The Ransom of Mercy Carter

  Waitstill could count, but it didn’t mean anything to her yet, so she just called out any number. “Four!” she shouted several times, and Eunice would say, “Four! Good for you, Waitstill!”

  Waitstill’s mother had been killed on the march. Waitstill was too little to understand, and although she had asked often where Mother was, she was easy to distract.

  The three children spilled out if the dogs took the curves too quickly or hit a rock beneath the snow, but they weren’t very high up, so it was rolling over rather than falling off, and they just giggled while somebody ran to stop the dogs and rearrange the children.

  There were also sledges with runners. These were heavier and could carry more without spilling. These were pulled by men.

  English men.

  The children had seen their fathers on leashes, tied and led. They had seen their fathers helpless to give them food, keep them warm or even keep them alive. Now they saw their fathers attached to traces, grunting and pulling like animals.

  The mothers had no choice but to keep plodding. Rides on the sleds were never offered to them.

  The children gathered around the Indians, clamoring for the privilege of riding. Everybody wanted a chance to be warm inside the furs and wave at the others and rest from the constant march. Running boys dashed alongside, bothering the dogs and trying to hang on to the end of the sled and be towed. After a while they played ball as they marched, using snowballs and calling out which trees up ahead were the goals.

  Ebenezer Sheldon limped on. Frozen toes or not, Ebenezer never slowed down and never complained. He was the third English captive to be named, after Ruth and Mercy. His was an easy name to translate: Frozen Leg.

  Eunice’s Indian began teaching her to count in Mohawk, and by noon, Eunice Williams, yelling over the snow from her sled, could count from one to ten.

  So could Mercy and Eben. So, in fact, could most of the children, shouting out the numbers as they pelted each other with snowballs.

  Mercy wondered what Eunice’s father was thinking about as Eunice began singing in Mohawk. The minister had not been made to pull a sledge, nor was he carrying a load. His Boston relatives were the most important ministers in all the New World: Increase and Cotton Mather. The Mathers would pay anything to get the Williams family back. Had the Indians known ahead of time who Mr. Williams was and what he was worth?

  Mercy considered again Ruth’s idea that there was a traitor. Had somebody sold out, telling the French and Indians in which house to find the minister? That his relatives had power and money?

  More than one Indian seemed to believe he was the owner of Mr. Williams. There was a moment when Mercy thought they would divide the minister with a hatchet. But he still lived, and they let him lead prayer and, once, sing psalms.

  Black and gray and brown cloaks and hats stretched ahead of her. She counted brothers: Sam and John and Benny were up ahead, each with his own Indian, doing fine. She counted cousins: Will and Little Mary were managing. She counted the children on the sleigh: Eunice and Daniel and Waitstill.

  Miles and miles they marched, past the barren silhouettes of chestnut, the straight poles of pine and the sagging arms of spruce. She could remember what had happened in Deerfield, and yet she could not remember. It seemed sealed off, like a folded letter fastened with wax.

  “Can the Indians still be afraid of pursuit?” said Sarah Hoyt. “I can think of no other reason for such a desperate pace.”

  “Ice,” said Eben briefly. “Spring is coming. If the river thaws, there’s no easy path north. We’d have to work our way through the forest. And they have to be worried about food. I suppose it’s better to stay hungry and cover many miles than stop to find food while an English army catches up.”

  Nobody wanted the English to catch up. Indian scouts at the rear would see the English long before the English saw them, and as usual, ambush would lead to yet more English death. And if the Indians were really pressed, they might melt into the wilderness and leave the captives to die alone, and that was the worst image of all.

  “Look,” said Eben. “The ice is broken by that creek. Let’s get a drink.”

  Avoiding the soft ice, the captives knelt, cupping their hands to scoop up water. Indians carried little wooden cups attached by a thong to the waist and could drink with dignity, but the prisoners had to take one swallow at a time in their hands.

  Eunice Williams stood up on her sled, a dangerous trick with the dogs racing and the sled jarred by every rut and ridge. She waved gaily. Her black hair swirled, her straight white teeth flashed an excited smile and her cheeks were red as berries.

