The Ransom of Mercy Carter (10 page)

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 trail 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.

The eagle took off with a muscular thrust, and a single feather swirled down, turning like the winged seed of a maple. Joseph flung away his pack, jumped over fallen branches and leaped upon a rock, reaching and stretching. The feather fell into his hands.

The Indians were joyful, as if the eagle had intentionally sent its feather to the English boy. “Sowangen,” said Joseph’s Indian, tapping Joseph’s chest. Joseph too had a name now. Sowangen.

“Tell me your name,” said Joseph.

“Aronhiowosen.”

It means “Great Sky,” Mercy thought.

The sky above truly was great—infinite snow falling over infinite wilderness. But the greatness of the Lord seemed diminished.

A
T LAST
they rested.

Tannhahorens sat, as Indians did, without a substitute for a chair. The English would look for a stump or stone
so they could sit up high. Indians preferred the ground, even when it was wet. He stroked his silver cross, as if comforted by its shape, although Mercy could not imagine Tannhahorens ever in need of comfort, and then he rested the cross against his lips.

She found herself wishing she possessed something that spoke of God; that she could have always with her, especially when God seemed to vanish as easily as small brothers and hope.

She sighed and then in shock saw for the first time just how tiny their band was. Five Indians. Six captives. Eben Nims, Sarah Hoyt, Joseph Kellogg, Ruth Catlin and Eliza, the widow of Andrew.

The Lord was truly against her.

Why do I have to be with Ruth? thought Mercy. She’ll throw things and she won’t do her share. And Eliza! She’s still blind with grief over Andrew. You have to lead her. Joseph will go off hunting with his Indian and have a wonderful time. Eben and Sarah will fall in love and hold hands. I’ll be stuck making sure Ruth doesn’t attack anybody and Eliza doesn’t fall off a cliff.

Mercy looked around to see if they were going to have anything to eat, and of course they weren’t, so she couldn’t even distract herself with food.

E
BEN REALIZED
that he need not worry about being burned or tortured. He was going to starve to death. Eben had thought that up here, where nobody lived
or ever had, the deer would be standing in rows in the woods awaiting a bullet. He had expected rabbits and grouse, moose and beaver. But there was no game.

They built shelters from woven branches, piling spruce and hemlock on top to keep out the snow. Each day some of the Indians left to hunt and each day they came back with nothing. It had never occurred to Eben that an Indian could go hunting and find nothing.

He was not sure how far they still had to go to reach Canada.

He had seen a map once that showed the Connecticut River, how it split the colony of Connecticut in half, then cut up through Massachusetts, headed north through unknown lands and bumped into Canada. The northern part of the map was guesswork. Eben needed a French map, which would show the city of Montréal, where the French kept their government, and the St. Lawrence River, down which fortunes in fur were shipped. He could not ask his master. An Indian kept his map in his head.

The only good thing about this rough land was firewood. No human had ever gathered a fallen branch here. So they could stay warm, but they had nothing to cook over the flames.

It seemed to Eben the Indians ought to worry more about this than they did. They spent every daylight hour looking for game, found nothing and did not mention
it. Instead, they sat by the fire, smoked and told war stories.

It was the captives who discussed food, describing meals they had had a month ago or hoped to have in the future. They discussed pancakes, maple syrup and butter. Stew and biscuits and apple pie.

Ruth said to Mercy, “You and Eben and Joseph are so proud of your savage vocabulary. Tell them they’re Indians, they’re supposed to know how to find deer.”

“There aren’t any deer,” said Joseph.

Ruth snorted. “We just have stupid Indians.”

Suddenly the whole thing seemed hilarious to Mercy: a little circle of starving white children, crouching in the snow, and a little circle of apparently not starving Indian men, sitting in the snow, all of them surrounded by hundreds of miles of trees, while Ruth spat fire. “Ruth,” said Mercy, “do you know what your name means?”

“My name is Ruth.”

“Your name is Mahakemo,” Mercy told her. “And it means ‘Fire Eats Her.’ ” Mercy began to laugh, and Joseph and Eben and Sarah laughed with her. Even Eliza looked interested, but Ruth, furious to find that the Indians were laughing at her instead of being respectful of her, began throwing things at Mercy.

Mercy rolled out of range while Ruth pelted her with Joseph’s hat and Tannhahorens’s mittens and then with
snowballs; finding them too soft, Ruth grabbed her Indian’s powder horn.

Mercy jumped up and ran away from Ruth and out into the snow, and in front of her were a pair of yellow eyes.

The eyes were level with Mercy’s waist. They were not human eyes.

No deer for humans also meant no deer for wolves.

Mercy meant to scream, but Tannhahorens got there first, in the form of a bullet. Wolf for dinner.

It turned out that the English could eat anything if they were hungry enough.

T
HEY MARCHED UNTIL THE CAPTIVES
could not take another step. Eben dragged Eliza half the way and Sarah dragged her the rest. Mercy and Joseph took turns hauling Ruth. That night they slept like rocks, and in the morning Mercy understood why bears spent the whole winter sleeping. It sounded good to Mercy.

Perhaps it sounded good to the Indians too, because they did not leave camp. Instead, they built two fires, gathering an enormous woodpile.

