Original Death (38 page)

“We'll be here when you are ready to leave,” she said in French, turning to the haggard woman beside her, who was admiring the dog, and beginning a conversation.

They worked their way down another block of merchants then Tatamy signaled for them to wait in the shadows of an alley as two officers in uniformed finery passed by, speaking with excited gestures, toward the ramparts.

“Pretty lacebacks,” Ishmael whispered at Duncan's side.

As the boy stepped away, he grabbed his shoulder. “Lacebacks. Why did you say that?”

Ishmael shrugged. “Lacebacks,” he said again, pointing to the officers' uniforms whose lace collars were visible below blue tricorns. “Lacebacks flutter around. Like Osotku said. I told you they took me to see him, to scare me. He said to me ‘black angels and lacebacks flutter around.'”

Duncan had heard the words too but had dismissed them as the ravings of a dying man.

“You knew what he meant?”

“Not until later. That night they came to look at Conawago and Hetty, the half-king's oracles. A French officer and a priest. I guess he was what you call a priest. Fancier than a monk. He wore a robe but also a gold necklace and a black cloak with red lining. A laceback and a black angel.”

Fancier than a monk. A French officer and someone high in the Roman church had come to observe the half-king's progress. He waited until the rest of his companions had followed Tatamy then warily stepped behind them as the Mohawk led them to the stone tower. They were being taken to the center of the Roman church in Canada.

In his youth Duncan had seen cathedrals the size of the one Tatamy led them to, but they had all been in ruins, laid waste by Calvin's reformers. Despite his foreboding, he longed to linger to study the stained glass and the gothic carvings along the pews and altars, but Tatamy hurried them through, to a small arched door behind a row of confessional booths. The northern chieftain paused to be sure they were not followed before opening the door. He lifted a lit lantern hanging on the inside wall and led them down a flight of stone stairs, cupped from long use. Tatamy had identified a long two-story stone building across the courtyard from the cathedral as the seminary, and as they entered a long passageway, Duncan realized they were being led toward it, underground. He assumed the second door that Tatamy led them through would open to another staircase. Instead they reached a small antechamber leading to a low door, heavy with iron studs and an iron cross nailed to its center. The Mohawk gave four slow knocks, and after several moments they heard the sound of a deadbolt being released.

A small man in a monk's robe greeted Tatamy in the tribal tongue, then hurriedly introduced himself as Brother Xavier before turning toward a large candlelit table in front of a smoldering hearth. The chamber looked as though it had been built for storage of foodstuffs, but there was no longer any evidence of supplies. One wall of the vaulted chamber was nearly covered by a fading tapestry with the crucifixion scene, at the top of which hung rich pelts and ornate tribal spears. Draped over the shelves of books and manuscripts that lined the other walls were more than a dozen beaded wampum belts. Brother Xavier settled into a chair before a large manuscript volume, pushed his unkempt greying hair back on his nape, and took up his quill as if they had interrupted him in some urgent task of scholarship.

Even after Tatamy had gathered the group in front of the broad table, the man kept writing. Finally he looked up, with a smile on his long, thin face. “One of my favorite entries in this chronicle is from 1689,” Brother Xavier declared in a refined voice, “when our blessed cathedral was still being built. A young Huron arrived with the tale of a white stag that had appeared along the banks of the inland sea, the great lake that takes the name of his tribe. He said the stag had come to them through a gate to the spirit world, to heaven. One of the young monks named Pierre who was being prepared to go live among the Hurons insisted on going back with the warrior. He was never heard from again. Years later that same Huron returned with one of the fur convoys and told a peculiar tale. He and the monk had found that stag. It let them follow it until they came to a valley thick with fog, though all the surrounding land was under a clear blue sky. The stag waited as if expecting them to continue into the fog with it, and Brother Pierre said it must be the way across, that they must have need of a monk on the other side. The Huron was too frightened, but Brother Pierre went on. Neither he nor the stag were ever seen again. No trace was found of him except his Bible, lying on a perfectly circular rock in a perfectly circular clearing.”

