by Ian Roberts
Brulé again holds up his hand in peace. “Totiri, we have come in peace to see Siskwa. Not you. This is his village.”
The hawk circles lower over the men, his screeching cries pierce the air. Several warriors look up, but Totiri ignores the shrill cries. He gestures suddenly to several of his warriors who grab Brulé and Atsan, pulling them over to two stakes set in the ground. They resist, but are quickly bound, their arms tied behind the post. The warriors circle about, continually shouting and taunting them.
Totiri raises his hand for silence. “When I finish with the boy I am going to skin you alive. Like I should have the last time.”
Father Marquette pushes aside the oilcloth covering the door and steps out of the chapel into the sunshine. He surveys the palisade of the Wendat village as Father LeCharon steps out of the chapel and joins him reluctantly.
“Fear not the savages, Jean-Philippe. The Lord is with us,” says Marquette.
LeCharon can barely disguise his growing sense of panic. He knows they are here to convert the Wendat, but everything inside him rebels against Marquette’s plan, against his certainty and fervour. “I know how frustrated we are here in our ministry but I think it wise to wait until we can talk with Brulé.”
“Damn Brulé!” Marquette erupts. LeCharon has never seen him so vehement, and he tended that way by nature. “We will rot before he helps us. He has done nothing and will continue to do nothing for us. He never wanted us here and is doing everything he can to make sure we leave.”
“That is true, until now, but —”
Marquette continues, “Savignon told me some of the sick could die. Particularly the young ones. We have freedom of the village. We can baptize them and if they die we bring them to our Lord at their moment of greatest need.”
“But we haven’t been to the village for weeks, not since those few fell sick. The way they look at us now, I —”
“We came to serve Christ,” interrupts Marquette, focusing his fierce, blue eyes on LeCharon. “And that is what we will do. We vowed in coming here we would save their savage souls. For almost a year we have let Brulé and that chief continue to tell us they will help. What have we seen? Nothing. Jean-Philippe, we are the ones damned if we do not answer our Lord’s call. We will be damned if we continue to do nothing. We can wait no longer. We put our trust and safety in the hands of our Lord.”
With that, Marquette starts walking towards the village. LeCharon follows against his better judgement, struggling to keep up to the other priest’s pace. They enter the village, each with a gourd of water. Villagers stop what they are doing and watch them cross to a longhouse and enter.
The two priests stand in the dark, smoky longhouse waiting for their eyes to adjust. A thirty-foot high arch of bent saplings, covered in bark, stretches eighty feet into the darkness. The only light enters through three smoke holes in the ceiling, down the length of the longhouse. Below each burns a small cook fire. Two tiers of storage and beds run down the wall on each side. Corn, herbs, fish, and furs hang from the ceiling just above their heads.
Two Wendat, an older woman and a girl, lay next to the fire, feverish and shivering. Open sores cover their faces and arms. Somewhere deep in the longhouse the two priests can hear the sounds of people sobbing and moaning in pain.
Bent close to the fire, Kinta, Brulé’s wife, and another woman busily tend to the sick. As soon as they notice the priests, both quickly stand up and back away as if fearing reprimand. Marquette takes this as a sign of permission to help. He kneels beside the older woman and crosses himself. LeCharon hesitates but does the same, kneeling beside the girl.
Two eyes from deep inside the longhouse watch closely as Marquette lifts the woman’s head, wets his finger from the gourd of water and makes a cross on her forehead as he chants in Latin.
Kinta quickly leaves the longhouse. The pair of eyes in the darkness continues to watch the priests.
After giving his first blessing, Marquette proceeds further into the longhouse towards the second cook fire. The three women attending the sick cringe from him but he remains oblivious to their reaction. He kneels now before a young boy, burning with fever and wide-eyed in terror at this strange dark figure in black robes now hovering over him.
At that moment, just as Kinta and Atironta, the Wendat chief, enter the longhouse, the eyes that have been watching emerge from the shadows. A warrior, war club in hand, is on top of Marquette in a second. The club swings down smashing the priest’s head. Once. Twice. LeCharon cries out. The warrior raises his club a third time.
