The Ransom of Mercy Carter (11 page)

Mr. Hoyt had been one of the stunned adult captives; wounded, heartsick and stumbling. It was difficult to believe Mr. Hoyt would survive if his journey was like the one Mercy and Sarah were enduring.

“Are you scared of wolves?” asked Ruth.

“No. The men will be back by nightfall. I’m just glad to have my father’s possession in my hands. I think I will never see him again, but now, in some way, I have his power, and I hope his blessing.”

They sat in the silence of the grim woods. The sun went down fast and fiery, the fir trees jagged and black against the vanishing glow.

If Sarah would never see her father again, neither would Mercy see
her
father. Or brothers. Or neighbors. They were separated like ice floes on the river, some tumbling downstream, some caught on the rocks, while Mercy had to walk north.

There was no such thing as home now.

T
HEY LOST
count of days.

Sarah said it was thirty, and Eben said it was thirty-one, while Ruth said it was a hundred. Maybe a thousand.

They walked now up a long slender lake.

It was the end of March or the beginning of April, the time of year when ice changed its mind whether to be ice or water. They were afraid of falling through. At least the Indians were walking first.

“It gladdens me to think that a Mohawk might tumble through the ice,” said Ruth. “I’ve been praying. If the Lord is going to answer any prayer, surely he’ll answer that. He’ll send some Mohawk to a freezing death, his lungs filling with slush, the ice sealing over as he tries to claw—”

“Ruth,” said Eben, “be quiet.”

R
UTH STORMED AWAY
.

She hated the Indians and prayed constantly not to hate her fellow captives as well. They were becoming Indian lovers. Only the stupefied Eliza had avoided it—and that was because she loved Indians so much she had married one. Ruth could not stand the sight of her own Indian, whose Mohawk name Mercy said meant “Otter.” Ruth could not bear to think that Otter owned her, but the other captives easily referred to their Indians as their masters.

Every time Ruth had to step into the woods and be private for a few minutes, she walked farther than she needed to and stayed longer. Now she stomped off the lake and into the hated forest. If only she dared escape. The closer they got to Canada, the more desperate Ruth
felt. She could not be a slave, she could not be an Indian, she could not—

Her foot reached the edge of a crag she had not seen and did not expect.

In the moment of pitching over the cliff, Ruth abandoned hate and thought only of life. She scrabbled frantically. She was just flesh that wanted to go on breathing, and instead would be smashed bones on rocks below. “No!” she cried. “Please, Lord!”

The hand that closed around her and kept her from going over was the hand of the Indian who had slain her father. For a moment they stood balanced on the icy rim, until Ruth let her anger come back. “You murderer,” she said, spitting on Otter. “I should have let myself fall before I let you catch me!” She jerked free and shoved him away.

He fell soundlessly over the precipice.

Thou shalt not kill
.

Ruth lay down and inched forward until she could look over the edge of the cliff to see what had happened.

The force of Otter’s fall had brought snow and rock down upon him. One hand stuck out, and part of his face.

But I say unto you which hear. Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you … And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other
.

What could Jesus have been thinking when he said that? This enemy was the murderer and slaughterer of innocent women and children. Ruth was not going to love him, she would never do anything good unto him, and certainly she was not going to offer him yet another chance to strike her in the face.

She rejoiced that this enemy had no choice about living or dying, any more than her father and brother had had a choice about living or dying.

She thought of her mother, giving water to the wounded French officer, and for that gesture, being left behind. She wondered how Mother felt now, alone in a world where her men had died to save her while she helped their enemies.

The savage was alive, trying with that one hand to dig himself free. A rim of ice fell like knives upon him. Ruth cried out. The Indian made no sound.

Ruth scuttled backward, out of his sight. She could go get help. Or let him die.

It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t supposed to be Ruth who had to love the enemy. That was just a verse you repeated in meeting. She was not going to take it seriously, loving her enemy.

But it was the Word of the Lord.

The Twenty-third Psalm moved through her mind, as warm and sure as summer wind.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures
.

If she broke the commandment and failed to love her
enemy, she would never lie down in green pastures. Not on earth, not in her heart, and not in death.