Joseph was stripped of his English clothes. Too torn and filthy to bother with, they were tossed into the woods. He was given a long deerskin shirt and leggings that hung from thigh to ankle, held up by cords strung to a belt. Then came coat, hat and mittens, all Indian.

How dark Joseph’s hair was. How tan his skin. Joseph looked like a young brave.

In a moment, the Indians did the same with Eben, whose coloring was very English, ruddy cheeks and straw-yellow hair. He did not look at all Indian, but in deerskin, he looked tough and strong and much older.

The girls were nervous. They did not want their clothes stripped off their bodies, no matter how torn and filthy. But Eben’s Indian, Thorakwaneken, hoisted a flintlock musket and looked questioningly at each girl.

Mercy could not imagine what he was asking of her. Eliza did not notice him or the gun. And Ruth was the last person to whom a sensible Indian would hand a weapon.

Sarah, however, nodded. “I’m a good shot.” She took the musket from Thorakwaneken.

Food was such a problem that even Joseph and Eben would be armed and sent forth to hunt. The girls would stay by the fire with enough wood to last for days, and Sarah to fend off wolves.

E
BEN AND
J
OSEPH
and their masters went south. Thorakwaneken had both gun and bow, but Great Sky planned to rely on bow and arrow.

Arrows could be shot in succession more quickly than a gun could be reloaded. And arrows were silent.

For Joseph, Great Sky had a small bow and arrow, yet another carefully considered supply brought from
Canada. Great Sky set the boy’s hands in place to pull the bow and helped him nock the arrow on the taut sinew. Eben watched enviously. “Please?” he begged. “I can do it. I know I can.”

He thought Thorakwaneken almost smiled and saw now that the Indian carried two bows on his shoulder. The one he had brought for Eben was a man’s bow.

Joseph and Great Sky went one way, while Eben and Thorakwaneken walked another. It was an hour before Thorakwaneken stopped at a clearing. He had been hunting for an edge to the wilderness.

All that appeared was a rabbit, looking as tired and hungry as Eben. In another world, one small rabbit would mean nothing, but today it was meat.

With Thorakwaneken standing behind him, guiding, Eben drew the bow taut and aimed. It amazed Eben that the Indian would risk losing a meal by letting Eben try.

The rabbit struggled a little in a soft patch, Thorakwaneken nodded and Eben loosed the arrow. The rabbit was theirs.

Eben was so excited he wanted to dance and yell, but Thorakwaneken stopped him with a finger on his lips. In silence they retrieved the rabbit and Thorakwaneken let him carry it.

In the spring, thought Eben, I’ll learn to canoe. Maybe trap beaver.

The French and Indian border wars were about beaver. Well, not in real France and real England; they
were fighting about their kings and queens. But in the New World, it was fur. Who trapped it, who sold it, who made the profit.

France wanted to own every river and every beaver skin the Indians brought down that river, and they killed Englishmen who got close or greedy. Destroying Deerfield probably had more to do with fur than with children or ransom.

Now, if Eben had been out here with Englishmen—

Well, he never would have been. The English would get here tree by tree, using axes to remove the wilderness so they would never actually have to set foot in it.

If I were Indian …, thought Eben.

His hair prickled. The bow in his hand shocked him.
If I were Indian?

Lord
, he prayed,
take these thoughts from me
.

On the far rim of the clearing, they found deer tracks. Now the Indian shifted his gun. There would be no teaching here. This was survival.

An hour later, Eben understood why Thorakwaneken had brought him along.

It was on Eben’s shoulders that the deer carcass was carried back to camp.

S
ARAH NEVER
set the flintlock down.

Ruth sat as close to the fire as she could get, having armed herself with a clublike branch. Eliza they had moved close to the fire and were watching lest she get too hot or too cold.

Mercy had not let herself think about Deerfield. But today she could not escape her thoughts.

The image of her father alone in an empty house tortured her. He would wonder now about the value of the molasses and tobacco that had seemed so important to him when he left. He would have found Tommy’s body, and Stepmama’s, and the baby’s. The burials would be over, and the minister from Hadley would have come to send their souls to God. Father would be sorting through their remaining possessions, although Mercy could think of none.

Mercy’s grandmother had stitched a sampler when she was a girl in England: stiff pink roses climbing a bright green trellis. It had borders of interlocked keys and little squares of needle lace; an alphabet and a Bible verse. Philippians 4:8. It had been stretched on a frame of wood, and how Mercy’s mother had cherished that sampler. It spoke of elegance and the Old World and the luxury of time. That sampler made it possible for Mother to believe that one day, yes, she would have windows with diamond panes.

Mercy knew Tannhahorens did not have the sampler. But other Indians had also been in the house and done their share of ransacking. She prayed the sampler was there for Father, because pinned to the back were locks of hair Mother had cut from her children’s heads. Five locks: Sam, Mercy, John, Benny and Tommy. Mother had died before Marah’s little head grew any hair.

Half the day passed before Sarah spoke. “It’s my father’s gun, you know,” she said. She moved her thumb off the long shaft so Mercy could see the carved initials:
D.H
. for David Hoyt.