Shadowbrook (20 page)

Still later, when the candles had been lit and then extinguished, and the women had gone to bed, Quent found his brother pouring himself a final glass of rum to carry upstairs. “She’s not what you think,” Quent said. “Her father was an English officer, a hero of Culloden Moor. Her mother was the granddaughter of a French marquis.”

“I’m delighted to hear the lady’s lineage, Quent. Is she on offer, then?”

“I’m telling you so you’ll know how to behave. And there’s something else … I think you’re dead wrong to whip any slave on the Patent, much less a fine man like Solomon, but I’m sorry about what happened yesterday. I realize with Father so ill, you’re in charge here.”

“After he’s gone, as well.” John held the rum up to the light of a candle set in a wall sconce, studying the color. It was pale gold with a hint of amber, the best they made on the Patent. The rum they traded to the local Indians in return for pelts was cloudy, and the proof was so high it did little more than burn a man’s mouth and throat, not to mention his gut. “Shadowbrook will be mine after Father’s dead.”

“I know that. It’s why I’m giving you fair warning to restrain yourself until after I’m gone. It won’t be long. I can promise you that.” Shadowbrook had claimed him again the moment he set foot on the Patent. The brooks and the trees and the hills whispered that he belonged to this place more than it could ever belong to him or to anyone else. But he was the second son and it would never
be his. The sooner he got away again and broke the Patent’s hold on his heart and soul the better it would be. “Just be clever,” he said to his brother. “Keep your bloody whipper on a tether while I’m here. I wouldn’t want to kill you, John. Not in this place, not while Mother and Father are alive.”

“And afterward?” John asked, tossing back the rum and pouring another. “Will you try to kill me after they are gone?”

“I hope it isn’t necessary,” Quent said.

“Ah, but that’s the only way you’ll get Shadowbrook, isn’t it?”

Quent“s bedroom was in the east corner of the second floor. The purple flowered vine that grew up that corner of the house had been there as long as he could remember; the main stem was as thick as a tree trunk. The flowers appeared in June most years, sometimes in May. He’d always made a point of keeping his windows open when the vine bloomed. The perfume was faint but intoxicating, even to a small boy.

Now it was well into July and the vine had finished flowering. He had no memory of leaving the window open, but when he went into his room, moonlight spilled across the rag rug between his bed and the unused fireplace and Corm was sitting at a small round table beside the empty grate. “Something wrong with the front door?” Quent asked.

“I needed to speak with you before I saw any of the others. How’s your father?”

“Very ill. Fading fast.”

“But still alive? You had a chance to talk to him?”

“Yes to both questions. What peace could be made between us was made. You did what my mother asked, no need to worry about that. What’s that you’re hanging on to?” Corm’s hand was covering something lying on the table. “A medicine bag? Where’d it come from?”

“I’ll tell you in a moment. First you tell me something. What day is this?”

“Thursday. What day could it be?”

“It was Monday when Mikamayalo found us in the reeds.” The hand holding the medicine bag squeezed it tight. Corm’s knuckles whitened with tension. “So it has to have been three days, not six hours. That explains a great deal.”

“Not to me.”

“
Co.
”
Corm used the Potawatomi negative. “No, I know it doesn’t make sense to you yet. Sit down. I’ll tell you what happened.”

“Any reason we shouldn’t have some light first?”

Cormac glanced toward the window. “None I know of.”

The question had not been meant seriously. There had been no hostiles on the Patent for fifty years. Corm’s glance betrayed a sense of caution that didn’t seem
appropriate, but Quent trusted it. He went to the mantel, all the while figuring how many strides he’d need to get his long gun from the cupboard where he’d stored it. Three, he decided, then realized that Corm didn’t have his gun. He struck a spark from the tinderbox and lit the pair of candles on the table, then sat down. Habit made both men stretch their long legs toward the empty fireplace. The silver buckles on Quent’s leather shoes gleamed in the candlelight, a contrast to Corm’s well-worn moccasins. “Talk,” Quent said. “I’m listening.”

