A Flight of Arrows (7 page)

For the first time in William's recollection he'd rendered Sam Reagan speechless. He stared, eyes roving William's face, feature by feature, before finally he said, “You looked
white enough
? What does that mean?”

“Apparently I'm savage born. Indian.”

Sam shook his head. “Not full blood. Your eyes.”

“My mother was born white but raised Oneida. So I'm told.”

His initial surprise spent, Sam was taking the news in customary stride. “I expect there's more to tell. In fact I'm sure of it, but save the details. Let's get inside.”

“Agreed,” said William, all but certain now his toes would never thaw again.

They turned the corner of the storehouse and stopped short to keep from running into the squat, burly form of Sergeant Campbell, who, judging by the look of satisfaction spreading across his blunt face, had overheard every word of William's confession.

Midwinter Moon

Fort Stanwix

T
wo Hawks had barely outraced the coming storm. As he entered the fort at the Carrying Place, the snowfall that had pelted him since afternoon thickened to an angry blow, curtaining the log barracks and obscuring the blue-coated figures hurrying to put a door between themselves and the biting cold.

Two Hawks sheltered the horse he led—his brother's mare—catching glimpses through snow of the outer defenses, under repair by the new garrison from Connecticut, commanded by a colonel called Elmore. When he ducked into the trading post, hauling the bundled furs the horse had carried, warmth met him. And the stink of unwashed bodies. As his eyes adjusted to firelight, he picked out the owners of voices raised in conversation, more voices than the scant supplies stacked around the post could account for.

It had been General Schuyler's notion, this post for Oneidas to trade their winter furs for clothing and food. Hunger stalked the People. Warriors were often too busy spying on the British or watching their borders for those intent on mischief to hunt meat. Even when they had furs and skins to trade, the war in the east had disrupted the supply of goods. Two Hawks's mother wanted wool to make warm shirts and leggings. Little such met his gaze as he lowered his burden to the floor.

Around a brick hearth, men stood talking and warming themselves. Soldiers, scouts, Oneidas come for trade or news. Several broke away and
headed for a cider barrel, revealing Ahnyero standing among the talkers, his hand around a cup. He flashed Two Hawks a look, nodding him over.

Two Hawks's spirits rose. Since his return from chasing the Cherry Valley spies, he'd seen the blacksmith-turned-scout only in passing, with no chance for the talk he wanted to have with the man.

Ahnyero made room for him in the fire's warmth. Two Hawks gave ear to the conversation while he began to thaw. Some of the talk was good—General Washington's victories at places called Trenton and Princeton. Some was not so good. Joseph Brant—Thayendanegea of the Mohawks, brother of Sir William Johnson's widow—had returned from a voyage to England where it was said he'd met the king.

“Brant's running hither and yon, boasting of being bosom friends with King Geordie,” a Connecticut soldier complained. “Promising the Indians presents our side ain't able to spare—winning them over to the Crown. Can't one of you lot, some high-up chief, rein that stallion in?”

This was directed to the Oneidas present. Two Hawks knew his were not the only teeth it set on edge.

“The English king sent Brant to sway the People to his cause,” Ahnyero told the soldier. “But when he came to Ganaghsaraga, he was scolded by the sachems who refused to side with the king.” Ganaghsaraga was a village on the edge of Oneida land. Many living there were Tuscaroras. “The sachems told Brant they were standing apart and letting the whites fight their own battle. This is so. We only protect our lands from war parties crossing, as is right to do in any case.”

Though
standing apart
was said when Oneidas were asked, the pressure to choose a side in the white man's war was partly what troubled those gathered in that fort.

When others took up the talk, Ahnyero leaned close to Two Hawks and said, “I still feel the cold coming off you, Brother,” and led him to the cider barrel.

Two Hawks filled a cup. They returned to the hearth, squatting where
a poker rested, its tip in the glowing embers. Ahnyero drew it forth and dipped it into Two Hawks's cider. The liquid steamed, its spicy fragrance clouding warm and pleasant between them. Ahnyero waited for Two Hawks to warm his hands around the cup, then his insides with a swallow.

“Your father…he will want to scout with us?”

“He has grumbled about it all winter.” Two Hawks told how he and Stone Thrower had hunted together through the autumn. Though Two Hawks had left twice since to scout, his mother kept his father from following, doubting his leg was up to the challenge of trekking through heavy drifts. “My mother was right. The bone knit strong. He has no more limp now.”

“Iyo.”
Ahnyero dropped his voice though the others had gone on talking, some moving off to start a dice game. “Have you been east since the autumn?”

Two Hawks shook his head. “I hoped for word of William to bring.” He fixed Ahnyero with a hopeful look. “Have you heard of Johnson's regiment?”

The Oneidas had cast a net of spies, strung out northward to the St. Lawrence River. Two Hawks was proud to be part of it but wished his part could be among those in Quebec gathering the war rumors from their spies among the British, that he might walk through some fort or encampment, turn a corner, and come face to face with his face—or one very like it—in the uniform of a Tory soldier. And he would say,
“Brother, since the day you were taken, you have lived in the hearts of our mother and father, and in my heart. Come now and know us so that we will be in your heart as well.”

