Sorceress Read online

  I had seen the look before, on the faces of those who took ship from England. I thought of John Rivers and Tobias and the men of Beulah. They were fierce and tenacious and there was no going back for them either. They would not give up what they had come here for. They had guns in plenty, besides, and their people did not fall ill and die. This was a fight to the finish, and I did not need White Eagle to tell me who would win.

  The way north took us past the neighbouring English settlement. Behind the broken stockade, smoke curled still from houses left to burn through the night. The devastation wrought there was equal to, if not greater than, that in our own village, but it gave me no satisfaction. I felt torn between two peoples. Rebekah and Tobias could have been living here, or John and Sarah, or it could have been myself.

  The ground was scuffed, the half-frozen mud pocked with hoof marks and the confused trampling of many feet, leather shod and booted. They must have taken prisoners with them: moccasins make little imprint.

  ‘Nipmucs. A big force. They went off to the west.’

  The trail led down to the river, marked by a spoilage of plunder: torn articles of clothing, a cast shoe, a child’s doll. There, a low screening of willows masked a ghastly sight. Mist crept in from the river and lay like a shroud over the bodies of women and children with the morning frost white upon them; their blood formed lumps of crimson. All of them had been scalped.

  ‘To slay all!’ I looked round, appalled.

  ‘They do not slay all. They took those who could walk, who would survive the journey.’ Black Fox continued to gaze at the sorry heaps. ‘These would hold up the march. They have far to go to reach safety and must move quickly. Is it not better to wait until they can walk no farther, than leave them to the wolves or to perish in the cold?’

  ‘But these are babies! Little children! It is cruel.’

  ‘War is cruel. How can you say that, Mother? You saw what they did to our people, to Speckled Bird.’

  He folded his arms and looked at me accusingly. His face was freshly painted; his narrow crest of hair newly dressed with feathers earned in the last skirmish. The tears he had shed over Speckled Bird had washed away what was left of his childhood. He looked older than his years, much older, and ever more ferocious, but he was my son. I would not be intimidated.

  ‘We can at least offer them burial.’

  ‘Let them bury their own.’ He turned away. ‘We must hasten on unless you wish to join them. Troopers may be on their way even now.’

  ‘There may be those alive.’ I looked towards the settlement. ‘In need of succour.’

  ‘With the Nipmucs?’ His laughter rang out, hard and mirthless. ‘I think not.’

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  24

  The settlement

  I was determined to enter the settlement and see if there was anyone left alive there. I was joined by others, who came not to help, but to glean what the Nipmucs had left, searching for food, for blankets, anything that had not already been taken. War was making us into birds of carrion; scavenging among the destruction.

  In many of the houses, the roofs had burnt and beams had fallen, but walls and floors remained relatively intact. Men and women lay where they had been struck down. Each one was scalped and beyond my help.

  I crossed the threshold of a house near the centre of the settlement. The door lay twisted, broken on its hinges, shattered and splintered by blows from a hatchet. The roof was gone; the house lay open to the elements. Halfway across the floor the body of a man lay trapped under a criss-cross of burnt and fallen beams. There was nothing I could do for him. He was dead even before the roof fell down on him. A blow from a war club had crushed his skull like eggshell.

  I stepped over him into a mess of smashed plates thrown from an overturned table. Over in the corner, slashed bedding smouldered, chests from home gaped open, their contents spilling. Broken pots littered the cold ashy hearth. Beneath my feet was a trapdoor, leading to a root cellar. I did not want to join in the scavenging, but we needed food for the journey, for our own survival.

  I pulled up the trap, thinking I might find their place of winter storage. Instead I found a boy. He was lying on his back, a great gash on his forehead. I knelt down beside him. The wound was deep and encrusted with black, but fresh blood seeped from the ragged edges. He lay insensible, pallid unto death, but a faint pulse beat in his neck. He was alive.

  Black Fox came to see what I had discovered. When he saw, he took out his hatchet and his scalping knife.

