Shadowbrook Part 7

MONDAY, JULY 13, 1754.

NEW YORK PROVINCE.

The reeds that grew beside this stretch of Hudson's River were taller than Nicole's head, taller than either of the men. They parted with soft, sighing sounds as the party of three moved through them, then closed as if they had never been disturbed.

It had been three weeks since the night beside the Shawnee fire. The journey by canoe had been infinitely easier for Nicole, but the boat had been abandoned the day before and left well hidden on the riverbank.

"Not a good idea for us to announce our arrival by paddling alongside the Albany town wharves," Quent said. When Nicole asked why, he hesitated, then grinned. She liked his grin. It made him look like a mischievous small boy. "Can't say I'm certain of the answer to that," he admitted. "But it's not the way Corm and I do things."

She understood what he was saying. Stealth was bred into them; it was how they survived. Anyway, she didn't mind giving up the canoe as much as she'd thought she might. The paths here were well marked and a bit wider than in the Ohio Country. The trek had been easier than she'd expected until they got to these dreadful reeds.

She was in her usual place, between the two men. The sun was not yet directly overhead, but already perspiration poured off her and the buckskins of the men were dark with sweat. She could smell their ripe, musky odor mixing with the fetid heat rising off the marsh. When evening came all three of them would strip off their clothes and bathe in the river, then eat and sleep. It was the prize, the goal that made her able to put one foot in front of the other.

A reed swiped her cheek and Nicole knew from the sting that she had been cut. She wiped away the blood and the sweat with a corner of her torn and shabby skirt. Then Monsieur Shea, who was in the lead, stopped walking and Monsieur Hale put a hand on her shoulder. They waited like that for a few heartbeats. By now she knew better than to ask what or why. Nicole held her breath.

Another man appeared, an Indian, dark-skinned and flat-faced, with flared nostrils. He wore buckskins and had a tomahawk at his waist. His hair was black and coa.r.s.e and worn loose to his shoulders. What looked to be the tail feathers of some bird hung from his ears, and his face was covered with the strange markings Nicole had been told were called tattoos. She had become adept at reading the reactions of her two companions. She knew at once the newcomer was not an enemy.

The three men spoke for a moment or two in that rapid, guttural language she didn't understand. The Indian kept staring at Nicole and jerking his head to indicate a spot somewhere to his right. Eventually Cormac Shea and the stranger took a few steps in that direction, disappearing into the all-concealing reeds.

"He doesn't like speaking of important things in front of a squaw," Quent said.

"But I do not understand a word of his language."

Quent shrugged. "He doesn't know that. Wait here. If you don't want to be lost in these reeds forever, don't take a step in any direction." He followed after the other two. Nicole had no idea where they had gone. The tall reeds had an eerie way of distorting any sense of direction. She could, however, hear the low murmur of their voices.

A few moments later Quent reappeared at her side. He was alone. "We're going on. Cormac has to see someone. He'll catch up with us later."

"I wouldn't have been lost forever if I'd moved," she said. "You'd have found me."

"I expect so."

"Then why did you say it?"

"To make you behave."

"I am not a child. You must stop treating me as if I have no understanding and no intelligence."

"You're right. I won't do it anymore. This journey," he added, "it can't have been easy for a white woman who's never been in the wilderness. You've done well."

Nicole blushed at his praise and managed a prim nod. "Where has Monsieur Shea gone? Who was that man?"

"His name is Mikamayalo. He's a Twightwee, what whites call Miami."

"How did he find us here, in these ... these abominations." She pushed the reeds away from her as she spoke, staying close to Hale's back and the path he cut for her through the whiplike vegetation.

"Indians are used to seeing things," Quent spoke in an easy, normal voice, not the hushed tones of exaggerated caution. "Mikamayalo had word we were coming."

"How? Who could have told him?"

"Other Indians. They have many ways of communicating." He didn't add that a brave or two moving on their own, without a woman, would have left them behind long since. "Mikamayalo had a message for Corm. An old friend in the town wants to see him."

"Who is he, this old friend?"

"Not a he, a she."

"A woman?"

He chuckled. "Mostly if you're a she, you're a woman, right?"

"Do not make fun of me."