Or he might say,
“Come now, forgive the man you called Father. Do this for my sake, so he will learn to think well of me…”

Ahnyero told him, “The Royal Yorkers are said to winter in Montreal. Perhaps your brother is there?”

“It is what my brother told Anna Catherine he meant to do, join Johnson's regiment. Saying and doing are not the same.” Speaking Anna Catherine's name drove other thoughts from Two Hawks's mind. He set the cider on the ashy hearth. “I have wanted to ask you a thing.”

“Ask it then.”

Two Hawks felt his face warm, not from the nearness of the fire. “How do you manage it, living among the whites and with the People, being at peace in both places?”

Ahnyero studied him, in no great hurry to reply. Two Hawks wondered what he was seeing. A foolish boy who'd lost his heart to an impossible love? Four moons had waned since he'd seen Anna Catherine. Two Hawks ached with missing her. Not that he'd thought time would change his heart.
For better, for worse
—words spoken when whites married, he'd learned. They warmed him, thinking of life with his Bear's Heart beside him. And they frightened him, considering the cost. He would need to remake himself after a pattern he couldn't clearly see. It ran before him like a deer through dappled thickets, giving only glimpses.

“You mean to marry that white woman then.”

Two Hawks had never told the man that he loved Anna Catherine. It must show on his face, written like words on a page. “If I can persuade her father.”

“It seems wrong to me,” Ahnyero said.

Two Hawks's heart plummeted. “Wrong?”

“That you should seek her father's favor instead of the other way, after all that man has done. After all your parents have forgiven him. He is a difficult man, Aubrey?”

Two Hawks grunted.
Difficult
was a good word for that one. He was very tempted to say so, but he did not; he had told Anna Catherine he would honor her father. That did not mean only to his face. Or hers.

“I have tried to think how it would be,” he said, “how I would see myself, had I done a thing I knew to be shameful. What would it take to
restore me? What ways do whites have for cleansing a bad heart? All I understand are our traditions, and the ways of Heavenly Father, which I am learning. This man seems to have nothing for the purpose.”

Ahnyero's brows lifted. “Nothing?”

“He has drawn himself apart. He is…” Inspired by their surroundings, Two Hawks said, “Like a man shut up inside a fort. Shut up where none can get to him. I think he believes even Creator cannot reach him there, where he hides. My parents tried to open that fort with forgiveness. Maybe they did. Maybe it is standing wide now. But he hasn't come out. I want this man to come out. I want him to be whole again. I want…”

He wanted Anna Catherine. Two Hawks stared into the fire, heart wrung with longing and helplessness. And conviction. He'd told Anna Catherine he was selfish. It was true.
Help me want Aubrey to be whole for his own sake, not just so my heart's desire might be granted me
.

“It is a tangled path you walk,” Ahnyero said. “But maybe I can help you to clear it. My father taught me his blacksmith trade. A trade opens doors to places a man would otherwise be shut out of.”

Two Hawks frowned. “You are saying I should become a blacksmith?”

Ahnyero started to smile, then suppressed it. “I am saying you should learn a trade that's needed by the whites
and
the People. It will help you live in both worlds, to be needed in both, if that is important to you.”

“It is.” He didn't want to stop being Oneida. Couldn't imagine such a thing. Neither could he imagine Anna Catherine living in his world. It was not their way for a woman to leave her mother's clan. “A man goes to live with his wife's clan,” he murmured. It was the way it had always been. The right way, and good.

“True,” Ahnyero agreed. “But this woman has no clan.”

“She has people,” Two Hawks said. “She has a place, a calling, and a woman she loves as a mother. She has a father. And
he
has a trade.” Anna Catherine had had this idea. He'd been of two minds about it back in autumn, but now…his father no longer needed help to hunt.

“All those bateaux? I have seen that one who pilots his boats, Yankee Lang, with the white hair.” The scout made a sound of interest—and approval, Two Hawks thought. “Maybe that is the way for you to Aubrey's heart, learning his—”

A sudden frigid gust had them breaking off their conversation and rising to their feet to see a group of Oneidas pushing into the crowded post, snow dusted, cheeks red with cold. One stepped forward and spoke, and because it wasn't in English, Ahnyero left the hearth to translate for those who needed it, but Two Hawks understood the news straight from the mouth of the warrior who brought it: “We come through this snow with dark news. There was a council at Onondaga, many sachems gathered there. During that council the spotting sickness came among them like a foul breath. Many are dead of it. Some of the dead are sachems.”

As Ahnyero translated, a chill took hold of Two Hawks that had nothing to do with the wintery air let in.

“We come to tell Colonel Elmore, so he may pass the news downriver. There is mourning at Onondaga and condolence to be made. Because of this, the keepers of the Central Fire have stamped it out. It burns no more. Every man may choose as he will between the Americans and the British. That is what we have come to say.”