by Anya Seton
"What, Dan?" said Robert carefully picking up the wet half-formed candles.
"He's murdered near two hundred Indians in cold blood. That's what he's done. Let 'em all run to him for protection from the Mohawks, waited till they slept, then turned out his soldiery and butchered all the poor devils."
"Dreadful," said Robert whose apprehensions were seldom roused by occurrences which shocked others, but only by secret workings in his own mind. "Why did he do that? Must've had a reason. They were his own Manhattan and North River tribes, I suppose."
"Aye," said Daniel angrily, sitting down on the settle. "Does that make it better? His reason was revenge, 'cause the Hackensacks wouldn't give up the young buck who revenged his father's death by murdering Claes the wheelwright last year. So Kieft massacres a whole lot a innocents who never heard o' Claes. I think he's gone mad."
"Mr. Baxter seemed to fear something like this last spring," said Elizabeth slowly. "What does it mean, Dan? What will happen?"
"Indian war's what'll happen," said Patrick, scowling at the hearth. "No human being, white or red-skinned, is going to lie tame and quiet under a slaughter like that. We can only hope the trouble stays within the tribes that were outraged."
"Oh, no doubt it will," said Robert. "We're in no danger anyway. I thought Nawthorne was acting peculiar last summer, but I met him over by the South Rig yesterday and he was all smiles. Forced a present on me. I have it someplace." He walked to his knapsack which hung on a peg near the oak dresser and extracted a circlet made of small bones pierced and strung on a buckskin thong. "'Tis a necklace, perhaps," he said. "Lisbet, would you like it?"
"Aye indeed, Papa—" cried the child, running to her father, her silvery hair flying, her pale little face that was so like Robert's eager for his recognition. As he tied the circlet around her neck, Elizabeth suddenly cried, "Don't! Don't! Don't let her wear it!"
"Why ever not, wife?" said Robert. "She has few toys."
"I don't know why not," answered Elizabeth after a moment. "I had a sudden queasiness, Dan—" she said, turning to him. "From whom did you hear all this shocking news?"
"From Underhill," he said bitterly. "He hopes there'll be Indian fighting—gi' him a chance for glory, no doubt. He'll not stay quiet at Stamford long, no matter what, ye can be sure of that."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THAT YEAR of 1643 was known thereafter in New Netherlands as the "Year of Blood." The fears of all those who had tried to dissuade Kieft from his insane Indian policy were immediately realized. All the tribes around Manhattan went on the warpath, and avenged Kieft's slaughter of the harmless Indians who had fled to his protection in Pavonia and at Corlear's Hook. By April, thirty of the Dutch had been tomahawked, and tenor stalked New Amsterdam. Kieft hastily strengthened the Fort. He sent for soldiers from Curaçao to reinforce his militia. He ordered detachments to make raids in all directions—on Long Island, along the North River, and even into Siwanoy country. Most of these raids were futile. A few Indians killed, a few captured. And the war went on.
Then Roger Williams arrived in New Amsterdam to embark for Old England on Rhode Island affairs. Williams summoned the nearby sachems to a parley, and such was his reputation amongst all the tribes, and so great were his powers of persuasion, that he affected a truce. He sailed for England with a calm heart. But his influence soon faded as the Director General's stupidities continued.
In Greenwich, until August, there was quiet. News of the dire happenings around Manhattan was incomplete and late in coming. Toby was away on an extended trading trip up the Connecticut River, so Greenwich had no direct contact with New Amsterdam. They depended on what filtered through Stamford, and eventually heard about the truce, which much relieved the Feakes and Patricks. There had been some disquieting little changes in the Siwanoy routine. The main tribe had not gone to the fishing camp on Monakewaygo this spring as it always did. But Telaka who reappeared one day in May explained this, and also explained her long absence. She said that Mayn Mianos had decided to fish on a neck called Byram this year, that the Siwanoys had been ovei there some time, and the distance was so great that it had been hard to come and see Elizabeth. Telaka brought some fine moccasins as gifts for the children, but she seemed hurried and nervous. She stayed but a few minutes, refused food, and while taking her leave, acted very strange.
Lisbet was playing as she often did with the bone circlet Nawthorne had given Robert, and Telaka, suddenly seeing it, recoiled, then snatched it from the girl's hand.
