The Ransom of Mercy Carter (14 page)

She had waved when Daniel disappeared into the mountains, but she could not seem to wave after Eben and Sarah. She stood for a long time, staring at the dwindling dots that were their canoes, until Tannhahorens took her back to the house.

The act of going inside was the worst part of the day, partly because it
was
a house, and the only other house she had ever known had also been a home. Homesickness was like a knife. It cut constantly. Homesickness had become work; something to do.

Lord
, prayed Mercy,
don’t leave me as Sarah and Eben have. Stay here
.

T
HEN ONE DAY
, the town stirred and moved and suddenly everybody was rushing to and fro, preparing and carrying and gathering. Huge fires were built and haunches of deer were roasted. The bake ovens were full, batch after batch of hot breads laid on woven trays.
Maple syrup was beaten into bear fat, to make a delicious salty-sweet butter.

The men painted and prepared for war.

Canoes packed with Indian men, women and children came from other towns. All had dressed in their finest. Beaver and mink and fox were mixed with English coats and Dutch jackets and French scarves. No man or woman was without jewelry: earrings and bracelets, necklaces and anklets.

Mercy knew herself to be a Puritan: a plain dress with white apron and bonnet was the only fashion she had ever known. She could not imagine wearing jewelry, but neither could she take her eyes off it.

French officers arrived, swords hanging at their left side, buttons polished and boots gleaming. The governor of New France came, and Father Meriel, and a dozen other priests.

These were greeted by the Kahnawake chief, Sadagaewadeh, who was dressed in white: soft white skins, thick white furs, tall white feathers, startling white paint. He looked to Mercy like the ghost of war. He looked magnificent.

“Savage,” muttered Ruth.

Tannhahorens had painted his face differently than he had the night he stood on Mercy’s stairs. She wondered if each pattern had a meaning, and if so, what was the meaning of the face paint he had used today. His cross was shining on his bare chest and his single lock of
black hair had been braided vertically and pierced with feathers, so that it rose a full foot above his head.

Thorakwaneken’s chest was covered by a necklace of shells and claws so large it could have been the front of a shirt. His scalps trailed behind him like the folds of a robe.

So this was how they left for war. Feasting and speeches and farewells from the French. Where would they attack now? Deerfield again? Hatfield? Springfield?

Mercy thought of her father. Samuel Carter’s face and voice seemed as remote as the beginning of time. She prayed he had not stayed in Deerfield to rebuild. What if, at this very moment, he was working those fertile fields that edged the Deerfield River? Far from the stockade; far from safety. She prayed that the destruction of Deerfield had been so complete, so dreadful, that he had gone to his brother’s in Connecticut.

Attack would hit some English town. And this time, when the Indians came, would the English be ready? Or would they have convinced themselves that the Indians would never come again?

The feast was preceded by prayers from Father Meriel, and Mercy had plenty to offer.
Dear Lord, in your loving kindness, don’t let the Indians attack Deerfield. But since they’re going to, Lord, let the settlers be ready
.

The captives gathered together, and this time nobody stopped them. Ruth was there. Eunice Williams. Rebecca and Joanna and Joseph Kellogg, all in Indian
clothing, like Mercy herself. Sally and Benjamin Burt and their baby. Mercy was astonished suddenly to see Mary Harris and Mary Field, neither of whom she had even realized was in Kahnawake.

How separated we are, she thought. How carefully our Indian families keep us among Indians, rather than among other English.

Mercy could not cuddle baby Christopher, because he was in his cradle board, fastened to Sally’s back by a burden strap. Mercy kissed his sweet forehead but could not hold his tiny hands (those tiny hands were what Mercy loved best about babies) because his arms had been tucked tightly to his sides. “Are they nice to you, Sally?” Mercy asked. “Your Indian family?”

Sally hesitated for a long time, and then she bowed her head. “They are wonderful to me. My own mother could not help me more with my first baby.”

Even Ruth was silenced by that.

It was time for the real prayers, Mohawk prayers, from the chief. The white grandmother who had been a slave for thirty unthinkable years translated for the Deerfield children.

