Original Death (34 page)

“Now is the time of night that the graves gape wide and let forth the ghosts,” Woolford recited. “
A Midsummer Night's Dream
. Why would you and Adanahoe both—”

“Something else Black Fish said that night. Words he repeated all over the League.”

“Surely not,” Woolford said. “Why would he . . .” His words drifted away as he looked from Duncan to Conawago's ashen face. “What else?”

“When he started to relate his dreams it was like theater,” Conawago recalled. “But speeches before the Council often have a theatrical flair. At
some of the smaller castles it was said there was a burst of yellow and red smoke in the fire which he leapt through. There is a certain expectation of drama. The words are supposed to be long remembered.” The old Nipmuc shrugged. “He started by saying it is time to be frightened because now the lion roars and the wolf howls at the moon.”

Woolford shook his head as if in disbelief. “Now the hungry lion roars and the wolf behowls the moon. Shakespeare again.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
again. Next you'll tell me he saw men with the heads of asses.”

Conawago's voice grew small. “Men with the heads of horses were among those attacking the gods.” He looked up sheepishly. “Not many in the tribes have seen an ass.”

Water lapped at the side of the ship in the silence that followed. In the distance came the mocking cry of a loon.

“My God, the Delaware,” Duncan said, looking at Sagatchie now. “He was telling us before he died. He knew the boys in the Ohio, he said, and they liked to cheat. We thought it was just more raving. He was talking about the half-king. He was warning us!” He saw the confusion on Conawago's face. “They gave you mushrooms to bring hallucinations,” he said to his friend. “The words spoken by Black Fish weren't his words. Someone prepared a script for a disciple of the half-king to use with the League.”

“Someone at the Council saw through it, and killed him,” Woolford suggested.

“No. Black Fish was no great orator, or traveler to the spirit world. He had a good memory, as his uncle does, but also a taste for liquor. He was watched over by his companions in the red-eyed canoe. He was killed by one of them. He had found some rum and couldn't be trusted to keep his secret. He was likely to boast that he was part of a ruse against the Iroquois League.”

“If men cannot be trusted before the Council,” Conawago murmured toward the water, “then the world indeed collapses around us.”

“It was meant to be his final performance,” Woolford said in a near whisper. “Spread the tale among the other castles, sow the seeds of fear, then finally present to the Council.”

“But shrines were destroyed,” Conawago pointed out. “More than the hand of man was involved. A sacred cave was buried when the mountainside above it shifted. I heard a sacred tree burst from the inside.”

“Either could have been done with gunpowder,” Woolford observed.

“Gunpowder doesn't burn rocks,” Duncan said. “We saw it, at the mouth of the gods near Onondaga Castle. It was as if lava had risen out of the earth and melted the stone.”

“Certain gunners can burn rocks,” came a voice from the dark, “burn the earth, like the devil himself.”

Duncan looked about in the darkness for the speaker before realizing it came from the captain, still standing at the wheel.

“Beg pardon,” the officer said. “None of my concern.”

“How?” Duncan pressed. “How do you burn rocks?”

“Why with water, what else?” came the bitter reply. When the captain saw the insistent look on Duncan's face, he called for the first mate to take the wheel and gestured them below.

A minute later they stood before the heavy door that marked the ship's magazine. “Not just gunpowder in here,” the captain explained as he unlocked the hatch. “There's always signal rockets and flares. But lately the navy board is experimenting with old recipes for Greek fire, the fluid that ignites with water and burns like the fire of Hades. Made of quicklime, saltpeter, sulphur, and bitumen, though the exact recipe is a secret kept by London. They heard rumors the French are equipping their fighting ships with it.”

“We need to see how you burn a rock,” Woolford said.

The officer seemed reluctant to go further. He sent for the gunner's mate, who knelt at a wooden chest lined with straw. Inside was a smaller chest that was divided into a dozen smaller compartments, each of which was lined with sawdust. He carefully extracted a small glass jar. Duncan exchanged a pointed glance with Sagatchie. They had seen such a chest, in the red-eyed canoe.

