Eliot Pattison - Original Death

She looked up to see the folded doeskin in his hands.

When she did not respond, he laid it flat on a rock. At the center of the chronicle of her life was the ivory ring carved with dragons. Her hand trembled as she lifted it and held it close to her eyes. “I was very young when my father died,” she whispered. “My mother was sick and decided to send me to my uncle in America. On the day my ship sailed she gave it to me, saying my father had always worn it around his neck.” She sighed. “In my life I had only one true love,” she said and began tying the ring into the hair of the dog’s neck. “He will like having dragons with him on the other side.”

“I never had the honor of his name,” Duncan said. “I do not know what to call the creature in my prayers.” He was not sure she had heard him, and after a long silence he retreated.

“ Roghskenrakeghdekowah ,” she said to his back. When Duncan turned, a tear was rolling down her cheek.

“War chief,” Duncan translated, and he solemnly nodded. “I should have known.” He pulled out the elegant dirk Cameron had given him. With a prayer in Gaelic, he laid the dirk against the dog’s body and backed away.

Hetty had sat by the scaffold for hours, oblivious to the others, oblivious even to the brief thunderstorm that swept over the island. Although others tried, only Ishmael was finally able to speak with her and lead her back to the abbey. After a hot meal, the boy sat with her and asked her to explain the images on the doeskin.

Now the Welsh woman, looking frail and hollow, stood with the rest of them as they watched the great flotilla recede toward Montreal. It was Conawago who broke away first, followed by Ishmael. Minutes later they turned to see the two Nipmucs waiting below the knoll with shovels in their hands.

They moved in silent procession to the site of their first great fire, on the night they had burned the old torture posts. Everyone remained strangely quiet as they shifted the ashes to the side to expose the bare soil. They dug deeper, making a large square several inches deep, then they pried and loosened the packed soil until finally they exposed the first of the kegs. Following Duncan’s directions, Tatamy’s men had buried the kegs deep, sitting upright.

No one spoke until the kegs were lifted out, their chalk signs of the Jacobites conspicuous in the bright sunlight. Duncan, borrowing Conawago’s ax, shattered the top of the nearest keg. For a fleeting moment he thought they had been terribly mistaken, for all he could see was gunpowder, but then Conawago sank his fingers into the keg and extracted a bright silver coin from the black grains.

Duncan handed the ax to Ishmael, and the Nipmuc boy, amusement growing on his face, opened the other kegs while Tushcona and Adanahoe followed, sifting up handfuls of coins from each to confirm its secret contents.

Duncan walked around the kegs. “I never thought we would get this far,” he confided to his companions, and he looked up to Woolford.

The ranger captain shrugged. “I am not the director of this particular drama.”

“We could take it back,” Duncan suggested.

“We could,” Woolford agreed. “No doubt the king would give Amherst some more initials to put behind his name.”

Duncan knew his friend was as weary of kings and generals as he was.

“The troops will be paid from the booty taken in Montreal,” the ranger reminded him.

Duncan paced around the kegs. It was more money than he had ever seen, more than he would likely ever see again. It could buy a vast plantation at the edge of the frontier. It could buy an entire town. A handful scooped from one keg could buy out his indenture, the deed of servitude that still hung around his neck. He and Conawago could make a stately home on a mountain, bigger than Johnson’s own mansion, furnished with a grand library where Conawago could spend his last years reading to his heart’s content. He could build an infirmary to care for the tribes.

He realized the elders, even Conawago, were staring at him. Wealth was an alien notion to them. Piles of coins had been used against the tribes ever since the Europeans arrived. Many had died, so many more had suffered, because of these very coins. The martyred father of Xavier had been right. Gold and silver worked against the spirit of the tribes. These coins in particular had only brought treachery and death.

Ishmael broke the spell. The boy stepped up to a keg and lifted a coin. “They are very heavy,” he said to Conawago, “and you can’t eat them.”

For the first time in weeks, Duncan saw a smile on his friend’s face. The old Nipmuc embraced the boy.

“I think,” Duncan said, “we should take these to those who paid the greatest price.”

They stacked the open kegs near the three scaffolds, on the bluff where the hell dog had fallen with the schoolmaster. Duncan listened reverently as Adanahoe spoke in her native tongue to explain to the dead how justice had been dealt to the Revelator and the poet of death.

When she finished, she looked at Duncan expectantly. He was not sure where the words came from, but he knew their rightness as soon as he spoke. “The Revelator lied when he spoke of murders on the other side,” he explained. “But it was the dreams of the Council who told us it was a lean and hungry time on the other side. When I was young, we would bury the dead with coins so they could buy food along the long path to the spirit world. The ghosts here may have had a few corncakes, but that would never be enough to see them all the way.”

Conawago, as always, instantly understood. He lifted a shilling from a keg and handed it to him.

“This,” Duncan said, extending the coin for all to see, “buys our friends a kettle of pumpkin stew.” He threw it in a long arc over the cliff, far out into the river. The splash stirred the others out of their spell.

“We are on the island of the starving ghosts,” Kass reminded them, then she shouted out Sagatchie’s name and threw another coin into the water far below.

Tushcona joined in, then Ishmael, and Hetty, and soon all the company was throwing coins, calling out names of dead they had known, including those of Bethel Church. They emptied one keg, then another. Woolford energetically lifted a full keg and dumped it over the side. Birds gathered overhead, not diving, but attentively watching. Ishmael pointed out an otter frolicking among the ripples. One keg followed another, emptied now by the Iroquois children and elders. For the first time Duncan saw laughter on the faces of the Iroquois, young and old, as they gave up the king’s coins, one silver splash at a time, to the river that never ended.

Mrs. Margaret Eldridge was a Welsh widow whose family had been lost in the North, Duncan explained when they reached Edentown. Hetty looked every bit the part in her simple blue dress, her hair combed and pinned at the back. They had paused in Albany during their long return journey, where Mr. Forsey had readily agreed to provide several dresses for his former seamstress. His generosity, Duncan knew, in no small part reflected the relief Forsey and his neighbors had felt when the true identity of their party was revealed.

They had caused quite a stir at the outskirts of Albany. Sentinels on the wall of the fort had raced for their officers. Townspeople had taken one look at their party and shut themselves in their houses. A church bell rang in alarm. Only by Woolford running forward to explain the apparent invasion did the army call off its confrontation.

Their company had lingered a week at Onondaga Castle in condolence ceremonies for the heroes who now stood perpetual watch at the Isle of the Ghosts. On their last night at the Haudenosaunee capital, Adanahoe had called for a celebration. The old matriarch had waxed eloquent about the successful return of the children, the bravery of those who had died at Bethel Church, the reconciliation with the northern Mohawks, even Duncan’s discovery of his protector spirit. Afterwards the Council had insisted on dispatching an honor guard of two dozen warriors to escort Duncan, Conawago, Ishmael, Kass, and Hetty to the Hudson. The Iroquois, wearing amused expressions, had filed into Albany between ranks of nervous soldiers.