Shadowbrook (2 page)

The People of the Town of Albany in New York Province

John Lydius:
A trader and sometimes arms dealer

Genevieve Lydius:
John’s wife, a métisse who is half Piankashaw Indian and half French

Peter Groesbeck:
Landlord of the Albany tavern at the Sign of the Nag’s Head

Annie Crotchett:
A prostitute who plies her trade at the Sign of the Nag’s Head

Hamish Stewart:
A one-eyed Scot, a Jacobite Stewart of Appin, and survivor of the infamous battle of Culloden Moor.

Assorted randy barmaids, crafty millers, entrepreneurial widows, drunken tars, layabouts and ne’er-do-wells; along with the many God-fearing huisvrouwen and burghers left from the days of Dutch rule.

The People of the Potawatomi Village of Singing Snow

Cormac Shea:
A métis, son of a Potawatomi squaw and an Irish fur trader

Ixtu:
The village Teller

Bishkek:
The manhood father of the métis Cormac Shea, and of Quentin Hale

Kekomoson:
The civil sachem of Singing Snow at the time of the story

Sohantes:
The wife of Kekomoson

Shabnokis:
A squaw priest of the powerful Midewiwin Society

Lashi:
Bishkek’s youngest daughter

Pondise:
Her son

The People of Québec in New France

Père Antoine Pierre de Rubin Montaigne, O.F.M.:
Father Delegate of the Franciscans in New France

Mère Marie Rose, P.C.C.:
Abbess of the Poor Clare Colettines of Québec

Soeur Marie Celeste, P.C.C.

Soeur Marie Françoise, P.C.C.

Soeur Marie Joseph, P.C.C.

Soeur Marie Angelique, P.C.C.

Monsieur Louis Roget, S.J.:
Provincial Superior of the Jesuits of New France

Mansieur Philippe Faucon, S.J.:
A Jesuit priest and an artist who documents the Canadian flora, called Magic Shadows by the Huron

Monsieur Xavier Walton, S.J.:
An Englishman and a Jesuit, also a surgeon

François Bigot:
Intendant of Canada, the steward and paymaster of the entire province

Pierre François Rigaud, marquis de Vaudreuil:
Governor-General of Canada after June, 1755

Marni Benoit

Military Figures

Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville:
A French officer; his death heralded the beginning of the Seven Years’ War.

Tanaghrisson, the Half King:
Born a Catawba, raised a Seneca; at the time of the story spokesman for the Iroquois Confederacy in the Ohio Country

George Washington:
A colonel in the Virginia Militia. Twenty-two years old when the story opens in 1754

Pontiac:
An Ottawa war sachem

Shingas:
A war sachem of the Lenape, also known as the Delaware

Scarouady:
Spokesperson for the Iroquois Confederation in the Ohio Country after the death of Tanaghrisson

Thoyanoguin, also known as King Hendrick:
A war sachem of the Mohawk, also known as the Kahniankehaka. Members of the Iroquois Confederacy, they were called the Guardians of the Eastern Door.

Major General William Johnson, of the New York Militia (Yorkers):
An Indian trader born in Ireland, in America since 1738 and married first to a German indentured servant, later to a Kahniankehaka squaw; adopted as a chief of that tribe

M
ajor General Edward Braddock:
Commander of His Majesty’s forces in America at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War

Général Jean Armand, baron de Dieskau:
Commander of the French and Canadian forces at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War

Général Louis Joseph, marquis de Montcalm-Gozon de Saint-Véran:
Successor to Dieskau

General John Campbell, earl of Loudoun:
Successor to Braddock

Major General Jeffrey Amherst:
Successor to Loudoun

James Wolfe:
A British colonel at the Battle of Louisbourg in 1758; a British Major General at the Battle of Québec in 1759

Book 1
Shadowbrook

WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 1754
QUÉBEC, NEW FRANCE

MISERERE MEI, DEUS
… Have mercy on me, Lord, according to the greatness of Your mercy.

The five women had no mercy on themselves.

They beat their backs with knotted cords. Each wore a black veil, pulled forward so it shadowed her face, and a thin gray robe called a night habit.

The blows rose and fell, hitting first one shoulder then the other, and every third stroke, the most sensitive skin on the back of the neck. Occasionally a small gasp escaped one of the women, barely audible above the singsong Latin chant.
De profundis clamavi ad te, Dominum
… Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord.
Domine, exaudi vocem meam.
Lord, hear my voice.

The narrow rectangular space was lit by twelve tall white candles. The white-washed stone walls reflected the elongated shadows of the women, who knelt one behind the other on the bare stone floor. Occasionally, when the woman in front of her managed to find a new burst of strength, a spurt of blood would spatter the one behind.

The knotted cords were carefully crafted, fashioned to a centuries-old design. The length must be from shoulder to thumb of the woman who would use it, the rope sturdy and two fingers thick. The seven knots were spaced evenly from end to end. It was called the discipline and was given to each nun on the day she made her vows as a follower of St. Francis, a Poor Clare of the Strict Observance of St. Colette.

