Shadowbrook (16 page)

On the sofa Memetosia sighed loudly. The old hawk clearly didn’t want Cormac to examine his gift in his presence and wasn’t going to explain its significance. Corm slipped the looped thong over his neck and tucked the medicine bag inside his shirt where it didn’t show, then backed out of the room.

There was only one brave guarding the door. Cormac wondered where the other had gone, but before he had time to worry, Genevieve walked toward him. She seemed to be studying his face. “Well?”

“He’s resting. No worse than when you saw him.” Her piercing glance was unnerving. He did not really think it was the condition of the aged chief that was
causing her such anxiety, but what else? And was it his imagination that she was staring at the thong around his neck?

“You look so tired, Cormac.” Now she sounded more like herself, motherly as she’d always been with him. She touched his cheek and started to trace the puckered skin of his scar, even though she knew he hated for anyone to do that. He pulled away. “Sorry,” she murmured. “But—” She broke off, her tone and her look changing. “Come with me,” she said firmly. “I’ve something to show you.”

He glanced at the Miami still guarding the doors to the room where Memetosia lay dying. The brave’s face betrayed nothing. He felt naked without his weapons; presumably they were still in the front hall. But the mystery of the medicine bag was more compelling. He hurried after Genevieve.

There was a Miami squaw in the kitchen, kneeling beside the fire stirring something in a big pot. Cormac smelled the familiar reek of rancid bear fat and parched corn, probably the special white corn grown only by the Miami. The Lydius house had become a Miami village. “This way.” Genevieve hurried him through the stone-lined dairy behind the kitchen, and the herb-drying room beyond that, through the kitchen garden, past rows of potherbs, and squash and beans and pumpkins ripening in the high summer heat. In a few strides they reached the woods that covered much of the Lydius land. Cormac was grateful for the shade. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see. It’s just there. Look.”

They had reached the banks of a small stream that cut across the edge of the property. Beside it was a newly made clearing, the stumps of the cut trees still creamy and fresh. A space had been made that was big enough to accommodate a small wigwam formed from willow saplings stuck in the ground in a circle and tied together at the top and covered in skins. There wasn’t any chimney opening that Cormac could see, but he spotted a fire pit for heated stones just inside the flap that served as a door. It was a sweat lodge; he could feel the heat from where he was standing. Another Miami, almost as old as Memetosia from the look of him, was moving between the wigwam and a second fire, this one with a lively blaze that was being used to heat the stones for the pit inside the lodge.

“I knew as soon as I saw you this morning that you needed this,” Genevieve said. “I asked Takito to make everything ready for you. As an honored guest.” While she spoke the old man squatted beside the fire pit at the door of the lodge and used two forked sticks to probe the heated stones.

It was unthinkable for Cormac to refuse the high hospitality of the sweat lodge; the steam bath was both a religious ritual and a mark of affection and esteem. “I do not deserve such an honor,” he murmured.

“Nonsense. We made it for Memetosia, to soothe his old bones and help him prepare for death. Now you must use it to prepare for life, for what you must do.”

Corm’s mind was racing, trying to sort out the remarkable events of the past few hours. He’d already decided Genevieve must have played a part in events of the day. How else would Memetosia have known that Cormac had a plan for the survival of the
Anishinabeg?
Maybe she also knew the old chief had given him a gift. Maybe she knew what it was. If so, she knew more than he did.

He could feel the deerskin pouch resting against his chest. It seemed to generate its own heat. He sensed Genevieve waiting for him to mention it, but she didn’t say anything. Instead she called to the old man tending the fire of the sweat lodge. “Takito, I have brought you the brave called Cormac Shea. He is of the Potawatomi people from the village of Singing Snow.”

The old man put down his sticks and got to his feet. He moved slowly, and his body, naked except for a breechclout, was ropy with age. One leg was shorter than the other and his gait had a distinctive leftward lurch.
“Kihkeelimaahsiiwaki,”
he murmured. I do not know him. “But I have heard of his deeds and his skill with the long gun.”

Cormac was starded to see a whole-skin otter medicine bag around his neck He lifted his hand in greeting, then realized Takito was blind; there were rough scars where his eyes should have been. The tattoos on his cheeks and forearms were distinctive and confirmed the message conveyed by the medicine bag. “I am honored to meet a priest of the Midewiwin,” Cormac said. “I am not deserving that such an esteemed healer should prepare the sweat lodge for me.”