"Where you get this?" she cried to Elizabeth, who explained.
"Hobbomock, Hobbomock," whispered the squaw flinging the circlet on the floor. Elizabeth's heart thumped. She knew that Hobbomock was the evil spirit all the Indians dreaded, but it was the shaking of Telaka's hands and the anguished tone of her voice that shocked Elizabeth.
"What do you mean, Telaka?" she cried.
The squaw recovered herself. She picked up the bones. "I take and throw in sea," she said. "No good for you."
And to all Elizabeth's questions she would answer nothing more. Her eye had become veiled and impassive. She hastened away.
By the first of August, Toby returned to the cove with the Dolphin and young Ben Palmer. The shallop had sprung a leak on the trip down from Connecticut, and Toby laid her up in the cove for repairs. While he was about it he decided to get himself a new mast. He had seen, to the north, trees of just the proper straight white pine growing near the western bank of the Mianus, some two miles across the river from the Siwanoy fort, Petuquapan. Toby and Ben several times explored the pine forest hunting for the best mast tree. On one of these trips, as the young men beat their way through underbrush back to the trail, Toby tripped over a rotting stag's head. Cursing, he looked down and saw that the stag's head was propped by stones on a mound and that some very fine beaver pelts hung from its antlers. Next to the stag's head was a clay pot full of red and blue com. "Indian claptrap," said Toby, but the pelts were exceptionally lustrous, and doing nobody any good. He gathered them up and hung them on his belt, kicked the stag's head which rolled off the mound upsetting the pot of com, and went back to the trail unaware that somber eyes were watching him, as they had been for days.
The next morning, by arrangement, Daniel joined Toby and Ben, and they all set out for the pine forest where Toby had blazed the tree he wanted. Daniel took his loaded carbine with a view to supplementing Anneke's larder, the two younger men carried axes. It was a soft gray foggy day, a welcome break after a hot spell, and Elizabeth profited by the coolness to work in her garden, while the baby crawled on the grass beside her. Robert had taken Johnny with him and gone to join Angell Husted in the mowing of the east pasture. Joan and Lisbet were leading the Feake cow to good grazing near Asamuck brook. Hannah was her mother's helper in the garden. The only one of the children who showed an instinctive love of flowers and herbs, thought Elizabeth fondly, watching the little red-gold head bend over the sage plot, and the chubby fingers loosen and pat the earth as deftly as she could have done herself.
"Thou'rt a sweet poppet—" Elizabeth said, giving Hannah a hug. "And a hard worker. Rest a moment, and I'll show thee a game I used to play in Suffolk."
The child laughed, nestling against her mother. She loved the rare times when Elizabeth would talk about the far-away country across the sea which to Hannah sounded all flowery-golden and full of magic. "Tell about the day you met the King and Queen, Mama!" said the child eagerly. "Or the day you were wicked and danced around the Maypole!"
"Not now, pet." Elizabeth scooped up the baby who was trying to cram a large dirty stone in his mouth. "Here, look!" She picked a fox-glove, and pulling off the crimson bells, put one on each of the delighted Hannah's fingers as a cap. "Now you've ten little elves, and they talk to each other like this. Right thumb speaks first, bowing—'Innikin, Minnikin, where's my wand?'"
"Innikin, Minnikin—" began Hannah, when they were interrupted by the barks of their sheepdog.
"Now who could that
be?" said Elizabeth. Evidently not a stranger since the dog stopped barking. In a moment Telaka came around the corner of the bouse. Her entire face, both the whole and the ravaged side, was painted with long black stripes. Black was for mourning, Elizabeth knew, and she hurried up to the squaw anxiously. "Oh, Telaka, what's happened?"
"Send inside," said Telaka indicating the children. "Speak alone."
Elizabeth saw both great urgency and fear in Telaka's manner. The squaw kept glancing back over her shoulder. Elizabeth sent the children to the house and said, "What is it? What's wrong?"
Telaka took her by the arm and pulled her down the rise to the edge of the cove; again she peered this way and that way through the mists. "Missis—where Toby Feake and Ben?" she asked in a harsh whisper.
"Why, they went with Captain Patrick long ago up north into the forest for a mast."
"Gone," said Telaka in a heavy hopeless voice. "Then they are dead."