  ‘No!’ I held his arm. ‘He’s no more than a boy. He will not die.’

  I was determined to save him. There was too much death around me already and I was a healer. It was my duty to preserve life, not take it. I bid Black Fox lift him out into the open. A stream ran through the village. I carried water from it to bathe his face and clean the filthy wound. His eyelids fluttered open. The sight of us set him swooning again, but I resolved to take him with us. I made a travois for him, binding him to it, then bid Black Fox tow it while I walked behind.

  When we stopped and camped for the night, I bathed his wound again. He was still insensible, so I left him strapped to the travois and scoured the woods around for what I would need to heal his wound. I scraped gum from the balsam fir and gathered oak leaves and yarrow to clean and heal the cut; white willow bark to stew and infuse to take away the pain. When I had what was required, I hastened back.

  The others had made camp, putting up temporary shelters, cutting poles from the surrounding forest and laying on rush mats which we had brought with us. Black Fox had made a shelter and was seeing to the fire. The boy was still strapped to the travois. I untied him and put him on the bed of leaves and fir branches that Black Fox had prepared for me.

  ‘I made it for you. Not him.’

  He stalked off, offended that I’d spurned the care he had taken, but I had real hurts to tend, not just injured feelings. Black Fox would come back, given time. I set a pot to boil over the fire to infuse the bark I had collected, and set about dressing the boy’s wounds. He still lay insensible, despite the pain I must have been inflicting on him.

  ‘Do you think he will recover?’ Black Fox asked when he returned.

  He regarded him with cold curiosity, as if this was a dog or some other injured animal I’d brought in to treat. The boy’s face was still deathly pale, freckles stood out like a spattering of mud over his cheeks. Black Fox’s expression darkened. He knelt. Looking closer.

  ‘He is speckled. As speckled as ... ’

  He twisted away, the pain of loss upon him again. Then he took out his knife and grabbed a hank of the tousled fair hair. It was dirty and tangled but gold shone here and there.

  ‘No!’ I held his wrist. ‘You will not do it.’

  ‘Why should he live, when she is dead and left to lie in the cold earth?’

  ‘Life replaces life. He is just a child, like she was. Speckled Bird. She was ever kind hearted and would want us to take care of him, to have her bed and place at the fire.’

  He gripped his knife tight and continued to stare down at the white skin and fair hair.

  ‘I know it is difficult for you. Their blood runs in your veins, too. It is hard to be caught between two people.’

  ‘For you, Mother, maybe. Not for me. I am Pentucket.’

  He looked at me then, his eyes alive with a mix of hatred and pride. I thought he would defy me, but he did not. He put his knife by and pledged not to harm the boy. He then left to sleep elsewhere. He promised so easily because he thought the boy’s life lost already, but I knew that it was not. I made a makeshift pallet across from him, but I slept little. I tended the fire and kept my eyes on him, watching on until morning, hoping to save one life out of all those lost.

  The boy woke as dawn streaked the sky. His eyes opened, blue and unfocused. He made no sense of what he saw, but he was awake long enough to sip the decoction I had prepared and to take a little broth before he slipped back into unconsciousness.

  I w
orried that the blow that had rendered him insensible might have robbed him of his wits as well. Even the bumping of the travois did little to rouse him. On the next night, however, he seemed a little better, well enough to sit up and take in the world about him. His eyes widened in very great wonder at my presence and what I was doing travelling with savages. His fear decreased when I spoke to him in English.

  ‘I knew by your eyes you weren’t one of them. How came you among them? Were you captured?’

  ‘A story for another day.’

  ‘How came I to be here?’

  ‘You were hurt. You must rest now and get well.’

  He frowned as if trying to remember who he was and what had happened, then he winced at the pain, for although it was healing, his wound was still tender.

  ‘Do not distress yourself. You must rest.’

  ‘How can I?’ He struggled to sit upright. ‘Who are you? What is your name?’

  I told him.

  ‘No, your proper name. Your English name.’

