His voice broke over the last words. He was too full of grief to say more. I cried, weeping openly. Such displays of emotion disturbed him, but he did his best to comfort me. We stood together, united in sorrow for a father who had been greater than any other and a husband dearer than life itself.
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22
Attack
The returning warriors brought the war with them like a pestilence.
‘You are harbouring fugitives.’ The English words rang harsh through the cold air, clashing like irons together. ‘Also, it has come to our notice that you have a white woman here.’
The captain rode at the head of a column of militia, twenty, perhaps thirty men. His message was relayed by a man whom they had brought with them, John Samson. He wore shirt, waistcoat and breeches, and carried a musket; only the loosely flowing length of his hair betrayed him as Indian. He was working in their service as spy and scout. He had told them of the returning warriors and of my presence in the camp.
Without the wiles of him and his kind, the English stood little hope of winning this war. They would blunder from one ambush to another, led on by an enemy that kept appearing and disappearing like so many jacky lanterns, flitting from swamp to forest like will-o’-the-wisps. They were not used to this skulking kind of fighting. They liked to take a stand and face their enemy out in the open. They liked to fight on solid ground. They were learning and learning quickly. Helped by tribes with scores to settle.
‘Unless you give them up, the white woman too, it will go badly for you. You have until dawn tomorrow.’
The captain looked around. His words were met with silence. No one stirred, no one looked in my direction. My head was covered, my face smeared with ashes, and I kept my eyes fixed to the ground. He waited for a response. Getting none, he sighed his impatience.
‘Mark me. Dawn tomorrow.’
He wheeled his horse and cantered towards the gateway, the troops and their Indian helpers following at a trot.
Hoosac ordered the warriors from the village and I went with them. We would have a cold and wet time of it. A cutting wind blew from the north and the hills around were obscured by dark rain clouds. Speckled Bird was already flushed with fever. A night out in the open with the year turning towards winter could only make her sickness worse. My judgement was snarled by grief and sorrow, or I would never have left her, but I thought she would be safe in the care of Hoosac and his wife. I trusted them to look after her, and thought that she would be far more comfortable in the warmth of the long house than out in the weather with us.
We set up temporary shelters on higher ground above the village and prepared to wait it out. We did not want to put our people in danger. When the soldiers came back at dawn to search the camp they would have no excuse to mete out punishment on our account.
*
They did not wait until dawn, and they needed no excuse. They came before there was any light in the sky. We woke to the sounds of attack, to the scent of smoke on the wind, the glow of fire. We ran to the edge of the craggy ledge and looked down on the village. All was confusion. Men were already in the stockade, firing into the wigwams at any who lay inside. Some were shot where they slept, others as they tried to escape, scurrying like rats from a burning barn only to be cut down. Men, women, children, it made no difference. As the soldiers went through the village, they fired each dwelling place. The rush matting was wet only on the outside. The inside layers made excellent tinder. Flames leaped up and sparks flew out as the frame poles and timbers cracked. Soon all was ablaze.
I cast about frantically, trying to see through the fire and smoke. Terror seized me, squeezing my heart, my throat, taking the breath from me. Fear so great I could not see clearly. Black Fox started forward, but was dragged back.
‘Wait! There are too few of us.’ Coos, his war leader, held him back. ‘We can do nothing. Yet.’
We watched as the troop retreated, herding before them those they had not killed, taking them captive. They stopped just outside the burning village to bind the hands and rope the captives together by the neck. Black Fox stood by me, and we strained to see if Speckled Bird was with them. I could tell by their size that some were children, but could not tell if any were she.
‘Did you see?’ I asked him.
Black Fox shook his head. ‘But we will find her. I will kill any who harm her. They will pay forty-fold for what they do this day.’
Coos called his warriors together. ‘We will track them. Hope to catch them unawares.’
‘I will go down to the village.’ I had already started out.
‘It is too dangerous.’ Coos frowned. ‘They may send men back to rob or spoil the storage pits. I cannot spare men to go with you.’
‘I do not ask it. I am Eyes of a Wolf. I go alone.’
‘No!’ Black Fox stepped forward. ‘I will not let you.’
‘You are my son,’ I said gently, ‘but you cannot command me.’
‘I will go with you then.’
I shook my head. ‘Your duty lies elsewhere.’
The war band was heavily outnumbered already. They needed every man, and he was the best scout they had. He could get right into the midst of the English without any of them noticing him. He could be within feet of them, inches, and they would not know it. They would be lying with their throats cut before any of them even realised that the enemy was near. That was his special magic. Coos could not spare him to go down to the village with me.
‘Come,’ Coos urged him. ‘We must hasten, or they get away.’
‘Very well.’ Black Fox turned to me. ‘But be careful. We will meet back here.’
I went down while the buildings were still smouldering. Tears blinded me, set me stumbling so I fell several times on the track. I thought of my life here, of when I first came with Jaybird and White Eagle, me showing the first swell in my belly, how proud we were. I thought of my friends among the women. And my own special one, my little Speckled Bird. There was no one there to see, so I wept openly. How careless we are with happiness when we think it will last for ever!