Tatamy glanced at Conawago. The Mohawk chief seemed disturbed
by the tale, but Conawago wore a calm smile. The monk at the table seemed to see only the old Nipmuc. “What will you say, Conawago of the Nipmuc, when you meet Brother Pierre on the other side?”

“I will ask him if the moon was full on the night he left this world.”

“The moon?”

“My mother told me of a white stag that was able to fly through the sky whenever the moon was full. She called it the spirit stag.”

The monk's face filled with wonder. He lifted his quill and quickly wrote on a scrap of paper, then rose and spread out his arms. “
Bienvenue
!” he offered, his greeting warmer this time. “We are honored to have the companions from the Council with us.” Xavier gestured to the volume on his desk. “I am keeper of the archives.” Duncan glanced around the room again. The chambers where monks worked at manuscripts were usually well lit by windows and mirrors. Xavier preferred to work in shadows.

Conawago inched in front of Ishmael, as if the boy needed protection. Brother Xavier smiled again. He seemed to know much about his visitors. “There are entries about a Nipmuc boy in the last century,” he said to Ishamel, stepping to the side to be able to see the boy more clearly. “He would have been about your age, a lad of great promise, a student in the Ville de Quebec who was sent to our seminary as a novice, one of the first of the tribes to wear our robes. He was even taken to France and introduced to the king, who was enchanted with him. They spoke long into the night about the beasts of the New World. Louis XIV was fond of the notion that the natives of our woodlands were the lost tribes of Israel. The king nearly choked with delight when the boy said he had always assumed the Israelites were a lost tribe of the Americas.” Brother Xavier's smile took on an air of melancholy. “But we have no Israelites to show us the way today. Just a band of . . .” the sweep of his arm took in Duncan, Conawago, Sagatchie, Kass, and the elders, “brave voyageurs.”

“Whom you have invited into the belly of the monster,” Duncan added. He was uneasy being at the mercy of a French monk, trapped underground. The church was known for working closely with the French
army. Black angels were working with lacebacks. Their lives hung on the thin thread of their trust in Tatamy. A squad of soldiers outside the solitary door would mean the end of them all.

“You dishonor me, McCallum,” the monk replied in a cool tone. “I gave my oath to the Lord above, not to an earthly king.” He opened a heavy tome at the side of his table. “Our prelate opposed this when my old teacher started it. It is still considered wrong by some, even a sacrilege. But I persevere, continuing the work of translation.”

First Duncan, then Conawago, stepped forward to leaf through the book. It was a Bible written in the language of the Mohawks. As he pushed the book toward Conawago, Duncan exposed correspondence underneath.

“I do not want more blood spilled,” Xavier declared as he dropped another book over the letters, though not before Duncan cast a surreptitious glance at them. Several were written in Italian. Two more were addressed to Logtown, the largest settlement of the Mingoes, and Fort Detroit, largest of the French forts in the West. “The tribes must settle tribal differences among themselves. They must stop being used by European generals.” He gestured to the chronicle of the missionaries. “When our brothers first landed here, they were certain they had found the lambs of God. They were naive. They were in thrall to the arrogant rulers in Rome who were themselves blinded by the gold and jewels of Vatican robes. They thought they had but to shepherd the lambs. They paid for it dearly. Nearly every missionary we sent among them in the early years died, and never easily. The deaths are recorded here in hideous detail. I was among those missions. I ventured with five other brothers into the West. The tribes tortured my comrades in front of me and sent me back to bear witness. But I went back, again and again. Most of me survived.” He held up his left hand, and for the first time Duncan saw that it was missing two fingers.