"Don't take well to a bit of teasing, do you?" He kept his tone light, but there was a small knot of anger in his belly. How come she cared so much where Corm went and what he did? "Listen, if you'll just stop talking and keep walking we'll be out of these reeds in less than an hour."

"And then?"

"Then we'll be in Albany. Or near enough as makes no difference."

In the days when the Dutch ruled Nieuw Netherland, the outpost some hundred and sixty miles up Hudson's River from Nieuw Amsterdam was called Fort Orange and was largely a trading post dealing with local Indians. The settlement that grew up around it was known as Beverwyck In 1664, when the English took control of Nieuw Netherland, Nieuw Amsterdam became New York, and Fort Orange and Beverwyck became Albany. A palisade of rough-cut logs still surrounded the city, which was little more than three hundred or so wooden dwellings tightly wedged on a grid of about a dozen streets-only two of them of any width-and many narrow, crooked lanes, most b.u.t.ting up to the sh.o.r.eline of Hudson's River. Fort Orange had been constructed of logs and positioned close to the river; it had fallen into ruin. The redcoats were garrisoned at the newly built Fort Frederick, a stone redoubt two thirds of the way up the city's highest hill. The inns and drinking houses were well below the fort, concentrated as they had always been around the intersections of Green and Beaver streets with the broad road known as Market Street that fronted on the river.

A dozen s.h.i.+ps-cutters and sloops and schooners-rode at anchor a short distance from the riverbank. "So many boats," Nicole said, looking back over her shoulder as Quent led her toward a taproom with a sign that pictured a horse's head, "for this place."

"Don't be so sniffy. This place, as you call it, is breadbasket to the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. At least the farms around it are. Without what we grow in this part of the world the Islands would starve. Without the river, how would the crops get to the buyers?"

Nicole wrinkled her nose. "Even so, it smells."

"That's not the river, it's the town. And only because it's high summer," Quent said, laughing. "Anyway, we won't be here long."

She smelled like the woods. He was astounded at the changes the six weeks of their journey had produced in her. She'd taken to was.h.i.+ng herself in the brooks and streams the way he and Corm did, insisting they stand guard with their backs to her. He couldn't imagine another white woman doing that. And she'd begun rubbing her body with wild herbs, squaw-fas.h.i.+on. How else would she smell of peppermint and thyme the way she did? Like Shoshanaya.

He wondered if the Shawnee women had shown her how to bathe and perfume herself, and if she did it because she was now Corm's woman. He'd seen them come back from the woods together the night of the Shawnee dance. Nicole and Corm had spent little time alone together since. Soon it might be different.

The big house on North Pearl Street was st.u.r.dily built of stone and white pine s.h.i.+ngles, as befit the wealth and station of the man called John Lydius. It had been erected gable end to the street, in the old Dutch fas.h.i.+on. A few steps above ground level there was a deep front porch with long benches built on either side. Cormac Shea had been to the Lydius house many times, and this was the first occasion on which he found it guarded by Miami braves who stood rigid either side of the front door.

Mikamayalo stepped forward and spoke a few words. Ceremony, the proper way of doing things, was of great importance to the Miami. Corm knew that. He waited respectfully, asking no questions, taking his cue from the braves. After a moment one of them opened the door and motioned Corm and Mikamayalo inside.

Another brave in the wide front hall demanded Corm's weapons. Unhesitatingly Corm slipped the long gun off his shoulder and stood it against the wall. The brave waited. Corm took his tomahawk from his waist and lay it on the table. "Maalhsi," the brave said, using the Miami word for knife. Corm slipped his from his belt and left it with the other things. Satisfied, the brave nodded and motioned Corm deeper into the house. This time he went alone. Mikamayalo murmured something to the guard and slipped back out the door. Corm didn't catch what had been said. The Miami language was very close to Potawatomi, Shawnee, and the other Algonkian tongues of the pays d'en haut. Too close. Corm could understand most of it without effort so he had never taken the time to learn it properly.

