Shadowbrook (53 page)

Noon. Marni would be coming in from the fields about now. She would come back to the house and take a cold drink because the work had made her thirsty. And if he were there they would strip off their clothes and ring out a cloth in rainwater and bathe each other beside the fire. Then they would lie down on his sleeping mat and she would give herself to him and—

Nicole knew just from looking at him that he was very far away. What did that mean? What did any of this mean? She didn’t know. “Monsieur Shea, please, I must go.”

“How do you know Quent isn’t still in Québec? Is his father still alive?”

“I do not know about the elder Monsieur Hale. He was alive when I left. But—” She broke off. Monsieur Shea knew nothing about the renegades attacking Shadowbrook. “I must go now. Truly. But on Friday I will be making this journey again, at the same time. I will meet you here and try to tell you more.”

“You promise? You must promise me, Mademoi—Soeur Stephane.” All the answers were waiting for him. He had only to pull the threads together and the pattern would be revealed. Then he could go back to Marni.

“I promise,” Nicole said.

He left the copse first, whistling softly a few seconds later to tell her it was safe for her to come out into the road. Nicole continued on her way up the hill, with her head down and her hands clasped demurely at her waist, and the white veil swinging softly around her shoulders.

FRIDAY, JULY 9, 1755
THE OHIO COUNTRY

THE QUIET WAS
deadly. The flying column had crossed the Monongahela and come upon relatively open country. They were, Quent realized, in an Indian hunting ground. Probably Lenape, possibly Shawnee. In either case it was a part of the forest where the underbrush was burnt off regularly to provide better accessibility to fodder and so attract more game. Braddock had been riding at the column’s head, but Quent couldn’t see him now. He turned, looking for the General, and spotted him trotting his horse rearward along the line of march, issuing orders as he went. The precise formation of the two regiments tightened in his wake. Officers called out orders and the drums beat faster. In response the soldiers picked up their pace.

Fort Duquesne was six leagues away. In country like this, for the flying column, three hours ahead. Possibly four. After so long and such a hellish march, the men were heartened by the nearness of their objective. Quent could feel their spirits rising. They were sure that after a siege they would take the fort, because Braddock said so. And to a somewhat lesser extent, so did Washington. Quent was a hell of a lot less sure. He raised his glance and searched the sky. Still no birds, not even a lone crow circling overhead looking for carrion. He studied the trees on either side, trying to see deep into the forest. Nothing. He heard no small animals scurrying, only the rhythmic thump of the drums, beating in unison, measuring the march. Both regiments carried their colors, the banners hanging Ump in the hot, still afternoon. But there were watching eyes. Quent could feel them.

He was starting to move deeper into the forest so he could scout the right flank when Scarouady came up beside him. The Iroquois had been to the rear, checking on the column’s end. “The women are just now crossing the river,” he told Quent. Meaning the column’s tail was a league or so behind its head. Satisfactory. Except for the unnatural silence. Scarouady felt it as well. Quent could hear it in his voice. “These
Cmokmanuk
warriors,” he demanded irritably, “can they not walk without the war drums?”

“Not and keep together.”

“And our great war chief says they must stay together.” The Iroquois Half King spat on the ground to show his disdain for Braddock’s ideas.

Quent started to say something, then stopped. Another of the Iroquois—a Cayuga who moments before had snaked off to scout the left flank—was coming toward them, crouching and moving as rapidly as he could. Quent felt the prickles begin at the back of his neck
“Hanio! Aiesahswatenien!”
Look! We’re under attack.

Both the Half King and Quent dropped to the ground at the same moment. The other Iroquois braves did the same. Quent raised his head to look for Braddock. He was still on horseback and trotting along the margin of the march, but now he was going forward, heading for his customary place at the front. Washington was beside him. Jesus, God Almighty. “Colonel Washington! General!” Quent shouted. “We’re surroun—”

The first arrow was aimed straight for Braddock. He was saved only because at that moment he turned to look for the source of the shouting voice. His horse wasn’t so lucky. A musket ball took the animal out from under the general. Washington leaned down and offered his hand to Braddock, who took it and hauled himself into the saddle behind the Virginian. The two men pounded for the column’s head.

