answers in that paint-smeared face.

  But his Indian now carried the full weight of his wounded friend or brother. One gesture, and it was clear that Indian would carry Indian, while Eben would carry loot.

  Eben opened up the blankets to combine his pack with the Indian’s. At the sight of his mother’s dresses, Eben thought he would begin screaming, but he controlled himself. He tucked in his little sister Molly’s doll as gently as Molly had every night.

  O Molly! he thought, willing himself not to collapse. Forgive my sin.

  Sarah Hoyt, watching from several places up in the line, walked back to help, but Eben’s Indian called, “No!” The syllable cut as sharply as a knife edge.

  Puzzled, Sarah motioned that she carried very little and could take part of the load for Eben.

  “No.”

  One of the Kellogg boys, guessing that heavy loads were for men and not girls, also tried to take some of Eben’s pack, but again the Indian snapped out a no.

  “I’m just going to carry the heavy things,” Joseph Kellogg explained. “The brass kettles—”

  The Indian’s glare terrified them. Joseph stepped away, holding his hands up for peace.

  “I think Eben has to carry everything that belongs to his Indian,” said Sarah softly. “We belong to somebody else. Stand up, Eben. Joseph and I will get the pack on your back.”

  She and Joseph could hardly even lift the double pack, and as for the straps, they were just a jumble of leather. Eben felt Sarah trembling against him, trying to get it done right and quickly. When another Indian strode up, they cringed, but he simply fastened the pack securely.

  Eben wasn’t sure he could take one step, never mind get to Canada.

  JOANNA KELLOGG, one of Joseph’s sisters, was stumbling.

  For Joanna, the world was blurred. Her eyes didn’t focus the way other people’s did. Leaves on trees were green blots against a blue sky. She couldn’t recognize people until they were within a dozen paces. When an Indian brave took Joanna’s hand, she had not seen her mother die and did not know this was the killer.

  She was only ten, but her pack was nearly as large as the ones grown men carried. Joanna did not complain or call out. She just walked more and more slowly.

  Ruth Catlin lost her temper. She flung the pack she had been given into the snow. She grabbed Joanna by the shoulders and ripped off Joanna’s pack, flinging that into the snow too. She hurled an iron frying pan across the snow and then a whole leg of lamb. Indian and captive alike were mesmerized.

  “You savages!” Ruth screamed. “Don’t you even think about hurting Joanna. She’s too little! You are vicious and mean! I hate you!”

  She dragged Joanna forward as if the two of them meant to reach Canada first, by God. “Go ahead and kill me!” she yelled, holding out her hair to be scalped. “I dare you!” She made a fist around her own hair, yanked it tight and waved the bristles in Indian faces. Nobody tomahawked Ruth.

  She stomped past Indian after Indian, calling them names.

  Ruth stormed right up to the front of the line, where the lead Indians were trampling out the path. She could go no farther. The Indians politely stepped back and gestured north, making it clear that Ruth was welcome to lead the way.

  Ruth kicked wildly at one of the braves, but he stepped back and Ruth’s burst of energy vanished.

  She wanted to lie down on her own soft bed, bury her face in her pillow and weep for the family that had died around her. Even more, she wanted to kill an Indian. Or ten of them. But she had no weapon and as for softness, even the snow was not soft today.

  Well, at least she would not give those Indians the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

  Glaring, dragging poor Joanna, she marched on.

  IN A DARK AND TWISTED GROVE of spruce, a place Eben would have avoided in summer at high noon, the Indians stopped for the night. If he had ever seen a place where an evil spirit would dwell, this was it.

  He knelt to release the pack. His forehead was rubbed raw, and beneath his coat, he was blistered from hours of friction and weight. The stab wound in his chest seemed to have deepened and widened.

  No food was given out. There was no shelter. The Indians did not even start a fire.

  We have to have fire! thought Eben. We have to dry our blankets and warm our feet! They stole whole hams. Surely they’ll let us have hot food.

  Could the Indians be worried that woodsmoke would reveal where they were?

  No, because three hundred people left a considerable trail. And that same trail was littered with bodies and shoes. Even an Englishman who had never been in the woods in his life could stroll after them by starlight.

  Eben decided the Indians were neglecting to make a fire just to be mean.

  He watched them cut spruce boughs for beds, and the scent of spruce surprised him. It was sweet and friendly in the dusk.

  Slowly, unthreateningly, Sarah Hoyt got to her feet. She dusted off her skirts and removed a bag she had tied to her waistband. She circled from child to child, giving each a bite of corn bread or dried apple. She must have grabbed the bag before she was thrown out of her house.

  The Indians did not interfere.

  Sarah Hoyt dropped down between Eben and Mercy. She gave a scrap to little Daniel and a crust to Mercy. Two circles of dried apple were left for Eben. He wolfed them down before he thought to wonder if Sarah herself had eaten any.