  To stop Eunice from risking a really rough fall, her Indian lifted her out and placed her on his shoulders to ride, putting Joanna Kellogg and Thankful Stebbins in the sled instead.

  Eunice will be adopted, thought Mercy. The Indian will keep such a beautiful happy child for his daughter.

  English women had babies all the time—six in this family; twelve in that. But Indian women hardly ever had more than one or two. And the smallpox that had ravaged Boston last year had probably done worse to the Indians; it always did.

  So … were the Indians in need of children?

  Perhaps the Indians came to Deerfield on a hunt for children, Mercy thought, just as they might come to the forest on a hunt for deer. Perhaps Mr. Williams means nothing. Perhaps it’s Eunice who means something, and Daniel, and … me.

  Mercy Carter. Munnonock.

  It was warmer, and Mercy let her hood drop to her shoulders. When the sun struck her face, she repeated softly the Mohawk word for “sun.”

  “Oh, Eben!” breathed Mercy, thrilled and astonished. “Guess what?”

  The glare off the ice was bothering him, and as the temperature rose, the snow on the frozen river was turning to slush. His moccasins were soaked and his feet were so cold he could hardly bear the pressure of each step. “What?”

  “I can figure out Mohawk words, Eben!” she said excitedly. “Sun was one of the first words Tannhahorens taught us. And we learned to count, so I know the number two. Thorakwaneken means ‘Two Suns.’ Your master’s name is Two Suns! And cold—that’s the word we use most. Eunice’s master is Cold Sun.” She turned her own sunny smile on him.

  Eben was unsettled by how proud she was. He did not want to compliment her. Uneasily, he said, “What does Tannhahorens mean?”

  “I haven’t figured that out. He’s told me, but I can’t piece together whatever he’s saying. I don’t know what Munnonock means either.”

  Mercy darted across the slush to her Indian master, and although they were too far away for Eben to hear, he knew she was asking Tannhahorens to explain again the meaning of his name and hers.

  He knew, everyone on the frontier knew, how quickly captive English children slid into being Indians, but he had not thought he would witness it in a week. He had thought it would be three-year-olds, like Daniel, or seven-year-olds, like Eunice.

  But it was Mercy.

  Ruth walked next to Eben. For once their horror was equal.

  A mile or so of silence, and then Ruth spoke. “The Indians have a sacred leader. Their powwow. He has a ceremony by which all white blood is removed. They say it is a wondrous thing and never fails.”

  They walked on. The temperature had dropped again and each of Eben’s moccasins was solid with ice. Every time he set his foot down, he stuck to the congealing slick of the river and had to tear himself free. Soon the moccasins would be destroyed and he would be barefoot.

  “I know now why it never fails,” said Ruth. “The children arrive at the ceremony ready to be Indian.”

  Chapter Five

  Leaving the Connecticut River

  March 8, 1704

  Temperature 40 degrees

  In the morning, the Indians split up.

  A group of three warriors, their four prisoners, one sled and eight dogs vanished upriver. A few minutes later five warriors and two heavily laden captives crossed the Connecticut to
go west along the icy path of a brook.

  Mercy had thought that everyone from Deerfield would stay together; that somehow, far to the north, at the end of this journey, they would be Deerfield again, with the same brothers and cousins and neighbors, just colder.

  How babyish. How stupid.

  Already they were out of food again. The wounded and the youngest children had had two or three bites of goose that had been shot by the band of Indians at the river’s edge. Everybody else had had nothing.

  It was, after all, the end of winter. No food existed except meat. Flour could not be carried, bread could not be baked, berries and corn did not grow. It would be easier to hunt meat when small parties were scattered over different territories.

  Mercy herself was so hungry, she was faint. Tannhahorens would despise her for it. She tried to keep her feet from weaving and her tears from falling, but she could not.