There was a storm of arrows now and musket fire. There were war whoops, bloodthirsty screams that caused fear even in Uko Nyakwai, the Red Bear. God knows how the men felt who had never heard them before, and who had spent the last few weeks brooding on stories of Indian brutality and torture. Quent knew the only way to fight the fear of battle was to issue your own scream of challenge.
“Ahi! Neyezonya!”
He bellowed the Potawatomi war cry as he loaded the long gun.

Braddock and his officers were shouting commands that were mostly lost in the tumult. “Keep together! Keep them together. Bugler, sound the colors!”

The officer nearest Quent, an East Anglian he’d had an ale with most evenings since the march began, was urging his men into the parallel lines that in theory would allow them to deliver crushing volleys of musketry into the enemy ranks. “We can’t shoot ’em if we can’t see ’em, sir,” a young American recruit protested. “We need to—” The boy’s words were cut off by a musket ball to his chest. In seconds the officer’s head had been blown apart and not one of his men still stood.

Quent crawled through the grass, pulling himself forward with his elbows, stopping every once in a while to fire at something he’d seen move among the trees, then pausing to reload. Braddock had found another horse. He was everywhere,
continually trying to keep his men in close formation. “Stand your ground, boys. They can’t defeat us as long as you stand your ground. Bugler, sound the colors!”

A boy with a bugle ran forward to stand beneath the banner of the Forty-fourth Foot and blew the notes that summoned the scattered forces to rally around the regiment’s flag. Quent watched those who tried to obey being picked off by arrows and musket balls coming from the cover of the trees. Moments later one of them got the young bugler.

Quent shimmied his way along the ground until he was near enough for Braddock to hear him. “General! The men have to break ranks and take cover in the long grass and behind the trees!”

“Nonsense! Get out of my way, damn you, Hale! Keep together, men. You know what to do, now is the time to do it!”

Sweet Jesus! Quent felt the tall grass around him moving, alive with men using it for cover. It was the Virginians. He could identify them by their blue coats, and by the fact that they knew enough to get themselves into the woods and under cover. Washington didn’t go with them. He remained at Braddock’s side, in the direct line of fire. Quent saw the young colonel’s horse shot out from under him. Washington snatched the reins of one that was riderless and sprang into the saddle. “Stand your ground, men!” Echoing Braddock’s order and his confidence. “They can’t beat us if we stand our ground!” The soldiers were desperately trying to follow orders. The result was to force them into an ever smaller square, an ever more defined target.

The men wearing bearskins were the enemy’s prey of choice. The French may have felt constrained by the European custom of not deliberately killing officers, but their Indian allies had learned to pick them off one by one. The redcoats were helpless without them. They were trained to follow commands instantly and without question; without those commands no one had any idea what to do except try to obey Braddock and stand their ground.

In the woods on either side it was tomahawks and fixed bayonets and hand-to-hand combat between the Indians and the Virginians. Scalps were stripped from the living and the dead by both white men and red. An Indian came at Quent from the rear and he swung round, cursing the fact that he no longer had his dirk, and used his tomahawk to split the man’s skull. Jesus God Almighty. The brave was Potawatomi. Quent felt nausea rise, then disappear as he took on a Shawnee seeking the most prized trophy of the day, Uko Nyakwai’s red scalp. Quent dispatched the Shawnee and spotted a few Lenape behind him. Shingas and the other Ohio Country chiefs hadn’t simply refused Braddock’s war belt, they had been so disgusted with the treatment they received from him they’d decided to fight with the French.

The marching drums were silent now, but the sounds of the battle were deafening. Shouted commands, war whoops, and above all, the never-ending screams. Quent’s long gun was useless in these close quarters. He fought his way to a tall tree near the cleared area, then climbed as high as he could. He had to squint to see through the smoke hanging over the battleground, but he could tell that the confusion was worse than before. Braddock was in the midst of it, riding what had to be his fourth or fifth horse and shouting out orders that his men now ignored, their terror too great. Many had thrown down their weapons and were running. Most were brought down by an arrow or a musket ball, others were dragged away by the braves. Quent knew they’d be tied up deep in the forest and reclaimed later. Captives were the most important thing any warrior could bring back to his village. The prisoners would be given the chance to prove themselves under torture, then a few would be adopted to make up for those killed here today. The rest would be killed and eaten.

