Shadowbrook (57 page)

“No, of course not. I never did such a thing. Why would I?” You stupid oaf. What would I gain in such a transaction? You’ve no idea what a mortgage lien is, I’ll warrant. But I need to know who told you your half-truth.

“At the Nag’s Head, they’re saying you exchanged the Patent for cane land.”

“They say a lot of things in the Nag’s Head. Most of it’s lies.”

“This too?”

“I already told you as much. Though why it’s any business of yours isn’t at all clear to me.”

Quent’s chest wasn’t quite as tight and his breath came a little easier. He looked up and saw faces in most of the windows, all open wide to the approaching dawn. Corn Broom Hannah and Runsabout and Six-Finger Sam up in the dormers beneath the rafters. Kitchen Hannah at the kitchen door. And his mother. She’d come out onto what they’d always called the long balcony, outside the big room she hadn’t shared with his father in all Quent’s memory.

Lorene saw him looking up at her. “Quent,” she said, “put down the gun. Please. Do it for me.”

He hadn’t realized he was still aiming it point-blank at John’s chest. He dropped the barrel. “What about Johnson?” he asked.

“William Johnson? What about him?” John was breathing a little easier. His voice sounded more sure in his own ears. “He’s nothing to do with Shadowbrook.”

“They say he’s changed the name of Bright Fish Water to Lake George. They say it’s not part of the Patent any longer. That you signed it over to some men in New York.”

John didn’t answer right away. That’s what alerted Quent to the lie. “That’s ridiculous,” his brother said finally. “I already told you—”

Quent dropped the gun and lunged forward. He got both hands around John’s neck. “You bastard! You lying, cheating, foul bastard! How could you do such a thing? Why?”

John clasped Quent’s wrists, trying desperately to wrench his brother’s hands away from his throat. His breath burned in his chest and his vision blurred. He staggered, went down on his back. The iron grip didn’t ease. Quent knelt over him. “Bastard! What else besides Bright Fish Water? What else?” A tiny part of his brain not blinded by rage realized that his brother could not answer because he was choking to death. And that Quent wanted to know’ needed to know—the exact shape of the betrayal. He loosed his grip on John’s throat and drew back his fist, but he didn’t realize he’d actually hit him until he saw the blood welling from John’s mouth. “What else?” The demand roared out of him. “What else?”

“Carrying Place …” The words were slurred and slow. John’s tongue was rapidly becoming too big for his mouth.

“What else?” Quent’s skin prickled and his heart thumped. The grieving was already beginning in him, a great gash that matched the wound John had made in the Patent. “What else?”

“Above Do Good,” John muttered. “North land above Do Good.”

Quent wanted to wail his anger and his pain, but he could not. It was stoppered inside him, his sorrow was tamped down by rage. “Who?” He spoke quite calmly. “Who’d you give the land to?”

“New York men. Businessmen. Had to. After the fire … Debts. Had to give something away to keep the rest.” He couldn’t get the words out fast enough or as clear as he wanted, as he knew he had to if he was to live. Quent’s fury had gone from hot to cold and John knew it was the more dangerous for that “Fire,” he said again, struggling to be understood. “Fire near’y ruined uf. Had to ge’ money to keep goin’ … nex’ year ha’vest.”

Quent knew in his gut it wasn’t the truth. He wanted to beat John to a pulp, spill his brains on the ground, and break every one of his bones. But it could be true.

“Quent.” His mother’s voice. Coming to him from the long balcony above his head. Just his name. “Quent.”

He staggered to his feet and headed for the stable. Jeremiah would give him another horse. He would go north and do what he’d set out to do. Later he’d go to New York City, find whoever it was who had the northern part of the Patent now. Do whatever was necessary to get it back. “Jeremiah!” he shouted. “Jeremiah.” The black man appeared holding a saddled mare. The gray he’d ridden out of the paddock that day of the fire, as it happened.

“You go away, Master Quent,” the old man said, “for your mama’s sake. Brother kill brother on this land, it be poisoned. Mark o’ Cain that be. You go, Master Quent. For your mama’s sake.”

Quent swung himself into the saddle and rode away without looking back.

Upstairs, in John’s bedroom, when she saw him stagger up from the ground still alive, Taba wept.

SEPTEMBER 7, 1755
FORT EDWARD, THE SOUTHERN END OF THE GREAT CARRYING PLACE

“FRENCH REGULARS?”
Johnson asked.