Quoniam non est in morte qui memor sit tui
… It is not in death that You are remembered, Lord.
In inferno autem quis confitebitur tibi
… In the eternal fire who will recall You?

An iron grille in the front of the cloister chapel enclosed the holy of holies, the small ornate tabernacle containing the wafers that had been consecrated in Holy Mass and were now the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The grille was covered by heavy curtains so those on the other side in the visitors’ chapel could not see the strictly enclosed daughters of St. Clare.

In the middle of that Wednesday night only one person was present in the public section of the chapel, a man who knelt upright with his arms outstretched in the position of his crucified Lord. He could hear the soft, sighing sounds of the knotted ropes punishing soft female flesh. His shoulders twitched occasionally in response.

Antoine Pierre de Rubin Montaigne of the Friars Minor was also a follower of St. Francis, a priest of what the Church called the Seraphic Order, men who had originally vowed to own nothing and beg for their daily bread. The rule had been modified over the five centuries since Blessed Francis preached the glories of Lady Poverty, but its priests retained the humble title “Father.” Rubin Montaigne was Père Antoine to all, most especially the women on the other side of the altar screen.

In the nuns’ chapel the pace of the scourging had become more urgent by the time of the great cry of the Miserere: Have pity on me, Lord, for I perish. The cords flicked through the air too quickly to be seen, white blurs in the candlelit gloom.

Père Antoine, Delegate of the Franciscan Minister General in Rome, the ultimate authority for members of the order in New France, had decreed that in addition to the traditional scourging that took place every Friday before dawn, the Poor Clares of Québec would take the discipline every Monday and Wednesday after the midnight office of Matins. They would offer this special penance until the territory the British called the Ohio Country, but which had long been claimed in the name of Louis XV, was made secure, truly part of New France. When Holy Mother Church moved south to convert the native tribes, these nuns and their scars would be the jewels in her crown.

Turn Your face from my sins and all my iniquities shall be forgotten …

None wielded the discipline with greater vigor than Mère Marie Rose, Abbess. The shoulders of her night habit were stiff with the caked blood of past scourgings. When they buried her the garment would serve as her shroud, and she had already issued instructions that it should not be laundered. She would go to her grave with the evidence of her fervor.

Iniquitatem meum ergo cognosco
… My sins are known to You.

For my sins, for the sins of my daughters, for the glory of God. The words filled the abbess’s mind, blended with the pain, the chant uniting the two, pulsing in
her blood.
Miserere
… Have mercy, Lord. On the king. On this New France. On our brave soldiers.

The shoulder muscles of Père Antoine were on fire. His arms felt like lead weights, but he did not allow them to drop. The pain was a kind of ecstasy and he exulted in it. For the Church. For the Order. For the conquest of the land below the
pays d’en haut
and the defeat of the heretic English.

THE THREE INDIANS
moved in single file along a track no wider than a moccasin. The thick virgin forest of the Ohio Country, claimed by both the French and the English but possessed by neither, shuddered as they passed, then closed around them, barely disturbed.

Quentin Hale trotted easily behind the braves. His shoulders were twice as broad and he was a head taller, but he was as noiseless and surefooted as the Indians, and as tireless. The four men jogged along the treacherous path as they had for most of the night, with no break of rhythm or purpose.

The braves Quent followed were two Seneca and a Cayuga, members of the Six Nation Confederacy that called itself
Haudenosaunee,
the People of the Longhouse. Those who hated them for their prowess in battle called them by the Algonkian word
Irinakhoiw—
snakes. In the mouths of the French—who hated them for the strength of their union, which led to power in trade, and for their alliance with the English—the word became “Iroquois.” Years before, after defeating the local Shawnee and the Lenape, whom the whites called Delaware, the Great Council of the
Haudenosaunee
sent representatives of their member tribes to live among the subjugated peoples. The Iroquois in the Ohio Country had come to be known as the Mingo.

It was shortly before dawn, late May, and warm and humid. A downpour had ended a while back, but the trees still dripped moisture. The braves, naked except for breechclouts and moccasins, blended with the forest. Quent wore moccasins as well, and buckskins greasy with sweat and the smoke of many fires. A rifle was slung over his shoulder, black, with a highly polished oak stock, shiny brass trim, and a barrel nearly five feet long. The grooved bore that made the long gun stunningly accurate had been invented some twenty years earlier, but the weapons were still rare, and the few around mostly in the hands of whites.

Every once in a while the Cayuga turned his head and eyed the rifle. If there is to be a battle, he thought, and if Uko Nyakwai is to fall, Great Spirit make me the one to be beside him.

Uko Nyakwai, Red Bear in the Iroquois language. Red for his hair. Bear for his size, and the size of his courage. Sometimes his rage. The Cayuga knew he wouldn’t get the long gun while Uko Nyakwai was alive.

Could it be true that this bear had once pulled a tree out of the ground with only his hands and used it to kill twelve enemies? And that he did this thing for a woman, an Ottawa squaw called Shoshanaya, but she died anyway? And after her death the Red Bear left his father’s land in the country of the lakes and vowed never to return? Probably only a squaw’s tale told by the fire.