It sounds just like a psalm, thought Mercy. I too return thanks to my Creator. But the Indians and I—we thank Him for different things, and we surely ask for different things.

Joseph got restless, jumping from foot to foot, until Great Sky, among the warriors, frowned at him. After that, Joseph stood utterly still, like a carving. Mercy couldn’t even see him breathe.

At last the spiritual part was over and the French presence was recognized.

Sadagaewadeh, explained their translator, was greatly pleased by the attendance of so many French officers. He said, “We thank you for the pleasure you have given us this winter sending a party to avenge us against the English.”

“What does he mean by that?” demanded Ruth. “We didn’t do anything to him.”

“You breathe,” said the white grandmother.

Mercy felt sick in her stomach when she was near the white grandmother. She did not want to know the old woman’s name, not in English and not in Mohawk. The thirty years, the slavery, the combination of helpfulness and bitterness, made Mercy so uneasy.

“This land belonged to our fathers,” cried Sadagaewadeh. “No longer do we let the cattle of our enemy eat grass on the graves of our ancestors.”

It’s true, thought Mercy. My father’s cattle did graze on the old Indian burying ground.

“We drink war from our birth and now our young men have tasted the joy of the fight. We give thanks, O men of France, that you guided us in battle. On this day we celebrate our return to our families and the beautiful sight of our homes.”

Mercy looked at the rows of windowless bark huts. In any language, then, and for any people, home was beautiful.

“Thanks be to God,” whispered Sally Burt. “This isn’t a
war
party. It’s just a party. They’re celebrating what they already did, not what they’re going to do.”

“Good,” said Joseph. “I hope we eat soon. I’m starving.”

But first the exchange of presents must occur, and in the fashion of Indians, every gift required a speech.

The French gave the Indians muskets and pistols, and a speech, and more muskets, and a speech, and chest after chest of bullets and powder. They gave bright blankets and armloads of jewelry, tool after iron tool, pot after brass pot.

“We’ll never eat,” Mercy said glumly. “Next we have to stand here while the Indians give the French
their
presents.”

Ruth looked at her oddly. “The Indians have
already
given the French a present, Mercy. Deerfield.”

T
HERE WAS VENISON AND FISH
, bear meat and beaver tail. Cider and a strange delicious tea. The French had brought hundreds of loaves of real white bread and real berry jam to spread on it. They ate for hours.

At last, Mercy found out what the honored field was for, the one that had finally dried out from the mud of spring. It was a ball field.

Almost every adult Indian male stripped off his finery and played more or less naked. There were two hundred on each team. Everybody had a stick with a cup sewn on, and the game involved throwing hard balls back and forth from cup to cup, trying to reach the goal and score. Father Meriel called it lacrosse, and he placed bets and cheered the plays. There were a few white men playing, but they had been adopted and were Indians now.

Four hundred men played for hours, racing full speed up and down a court that was all but a mile long. Mercy had never seen grown men play. She tried to imagine Mr. Williams or Deacon Sheldon celebrating a victory by running around naked and throwing balls.

The women and children and guests raced up and down the sidelines with their men, cheering or booing. Nistenha collected Mercy, having seen how much English was being spoken, and Mercy found herself racing up and down too, shouting for Tannhahorens.

·  ·  ·

S
PRING
, or possibly the party, made everybody cheerful and energetic. Nistenha and her mother and sister began sewing tunics from hides tanned last fall and making baskets for gathering corn and berries and nuts and squash later on. It took Nistenha no more than a few hours to make a gathering basket and sometimes she whipped the reeds together so quickly she produced a basket in an hour.

Whatever else Mercy might be, she was not a slave. Nobody made Mercy do anything. Either she was considered a child—children in Kahnawake had no chores, ever—or too white and too useless to complete a task.

There was nothing to do and nobody to do it with, and Nistenha stopped letting her visit the other captive girls. She saw quite a bit of Joseph, though, because his longhouse was next door.