The blast of a cannon, another solitary ranging shot, shook the walls. Tushcona, clearly unsettled, began low whispered prayers, clutching her amulet. The sound of the cannon seemed to prod the monk, to make his words more urgent. “They died true martyrs, do not mistake me, but their
deaths were wasted. Rome kept viewing our mission as a conquest and kept dispatching their Christian soldiers to subjugate the wayward flock of the New World. For decades they refused to allow arms to be given to the tribes of the North since that was inconsistent with their vision of the natives as lambs. When the Dutch and English armed their traditional enemies, many in the northern tribes died needlessly. Rome's version of the truth has pushed the tribes into slow death.”

The thunder of another gun interrupted the Jesuit, shaking the walls. He glanced resentfully in the direction of the blast.

“The history of the Jesuits is filled with contradiction,” Conawago observed.

“Because they think the tribes are their children!” Xavier shot back, fire suddenly in his voice. “That is the error of their ways! The tribes are not the lambs of God! They are the lions of God!” His voice dropped to a near whisper. “They are the means by which we save our corrupted souls!”

Tushcona's whispers stopped, as did Duncan's breathing.

It was Conawago who broke the silence. “The claws of these particular lions are not the tools of the Vatican.”

“Are you deaf!” Xavier snapped. “Do you hear nothing I say? That is the error of our ways! Rome has its holy saints and disciples just as the tribes have their holy spirits of the trees and water, but there is only one god, not one God from Rome and one who sits on the great turtle's back directing the ways of copper men. There is one, and he watches over our grand chess game to see which side is worthy to survive.”

Duncan eyed the fierce, enigmatic Jesuit, wondering how many sides there were in the game Xavier played.

“Tell me something, Brother Xavier,” Duncan asked, “are you familiar with the chieftains in the western lands?”

Xavier held up his maimed hand again. “The chieftains long ago accepted that I had paid my passage. I have spent many years in the Ohio country, have even seen the mighty Mississippi. I am a familiar face to all those tribes, and to those who trade with them.”

Duncan realized that he had misunderstood Xavier, just as Woolford had not appreciated the contradictions of the Jesuits when he chose not to probe the Jesuit message route. He looked back up at the skins and spears hanging over the tapestry of martyrdom, then at the beaded belts hanging casually from the shelves. The belts, meaningless to almost every European, were the perfect medium for secret messages. A message on one could be hidden in plain sight. Xavier was no monkish scholar. Here was the secret communications center Woolford had been seeking, the nexus of the messages between the French and the half-king. The messages had been carried by the Jesuits, who regularly traveled between east and west. Xavier was a deputy of the half-king. And he had summoned them for a purpose.

Xavier fixed him with the smile of a conspirator. “There is little time left and much to do. The pieces fall together like the gears of a clock. But old feuds are difficult to extinguish. I need you to understand that only one thing stands in the way of the tribes' true destiny, preventing them from coming together at last in all their glory.”

“The Iroquois Council,” Duncan inserted. “But the Council will never join the cause if their children are killed or enslaved.”

Xavier gave an approving nod. “Exactly. Regis overreacts. He must learn that chess is won with subtle moves.”

“Regis?” Conawago asked.

Xavier made a dismissive gesture. “Before he became a leader of the western tribes, the Revelator had another name.”

Duncan recalled how the half-king had fluently spoken English and French. Regis. It had the sound of a trader's son, of a half-breed. The crossed boy, Osotku had said as he died.

“He is too bold by half in dealing with the Iroquois League,” the monk continued, “and he corrupts his cause by stealing their children. He was taught better. Now he talks of riches and bounties and bribes. But he has been taught that gold and silver corrupts the soul as much as the rum he loathes. It does not build on the strength of the tribes he wishes to lead. He spent so long in war parties that he forgets how to negotiate.”

“So we have been brought to his peace chief?” Duncan said.

The suggestion brought a thin smile to Xavier's face. “He deludes himself and must be shown he can win his crown without stooping to the greedy ways of European kings. Our lust for gold is a disease of the soul! We must show ourselves immune!”