The dead lay all about. Unarmed men, children, women, they had died where they fell, scrambling from sleep. Many had not even left their wigwams; their homes had become their pyres.
I thought, at first, that Speckled Bird had escaped. I pulled aside the charred mats from the side of the long house and picked my way through the smouldering interior. I could find no sign of her, although I found others enough to fill my heart to the brim with sorrow.
I thought she must have been taken prisoner and that Black Fox would find her and bring her back to me. Then I saw her. She had sought to escape, running on her swift little legs, but then she must have stumbled. Her foot was still caught, tangled in a fallen cooking frame. She lay as if sleeping, her face clear of any injury, but the dark bloom of blood haloed her head. I knew that she was dead.
I sat on the ground, as frozen and numb as when Jaybird first found me cast out in the forest. I wished that he had left me there. I wished that I had died that day. I remembered White Eagle’s extra look of sadness. All those years ago, he had known that this would happen. Such knowledge is a grievous burden. No wonder he longed to leave this world.
I was so lost in grief, I did not hear him until he was upon me. I did not even hear his horse.
John Samson. He slid from the saddle and walked towards me. His step was silent. Even though he was dressed as a white man, he still wore moccasins.
‘I knew you’d be back, Eyes of a Wolf. I know why they call you so. I had no use for your whelp, but you – you are worth money.’
‘Come no closer.’ I stood up and loosened the tomahawk at my belt. ‘Or it will be the worse for you.’
‘What can you do, a woman alone?’
‘You are a traitor to your people and a killer of children. You do not deserve to live.’
‘What will you do? Put a spell on me?’ He laughed. ‘I have heard you are strong in sorcery.’
‘Do you want to see?’
I gave him the wolf in me. His mocking smile died and he paled as a snarling she wolf took my place. I could have killed him myself, torn his throat out, but I dislike the taste of blood in my mouth. Instead I kept him rooted as I assumed my own shape again. He stood before me motionless as a statue, seeing nothing, hearing nothing until the tomahawk landed with a splintering thud in the centre of his chest.
He looked down then, as if he was thinking, ‘What does that do there? It was not there before.’ Then he pitched forward.
I left him with his blood making rivers in the mud and gathered up my Speckled Bird.
I carried her back to the burying ground high on the hill above the ruined village. I laid her beneath the trees, the yellow and red leaves falling upon her, and then I went out to follow the men who had done this to her, to all of us. I saw as if I was a bird, a hawk flying. I saw the column of men making their way to the river. The straggling line of captives was slowing them down. I could see Black Fox and the warriors pursuing. I could lend them my strength, but if the column reached the river, their chance of surprise was lost. Across the river was open country. Once the soldiers gained that, they would have a safe run to the township. They had to be stopped.
I held a thunderbird amulet that White Eagle had given to me. I called on his power now. It had been raining in the mountains for days, weeks now. Last night we saw the lightning flash, heard the thunder roll. Huge black clouds had emptied themselves of rain, filling every freshet, every stream. Now was the time for all that water to find its way downriver.
It came as a pulse, a surge, small at first, but soon it turned into a great wall.
It caught the first horsemen at the fording place. Horses lost their footing, men went down and were swept away in the furious churning mass of water. The rest turned back in confusion. That was when the warriors struck. I heard the screams of men and horses; I saw the blood spray through the air like raindrops. I rose higher and higher until I could no longer hear, no longer see them. Then I came back to Speckled Bird.
I chose a place under a strong, young, straight-growing silver birch. The trunk shone bright and the small yellow leaves pattered down on both of us as I took off my beads and bracelets, the gifts that Jaybird had given me, and laid them about her. I took White Eagle’s thunderbird amulet and put it on her breast, closing her fingers around it. I cut my hair with a knife and put the thick braids about her shoulders. I stripped bark from the trees and wrapped her before laying her facing the east in the way of her father’s people. Then I scattered the earth upon her and said my last farewell.
The story White Eagle had told in the cave came back to me. I knew now why he had told it. He had known that the days would bend towards this one, even in the time of my youth, in my first love for Jaybird, before Speckled Bird was ever conceived. Wisdom and knowledge are born of suffering. I understood that now as I threw the earth down upon my lovely child.
I squatted long at the foot of her grave in the pose of those who want to bring death upon themselves, with my knees drawn up and my head resting on my folded arms. At first I meant to follow her, take the journey that White Eagle had taken, but I understood the lesson of his story. Such things are not to be. Instead I prayed fervently that Jaybird would stop in his own journey along the way of the dead. That the thongs of his moccasin would snap and as he bent to mend them his Speckled Bird would come to him, a quick flying thing. He would sweep her up and carry her on his shoulders, as he had so many times in life, so now in death, and they would go forward together to Kiehtan’s great door.
I smeared my face with ashes from some long-dead fire and set myself to watch through the night to the cold light of dawn.