The tail of the flying column had finally caught up with its head, but rather than reinforcing their comrades the new troops added to the general melee. The new officers too were quickly spotted and killed. The women were almost all captured. Four or five times Quent shot a brave in the act of dragging a woman into the forest, only to have another seize her while he was still reloading.

The ground was becoming a carpet of bodies, and parts of bodies. Quent could see a headless and legless trunk right below him, the red coat still intact, its buff-colored facings indicating a member of the Forty-eighth Foot. The pair of arms weren’t from the same victim—the turned-back cuffs were yellow, indicating the Forty-fourth.

Quent got off another shot and took down a brave who had been hurtling toward one of the officers. The barrel of the long gun was smoking hot, but he reloaded in the space of twenty heartbeats. This time when he lifted the gun to his shoulder and tried to sight, he saw the doctor, Walton, moving on his knees among the bodies on the field. Sweet Christ, the man was mad. You couldn’t minister to the wounded in conditions like these. Quent watched him for a moment, then swung the gun around to where a whooping brave—Abenaki from the look of him—was aiming his musket at Braddock. Quent fired, but he was a second too late. He saw the general go down. The Abenaki took a step toward his feilen victim, then the top half of his body separated from the lower, neatly sliced apart by Quent’s blast.

“Absolve peccatis, Domine.”
Absolve thy servant from all sin, Lord. Xavier Walton had been carrying holy oils about his person for just this eventuality. He kept them hidden in the pocket of his jacket and every few seconds moistened the forefinger of his right hand, then traced a cross on the forehead of a dying or dead man as he hovered over him, whispering Latin petitions for the salvation of his
soul. Protestant heretics all of them, but his task was to give them the opportunity to renounce their sin. Who knew what thoughts of repentance might cross a man’s mind in the final moment of life?
“Absolve peccatis, Domine.”
He could do no less than to pray for these sinners, and hope that eventually they would be admitted to heaven. Any minute the martyrdom he had so longed for would come. Walton was convinced of it. Surely he would not escape.
This day you shall be with Me in Paradise.
You promised, Lord.
“Absolve peccatis, Domine.”
The Jesuit crawled to the next red-coated body. His finger hovered above the man’s forehead. It was the general. The front of his uniform was covered in blood, but Braddock was breathing.

“No doctoring now … have to get up … a horse …”

Walton got his arms under Braddock’s torso and dragged him across the ground, through the spilled entrails, bumping over bodies whole and dismembered, until finally he reached the scant shelter of a large oak whose branches almost reached the ground.

The Jesuit’s breath came in hot, hard gasps; Braddock’s were shallow and sounded as if he were expelling bubbles. Walton lay his hand over the general’s chest and felt the rapidly beating heart but not the steady thump of fresh blood being pumped out of a damaged artery. The yellow facings of Braddock’s red coat were stained neither by blood nor dirt. Walton’s fingers were slick with Braddock’s blood as he worked the buttons open, then pushed the coat aside. Holy Mother of God … Braddock had taken a musket ball directly to the chest. The breastbone had prevented total penetration and the musket ball was now acting as a plug, stopping the flow of blood. “You are a man favored by God, General Braddock,” Walton whispered. “You should give thanks.”

Braddock’s eyes showed that he’d heard, but when he tried to speak no words came. The Jesuit pressed a finger over the wounded man’s Ups. “Save your strength. You are fighting for your life, and perhaps your salvation. Listen to me, and just nod. Do you renounce Satan and all his works?” Braddock’s eyes showed panic. “I am trying to save your soul,” Walton whispered urgently. “You are mortally wounded, man. Do you renounce all heresies and offer your full allegiance to Jesus Christ and His Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church?”

Braddock understood. Walton, the English doctor, was a Catholic and therefore a spy. He had no weapons; his only hope was to kill the man with his bare hands. Braddock lifted an arm, stretching toward Walton’s throat. The gesture caused a fire to light in his chest, the pain such that a small scream was torn from him. Then he passed out.