He felt naked without his weapons, but he had guessed it would be like this. No one treated their chiefs with more deference than the Crane People. To enter the presence of one of them bearing arms of any sort would be a gross discourtesy. Moreover, if Mikamayalo's story was accurate, he had been sent for by none other than Memetosia, grandfather of the mighty war sachem Memeskia. It was Memeskia who in recent years had renounced exclusive trading agreements with the French, forged alliances with Britain, and invited other tribes living below the lakes of the pays d'en haut to join him. The French saw Memeskia's action as a threat to their claims on the Ohio Country. Two years ago they and their Ottawa and Ojibwe allies had attacked Memeskia's village of Pickawillany, completely destroying it and slaughtering or capturing every inhabitant.

Among Memeskia's clan the wounds would still be raw, and the Potawatomi were brothers to the Ottawa and the Ojibwe. Once all three had been known as the Fire Nation. So why send for Cormac Shea? More important, why would an old chief like Memetosia, who should have been waiting out his time to die in some peaceful village of his own people, have come to Albany in the first place? If he hadn't, if Mikamayalo was lying, Corm was walking into a trap. He never remembered this house being so dark or so silent.

Genevieve Lydius was a metisse like himself, half French and half Piankashaw Indian. Her husband, John, was French speaking, but of Walloon descent and a Protestant. When he was banished from New France it was on the charge of being a British spy. Corm had no idea if that was true, but Lydius had become one of Albany's wealthiest traders. He'd had frequent dealings with Ephraim Hale, and maintained a trading post with the Indians on land he rented from Ephraim up in the part of the Patent known as the Great Carrying Place. Cormac knew Lydius used it for smuggling guns to the Indians in Canada; so did Ephraim, but he preferred to turn a blind eye. When Cormac was a boy, John and Genevieve Lydius had been regular visitors to Shadowbrook. "Alors," she'd said one day when she came upon Corm heading for the realm of Kitchen Hannah and her fresh-baked gingerbread, "le pet.i.t metis." The little half-breed. "Moi, je suis la grande metisse. You must come and see me when you are next in the town."

He'd be grateful to see her now. It would convince him he wasn't about to plunge into a bear pit.

The house was big and sprawling. John and Genevieve had eight children and at least twice as many grandchildren. Usually you heard young voices and innocent laughter the moment you walked in the door; today there was only silence. He walked on a few steps, his heart beating a bit faster as the darkness became more intense. d.a.m.n fool he'd been. He should have insisted on keeping at least his knife.

"Cormac. Ici." The words were a soft whisper, but he recognized Genevieve's voice and turned in the direction it had come from. He could just make her out in the gloom. She was standing in front of a pair of heavily carved double doors. Genevieve Lydius was a big woman, stately, with no sign of gray in her black hair. Flanked by two Miami braves, she might easily have been a queen.

Cormac's eyes had grown accustomed to the dimness and he could see that both braves carried muskets. That made at least five armed Miami in the house. What if instead of being here to protect their chief, they'd taken Genevieve captive for some reason? His mind was racing faster than his heart. His long gun was equal to five muskets, but it was three rooms away, guarded by yet another Miami. Then Genevieve came forward and greeted him with a kiss on both cheeks and Corm felt his tension drain away. He would have smelled fear on her and there was none. She would not willingly conspire against him. Genevieve would never be his enemy.

"I am glad you have come at last, Cormac. Memetosia is very ill. There may not be much time." She nodded toward the pair of doors.

"It's true then? He is here? The house was so quiet, so dark. I was worried. The children-"

"We have sent them all away. Memetosia is too ill for the noise."

Cormac glanced at the braves guarding the double doors. They stared straight ahead, seemingly uninterested in the conversation. Cormac knew that at least one of them would be listening carefully to every word. "Why is the honored Miami chief in Albany?"

"There was a meeting. Governor De Lancey from New York City and many other important men. They called it the Albany Congress."

"White men. Cmokmanuk," Corm said, not quite believing that a congress in Albany was an explanation for Memetosia's presence.

"Yes, but a number of the chiefs as well. My revered uncle, even Thoyanoguen of the Kahniankehaka." What she didn't say was that they were there because there was a scheme to sell land some ways to the west. The Iroquois who ruled in the Ohio Country had long before given the areas known as Wyomink and Shamokin to the Delaware, but just this week at Albany they had sold that same land to the British. John wasn't in Albany now because he was trying to get control of that land on the Susquehanna River on behalf of businessmen from Connecticut. She would tell Cormac nothing of those dealings. It would only anger him. "Mr. Franklin of Philadelphia proposed a way for the colonies to band together to protect themselves. A Plan of Union."