  ‘No one has called me by it for many years now, but my name is Mary.’

  ‘Then that is what I will call you.’

  ‘What is your name?’

  He thought, wincing again at the pain in his head. He closed his eyes, tears came from the sides.

  ‘I do not recall.’

  ‘Never mind. Drink this.’ I gave him a draught from my small stock of sleeping potions.

  He was weak and often fell into insensibility. I fed him broth when he was awake and prayed that his strength would return quickly. I knew how Indians dealt with laggard captives.

  Black Fox kept his distance from the boy. He did not offer to help with him, and I did not ask it. I knew how my son felt about the captive, but I would not abandon him, not now that he was recovering.

  The boy was young and quick to get his strength back; with it came his memory. His name was Ephraim Carlton. He was eleven years old, although I had taken him for younger. He asked me what had happened to the people in the settlement.

  ‘Some were killed and some taken.’

  ‘What about the place where I was dwelling?’

  I remembered the body under the fallen beams, but he was not ready to hear about that.

  ‘No way of telling,’ I said. ‘I was not present, so did not see what happened. Killed or captured.’

  ‘I’m sorry for it, either one. They was good people. Not kin to me, though they treated me kindly.’

  ‘What of your family?’

  ‘I don’t remember my ma, and my pa’s dead. Kilt in an accident. He was out felling trees when one went the wrong way, caught him on the way down, pinned him right to the ground.’

  ‘Had you been long in the settlement?’

  The boy shook his head. ‘Been here, been there. Even spent time in Virginia, but the climate wasn’t suiting my pa. Anyways, Mr Barker took me in after Pa had his accident. I been working for him since. When the attack started, I helped fight off the first wave, but then we ran out of powder. Mr Barker, he reversed his weapon, stood by the door ready to club the first savage son of a whore that came through the door, them’s his words, not mine. He bid me and his wife and little girl hide in the root cellar. Was they ... ’

  ‘They were not there. Perhaps they were taken.’

  ‘P’raps.’ Tears squeezed from the corner of his eyes. ‘I pray it be so. Anyways –’ he wiped his nose on the back of his hand – ‘anyways, I stood in front of ’em for when the savages come. We heard the door smashed down and things thrown about and breaking. Then it went quiet and all we heard was the padding of moccasin skin soft across the wood. We could see him through cracks in the boards of the floor. Even the child was hushed by the fear of it. We near didn’t breathe, hoping he’ll miss us, but then the trap goes up. I steps in front, ready to fight. I see him looking, his face painted, quartered and striped, white, black and red. I scarce saw a man there, more a devil. Then I see his arm go back and I don’t remember no more.

  ‘They must have took Mrs Barker and the child and left me for dead. It is lucky they did not scalp me.’ He touched his head. ‘Too intent on their other prizes to harvest my hair, most likely.’

  Ephraim was getting better by the day, but I worried about Black Fox, how things would be between us. I understood his jealousy and knew the wellspring of his enmity, but he had to understand this of me: I was a healer and it was my duty to offer my skill to any in need of it. Friend or foe, it did not matter.

  Perhaps he did begin to understand, for I found little gifts of game left outside our hut: a haunch of venison, two fat ducks. I saw it as a sign that he wanted to make peace. Black Fox spent much time with the men of the tribe, hunting and preparing for war, but he came back to eat at my fire. I was glad of that, even though he refused to acknowledge Ephraim’s presence.

  The rest of the tribe were leaving to go south to join with tribes at Mount Wachusett where Metacom had set up his winter camp. A great host was collecting together to make war on the English towns.

  I would not go with them. I would not join the fighting. I belonged to both sides and this was tearing the heart from inside me. I wished to see no more killing. It tore my heart further to see my son go with them, but he was a warrior now and a scout of great cunning. Few were as good as him. It was clear where his duty lay.

  When the time came for him to leave, I knew better than to tell him to be careful, not to take risks with his life. He was going off to war. All I could do was offer the protection it was in my power to give.