Back on the main deck the gunner's mate produced an old cracked
ceramic bowl, a bucket, and a long grappling hook. He upturned the bowl in the bottom of the bucket and poured the jar's acrid-smelling contents over it. “Ye paint yer rock like this,” the mate explained, “then toss on some water.” He quickly hung the bucket at the end of the pole and extended it from the ship's side, over the lake. “Greek fire be like a viper. If y'er gonna release it git away fast.” As he spoke the captain used the ladle from the water butt to toss a few drops into the bucket. Instantly the bowl burst into white flame, and the mate lowered the pole to set the bucket adrift. “It has to burn itself out. Water just makes it angrier.” The bucket began to tilt, its molten contents spilling into their wake. They stared in uneasy silence as a narrow line of burning water traced their passage over the blackened lake.

IT SEEMED DUNCAN had barely lain down when the pounding of feet overhead awoke him. He rolled off his hammock and was far enough up the ladder to hear the frightened shout that came from the lookout.

“Boat ahead, port bow!” came the call from the mizzentop. The sailor quickly corrected himself. “Vessels on the starboard and port bow!” he called to the deck. “Blessed Mary!” he moaned a moment later. “The buggers are everywhere!” he shouted in desperate confusion.

Moments later Duncan had joined the captain on the lower shrouds, studying the shore they were now hugging. At first he saw nothing but a long point of land, then he thought he was glimpsing scores of logs in the water beyond the point. As he focused his glass the captain uttered a fearful gasp and cast a worried glance at his limp sails, then extended the telescope to Duncan.

It was not logs coming toward them. Duncan looked down into the anxious faces of Woolford and Sagatchie.

“Canoes,” he reported, “Fifty or more, full of warriors. The half-king's men.”

The captain's voice cracked as he called out orders to his meager crew. “Battle stations!”

“No,” Duncan said.

“My cannons may be small, sir, but those vessels are fragile.”

“They are fast and able to come at us from all sides,” Woolford rejoined from the rail below them. “If just twenty of those warriors make it on board, we are finished.”

“What do you suggest?” the captain asked, looking in despair at his pennant. The wind was quickly dying. They were as unlikely to outrun the canoes as outfight them.

Duncan and Sagatchie stepped to the rail and studied the advancing warriors. The sailors on deck seemed frozen in fear. They had all seen the gutted men sent back by the half-king.

“I always wanted to play the admiral,” Conawago suggested with a sly grin.

Duncan gazed at his friend in confusion, but Woolford's eyes lit with understanding, and the ranger turned to the captain. “You're going to surrender the ship to the tribes.”

“Never! You saw what they did to the last British who fell into their hands!”

Woolford held up his hand. “Not those tribes.”

Duncan slowly grasped Conawago's intentions. “You and your men must go below and stay out of sight,” he instructed the captain, then he quickly conferred with Woolford and Conawago.

The old Iroquois reacted energetically. By the time the canoes reached the sluggish brig, they were ready. Conawago, with a light in his eyes Duncan had not seen for weeks, stood at the wheel wearing the uniform jacket of the captain, looking every bit the mariner. Ishmael, attired like a cabin boy, stood at his side holding a compass box. All of the old Iroquois were on the deck, each of them wearing an article of clothing borrowed from the crew, who were concealed below, some holding slow match to fire the cannons if desperate measures were called for. Hetty was stretched along the bowsprit, her flinty face aimed outward, looking for all the world like a ship's figurehead.

Sagatchie stood in the mizzentop with his rifle, Kass in the foretop with her bow and quiver. Duncan, alone of the Europeans, stood on deck.

The half-king's men slowed as they reached the ship, spreading out to encircle the brig at the radius of a bowshot. Only one canoe glided forward, its passenger standing, holding a long ceremonial spear. With a chill Duncan recognized Scar, who had directed the torture of the Delaware Osotku and taunted them with his necklace of the man's fingers.

