Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

“He has broken his word!” Arnold protested. “Broken his bond! Broken our law!”

Suddenly Tashgua was standing in front of them, though Duncan had not seen him rise. He examined Duncan again with a gaze that seemed to be aimed at something under his skin. “He has been summoned here, this one, summoned to be dealt with,” the shaman declared to Arnold. The words raised a shiver down Duncan’s spine.

But Arnold seemed unable to contain his fury. He rose, pulling Cameron up, shoving him toward Duncan. Suddenly a long object appeared in Tashgua’s hand. At first Duncan thought it was a club. Two feet long, ending with a carved head of a raven, the top third consisted of a flattish, ridged turtle shell, the handle below it carved with snakes. As he shook it over Arnold’s head, it rattled with the sound of many small objects inside. Cameron froze, then slowly lowered himself to the ground. Arnold’s eyes flared, but he seemed able to endure Tashgua’s stare for only a moment before relenting and sitting again. The shaman circled the two men, solemnly shaking the rattle, his eyes somehow wild and serene at the same time.

“Inside,” Conawaga whispered without looking away from Tashgua, “are bones. It is very old, handed down from the first of the holy ones who sat at these roots. They say it has bones of the most powerful shamans from every generation since. Some say it is the most powerful object in all the Six Nations. Like the Jesuits,” he added.

Duncan could not curb his question. “The Jesuits?”

“They also carry about old bones of their saints, and ascribe great power to them.”

As Tashgua returned to his seat, the strange ritual continued, Arnold pointedly not looking at Duncan as he resumed speaking, though Cameron continued to cast resentful stares. Duncan struggled to understand why Arnold would tolerate the demands of the shaman he hated so, but soon forgot about this and drifted into a dreamlike state, somehow mesmerized by the voices and the slow, sibilant sound of the drum. Arnold’s words, about an all-powerful and wrathful god, seemed but a backdrop against something vitally more important, something very old, something that seemed to bridge the spirits of men and the forces of the forest. The fact that Duncan could not name it, could not put it into words but could only feel it, seemed only to make it more vital. What was it Fitch had said to him, a thousand years ago? The most important things can never be put into words.

Arnold, finding his pulpit voice, finished with a flourish, with words about Christian soldiers and judgment day. He seemed about to rise when the old chief in the fox skin stood and entered the center of the circle, where he bent over the Bible pages.

“Seneca,” Conawago whispered, “an old friend of King Hendrick.” The chief spoke in the tongue of the tribes, the ears of the fox head bobbing up and down as he nodded toward Arnold and Cameron.

“A great man was at your side when you journeyed across the salt-waters,” Ravencatcher translated. The Seneca chief reached inside his shirt and produced a folded piece of paper.

“The Ramsey Company does great work,” Arnold rejoined.

The Seneca unfolded the paper and stretched it on the flat rock, over the printed Bible pages. “But your god is wrathful, your god is jealous. He could not abide the starspeaker who was coming among us.”

Arnold’s patience seemed to be coming to an end. He glanced warily at Cameron and sighed. “Starspeaker?”

The fox dipped and rose as the Seneca lifted the paper for Arnold to better see. It held a maze of lines, words, circles, and arrows. Arnold’s jaw dropped. Duncan stared at the paper in disbelief. It was the missing chart from Evering’s cabin. Cameron’s head jerked up, and he seemed about to rise until he noticed that one of Tashgua’s warriors had materialized behind him.

The fox-draped chief spoke again. “Why would the god you describe take such a powerful shaman from his people? Can you speak to the stars? Can you persuade them to tell us where they will be at the rise of the next full moon?”

“Evering,” Arnold sputtered. “Evering was no shaman. He was a. .” His voice trailed off and he cast an accusing glance toward Duncan. “You could not have known this man. We cannot know what these scratches on this paper are.”

“But we do,” the Seneca said, and turned Evering’s chart over. “There is a prophesy of miracles this year. A water miracle, an earth miracle, a sky miracle that will confirm our gods are still with us.” Cameron moved again, as if to snatch the chart away, then froze as the hand of the warrior behind him settled on his shoulder. Arnold’s face swirled with emotion as he gazed at the reverse of the paper.

The back of the chart offered a chaos of words, drawings, and Iroquois symbols. An image of a feather, not just any feather, but the vermilion-marked feather that had been left at the bloody compass. Iroquois words, sounded out in English. Crude images of men and animals like those Duncan had seen on the wampum belt at Edentown, but also images of snakes and longhouses and birds. Some had been drawn by Evering, but some, Duncan realized, had been drawn by Sarah Ramsey.

The Seneca chief turned the chart over, back to the sky map, and stared gravely at Arnold. Tashgua’s eyes, fixed on the paper, had a strange longing in them.

“Your god is wrathful,” the Seneca said. “He could not bear to have such a prophet on the earth.”

Duncan watched as Arnold’s eyes flared with emotion. Then the vicar seemed to collect himself. “You and I,” he said to the chieftain in a strained voice, “have our own appointed turn to leave this world, and it is useless to resist it. Even a prophet has such an hour.”

A single syllable from Tashgua broke the silence that followed. The Indians began to rise.

“We have received our benediction,” Conawago announced, and rose, offering Duncan a hand.

But Duncan, as if under a spell, did not rise, only stared at Evering’s chart. He extended a finger, touched the whitened edge of the chart, then brought his finger to his tongue. For one raised in a seaborne clan there could be no mistake. The paper had been soaked in the ocean. He suddenly realized the others were gone, all but one. He was alone with Tashgua, and the tree. The shaman fixed him with a calm, weary gaze. For a moment Duncan considered bowing his head to the ground. But then the shaman lifted his hand, closed it into a fist, tapped it against his chest, then raised the hand, extending two fingers as he lifted them in a spiraling motion toward the sky. Duncan, without thinking, repeated the motion. The wrinkles on the shaman’s face rearranged themselves, and Duncan realized he had smiled. The shaman motioned Duncan toward him, and he advanced and lowered himself onto the ground between the outstretched roots. With a chill he watched Tashgua’s rattle rise, and fought an impulse to flee as the rattle shook at one side of his head, then the other.

The shaman smiled again, capturing Duncan with his eyes. Suddenly Duncan was aware of Tashgua’s hand on his, guiding it over the hollow log, letting his fingers touch the carved bears, then showing him how to make the subtle rubbing, tapping motion that produced the undulating, otherworldly moan of the log. Once, twice, three times Duncan opened his lips to confess he was carrying the sacred stone bear, but each time something held his tongue until finally he knew words were unnecessary. Tashgua’s tired, wise eyes watched him with an odd contentment, and Duncan realized the shaman’s hands were clasping the roots again and Duncan alone was making the quiet throbbing sound, like the heartbeat of the ancient tree.

He slowly pushed back the chaos of his thoughts, letting the murmur of the log take over his mind and body. When he finally rose, Tashgua’s eyes were closed. He studied Evering’s chart one more time then stepped backward for several feet before turning toward the trail. He understood little of what the shaman had done that day, but somehow at the tree he had finally seen the truth of what had happened on board the ship. At the trailhead, he paused for another look. From the distance Tashgua looked like part of the tree.