The Midewiwin priesthood was active among the Potawatomi as well as the Miami and Ojibwe and Ottawa. When they were formed, the Great Spirit had chosen to communicate with them through means of an otter who helped a brave whose leg had been crushed in an accident (a Potawatomi, according to the way Cormac had heard the story). The otter told that first Midè priest that in exchange for the loss of his leg he and those who joined him would be given means to protect the
Anishinabeg.
After that it became common for many members of the Midewiwin to sacrifice a part of their own bodies at the sacred festival that conferred priesthood. It was possible that Takito had gouged out his own eyes.

The priest pointed at the sweat lodge. “Everything is ready. Come.”

Cormac looked around for Genevieve, but she was gone. “With your permission, esteemed priest, I will prepare myself for this great honor.”

There was a place at the edge of the clearing where three tall pines formed a natural curtain around a flat rock ledge at the edge of the stream. Custom demanded that Cormac enter the rebirth of the steam lodge as he had entered the world at the time of his first birth, entirely naked, without even a totem or a medicine bag of any sort. He took off his moccasins and trousers first, folding them neady, stalling before he must remove his shirt, trying to sense any prying eyes.
Instinct told him he was alone except for the old priest squatting beside the fire pit, chanting.

“
Haya, haya, ahseni …”
The sound was low, soothing, luring him back to the pleasures of the steam. What did it matter where he left Memetosia’s gift? They were alone and Takito was blind. He could leave the pouch tucked unobtrusively under his clothes and it would be there when he returned to dress …
Ayi!
The steam had already turned his thoughts to smoke. “The most precious thing I have,” the old chief had said.

The chanting stopped and the priest called him, “Cormac Shea of the People of the Fire, come. These stones are waiting for you.”

“I am preparing myself, esteemed Priest. Only a few breaths more.”

A short distance from the rock was a maple tree that had been three-quarters felled, probably by lightning. Most of the trunk lay along the ground, leafless and withered. A shadow-tree remained upright, a single piece of the trunk that was still struggling to grow. Its leaves were yellow and curled in on themselves. Only one branch at the very top was still green and full of life.

Cormac grasped the skinny remains of the tree with his knees and began to shimmy up the ghost trunk It swayed and bent toward the earth. The rough and splintered bark tore at his naked legs, but he ignored the pain. The single live branch stuck out of one side and hung almost over the stream. Cormac tested it gingerly.

“Haya, haya, ahseni …”
The chant had started again. People said that a Midewiwin priest could see with his eyes closed. Maybe Takito could see with no eyes at all. But what did it matter? Takito was not his enemy. There had been trouble between the hereditary chiefs and the Midè priests since the chiefs had been unable to cope with the devastation caused by the white man’s diseases. That had allowed the Midewiwin to become more powerful, and in many of the tribes they struggled with the chiefs for power. But if Takito wasn’t loyal to the old man dying a short ways away in Genevieve’s parlor he wouldn’t be here.

“Haya, haya, ahseni. Haya, haya, ahseni.”

The single live branch of the maple tree dipped perilously close to the water.
Ayi!
He was going to fall in and make a fool of himself. He moved back a couple of inches and the branch stopped swaying. He glanced over at the steam lodge one last time. Takito’s back was to him. Cormac reached up with one hand and slipped the deerskin medicine bag from around his neck, wound it securely around the single living branch of the dying maple, and shimmied carefully back down the branch. When he was on the ground he saw that the green leaves entirely hid the treasure.

Utterly naked, at last he approached the lodge. Takito stopped chanting and stood up. He rubbed Cormac from head to toe with bear grease, then he held open the flap of the small wigwam and waited.

Cormac had to stoop to get inside and once there he couldn’t stand upright; the wigwam had not been built for standing. On the floor was a frame of laced-together saplings that stood about two hands high and supported a woven lattice of hide thongs. When he lay down on it Cormac felt as if he were floating. The air was already thick with moisture, but he heard the sound of liquid splashing on the rocks in the fire pit and more clouds of steam filled the little lodge. The moist heat surrounded him, entered his muscles, and began its work. He gave himself up to the healing magic of the Midewiwin.