  Tannhahorens took her hands and cupped them. Then he removed a small deerskin pouch from his belt and into her cupped hands poured dust. He licked his empty palm and lifted his chin at her to indicate that she was to do the same. Hesitantly, Mercy licked the dust.

  It was parched corn, ground almost to the point of flour. It had a salty, burned taste. It surprised her, and she shuddered, but immediately she wanted more and took a second lick. It was good. It was even filling.

  She glanced at the sky. The temperature was dropping. It would snow tonight. Three hundred people would have gone a dozen different routes, and by dawn, their tracks would be eaten by the snow, dusted by the wind.

  By the time Mercy had sorted this out, her three brothers were gone. She panicked. “Sam!” she screamed. “John! Benny!” She ran from group to group, darting behind sledges, racing among the dogs, circling the fires. “Sam! John!”

  What was the matter with her? How could she have stayed separate from them? Why had she not kicked Tannhahorens in the shins, as Ruth would have, and marched with her brothers no matter what he said? Ruth was right, he was nothing but an Indian!

  O Father! she thought. O Mother! I let you down again. I didn’t protect Tommy. I didn’t save Marah or Stepmama or the baby. And now the boys are gone.

  On her second screaming circle of the camp, Tannhahorens caught her. “Boys go,” he said.

  “But are they all right? I didn’t say good-bye! You never let me talk to them at all! I don’t even know their masters’ names!” A new and even more horrifying thought struck Mercy. It tore the wind from her lungs and her voice broke. “Will my brothers and I go to the same place? Will I see them again?”

  Poor Father, come home to find his entire family ripped away in a night. Father would comfort himself that Mercy was taking care of the boys—and he would be wrong.

  Tannhahorens had fewer English words than Mercy had Mohawk. He could not understand this outpouring. He steered her back to his possessions. “Raquette,” he said.

  Mercy jumped in front of him, blocking his path. He was hung with weapons in preparation for departure: knives, tomahawk, hatchet, gun, two bows, quiver of arrows. But something new hanging from Tannhahorens’ chest gave her pause. A Catholic cross. Although in her whole life, Mercy had seen only one spoon and a belt buckle made of silver, she knew this cross to be silver.

  She wrenched her eyes from its beauty. It would be a sin to find a cross beautiful. Religion must be heart and soul, not scraps of metal.

  Tannhahorens pushed her along in front of him. “Raquette,” he said irritably.

  “Raquette?” she begged. “Is that your town? Is that Sam’s master’s name? Are the boys together? Is Sam going to be able to watch out for John and Benny?”

  This time, ragged trousers and a torn stained coat blocked Tannhahorens’s way. The Indian looked harshly at the Englishman in front of him, and Mercy wished she had learned words like please. But Tannhahorens walked on and left them together.

  “Oh, Uncle Nathaniel!” she said, and they wrapped their arms around each other.

  He held her tightly. He had to clear his throat several times to find his voice. “Your brothers are not together,” he said, “but they seemed all right. They were not afraid. Benny’s Indian has a sled and he will ride as he did yesterday. John’s with five other English, all adults. They will watch for him. And Sam is with the Kellogg girls. He’ll be busy taking care of Joanna and Rebecca.”

  Her three brothers, going in three directions in the hands of strangers.

  “They took my Will and my Mary in the last band,” said her uncle. “I have some hope. The Indians treat my children tenderly. When nobody else had a morsel to eat, their masters fed them.”

  Sam. John. Benny. Will. Little Mary.

  Gone.

  In woods and ravines, among wolves and panthers, rattlesnakes and bears, the children she cared about most were alone. “And Aunt Mary?” said Mercy finally. “Where is she?”

  There was a long pause before the answer. Long enough that Mercy knew what the answer must be.

  “She slipped on the ice yesterday,” said Uncle Nathaniel finally. “She didn’t recover.”

  Yesterday I was happy, thought Mercy. I admired my new language. I enjoyed the sight of sleds on snow and great trees rising in the sky. I rejoiced in the Lord’s world. But the Lord’s world always includes suffering.