Elizabeth stared through the drifting mist, uncertain what she heard.
"Mayn Mianos, my father—" said Telaka. "He wait for them. Now too late."
"What do you mean?" whispered Elizabeth, sweat breaking out on her scalp. "I don't—why—we must run! Warn them...!"
Telaka shook her head. "No good." She grasped Elizabeth's wrist, holding her forcibly. "I will tell—Listen. Always my father hate you white men—"
The squaw spoke in a desperate rush, forgetting her English sometimes, but as Elizabeth listened the danger came clear.
Mianos had never wished to sell his lands, but had yielded to Telaka's pleadings and the greed of his sachems who wanted the English coats. But since then the Indians had discovered how paltry a price that was. The coats were already torn and faded, but the English remained on the land ever encroaching and scattering the tribes' game with their banging guns. Still Mianos was just, he had no intention of repudiating his bargain. But then the Labdens came and settled, though Mianos had thought there would never be but the two English families to endure. Labden robbed the Siwanoys of wampum when he had given them firewater which drove the young braves crazy. Mianos saw the morale of his tribes disintegrating, but still he did nothing, held by his pact. It was Nawthorne and the Tomacs who had murdered the Labdens. Nawthorne who served Hobbomock—the Devil.
"The bones..." whispered Elizabeth. "An evil spell to hurt us?"
"Bones—" said Telaka, "were fingers of Labden woman."
Elizabeth gave a choked cry, but Telaka went on. Greenwich had turned Dutch, and Mianos heard constantly of Dutch atrocities committed against other tribes. Telaka had reasoned with her father, saying that the Feakes and Patricks were not responsible, were not really Dutch. The old chief had listened angrily, but he had listened, and then issued orders. There must be no more contact with the white men. Henceforth the Siwanoys would live unto themselves, guarding their ancient rights and the integrity of their tribe. Soon afterwards the two hundred Indians had been slaughtered at Manhattan and Pavonia, and Miantonomo, the Great Sagamore of the Narragansetts, had secretly come to the Siwanoys urging them to wipe out the white man—while they still could. Many of Mianos's own sachems had begged him for revenge. And the chief had wavered, had begun to plan attack. Then Elizabeth had cured Keofferam's leg. Mianos acceded to the urgings of his favorite son, and reconsidered. But he had forbidden either Keofferam or Telaka ever to see the white folk again, on pain of death.
Even now, he had not ordered his warriors to join in a general attack. lie had gone on the warpath alone, today, to avenge his wife.
"But why—" Elizabeth cried. "What have we done!"
"Toby Feake and Ben," said Telaka. "Each day they go to our Manitoo forest. A spy of my father watch. Yesterday Toby Feake, he—" Her voice dropped into a low moan. She put her arms around her head and swayed, moaning. She raised her face and tears ran from her left eye down through the black paint. It was the new grave of her mother Toby had desecrated. lie had kicked the protective stag's head away, he had spilled the corn which would feed the old woman on her last journey. He had stolen the beaver with which she would have paid her way into the happy land of Manitoo. Her spirit was lost forever, damned by the white man.
Elizabeth stood appalled beside the weeping squaw while wave after wave of fear swept over her, and her mind darted in frantic spurts seeking a plan of action. Only one came. She must summon Robert and Angell from the fields. There might yet be time. She ran into the house for guns and powder horns—the men were unarmed—and staggering under their weight, she had reached the path when she saw figures coming through the trees from the north. She stopped, clutching the guns against her chest, squinting ahead, and released a long sigh. Toby's square-set figure was in the lead, and behind she saw Daniel's unmistakable red hair. They seemed to be earning something between them, doubtless the mast. Oh, wicked squaw, she thought with the sharp anger of relief. Mistaken in the whole story, or trying to frighten—or just the incomprehensible Indian mind?
Elizabeth rested the guns and powder horns against a maple and went to meet the men. Her relief vanished when she saw Toby's face. It was oyster-white and glistening, his eyes stared ahead, fixed, unseeing. He wavered like a man drunk. She looked down at what they were carrying. It was Ben Palmer, a long arrow protruding from his left breast, and a foolish surprised grin on his blue lips.
"Bess," said Daniel in a high-pitched voice. "Help us carry him!" She silently put her arms around the boy's sagging hips and they continued into the house. They eased him down on the trundle.