"A union of English whites to protect themselves from French whites." For over a hundred years the various tribes had been trying to survive by playing off one group of white men against the other and finding a place for themselves in the s.p.a.ce between. Still the numbers of Real People grew ever smaller, and their way of life ever more threatened.

Genevieve shrugged. "Of course from the French. They are the enemy of the moment. At least here in Albany. Anyway, it does not matter. The a.s.semblies in each colony must approve this so-called Plan of Union. It will come to nothing."

Men's inconsistencies did not trouble her overmuch. She was married to a man who called himself English when it suited him and French when it did not. Half French she might be, and half Indian, but her job was to protect her family and her blood kin. "Memetosia is so old and so revered he can do as he likes. He wanted to come, so he came."

"It won't help them. Not any of the tribes," Cormac said glumly. "In the end it doesn't matter whether they side with the French or the English, the Real People are doomed unless-"

"Cormac, I know what you think. And you know my opinion." Genevieve stifled an impatient sigh. How often had she heard him say that the Anis.h.i.+nabeg must find a way to preserve their way of life, but be at peace with the whites? All the while he was growing up he'd been telling her the same thing, and she'd given him the same answer: You are filled with elaborate plans for the whole world. Better to make a plan for yourself. We cannot win this fight, Cormac Shea. The Real People cannot win. We are too busy fighting among ourselves to fight the whites. Find a way to survive and prosper. Let the white half of you take command and let the rest of it go.

Genevieve had done exactly that. She looked as the wife of prosperous John Lydius should look. Black hair twisted in a neat knot; a fine dark red dress trimmed with lace, the skirt fas.h.i.+onably wide, swis.h.i.+ng when she walked; a shawl made of soft blue wool. But half her blood was Piankashaw; her mother's people were a sister tribe of the Miami. Chief Memetosia had come to Albany for reasons of his own that Genevieve did not pretend to fully understand. But no man, not even an honored Miami chief, could change his fate. The old man had become ill in Albany; it was entirely proper that he rest and recuperate in the home of a daughter of his people. Besides, keeping everyone happy was good for trade; French livres and English pounds enriched the Lydius accounts equally.

"In here," she said, taking Cormac's hand and leading him forward. The armed braves continued to stare straight ahead, but they stepped aside. "You understand the Miami ways? Memetosia is a full chief, remember."

"Yes, I know how to behave."

She seemed satisfied. "We keep the room very dark because the light hurts his eyes, but he can see us quite plainly. And there is nothing wrong with his hearing." Genevieve opened the door. "Teepi nko hka neewaki," she murmured, bowing low. I beg to be admitted to your presence.

There was no reply, but the old man raised a hand from a sofa piled high with cus.h.i.+ons and blankets against the wall near the fireplace. Mostly white man's furnis.h.i.+ngs, but the blanket wrapped around the chief's shoulders had been woven by a Miami squaw. Even at this distance Cormac could make out the crane symbols.

"I have brought you Cormac Shea, revered Uncle," Genevieve said. "He is the Potawatomi brave you asked to see."

Cormac took a few steps closer to the sofa and squatted, waiting for Memetosia to acknowledge his presence. After some seconds the chief waved a carved stick that ended in a sheaf of crane feathers in the direction of each of Cormac's shoulders. "Teepahki neeyolaani." It is good to see you. Corm stood up. "Now," Memetosia said, "send the squaw away and we will talk."

Cormac turned to Genevieve, who was already backing out of the room.

Memetosia coughed. Cormac made a move to help him, but the old man waved him off. Memetosia spat repeatedly into a bowl beside the sofa; finally the fit pa.s.sed. "You must forgive me if I do not speak of the things that should come first, but I am ill and soon I must sing my death song." He was apologizing for not asking about the last time Cormac had hunted and how things were in his village, the common courtesies that should begin any conversation among Anis.h.i.+nabeg who met in friends.h.i.+p. "There are things I must say quickly, while I still have the strength. I am told, Cormac Shea, that you met with the Ottawa, Pontiac, and that your brother who marked your face was with you. I am told that either he would have killed Pontiac or Pontiac would have killed him if wiser men had not stopped them."