  “You were wonderful, Eben,” she said quietly. “I was proud of you, carrying so much and not giving up, and being sure that Mercy had bread for Daniel.”

  He had not been wonderful, but he did not explain. What was the point? Sarah had dead of her own.

  “My father’s up front,” Sarah said. “You know how they’ve tied the men for the night? They’re staked on the ground like skins being cured. I think the temperature’s below zero again. I think they’ll freeze.”

  Eben was hurt that he was not being treated like a man.

  WITH DUSK, the snow turned blue and black. The heavy spruce boughs held as much snow as the loft of a barn. In this dark hollow, nothing had melted.

  We will freeze to death, thought M
ercy. Why go to the trouble of carrying a hundred pairs of moccasins when they won’t make a fire?

  Her Indian knelt and, with his bare hands, scooped out a hole in a snowbank. She expected him to store his plunder in the cavity. He had to make a lot of hand motions before she understood that this was her shelter for the night.

  Not a house, nor a bed, nor even a stable. A hole in the snow.

  Mercy wanted to raise her head to the skies and howl like a dog. But she wanted to survive. There must be no more bodies along this terrible trail. “First, may I look for my brothers?” She held up four fingers.

  “No,” said the Indian, and motioned her into the cave, tucking Daniel in after her.

  Mercy would have felt much better if she could have rested her eyes on Tommy and John and Sam and Benny.

  From her hole she watched the others settle in for the night.

  Eben’s Indian collected the older boys: Eben, the oldest Kellogg boy, the two Sheldon boys and Joe Alexander, who was in his twenties but looked very young. They were pinioned to the ground a dozen yards from where Mercy was curled.

  For Eben, however, his Indian made a cradle of spruce boughs. He wrapped a leather rope around Eben’s wrists and linked the cord to his own. If Eben moved, his captor would know it.

  The rest were made to lie on open snow. There was nothing between them and the weather. No walls, no roof, no parent.

  Daniel slept.

  Mercy needed to pray before she slept, but her weary mind could not locate a prayer.

  The sounds of the night settled into the rhythm of breathing: people too exhausted to care where they lay. Mercy waited for stars, so she could count them, and it was a long time before she realized the forest was so deep that trees hid the sky.

  Lord, she prayed finally, don’t go.

  And yet her dreams, when they came, were sun-gilt and sparkly, as if the day had been made of crystal instead of blood. In her dream, it was October, and the leaves were gold. She gave a leaf to Marah, and Marah smiled.

  Mercy awoke sometime in the night to a whispery shuffle. No doubt an Indian guard prowling. How careful were his steps. How slow and separate.

  If only it would snow. She and Daniel would be hidden in their tiny cave, forgotten while the Indians marched on, and after a while she would dig them out and they’d run all the way home.

  But was there a home now?

  Mercy caught the edges of her mind like a hem with a needle, turning under the memory of the attack and whipping up the frayed and bleeding edges. She must not think of Deerfield. She must not picture what was left, nor what Father would find when he got home.

  Anyhow, she could not let her brothers go to Canada alone, so even if she got the chance to escape, she couldn’t take it.

  It occurred to Mercy that a guard would not tiptoe. Her heart soared. One of the prisoners was escaping.

  A load of snow tumbled off a bough and when the limb lifted, a shaft of moonlight fell on Joe Alexander, who had been tied down next to Eben. He was creeping out of camp.

  Mercy prayed Joe out of sight and across the frozen ravines, prayed him back up and over every hill, prayed him safely to Deerfield and then—

  And then, thought Mercy, the Indians will kill somebody in revenge.

  Eben, probably. He was closest. They’ll know that he knew.

  Chapter Three

  The New England wilderness

  March 1, 1704

  Temperature 10 degrees

  Somebody was tapping Mercy in the ribs. It couldn’t be Tommy, who pounced, or Sam, who jabbed. It wasn’t John, who kissed, or Benny, who snuggled. Whichever brother it was had wet the bed in the night, and wet Mercy with him, and so far it was still warm, but the moment she separated from that sleeping brother, it would be cold and awful.

  But the tapping would not stop, and Mercy woke to see a deerskin legging with a painted running deer. “Up,” said her Indian. The paint had partly peeled off his face, giving him a patchy smeared look.

  She remembered the day before backward: the marching, the carrying, the slipping, the snow. She thrust memory away, folding it closed. She would not think about the attack.

  Lord, please, she prayed. Let me see Sam and John and Tommy and Benny. Let Uncle Nathaniel and Aunt Mary and the cousins be here. Let it not be true about Marah. Let Stepmama and the baby be safe and sound and walking fast enough.

  The Indian stooped to take her hand and pull her to her feet, giving a slight grunt as he did. For the first time she saw that he too had been hurt and that the paint on his side was his own dried blood, and Mercy knew then that she had experienced war, and that it was true about Marah. She did not take his hand, knowing what it had done. Rolling Daniel ahead of her, she was out of the snow hole and on her feet in a moment.