"D'ye dare take the arrow out, Bess?" said Daniel in the same voice.
"'Twould do no good," she said. "He's dead, Dan." She went and shut the door to the other room where Hannah was playing with the baby.
Toby turned and looked at her. "Dead," he repeated. "So would I a been 'cept for Patrick." He wandered over to the dresser, knocking against the table and stools. He pulled down the mm jug, and tilted it into his mouth.
"It was Mianos," said Elizabeth quietly to Daniel.
"Aye," he said, not questioning how she knew. "I got him afore he got Toby. Mianos was hiding behind a tree. He shot Ben around the tree. Then he stepped out and aimed at Toby, a-jabbering an' yelling, an' pointing to some old antlers. That's how I had time to shoot him."
"We have his head," said Toby, with a chuckle that turned Elizabeth's stomach. "We have his head, in return for Ben."
Elizabeth did not understand, but Toby walked to a sack he had dumped on the floor when they carried Ben in. This morning it had held a jug of beer and their nooning meat. Toby kicked the sack and it rolled over, opening a little. Elizabeth saw a bloody mass, and heron feathers tipped with copper strands, and long black hair.
"My God," she whispered. "Take it away, Toby ... If poor Telaka should see—" She grabbed a dishcloth and threw it over the sack.
"Telaka!" Toby spat out the name. He took another pull from the mm jug.
"She came to warn us," said Elizabeth. "She tried to save you!"
"And will come no more," said a voice from the doorway. The Indian squaw stood there, stiff and proud as she had stood on the beach the day she daunted the Corchaugs. There were no tears now on her cheek. "You kill Mianos," she said pointing her long finger at Toby.
"I shot him," said Patrick, lifting his great hands and letting them fall helplessly. "What could I do, Telaka? He shot Ben, he would have killed us."
"Aye," agreed the squaw slowly, turning to Daniel. "So Mianos's blood curse is on you then. Must be paid."
"No!" Elizabeth cried, running to the Indian. She seized the squaw's hands and held them tight against her breast. "Telaka, listen—we've been through much together, you feel something for me, I know you do—for us all or you wouldn't have come today. This murder and revenge must stop. For God's sake, I beg you, don't inflame your tribe. Daniel couldn't help doing what he did. You know that—" Her voice broke, she squeezed the quiet brown hands tighter. "Look!" Elizabeth cried, pointing to the boy on the trundle, with the arrow still upri
ght in his breast. "Look at poor Ben. Isn't that enough?"
Telaka's hands quivered, she removed them gently from Elizabeth's grasp. She closed her eye and lifted her head, seeming to listen. At last she spoke in the chanting voice, and she looked at Elizabeth.
"Because you brought me back to my people," she said. "And because you own Monakewaygo and its Manitoo, I will not tell the tribe. I will lie for you white men. But Patrick pay blood curse even so. Chekefuana tell me— Noonway wayasama," she added solemnly touching Elizabeth's forehead. "Noonway wayasama —Missis—It is farewell."
They buried Ben beside the trail to the north, on a pleasant hill overlooking the Great Cove. Robert read from the Bible while they stood around the grave, the Patricks, the Feakes and Angell Husted. They sang a psalm together, and then Daniel suddenly raised his head and recited what he could remember of the Latin Prayers for the Dead. Toby stood motionless, staring down at the grave while they placed a great flat stone over it for fear of wolves.
They went back to the Feake house and ate in silence. As they rose Toby said, "I'm going to New Amsterdam for protection. Ye were promised it and ye shall have it. Mianos's head goes with me."
"What good is that?" said Elizabeth dully. "Bury it, Toby, bury it at sea."
Toby did not answer. Elizabeth's senseless trust in Telaka's promise did not affect him. lie would demand a force sent from New Amsterdam, and in case Kieft would not heed him, exhibit the great chief's head, painted as it was with the red stripes of war. "Better ye keep all together here," Toby continued. "Guns loaded. Or better yet go to Stamford, let Underhill guard you."
"Nay, Toby—" said Patrick quickly. "There's no need o' that. Keofferam's chief o' the Siwanoys now, and even if Telaka breaks her word, which she won't, they'd never attack until their month o' mourning for Mianos is up."