"Memetosia hears all that happens in our world, as is fitting. But it was not Uko Nyakwai's choice to fight Pontiac, revered Chief. Pontiac questioned Uko Nyakwai's right to the totem given him by the great Ottawa chief Rec.u.msah."

Cormac was puzzled by the lack of anger with which the old man talked about the Ottawa. It was the Ottawa who, after everything else in Pickawillany was destroyed, had killed and eaten the old man's grandson, Memeskia.

Cormac's eyes had adjusted to the near-dark of the room. He could see the chief clearly now. Despite Memeskia's fierceness in battle the French had called him La Demoiselle, the Young Woman, because of the delicacy of his features. Memetosia had the same small nose and large eyes and thin face as his grandson. In his youth he, too, would probably have made a pretty girl. Now he looked gaunt and gray with illness, and beneath his many tattoos his cheeks were covered with the marks that showed that sometime in the past he had survived the great sickness, the smallpox, that had slaughtered so many of the Miami.

The rheumy old eyes studied Cormac. He seemed to know what the younger man was thinking. He made an impatient gesture, as if he did not wish to discuss the wrongs he and his clan had suffered at the hands of the Ottawa, who were brothers to the Potawatomi. "You call Uko Nyakwai by a name that makes him a Real Person," Memetosia said, "but he is white."

"He walked through the Potawatomi fire, revered Chief."

Cormac let the words hang in the air between them. Memetosia knew this to be so; it meant that Quent was Potawatomi by adoption and despite his white skin he was truly Anis.h.i.+nabeg. That could never be undone, not even by a full Miami chief.

"Ayi!" the old man grunted. "Do not tell me things I know. You waste my time!"

Cormac quickly bowed his head low. "I beg your forgiveness, revered Chief."

The crane-feather stick was waved over his head, dismissing his impertinence and accepting his apology. "They say that you are wise in the two worlds, that you do not give yourself to one at the expense of the other. From many people I have heard this. It is true?"

"It is as true as I can make it, revered Chief."

Memetosia started to say something, but another fit of coughing stalled his words. Cormac looked around, spotted a tankard, and sniffed it. Water. "Will this help you, revered Chief?"

The old man sipped the water, letting Corm hold the tankard for him. He spoke again. "There are others who are like you and the Piankashaw squaw." The old man nodded in the direction of the double doors where he knew Genevieve waited. "Others who have the blood of both the whites and the Real People. This is true, is it not?"

"There are many of us, revered Chief. Some call us metis."

Memetosia nodded agreement. "That is true. The one called Charles Langlade, he too is a metis, is he not?"

Langlade, who had led the raid on Pickawillany, was half French and half Ottawa. Cormac had heard it was Langlade who threw Memeskia into the pot. Ayi! How could he be so stupid as to have forgotten that. "He is, revered Chief, but-"

Memetosia cut him off with another wave of the crane feathers. "A man can be good or evil and be all Anis.h.i.+nabeg or all white. Why should a mix be any different? Tell me something else-Lantak, the outlaw who no longer obeys his own chiefs, you know him?"

Cormac tried hard not to show his shock Memetosia seemed to be implying that Lantak was also a metis. He'd never heard that before. "I have seen Lantak, revered Chief, but only down the barrel of my long gun."

"It is a pity you never shot him. He is a danger to Real People and whites alike."

"I agree."

"So will you shoot him now?"

Cormac had no idea where this conversation was going, or what was truly being said. "If I find him in my sights, I will shoot him. It is as you say, Lantak cannot be trusted by either side. And he preys on squaws and children."

The old man nodded. "Yes. That is all true. But usually white squaws and white children. They are our enemies, too, are they not?"

Cormac spoke slowly, choosing his words. "I have much reverence for your great age and wisdom, Memetosia, Chief of the Miami. But I have also spent many moons thinking of this thing that has come to the lands of the Anis.h.i.+nabeg."

The old man's gaze became more intent. Perhaps everything he had heard about this young man was correct. "Your skin is white, Cormac Shea. But they say you are truly of the Anis.h.i.+nabeg."