  ‘I will do what I can to watch over you. Meanwhile, I want you to have this.’ I took the feather White Eagle had given me from my pouch. ‘Your great-grandfather gave it to me, and now I give it to you. May his spirit be with you. Go well, my son.’

  He took the feather and fixed it in his own scalplock.

  ‘Stay well, my mother. I hope there will be others watching from the world of spirit.’ I saw by his eyes he meant his father and Speckled Bird. ‘And I pray I will not disappoint them. Look out for me, in the evening and in the morning – I will return to you.’

  He swung up on his horse and turned in the saddle and gave me one of his rare smiles, then he was gone, the rest of the band with him. Ephraim and I were alone in the forest.

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  Ephraim was strong enough to travel now. He walked by my side as we journeyed north.

  ‘I have to tell you, Mary,’ he announced to me as we went onwards. ‘I see it as my duty to escape as soon as may be and join the fight.’

  ‘That is your choice but I counsel you not to try it yet.’

  ‘You ain’t going to stop me.’

  ‘Neither will I, but the forest might. You are still weak from your injuries and we travel far from the places you know. You will be lost in a minute. There are few settlements this far north and if you are found by a war band they will show no mercy.’

  ‘But where, where are we going?’ Ephraim looked about the forest.

  I did not answer.

  I walked in constant sorrow, sick to the depths of my being. My son had taken the war trail. I did not know whether I would ever see him again. Fear for him added to my grief at the loss of Jaybird and my pretty one. My heart had no time to heal. Each new dawning tore the wound open afresh. The pain was as piercing as in the first moment of knowing and with every waking minute a sharp blade turned in my heart.

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  25

  Quechee - the Place of Quick Whirling Falls

  Our roving was stopped by a tall man standing by the white-water rush and surge of a tumbling river. I could see he was Pennacook by the way he dressed his hair and the markings on his skin. He came forward when he saw us, as though he had been waiting.

  ‘You are Eyes of a Wolf.’ He stepped away from the roar of the water, his hand raised in greeting. He was older than I first thought, and he limped, shorter in one leg than the other. ‘I am Sparks Fire.’

  ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘
I was told in dream of your coming and guided to this place.’ He turned and pointed. High on the bluff behind him, an eagle perched on the topmost branch of a white pine. ‘I knew Jaybird when he was a little boy, before the sickness came to his village. His father’s band and mine would join to fish the falls.’ He smiled and his eyes creased in remembered laughter. ‘He vexed me greatly, for he was always wanting to join in our games, although he was so much younger. I called him Little Brother, so you will be my sister.’ He looked down at me, recollected merriment laced with sadness. ‘I grieve for your loss. Your sorrow is my sorrow.’

  He said no more. We both looked up. A flapping of wings announced the eagle’s departure. It wheeled in the sky above us and flew into the fiery heart of the setting sun.

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  We wintered in the camp of Sparks Fire’s Pennacook band. They welcomed us not as outcasts seeking refuge, but as kin. They gave freely of all they had: food, clothing and shelter. I bore the mark on my cheek, and space was made in the long house of the Wolf Clan. We lived as a family, Ephraim and me. Ephraim did not try to escape. How could he? The winter and the forest held him faster than any stockade. We were much farther north than we had been before and the weather was ever more bitter. I had not known where we would go when the boy and I commenced our wandering, but now I was glad to have found shelter in the warm smoky darkness where many families lived together.

  We wanted for nothing. We were given furs for clothing and bed coverings. The band had food stored from the summer harvest, and game was plentiful in these vast northern woods. I fashioned new clothes for Ephraim, for his were torn, too thin for the winter and all but worn out. I made him fur-lined moccasins and a jerkin and leggings of soft deer skin. I made sure he was not treated as captive. He was accepted as my son. I taught him the words for all around him and Sparks Fire taught him to hunt. When he was not hunting, he was with the other boys, sliding in the snow and on the ice.