“Stop,” Atironta’s voice thunders through the longhouse.
The warrior slowly lowers his raised club and turns to Atironta, meeting his gaze, one will pitted against the other. He slides his foot under Marquette, slumped in a heap on the ground, and roughly turns him over onto his back. He kneels, grabs the crucifix from around the priest’s neck, breaks the chain and throws it on the fire. Wiping his fingers in the blood oozing from Marquette’s head, he draws a red cross on the priest’s forehead. Then he stands, leers at LeCharon and disappears back into the shadows as quickly as he had emerged.
LeCharon watches the crucifix glow red in the fire.
The head of a steel tomahawk shimmers, as red-orange as the coals in the fire. Totiri jams a green branch into the axe head and lifts it close to his face. He smiles as he feels the searing heat near his skin. He turns and approaches Atsan, tied to the stake.
“Three times I have tortured white men. Two screamed, sobbed like children. Their fear of pain overcomes them. But I could not get your father to make a sound. Now I will decorate you the way I decorated him. And we will see how brave you are.” The hawk, circling above, suddenly swoops lower.
Totiri raises the red-hot tomahawk to Atsan’s neck. Atsan tenses, eyes wide. He stares at Totiri in defiance. Brulé struggles and rages against the ropes that bind him. Totiri looks at him, then back at Atsan, “If you had stayed here with me, I would have turned you into a real warrior.” He leans forward, his face so close he can feel Atsan’s breath, and then slowly pushes the tomahawk onto Atsan’s neck. Steam and smoke hiss off his burning flesh. His body vibrates in convulsions of pain, yet he makes no sound but for the sharp exhale of breath through his clenched teeth.
Once again, the hawk cries out, descending yet lower, beating his wings just above them. The Iroquois warriors stare at the hawk and at one another. They are alarmed; they know why the hawk is there and can feel its power. But Totiri ignores it, continuing to stare into Atsan’s face. Atsan glares back unyielding, his eyes wild with pain. Totiri smiles again as he turns the tomahawk over. A fresh surface of red-hot metal sears Atsan’s neck. As the cloud of smoke and steam hisses off his flesh, a rock strikes Totiri’s face knocking him back a step. The tomahawk drops to the ground.
“Touch him again, and I will kill you.”
In front of the entrance to the nearest longhouse stands a woman. She’s regal, with a weathered beauty and as wild as a cougar in her rage as she confronts Totiri. “Get away from him.”
“N…Nuttah,” stammers Brulé. Atsan, attempting to see through the haze of smoke and pain, perceives the outline of the woman. Even in his crazed, pain-wracked awareness, he has heard Brulé speak her name and realizes immediately who this must be. Siskwa, the Iroquois chief, comes out of the longhouse and stands now beside the woman. The hawk lands atop the stake holding Brulé, beating its wings slowly, unsure yet whether to stay or again alight.
Siskwa looks at Totiri, “You disgrace us. This is not your village to act like this. Is your hate and jealousy so great you cannot see the power of the spirit these men bring,” pointing at the hawk. “You know they come in peace.”
He dismisses Totiri with a gesture and then with another indicates to the warriors to cut Brulé and Atsan loose. He beckons Brulé.
Totiri bristles at his humiliation. He and Brulé glare at each other in hate-honed anger. As Nuttah quickly moves towards Brulé, the war chief eyes the woman
with equal fury, takes three swift steps and smashes her across the face. Enrages, Brulé charges at Totiri, but several Iroquois manage to hold him back. Totiri casts one last menacing look at them and walks away.
Brulé approaches Nuttah, gripped by a turmoil of emotion. He touches her face where she has been struck. Nuttah takes his hand, “Go. Talk with Siskwa. I will care for Atsan.” She pushes him gently in the direction of the longhouse. The hawk now beats its powerful wings several times as it rises from the post where Brulé had been tied, swoops down in one last dive above Brulé’s head and then, climbing fast, disappears beyond the village wall.