A boy among Indians was special. He was a person who would become a man.

Joseph was always being taken somewhere. The Indians loved to wander through the woods and over the streams, into the marshes and beyond the hills.

Joseph was already part of a group of boys who were wrestling and running and learning to hunt, and Joseph’s mother let him use Great Sky’s lacrosse stick, which was beautifully carved. Whenever Great Sky took him rambling, Joseph would lord it over Mercy, who never got to do anything.

Boredom forced Mercy to ask if she could help Nistenha.

By evening, she had made her first basket; a plain serviceable thing for field work. Nistenha showed off Mercy’s basket to everyone who stopped by. They complimented her creation as if it were worthy of being sold in Montréal. “Daughter!” they exclaimed. “This is a fine basket.”

With the excuse that she needed to show off her basket, Mercy managed to slip away and talk to Joseph, and wonderfully, his sister Joanna was with him. The girls hugged and hugged. How Mercy savored speaking English.

“Does Ruth have a new Indian name?” asked Joseph, who never glanced at the basket. “They don’t call her Fire Eats Her anymore. Is she being adopted?”

“Who would adopt Ruth?” Joanna wanted to know. “You did a fine job on the basket, Mercy. I’m learning too, but my first one was pitiful.”

“Thank you,” said Mercy. “And Ruth does have a new name. Spukumenen, ‘Let the Sky In.’ ”

This was the word for the opening in the roof through which the smoke rose. When the fire was low and the weather clear, you could see sky through the hole. The hole could be covered with curls of bark to keep out rain, but the Indians preferred to let the sky in.

“I’m still calling her Fire,” said Joanna. “She doesn’t let any sky into my life.” Joanna bounded off to join
Eunice Williams. Joanna was eleven and Eunice seven, but they lived in the same longhouse and whatever happened, they had an English friend to share it with. How Mercy envied them.

Mercy’s only hope for friendship was Nistenha’s cousin’s daughter, Snow Walker, who was a frequent visitor and pleasant enough. But Indians were less likely to talk for the sake of talk and Snow Walker hardly talked at all. Snow Walker for a friend would be like a fence post for a friend. The only friend Mercy really had right now was Father Meriel. After Mass, he never failed to greet her. “
Bonjour
, Marie.”

She loved the soft musical sounds of French. How different they were from English sounds and Mohawk sounds. But it was Latin that Father Meriel was teaching her, and the first two words she learned were
Pater Noster
. Our Father.

His Bible, from which she studied, was not just printed words on a page, but had letters in gold with swirls of indigo and scarlet at the start of each chapter. “It’s the same Bible your English father read to you,” Father Meriel explained, “but in Latin.”

Wherever Catholics were in the entire world, they did not use their own language. They used God’s language, and every Catholic anywhere said
“Pater Noster,”
even the Kahnawake Indians.

Most Kahnawake could speak at least something in
six languages: Mohawk, Abenaki, Huron, French, Latin and English.

Mohawk was shaped differently than English. Names were made up of pieces of words strung together. Her own name eluded her.
Munnonock
, its m’s and n’s humming in a friendly summery way, contained syllables she had not heard elsewhere.

Father Meriel, however, called her Marie, and in his presence, so did the Indians. Every Indian had a French Catholic name as well as an Indian name. Nistenha’s name in Catholic was Marguérite; her sister was Claire and Snow Walker was Jeanne.

Whether they called her Munnonock or daughter or Marie, it always seemed to Mercy that they must have somebody else in mind. The word
nistenha
did not offend her any longer. She used it to address any older woman and nothing in it seemed to mean mother.

I
T WAS TYPICAL
that Ruth was the most difficult captive but nevertheless the first to be taken into Montréal. Not one English child from Deerfield had ever seen a city and they were aching to visit. When she got back, Ruth came straight to Mercy’s longhouse to tell her everything. Ruth plowed to a stop and stared in horror.

“They pierced my ears, that’s all,” said Mercy quickly.

“Mercy! You are a Puritan! You cannot adorn yourself. Rip those out.”