The Mohawk scout shook his head. “A few. Mostly Canadians and
Anishinabeg.
”

Johnson made a soft sound under his breath. “This Dieskau does not sound like the usual sort of European general.”

“But the Abenaki with him are the usual sort of
Anishinabeg,
” Thoyanoguin said.

The old man had cut his hair into a scalp lock. It looked out of joint above his timeworn face. The disparity gave Johnson a bad feeling about this campaign. The man the English called King Hendrick was over seventy by most reckoning, but nothing Johnson or his wife, who was also Kahniankehaka and a member of the old man’s clan, had said could change the chief’s mind. He was war sachem of the Kahniankehaka, the Keepers of the Eastern Door; if there was to be a battle on that doorstep Thoyanoguin would lead his braves into the fight. If it proved the last one, so be it.

The chief had put aside the tricorne and blue officer’s coat he usually wore and was in full Iroquois battle dress: leggings, breechclout, and a double line of six blue dots across his forehead. His chest was bare except for the carrying strap of his musket. It was a young man’s attire on an old man’s soft and flabby body. Rolls of fat curled over the top of the tomahawk at his waist. “A blanket, old Father.” Johnson held one out. “It grows cold.” He did it out of respect, of course. But also he did not wish to see this travesty. It made ice in the marrow of his bones.

Thoyanoguin wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, grateful for the warmth. “The winds come early this year. You will not take Fort Frédéric for many moons.”

“No, I don’t think we will,” Johnson agreed. “Next spring, perhaps.”

“And the attack on Niagara? It too is delayed?”

“So I hear.” The plans made in London were coming up against the realities of colonial life. Not just the thick forests and the lack of roads, but also the rivalries of the different governors and their legislatures stood in the way. “De Lancey refused to release the cannons from the Albany fort. And John Lydius was supposed to recruit men for the Niagara campaign, but not too many have appeared.” More than likely Lydius had pocketed the bonus money meant for the recruits.

Thoyanoguin nodded. Even among the members of the Iroquois Confederation, sometimes you could not rely on cooperation. He had dreamed a river of blood covering the villages of the Kahniankehaka. Endless blood, covering the earth. And a hawk, and a tiny
raon,
and a great bear that Thoyanoguin had thought was Uko Nyakwai. Perhaps not. His scouts had reported sightings of the Red Bear heading north in the direction of Singing Snow. The Potawatomi were allied with Onontio. So maybe in the end Uko Nyakwai was more Potawatomi than
Cmokmanuk.
And maybe not the bear in his dream.

Johnson was squatting, making marks in the dust. It was a way he had of ordering his thoughts. Thoyanoguin had seen it before. He hunched down beside the other man. His old bones creaked and protested, but they still served. He leaned forward, studying Johnson’s marks. There were two circles on the ground. Both had a few crosshatches within their perimeter.

“Say five hundred men in each group,” Johnson said quietly, his words meant only for the chief. “Two detachments. They can cut off the French. A pincer movement.”

Thoyanoguin ran his hand over his scalp lock. After so many years, the Great Spirit had given him one last opportunity. But pointless death was a waste. He stood and motioned to the scout who had brought the news of the French approach. “How many?” he asked.

The scout had already relayed his estimate, but he did so again. “A thousand. And half a thousand more. Nearly half the total are Abenaki and Caughnawaga Kahniankehaka. Only a few French soldiers. The rest men of Canada.”

So there were fifteen hundred enemy approaching. And most were braves and
Cmokmanuk
from this world, not the Old World. Men who knew how to fight. It would not be like that thing they said happened two moons before on the Monongahela. These troops would not stand still and wait to be killed. Thoyanoguin looked again at the markings on the ground.

“Two groups of five hundred each,” Johnson repeated. “A pincer movement.”

Thoyanoguin shook his head. “If they are to die,” he said quietly, “they are too many. If they are to fight, they are too few.”

William Johnson considered for a moment. Then he stood up and ran his boot across the markings and scuffed them out.

The next morning, sitting astride a fine chestnut gelding, Thoyanoguin led out the combined war party of nearly a thousand Yorkers and two hundred braves—mostly Kahniankehaka, but also Mohegan and a few Mahican. Thoyanoguin despised the Mahican and had little use for the Mohegan, nonetheless he had claimed the honor of leading them all. However much Johnson disapproved he could not deny him. Now the old chief sniffed the air, trying to smell enemy blood. The scouts said two hundred French regulars waited up ahead on the wide road cut by Johnson’s men during this long summer of preparation. But did this Dieskau mean to do what Braddock had done? Would they all simply wait to be killed?