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I travelled in dream to White Eagle, climbing back towards the mountains. If ever I needed him, I needed him now. At last I came to the great rock face that rose up sheer to the Cave of the Ancestors. It had been snowing, the first snow of winter, and the grey rock was banked by thin drifts carved by the wind into delicate flutes and ridges. The cold was biting, just as it had been when I first came to this place. I saw now what I had not had the eyes to see then. The cliff was carved with strange devices: whirling shapes, circles and spirals. Some had been there since Moses walked beside the Nile, since Noah prepared his great ark. These were not man’s doing. They marked the place as spirit, manitou. They were carved by the first beings to show the beginning and the end of things.
White Eagle was waiting there for me. He was dressed for a journey. A quiver of arrows and a bag of rations slung at his belt, his bow across his back. Black and vermilion painting stood like a mask on a face as white as his snowy hair.
He uttered no word of greeting. He touched my face, his hands trembling like leaves as he wiped the tears from my cheeks. He took me in his arms and held me as tenderly as the father I had never known. I felt his frailty; his bones as thin as a bird’s beneath his clothes.
Then we sat down with the towering cliff above us and he talked to me.
‘We cannot win this war.’ He drew a map with a stick on the ground. ‘I see a land with no place for us in it. I have looked for an end to the white men coming, but I see none. They are like the snow at the time of white frost forming.’ He held out his hand to catch at the sparse drifting flakes. ‘At first there are few, they scarce cover the ground. But if you look you see each is different and as the days go on towards midwinter more and more fall down, and more and more, until the world is white with them. The people long then for the sun’s returning, for warm spring rains to fetch it away. Except for us there will be no thawing. It will be winter all year round.’ He looked up at me, his dark eyes fathomless. ‘They will make this land their own and there will be no room for us. They will not stop coming until the land is quite filled up. You know. You who were born among them. They will seek to claim you, but you cannot go back. Neither can you follow the road to the west, however much you might want to take it. It is closed to you until your own time comes and you have many years yet. You have spilled heart’s blood, my daughter, and the wound is fresh within you, but you must go on, the people need you. Your life is with the people now.’ He raised his eyes to the sky, then looked to the mountains retreating northwards. ‘Go to our Pennacook brothers. If you need me, I will guide you. Take this as a sign that I will be with you.’
He took an eagle feather from his hair and gave it to me, then he stood and helped me to my feet.
‘Now is the time of leaving. I must go from here. Soon the forests round about will ring with the white man’s axe. His ploughs will tear the land. One day he will hollow even this mountain, taking the stone to build and to burn in fires. It is time for the ancestors to sleep. Let the earth take them to her.’
He stared up at the rock face. He blinked and the ground quaked under our feet and rocks began to tumble. When the dust had cleared there was no cave. It was as if it had never been.
He held up his arms. His hands no longer shook and trembled. Then he walked away, setting off west to the place of the setting sun. With each step, he seemed to grow straighter, each stride he took was longer, until from a distance I would have taken him for a young man going back to his village, a successful hunt completed. I was about to lose yet another of the ones I held dear to me, but I did not seek to stop him or call after him. How can you stop a spirit?
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23
First remove
I stayed at the burying place until the captives came back. They were escorted by the warriors riding on horses that they had taken from the soldiers. Coos, the war leader, came first, large bulging baskets slung over his saddle. On the top I could see a hand; it was turned up and open, as though ready to receive a gift. The base of the carrier oozed and dripped, the fibres soaked and blackened with blood. It was the custom to take the heads and hands of enemies.
The sun went down, staining the western sky red, as Hoosac collected what was left of his people and made temp
orary camp in the woods. The sunset was matched by an equal glow to the north. Across the valley, another town was burning.
Hoosac posted watchers as we buried the rest of the dead. Then the warriors built their fire away from the rest of us. They would talk of their triumph far into the night, telling their exploits again and again, until they became part of each man’s story and each man had a part in the story. Thus it would pass into the memory of the band.
Black Fox did not join them. He had come back full of foreboding when he did not find Speckled Bird among the captives, and when I told him what had happened to her, he took it very hard. Tears melted the paint on his face, streaking it down his cheeks. He took me in his arms and we clung together. I offered what comfort I could but he went from me, his sorrow beyond sharing even with me.
We found him next morning watching by her side. He had tended her grave most carefully, heaping up the earth and piling rocks upon it so no animal could despoil it. He had combed the country far and wide, collecting stones and shells from river and lake, arranging them in ways that would please her. As in life, so in death, he had made toys for her, whittling soft pine into a doll, dressing it in corn husks. He had fashioned little figures from sticks and hung them up in the trees, to turn and twist in the breeze, as he had done above her cradle board when she was a baby. He stood now, facing east, still as a statue in the first pale rays of the rising sun.
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We left soon after dawn, going by way of the village. What could not be salvaged from the wreck was broken, burnt and scattered, the ground sown with ashes. As we went, I saw people taking special note of all they saw. They knew they would not return to this land any more. Every tree, every stone, each fold in the hills, the exact curve the river took through the valley, each part of the homeland was committed to memory, as one who feels blindness fast approaching might strive to learn the face of a dear one before the darkness descends.