“The old Miami chief Memetosia was at the Lydius house, just as Mikamayalo told us. Genevieve was there, too. Not John, or the rest of the family. I saw four braves in addition to Mikcamayalo, a squaw in the kitchen preparing food, and a Midè priest called Takito.”

Corm told the story of everything that had happened. Quent listened without comment. “And you thought you’d only been in the sweat lodge six or seven hours?”

“At first. Then, when I was on my way here, I realized I was famished, weak with hunger. I had to stop and find food before I could go on. That’s what made me think it was longer. It’s taken me the better part of a day and a night to get here, so if this is Thursday, I’ve been gone four days and I was in the lodge for almost three of them.”

“Takito must have been using pretty powerful herbs in that steam.”

“Apparendy so.” Cormac remembered the young woman who had pleasured him with her mouth, the one he had imagined to be Nicole Crane, though he knew that wasn’t possible. Could be there hadn’t been any young woman at all. Could be the whole experience was Midewiwin magic. “Very strong herbs. Like nothing I’ve ever known.”

Quent didn’t want to push Corm to describe what had happened in the sweat lodge. The priests, particularly the Midewiwin, had many ways of bridging the distance between this world and the next; the sweat lodge was one of the most effective. He’d participated in the ritual four times, never for more than an hour or two. Each time the experience affected him profoundly and he emerged slightly changed. “The brave you killed was Miami?”

“No, that’s the strangest thing of all. Huron.”

Quent sucked in his breath. “Huron.” The Huron were bitter enemies of the Miami. “Listen, maybe there was trouble. Maybe the Huron sent a war party to the Lydius house and—”

“The Huron wouldn’t send a war party to the center of Albany. And there was no evidence of any kind of fight. The house was empty, but nothing inside was disturbed.” Corm didn’t mention that his knife and tomahawk had been exactly where he left them, something that would not have happened if there had been a war party rampaging through the Lydius house. If he told Quent that, he’d have
to tell him about his long gun being stolen. “Whenever Genevieve and the Miami left, they did it peacefully.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“None at all. Neither does this.” Corm released his grip on the medicine bag and pushed it toward the light of the candles. The fine white deerskin and the red and black crane symbols shone in the glow. “At least my having it doesn’t make sense.”

“This is what Memetosia gave you?”

“Yes.”

Quent was intensely curious about what was inside, but it was up to Corm to decide when to open the pouch. “Where did you leave the Huron’s body?”

“In the stream.” Cormac had been unwilling to grant the Huron the dignity of a burial. That was an honor due a worthy enemy, not one who sneaked up on a man drunk with magic. He took the scalp before he’d kicked the corpse into the water, and left it in the Lydius’s front hall, in the place where his stolen long gun should have been.

Cormac fingered the medicine bag. It was miraculous that it hadn’t been found and stolen while he was under Takito’s spells. The Spirit of the Sacred Fire had protected the medicine bag because Corm was meant to have it and do something with it. Only he had no idea what.

He pushed the pouch toward Quent. “Take a look. It’s six shells. Wampum but like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

Quent closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Only when he felt himself calmed and ready did he loosen the thong and carefully, with great respect, withdraw the contents and spread them on the table.

Each shell was about the size of Quent’s thumbnail. He’d never seen wampum that big before. In the days before the Europeans came the
Anishinabeg
used stone drills to bore holes in shells so they could be sewn onto belts and bands. The position of the wampum on the belts carried the messages they sent one another on the most solemn occasions. Nowadays a skilled wampum carver using metal drills could craft smaller pieces, but ordinary wampum had nothing in common with Memetosia’s gift. Wampum was always white and tubular. These were flat beads made from the purple-black shells of the big clams called quahogs. Individually they were called
Súki
beads, collectively
Suckáuhock.
“How old do you figure these are?” Quent asked softly.