Deep woods lined either side of the road. If it were he, Thoyanoguin knew, he would have placed—

“Oh nihotaroten?”
What tribe? A voice from the woods, speaking in Kahniankehaka Iroquois. The Caughnawaga were deployed as he suspected. They were all around, but they did not wish to kill their own kind.

“We are of the Confederacy,” Thoyanoguin called out. “Members of the Great League of Peace, leaders of all the
Anishinabeg.
Most of us are of the Keepers of—”

A shot rang out.
Ayi!
It had come from behind him, not from the woods. One of his own hotheaded braves, too stupid to wait. A Mahican, probably. And now it was too late. Many shots. The braves behind him were like partridge in the short grass, available targets, more and more of them fell to the ground with every volley of musket fire and arrows.

Thoyanoguin felt the hot white pain of a musket ball pierce his shoulder. He slid from the horse and stumbled toward the woods. At first two of the younger braves helped him, then he couldn’t keep up and they scattered. Thoyanoguin ran through the woods until he saw a settlement up ahead. Women. His eyes were blinded by sweat and he had lost enough blood so that thoughts chattered in his head like rattling bones. The women who followed the Yorkers, he thought. The ones who did the washing by day and offered themselves at night when—

The first tomahawk had embedded itself in his flesh before Thoyanoguin realized he had lost his way and arrived at a camp of the enemy’s women and boys too young to fight. The river of blood had reached here and would be swelled with his own. He was still alive when the boys took his scalp lock, but dead before they cut out his heart.

LEAF FALLING MOON, THE SIXTEENTH SUN THE VILLAGE OF SINGING SNOW

“So now your birth father has passed to the next hunting ground, my white son?” Bishkek did not look directly at Quent when he asked the question.

“Yes, he is passed.” Bishkek had always been able to read the thoughts of both his manhood sons. Quent wasn’t surprised the old man knew it had been many months since Ephraim’s death, and that they both knew Quent’s visit was long overdue. “He passed in the Arriving Dark moon.”

“Arriving Dark,” Bishkek said softly. He and Quent squatted a short distance from the morning bustle of the village. Bishkek used the twig he held to scratch a number of lines on the ground, each one representing a New Moon ceremony. “No Sun, Deep Cold, Promised Light, Great Wind, Cracking Ice, No Fat, Much Fat, Thunder, Great Heat, Leaf Falling …” Bishkek paused and looked up. “Ten New Moon Tellings since your birth father passed. My whiteface son waited a long time to come and show respect to his manhood father.”

“I know I should have come before,” Quent said. “I could not.”

“And you do not plan to stay until the Telling of the Last Fruit Moon, either.” Bishkek’s face was grim and he looked away from Quent.

Last Fruit corresponded to October. The Last Fruit New Moon Telling would take place in a little more than two weeks. If he remained in Singing Snow all that time, his mission would have failed. “No, Father. I do not.”

“And have you a wife, my whiteface son? A birth son of your own?”

Quent shook his head.

“And you do not plan to find one here in the village, and put a bridge person child in her belly, or make yourself a manhood father to the son of another squaw, so that boy will come to know more of the
Cmokmanuk
ways even as he learns more of what it means to be an
Anishinabeg
man.” Bishkek’s voice displayed neither approval nor disapproval, but he did not smile. The words detailed Quent’s solemn obligations to the village. So far all were unmet.

“All that you say is true, Father.”

“And that is why you have taken so long to come to Singing Snow. So tell me,” Bishkek said, “if you do not mean to honor our ways that you swore would be your ways, why have you come? Why have I held you in my heart since you were a little boy, and why has this village placed so much hope in the two bridge persons who were one with us.
Haya, haya, jayek,
” he said softly. So, so, all of us together. “Is it not so, my whiteface son?”

“It is so, Father.
Haya, haya, jayek.
I am always one with the people of Singing Snow. In my heart, always. In my spirit I am what you named me, Kwashko, he who jumps over fire.” The memory of the Potawatomi brave he’d killed in the woods near the Monongahela was a sour taste in Quent’s mouth.