Inside the longhouse, the chief gestures for Brulé to join him beside the fire. He lights a pipe, smokes briefly and hands it to Brulé. “Totiri is best in battle. He seems to create trouble everywhere else. I am sorry.” He takes the pipe Brulé has offered back to him and sits smoking for a moment and then continues, “Nuttah, that Wendat woman, Totiri’s wife. She was your wife.”
Brulé nods, another rush of rage as he learns they are married.
“But you have not come because of her?”
He shakes his head.
“And that boy. He is your son. Her son.”
Again Brulé nods, unable to talk, consumed by mounting waves of conflicting emotion. Siskwa, perceiving Brulé’s turmoil, continues to smoke his pipe, looking into the fire. “Deep currents of spirit unfold here today.” Then he asks, “So tell me, White Trader, why have you come?”
With the gentle care of a mother, Nuttah softly pats grease onto the red-blistered flesh on Atsan’s neck with the tips of her fingers. With her other hand she clutches his arm. Both look into the other’s eyes, beseeching, beyond their discomfort, beyond their awkwardness, as if despite the strangeness, they might retrieve all the lost years of the other’s being.
Eventually the weight of his questions outweigh the mesmerizing grip of his mother’s presence, and Atsan stammers, “I was told you were dead. Why did you not come home? Escape. What are you doing here?” As a Wendat warrior he would never allow himself to be caught crying but now, despite himself, tears roll down his cheeks.
“I tried, years ago. It is not so easy as that.”
“But why didn’t he come and get you?”
“You know the story. He must have told you.”
“He told me you were dead.”
“He was almost dead by the time Totiri had finished with him. He did not know if I lived.”
“But you must come with us now. I cannot leave here without you.”
“I have two children, Atsan.”
“With that demon!”
“Girls. They need me more than you do. You are a man now. A Wendat. A man any mother would be proud of.”
Atsan listens, anguished at the reality he must somehow digest.
“What about my sister? What happened to her?”
“She married a good man and has a small boy. Her place is here now.”
“An Iroquois…a good man! How can you say that?”
“They are not so different than us, Atsan. At least most of them.”
“Your sister lives in this village. That is why I came here to visit,” explains Nuttah. “That at least is what I told Totiri. I see what these guns do to him and what he plans against the Wendat. All I could think to do is talk to Siskwa. Your father also it seems.”
“You have the courage of a great chief,” Siskwa says to Brulé, “I can see that. In spite of what the Iroquois did to you the last time, yet for your people, the Wendat, you risk this. I fear you are right about a war with guns between us. It will bring more violence with the Wendat as certain as the rushing rivers of spring. Would your Wendat chiefs agree to this? I think not. We are all too proud. And too bound by fear and mistrust.
“The English traders came here. To trade guns,” continues Siskwa. “They spoke, as you say, of destroying our enemies.”
“You trust the English?” asks Brulé.
“They speak of destroying enemies in the same way we see them destroy the land. No, it is not about trust.” Siskwa stops a moment, considering, then continues, “I will tell you. We have few furs left for trade, many of our people are sick, and die with a disease our shamans cannot heal. We have new enemies to the south and the west. The white man, the English, push into our hunting grounds to the east.”
“Then why do they sell you guns?”
He motions to a warrior, sitting nearby in the shadows, to bring him a musket. Placing it on his lap, he strokes its dark, oiled wood and gleaming black metal. “When I first held the white man’s metal knife, I felt its edge. I felt its power. I wanted it like nothing I had ever seen before. Our own stone knives seemed foolish. And then we wanted the white man’s axes. And his kettles. The women had to have them too. And the needles, the coloured cloth, and the beads and the blankets. The white man’s hold on us is invisible but the grip is like that of the jaws of a wolf.” He lifts the gun. “And now the muskets. I see it in the eyes of the young men. They lust after them as they lust after a beautiful woman. They want them. No chief can control that. The English have seen that lust. They gamble that we will destroy our enemies and not our source for more guns. The white man casts a long shadow on the Iroquois way of life. And on the Wendat way of life.”
