Eliot Pattison - Blood of the Oak

He had no reply.

A deep sorrow seemed to settle on her countenance. “Blooddancer is the Trickster of death. You can’t just track a god like some runaway animal. It needs someone who can speak with the old spirits, who knows how to listen to them. Surely she wouldn’t expect you to go alone to find such a . . .” Her words trailed off as she looked back at the smithy. “Oh. Conawago.”

“She had a dream, Sarah. The two of us brought the mask back.” He did not speak of the rest. They would come back limping, as though from a great battle, nearly dead. “How could I say no to her?”

“Because you are not of the Haudensaunee. Because we need you here, Duncan,” she said, then pushed herself into his arms again. “There will be time to speak of this later. You have to doctor Patrick. We have a burial to perform.”

“They were attacked just north of Edentown. As if to stop them from arriving here. Has someone else been here? A stranger?”

Sarah faced away, looking at the waking settlement. A dog barked. A cow lowed, asking to be milked. “We have over a hundred souls now. It means a steady stream of visitors. Trading sutlers came. An Episcopal circuit rider. Teamsters with the wagons that bring supplies.”

“Yesterday? The past week?”

“There was a tinker, who mended some pots. That circuit rider, who led us in hymns and moved on.”

Threads of smoke began climbing out of village chimneys, laced with the scents of frying bacon and baking bread.

“An Episcopal circuit man,” Duncan repeated, weighing their conversation. “A long, lonely ride over the mountains.”

“The Scots, Duncan. Your countrymen have been flooding into these lands, all the way down the Susquehanna Valley. Those Anglican parsons can’t abide the thought that Presbyterian churches might be built.”

They watched as Crispin appeared, carrying a heavy tin bathtub into the woodshed, followed by Jess the cook, singing a frolicking tune as she carried two buckets of steaming water. Conawago finally emerged from the smithy, pale and drawn from his lonely vigil.

“Messages have arrived from Jessica’s family, Duncan, down the Susquehanna. A Scottish constable seized a horse train of trade goods going west. When they found it was mostly blades and guns for the tribes they destroyed it. Tons of weapons going to the western tribes.”

He looked at Sarah, not certain why she chose to tell this now. “In violation of the rules against such trade.”

“Some soldiers went to arrest those who did it and were taken prisoner by the constable,” she said.

“Soldiers?”

“There’s talk of sending troops from Philadelphia.”

“The constable’s a Scot named Smith,” came a quiet voice over Duncan’s shoulder. The dawning light seemed to be restoring color to Conawago’s countenance. “He speaks of John Locke, who wrote of how citizens have a right to resist their government in protection of their own life and liberty. I confess I sometimes wonder if he is writing about the tribes, for they tend to their life and liberty so much better than Europeans.”

Duncan looked at his friend in surprise, unaccustomed to hearing such sentiments from the old Nipmuc. “Notions from some philosopher with too much time on his hands,” Duncan rejoined, now admiring the prosperous village as the sun’s first rays washed over it. Jess appeared again, hauling two more buckets of water. “Scottish settlers are more practical. They knew if those smugglers had succeeded, the renegade tribes would have used the weapons to raid their settlements.”

“The word that comes up the river,” Sarah continued, “is that men on the council of government in Philadelphia had financed the shipment.”

Duncan turned to her with new worry. “It does none of us good to credit idle rumors.” Crispin appeared from the barn, carrying the sleepy Iroquois boy into the woodshed as another maid from the house entered with towels. “They were thinking of the safety of their families, not of some dead philosopher.”

“And the government is likely to hang the lot of them for asserting their rights,” Sarah retorted.

He studied her. The hint of defiance in her voice was something new. She was watching Jessica, who now sang an old Scottish droving song as she carried a bar of lye soap and a long-handled brush into the shed. “Jess has family there, among those Susquehanna Scots,” Sarah added, then cocked her head toward Conawago, who had lit his clay pipe and was watching the shed with unexpected, though weary, amusement.

A shrill protest exploded from the shed, in high-pitched, furious French. “ Allez vous en! Idiot! Degage d’ici! ” Then the French shrieks were replaced with what sounded like an Iroquois war cry.

Crispin burst into the morning light, a shocked expression on his wide face and his skin several shades darker than usual. The brush flew past his head. By the time Duncan reached his side Conawago was making a low wheezing sound that he realized to his surprise was laughter.

“I never knew that a man with skin the color of walnut could blush,” the old Nipmuc exclaimed, then saw the confusion on Duncan’s face. “Did you not see it? Pierce the grime, Duncan,” he explained with a grin, “and your wild Iroquois boy becomes an even wilder French girl!”

They ate breakfast at the long table in the great house kitchen, still smiling over Crispin’s discovery. The big man took the ribbing good-naturedly and Duncan realized his friends were drawing out the incident because it was the one excuse to be lighthearted amid the death and fear that had descended on Edentown. To hear Conawago laugh after their long, despairing night had lifted all their spirits.

Analie, their young French visitor, fidgeted in a homespun shift and tugged resentfully at her newly revealed, neatly combed blonde hair as she explained that her family had been lost in the forced evacuation of the Acadians from Nova Scotia during the great war. As she emptied her second bowl of porridge she related how she had found herself among the tribes of Maine, then had been traded as an orphan slave until she settled with the Iroquois, where Red Jacob had shown compassion and agreed to help her on her journey south to find an uncle in Virginia.

As was the custom at kitchen meals, the house staff sat with them, and as Analie finished her porridge and began to nod off, Jess lifted her up and carried her into the little bedroom off the kitchen, cooing a Scottish lullabye. When she returned she explained how reluctant her young charge had been to yield her layers of grime. “Oh how she kicked and squirmed in the tub!” Jess exclaimed. “But I told her what I tell me own sisters. Cooperate and we’ll keep the warm water coming. Otherwise it’s into the creek with ye. And oh that hair! Can you credit it? It was bootblacking they used to make her seem like some wild Indian, and it took long scrubbing till we saw the color of autumn straw coming through. Why would you ever try to hide such a bonny head, I asked her.”

The Scottish burr in the woman’s voice coaxed Duncan into a dull reverie. For long moments he basked in the sound of friendly voices, the welcoming smell of baking bread, and the warmth of the great stone hearth. Jess’s infectious humor joined the table in laughter as she went on to describe how the day before, a too-curious turkey had gotten its head stuck inside a crock, and how she had tangled Conawago’s hands in knots in an unsuccessful attempt at spooling yarn. She had arrived only weeks earlier but the young Scottish woman had clearly won many friends with her light heart and hard work.

His lack of rest the night before began to take its toll, and Duncan was drifting into sleep when he heard Jess suggest that Sarah herself should take a morning nap. She saw the surprised look on Duncan’s face. “Do ye nae ken, Clan McCallum?” she asked. “Miss Ramsey was up all night, boiling your bandages and keeping vigil at the captain’s bedside.”