  “Mercy,” said her uncle, his voice shaking, “remember your English.” He traced her features with his fingers, as if he must capture her image to carry with him, since he would have no son or daughter, no niece or nephew to carry. “Remember your mother and father. Remember your God. Remembering must be your first rule. You must remember, Mercy.”

  In his eyes she saw a terrible fear, and she thought, He does not think he will ever see me again.

  I do not think so either.

  ONE CAPTIVE AFTER ANOTHER, they left, peeling away in relentless rhythm.

  Sally Burt waved jauntily, as if she were still slim and agile, not soon to give birth.

  Nine Indians, none of whom Mercy recognized, had no sled and would carry everything they had, including Daniel, their only prisoner. His pale hair shining, his strong chubby legs sticking out, Daniel perched in the embrace of some strange Indian as comfortably as he had in Mercy’s arms. “Bye, Mercy!” he called, and put his thumb into his mouth and his head down on the shoulder of the savage.

  O Daniel!

  Not one of us goes with you. Whatever your life will be, you will have it with no mother, no father; no sister, brother, cousin or friend.

  Lord, Lord, Lord.

  Mercy stood waving long after Daniel had vanished into the piles of mountains, one after another, blue and shadowy. She felt Daniel had been swallowed by a sea dragon.

  Deerfield will never recover, she thought. Lost children will destroy it as lost buildings and lost crops never could.

  “Raquette,” said Tannhahorens again, patiently. He produced a peculiar set of shoes. Slender sticks of pliable wood had been bent in an oval, tips overlapping and tied in the shape of a paddle. Woven through and around this wooden frame were sinews, making a sort of diamond-patterned sieve. Fastened to the center were bands of rawhide. After checking her moccasins and retying them, Tannhahorens slid Mercy’s feet into the loops. She was standing on the sieve.

  Tannhahorens put his own on and walked. A warrior with webbed feet. If she had not been heartsick, she would have laughed.

  It took her a while to figure out how to lift her feet with such large contraptions stuck to them. But they were wondrous. Her feet no longer collapsed through the soft snow but stayed on top, leaving the most extraordinary prints behind her: a hundred lacy diamonds where each foot had come down.

  Some windows in Deerfield had had diamond-paned glass. Mercy’s mother used to say to Father, “Someday we will have windows like that.”

  Mercy put memory in the hands of the Lord and joined Eben, who was practicing on his raquettes. Ruth got none, probably because she would throw them away. Why waste them on her?

  The tra
il wove through evergreens.

  A dozen yards ahead of her, Tannhahorens moved gracefully over the folds of white. Although snow covered the floor of the world, making the wilderness appear trackless, the Indian seemed to be following a path he knew. As soon as the starry patterns of the snowshoes pressed down, the path was obvious and reasonable, and Mercy thought that if it had been summer, she too might have seen the path through the trees. As it was, she saw only the bright shaft of Tannhahorens’s blue coat in front of her.

  Twice the snow diamonds split. Up ahead, where she could not see it happening, their band was dividing and becoming smaller.

  It had begun to snow again when the sled tracks turned west, and Mercy’s group went north. Now Mercy was given a burden pack with a forehead strap, because they had no sled with them; her band would carry everything.

  The country became brutal.

  Slabs of granite rose in awesome cliffs of striped and craggy rock. At the bottom of ravines were vast rock piles where whole sides of mountains had fallen off. Spruce and hemlock grew so tightly together they were a wall of black. There were no colors in this wilderness. Snow poured out of the sky like milk from a pitcher.

  What if she got lost in this terrible place? The snow would fill in behind her, and even an Indian would never find a missing child here.

  The raquettes became painful. The backs of her legs cramped up and she had to stop and massage the kinks out. She took off her raquettes and slogged on in moccasins.

  “Look!” called Joseph Kellogg.

  Directly above, a dead pine rose like a spire. On its very tip sat an eagle, looking down with the majestic scorn of predators.

  “Sowangen,” the Indians told them.

  Mercy repeated the new word to herself. Sowangen. Eagle.