  There was some sort of assembly going on. The prisoners were stumbling toward Mr. Williams, who stood alone, his hands raised to the sky.

  How extraordinary, thought Mercy. They’re going to let us pray.

  She was glad, because a day without morning prayer was unthinkable, but it didn’t seem like something the Indians would permit. French Indians were Catholic, though, converted by priests from France itself. Mr. Williams often said that if you were Catholic, you hated God and were evil and stole little children from their beds.

  The warriors had gathered in clumps. Yesterday had been complete victory for the Indians, and yet there was no rejoicing among them. Her captor’s eyes were on a bundle in the snow. She had seen enough death in her life to know it. One of the Indian wounded had not survived the night.

  The posture of her Indian was human. It was grief.

  “Mercy, I’m hungry,” said Daniel, and she said, “Hush. We’ll eat later.”

  Mercy was hungry too. The hunger wasn’t yet pain, because Mr. Williams often called for a fast and Mercy was used to going twenty-four hours without food. No matter what woe was visited upon Deerfield—shaking fever, crop failure, the snatching of Zeb and John—fasting made Mercy feel safe again. If three hundred people ate nothing for a day and a night, surely the Lord would be impressed and might relent, and people would get well and corn would grow.

  She and Daniel took a moment to squat behind trees. They cleaned themselves with snow, and when she washed his face with a handful of icy white powder, Daniel giggled. He wanted to wash Mercy’s face too, and she let him.

  By the time they reached the rest of the prisoners, Mr. Williams had begun speaking. He had a great deep voice that sounded just right when he read the prophets in the Bible. He could be Elijah, he could be Jeremiah. Mercy loved his voice. It was shaking now, but not with the ecstasy of belief that possessed Mr. Williams during a sermon. It was shaking with fear.

  If the Lord is not with Mr. Williams, thought Mercy, the Lord is not with any of us.

  She threw away a lifetime of training, and instead of listening harder to Mr. Williams, she stopped listening at all. Her prayer went so deep it had no form, it was just Lord, Lord, Lord.

  And the Lord was good, for among the crowd, she saw Sam, John and Benny, her uncle Nathaniel, her aunt Mary, and far away from the rest, and separated from each other, her cousins Will and Little Mary.

  She could not see Stepmama, the baby or Tommy, but no doubt they, like Mercy, had been separated. As soon as prayers were over, she would find them.

  At some point during the night or early this morning, the French had joined them. There were far more soldiers than she had realized. A hundred French. At least two hundred Indians. With another hundred or so English prisoners, Mercy was among more people than she had ever seen gathered in one place.

  They were standing in distinct groups, divided by expanses of gleaming snow. The still-bright French; the heavily armed Indians; the shivering English.

  “The frown of the Lord,” said Mr. Williams, “is very great. This dread suffering is because we failed Him.”

  I failed Him, thought Mercy. I did not save Marah.

  Mr. Williams prayed fo
r the souls of the dead, listing name after name. Among those whose souls he entrusted to the Lord were her brother Tommy, her stepmother and the baby.

  No, thought Mercy. I let them all die? Even Tommy?

  Sleep tight, she had said to him. And now he would.

  If she had not wasted time giving her cloak to Ruth? If she had not taken Eliza’s hand when Eliza went blind with shock? If she had shoved Jemima out of her way? Could she have saved Tommy?

  The Indian next to Mr. Williams interrupted him roughly. “We kill. You tell.”

  Mr. Williams ceased to pray. “Joe Alexander escaped last night,” he said. “If anyone else tries to escape, they will burn the rest of us alive.”

  Burn alive? Burn innocent women and children because one young man flew from their grasp?

  Her Indian stood some distance away amid the other warriors. He was now wearing a vivid blue cloth coat of European design. In one hand he held his French flintlock, and over his shoulder hung his bow and a full otter-skin quiver—actually, the entire dead otter, complete with face and feet. His coat hung open to show a belt around his waist, from which hung his tomahawk and scalping knife. His skin was not red after all, but the color of autumn. Burnished chestnut. His shaved head gleamed. He looked completely and utterly savage.

  He might sorrow for a dead brother warrior, but grief would make him more likely to burn a captive, not less likely.

  Mercy imagined kindling around her feet, a stake at her back, her flesh charring like a side of beef.

  Beside her, Eben seemed almost to faint.

  Mercy had the odd thought that she, an eleven-year-old girl, might be stronger than he, a seventeen-year-old boy.

  The English were silent, entirely able to believe they might be burned.

  The first person to move was Mercy’s Indian. Sharply raising one hand, bringing the eyes of all upon him, he pointed to Mercy Carter.

  She was frozen with horror.