“These are the waters of the Revelator's nation!” the half-king's Huron captain shouted. “You will surrender the king's ship to us!”

Conawago made a show of working the captain's sextant, seeming not to notice the intruders at first. He handed the sextant to Ishmael then made a dismissive gesture toward the Huron. “As you can see, this king's boat has already been surrendered to the tribes in a greater cause.”

“To you?” the Huron scoffed. “An old man and a boy?”

The reply came from old Custaloga, who appeared at the rail holding a boarding pike at his side like a staff. “To the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee.”

“Then you obey the Revelator's summons?”

“Revelator?” the old Oneida chieftain asked, keeping his voice loud enough for those in all the canoes to hear. “I know not of such a man. We obey the summons of the spirits.” The hell dog appeared at his side, baring its teeth toward Scar.

The Huron hesitated a moment, looking at the dog. “To join the Revelator's cause,” he asserted.

Duncan watched uneasily, glancing at the cabin door where the crew waited with weapons at the ready. One misplay and the deck would be running with blood. Custaloga lifted his pike and shook it as if to make sure the onlookers saw the strips of white fur hanging from it over streaks of fresh red paint that looked like dripping blood.

“To patch the hole in the world,” Custaloga declared matter-of-factly. He was revered as a great orator, and he spoke with slow eloquence, gesturing now to the warriors hovering in the canoes. “We are pleased you have
come to join us on this quest. You can be at our side when we all cross over. The navigator sent by the spirits says we have only a few hours remaining. Time enough for you to prepare your death songs.”

The Huron leader opened and shut his mouth several times, but he had no reply. He had seen the faces of his men. Many seemed to sag. Those with weapons in their hands lowered them. Some began backpaddling. The Revelator's warriors had lost their lust for blood.

“Please!” Custaloga continued, “stay with us. You are wise to surround us this way. We need you as our noble vanguard, the first to cross over! The Speaker of the Dead shall tell you which of you shall have the honor to cross over first! She has walked that path many times! Your people will speak of your sacrifice for many seasons to come!” He aimed his pike toward the bow. Tushcona, sitting out of sight below the bowsprit, took her cue to uncover a brazier of smoldering tobacco. Hetty pushed herself up from the bowspirt on which she had been lying, rising up out of the smoke.

When Conawago had told the old Iroquois that Hetty had to look more the role of a spirit chaser, Tushcona had quickly taken charge, demanding the red jacket of one of the brig's marines and ordering Kass to gather up the dead gulls before sending Ishmael for the big cartouche bag she had brought with her.

Even Duncan, aware of the ruse, was unsettled. There was nothing artificial about the creature who hovered over the bow now. Hetty was indeed a spirit chaser. The red coat had been sliced so that not one but two pairs of long gull wings extended from her shoulders and back. Feathers had been sewn with quick stitches along the sleeves. From the red band that covered much of her head dangled long red shreds of cloth looking like bloodstained hair. Along the front, on either temple, had been sewn the head of a seagull. Her hands, inside the feathered sleeves, clutched the legs of a gull, so that instead of fingers appearing at the end of the sleeves, the scaled and clawed feet of the great bird extended.

“Beaver! Bear! Turtle!” she screeched, pointing with one of the horrid appendages to one canoe, then another, and another. She recognized the
markings among the Huron and Mingoes and was calling out the names of their clans toward the sky. “The black snake wind has shown us the way,” she called out. “The honor to be first to leave this world will be yours!” She pointed to another group of canoes. “Wolverine!”

Duncan did not miss the gasp from above and saw Sagatchie instantly raise his rifle. He halted before aiming, controlling his instinct. Custaloga had heard too, and he reflexively pointed his pike at the same group of canoes. The reviled destroyers of the Council hearth so many years before, the clan who had massacred the inhabitants of Onondaga Castle, were within striking distance.