“I’ve been wondering about that since I opened the bag.” Corm had examined the treasure yesterday, after he was well beyond. Albany He’d finally given in to his hunger and stopped to fish, and torn into the raw flesh of the fat walleyed pike with his teeth. It was not the mark of a true brave to eat uncooked food, but he didn’t want to risk a fire, and couldn’t wait to get the taste of Huron flesh out of
his mouth. After he’d eaten, he had examined Memetosia’s gift. “I figure they’re at least a couple of hundred years old. Could be more.”

“Maybe a lot more,” Quent said.

“Maybe.”

“The carving is marvelous. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Each of Memetosia’s treasures was a complex picture, the shell punched through in some places, deeply engraved in others. In the tiny space available, the ancient artist had depicted signs that stood for various animals and surrounded them with a whole raft of other, more mysterious symbols. Quent recognized the turkey, the spider, and the possum. “What are these?” He gently pushed three of the beads toward Cormac.

“That’s
papankamwa,
the fox. This is
eehsipana,
the raccoon. I’m not sure about this one. It’s an elk, but I don’t know if it’s
ayaapia,
the buck, or
apeehsia,
the fawn.”

“There are six Miami nations, aren’t there?”

“Yes. The Miami themselves, plus the Kilatika, the Mengkonkia, the Pepikokia, the Wea, and the Piankashaw.”

“You think the stones represent the six nations?”

“That’s my guess, but I don’t know which symbol represents which tribe, or what any of it means. Or what Memetosia meant me to do with them.”

“And after you got out of the sweat lodge, he was gone?”

“They were all gone. Even Genevieve.”

“You think she was working with whoever tried to kill you?”

“I don’t know what to think. She’s always been—” He broke off. It was as hard to imagine Genevieve plotting to murder him as it was to think of Miss Lorene wanting him dead. His own mother had considered him a burden and an embarrassment, but two women, one white, one a métisse had given him the affection Pohantis refused. “Genevieve’s half Piankashaw. That’s why Memetosia was taken to her house.”

“When he spoke to you, he didn’t say anything that would give you some notion of what he was—”

“I told you—mostly he talked about the danger the whites are to the
Anishinabeg,
and predicted more war between the French and the English. And oh, yes. That young officer you were with, Washington? Seems he surrendered his Fort Necessity to the French and went back to Virginia with his tail between his legs.”

Quent shrugged. “I saw something about that in one of Father’s newspapers. The reinforcements never got there. Wouldn’t have been much good anyway. Story was, all they had by way of munitions was one barrel of spoiled gunpowder. The North Carolina troops were promised three shillings a day. When word went out it was to be reduced, they disbanded and went home. Besides, that so-called
called fort the Virginians built at the forks wasn’t going to withstand well-trained French regulars. Paper said it was Jumonville’s brother who led the French attack.”

“Jumonville? The one Tanaghrisson …”

Quent nodded and both men were silent for a moment Quent was the first to speak. “Listen, you think it was Genevieve who told Memetosia about your notion that Canada can be the home of the
Anishinabeg
if the French will just get the hell out?”

“Has to have been. Except that Memetosia knows as well as I do that the French won’t just get out. Someone’s got to make them go.”

Quent looked at the stones. “These six tribes?”

Corm shrugged. He could hear the doubt in Quent’s voice; he felt the same. The Miami union wasn’t mighty enough to battle the French and win. They might have been once, but since the coming of the Europeans they, like so many of the tribes, were a pale shadow of their old glory. “Maybe the British will do it.”

“Doesn’t look that way. Not if they keep sending boys to do the job of men. But even if the British were to drive the French out of Canada, it’s not likely they’d hand the place over to the red men, is it?”

“Not likely,” Corm agreed. “Not unless they’re made to.”

“Which brings us back to the same question,” Quent said. “Who’s going to make them?”