MONDAY, JULY 13, 1754
ALBANY, NEW YORK PROVINCE

HAMISH STEWART DID
not like cities in general, and Albany, for all he’d lived here going on a twelvemonth, he considered the least likable of all. Nothing to inspire a man to awe or even admiration, only squat wooden buildings, na the fine red stone o’ Edinburgh ni the impressive gray granite o’ Glasgow. Wi’ a wooden stockade around the bits that mattered, the fort and such, there were too many people crammed together in too little space, and the men all haggling and cursing and spitting and pissing at the same time into the same wee drainage ditches as ran down the dirt roads and emptied their filth into the river. The decent God-fearing sort of women turned their pinched faces away and pretended they dinna see or hear the goings-on. The wenches as lifted their petticoats out behind one or t’other o’ the town’s taverns or grog shops and bent over for any as had five copper pennies to pay for a straightforward fucking—or a bit more for something fancy—those sorts o’ lassies dinna care.

There were plenty o’ that sort in this place. The taproom belonged to a Dutchman, Peter Groesbeck, and as in the rest of Albany, you were as likely to hear under its roof the Frankish speech of Holland and the other Low Countries as the bloody king’s English. Groesbeck, like most, spoke both tongues. What set him apart was that he let the whores do as much business as they liked out o’ his establishment at the Sign of the Nag’s Head, long as they paid him his share at end o’ day. Hamish had no quarrel wi’ that. You survived how best you could. What bothered him about Groesbeck’s taproom was that geneva could be had for a ha’penny the glass and rum for a penny, but you couldna get a dram o’ real whiskey at any price. None to be had anywhere in the town. A pox on Albany. Once Shadowbrook was his he wouldna come again to this miserable excuse for a town. He’d send his slaves to do whatever business he had with Albany.

Hamish finished his rum and called for a refill. Old man Groesbeck himself brought the jug and filled the Scot’s glass. Hamish put a wooden penny on the table and the Dutchman took it and went away.

Slaves. God’s truth, it was a mighty strange notion. He dinna think he’d ever be really comfortable with it. Men and women running about doing whatever they were bid for no pay, and no reason for it other than that the slaves had black skin and the masters had white. Could be this whole slave business was a heretic Protestant notion. On t’other hand, St. Paul himself said that slaves should be obedient to their masters. Besides, slaves and Shadowbrook went together. First time he’d seen the one was first time he saw t’other. And God’s truth, Shadowbrook was meant to be his.

He’d known that back when he still had two eyes, the first time he saw that glorious piece of God’s creation called the Hale Patent. Shadowbrook was his destiny. That’s why the Almighty had let him live through the sinkhole o’ death that was Culloden Moor. It was why he’d survived the bloody slaughter o’ the hunt the Sassenachs mounted after the battle ended, pursuing the Highlanders up every
brae
and down every
ben,
killing them wherever they could be found. After Culloden the Highlanders were na permitted e’en to wear the plaid, God help them all. But Hamish Stewart still had his plaid, woven for him by his own grandmother in the soft blues and rose reds o’ the tartan o’ the Stewarts o’ Appin. He would wear it again, by God, when he was laird o’ Shadowbrook.

His destiny, Hamish reminded himself, and pushed away the faint unease he felt each time he thought o’ how it was he’d gotten enough brass to make it all happen. By Christ, had he gone to London and paid the ass-licking court flunky as was supposed to get it, what would ha’ happened then? Nothing. Whatever the wee favor the Sassenach was supposed to do for the poor bedeviled crofters who dispatched Hamish Stewart to pay the Englishman their life’s savings, he would na ha’ done it. No Sassenach can be trusted. Ach, what was the point o’ thinking on all that now. “Landlord! Another rum. A man can be dead o’ thirst in this place and you’d not notice.”

“And will you treat me to one as well?” a woman’s voice asked from somewhere over his shoulder.

“Aye, glad I’ll be to do it, Annie. If you’ll sit yourself down and talk a wee while.”

“The talk’s easy enough, Hamish. But the sitting is another matter.” Annie Crotchett was on the wrong side of twenty-five. She was missing two front teeth and her skin was beginning to look like badly tanned hide. Aye, but her breasts were still fine things. They rose above her bodice like a pair o’ ships in full sail. Hamish had heard she charged tuppence extra to unlace her dress and let a man suckle. He couldna say for sure because he’d never gone with Annie out behind
the Nag’s Head. A man shouldna shit in the same place he ate, a lesson he’d learned early on. Annie was a matter o’ business.