The old chief lowers his head again and looks into the fire. “I am sorry, White Trader. I have heard of you often. I wish we could talk when the waters around us were not so rough, so dangerous.”
As Brulé emerges out of Siskwa’s longhouse, he sees Atsan and Nuttah huddled together by the gate to the village and walks towards them, aware that for Atsan, the world has changed. He has stood at an Iroquois torture stake, the most terrifying assault imaginable and then experienced the deep comfort of a lost mother, only now to be separated from her again.
The emotions in his own chest churn. As he reaches them, Nuttah turns and, like two magnets, they rush to embrace — ten years of lost love desperate to be recovered. Catching herself, Nuttah abruptly pulls away, wiping tears from her eyes. “I will pay a heavy price for this,” as she looks into Brulé’s eyes, sharing a deep, wordless communication they had once enjoyed. Then with all the strength in her being, she turns and leaves. As she walks back into the village, she does not dare look behind her.
Atsan grabs his father’s arm, but Brulé leans in close to his son and warns, “Not now. We must get away. We are still not safe.”
The two exit through the gate. The warriors, still lingering near the entrance, eye them suspiciously but give them a wide berth to pass freely. Brulé and his son purposely make a point not to rush, even as their backs prickle with a sense of imminent danger behind them. As they approach near to the edge of the forest they quicken their pace. The moment they are safe in the shelter of the trees, Atsan explodes in a fury of confusion and pain, finally able to release his terror and anguish. He kneels and pounds the ground with his fist. “She is my mother, my mother! Living here with the Iroquois. How could you let her? Why didn’t you tell me?” cries Atsan.
“I thought she was dead. I didn’t know. When Totiri finished with me, I lost consciousness. I only came to lying on the ground outside the village. Alone. I never saw her. I —”
“She told that beast she would marry him.”
Brulé feels like a knife is driven into his heart when he hears these words. He knows this means only one thing: Nuttah had sacrificed herself to keep him alive. All the events that had led to that moment when his broken body screamed back into awareness as he lay in the mud outside the village, now return to haunt him. The door he had so firmly shut now opens like a floodgate. He cannot stop his wild howl of anguish.
“I never thought we would see her again. Not here. Not today…not ever.”
Atsan shares with him his mother’s warning, “She told me, they have forty guns and plan to attack the Wendat. Soon.”
“Atsan, we had to know that number. But the price you had to pay for us to get it. You were defiant. Y
ou were fearless. Any Wendat warrior would be proud of how you stood up to him. You must be wracked by all this today, but we will get guns, Atsan, and we will crush Totiri.”
It’s dusk in the camp. With the palisade built and all in order, members of the expedition relax, eating their evening meal in the gathering dark. While others squat on the ground, Champlain sits with the nobles at their elaborately set table. The footman returns with a silver tray. On it rest three porcelain bowls, each with a dollop of gruel. De Clemont eyes the dinner. “Now less than three weeks into this nightmare all our provisions are gone. We came from France well stocked. But no, you must cut back. It would be too heavy for these brutes to carry.” He pokes at the thick mush and puts his spoon down. “Look at this slop.”
“Come Monsieur Le Marquis, it will toughen you up,” jokes Champlain.
“I am not interested in being toughened up. I am interested in going home. You know what I am going to do when I get home? Do you remember, Jean-Marie, that dish the Duchess de Nantes served that time? That small hen stuffed with fish and mushrooms. When I get home I am going to invite myself over and tell her how I dreamed of that dish out in this god-forsaken waste.”
“Ah yes, that does sound good,” says Champlain. “Unfortunately, we do not have the leisure to hunt for game now to supplement our diet. We must make time.” He looks at the dancing refractions of the candles through the delicate glass of the decanter. “And thank you for inviting me to join you for the last of the wine. That was very kind,” says Champlain.
“But you were saying about Savignon. Please continue,” de Valery encourages him.
“I was just saying, can you imagine for Savignon, coming from this wilderness, not yet twenty, going to the French court. Everything must have been so overwhelming, like a dream. Anne-Marie was fifteen then, playful, charming. She helped steer him through it.”