Ruth worked her way through tangles of thin saplings and around boulders. She slid down rock faces. Sweating and sobbing over terrain that could not have been made by God, only by devils, she reached Otter at last. Her bad lungs sounded like sand rubbed on floors. She dug him out, not carefully. She might have to save him but she would not spare him pain. He was bleeding where ice had sliced him and by now her mittens were shredded, and their blood mingled, flecked scarlet on white snow.

When he was finally on his feet, she said, “It’s not because I wanted to, you know.”

Otter took a short careful step and paused in pain, Ruth thought, though pain did not show on his face. “It’s so I won’t be a killer like you,” she said.

He snapped a branch in his strong hands to use as a cane. Laboriously, they made their way up the cliff, crawling part of the way.

“Actually, I hate you,” said Ruth. Huge hot tears fell from her eyes and she knew that hate was not as simple as that.

Nor were the commandments.

T
HEY REACHED A RIVER
where the water was open, seething and churning over rocks.

We’re going to cross that? thought Mercy. It’s too wide and deep. We’ll drown.

Tannhahorens took off his tobacco necklace. He loved to smoke, as did all the warriors. Since they smoked only when they had time and felt safe, the prisoners also loved it when the men smoked; it meant everybody had time and was safe.

Tannhahorens poured tobacco into his palm. He lifted it toward the sky, calling as the loon called, his voice shivering through the wilderness. Then he faced the river and held, it seemed to Mercy, a conversation with the river. Finally, over the sharp rocks and ripping current, Tannhahorens threw all his tobacco. Every Indian did the same.

The captives stared.

Eliza, who had not spoken once since her husband was struck down, said, “It’s an offering. They give their best to the river, and hope the river will give its best to them.”

They walked upstream, fighting thickets and snarling brooks. When the Indians stopped to kick at a great melting drift, Mercy was too tired even to wonder.

Snow covered a dugout canoe. Forty or fifty feet long, it had been made of one great pine, the center core burned out and chiseled clean. They would paddle the rest of the way.

Mercy lay on fur on the bottom of the dugout, the sounds of water above her head, for she was lower than the surface of the river. Not having to carry her own body was joy. The loons called back for hours, wailing a
long wandering cry, like a bell that would not stop ringing or a sob that would not stop weeping.

Tannhahorens said to Mercy, “It is the speech of the north,” and Mercy understood.

That wild terrifying beautiful cry was the sound of where she was going.

T
he dugout pulled up to a stone jetty and an Indian town, out of which Indian women and children poured. For a month, Mercy had prayed to reach the end of the journey, and all she wanted now was to be back in the wilderness, with only cold and hunger to worry about.

People flooded over the captives; an entire town running like water over the fields and onto the jetty, raising their arms in proud salute. Mercy tried not to show her terror.

Why
had
the Indians taken captives?

What would happen next?

Lord, Lord
, she said, asking Him to be with her and keep her brave.

Since her mother had died, Mercy had been an adult in her household; bringing up her brothers; making
meals; caring for babies. She had not thought of herself as a child, nor had she been one. Now she knew herself to be eleven years old, small and thin and easily defeated. She could not imagine what these alien people planned to do with her.

She looked to Tannhahorens for help, but he did not glance at her. The man who had lifted her over creeks and fed her parched corn did not exist in front of his people. Mercy had forgotten that what Tannhahorens really was, was a triumphant warrior returning home.

Tannhahorens held up scalps.

Thorakwaneken held up scalps.

Otter and Great Sky and Cold Sun held up scalps.

Eben could not stifle a groan, and Sarah Hoyt, who was closer to Eben than Mercy, put her hand lightly over his. One of the scalps was the heavily braided chestnut-red hair of Eben’s older sister.

The crowd of women and boys and old men whooped continually. It was not the same sound as the howls during the assault; if screams were speech, this was different speech. But it was equally frightening.

“They’re busy,” whispered Ruth. “Let’s just paddle away.”

Joseph and Eben managed to laugh. The dugout was tied to the wharf and there were dozens of warriors within a few yards. Eben did not want to be dragged out of the boat, so he was first to step onto the jetty. He coaxed the girls to follow him. “Don’t look at their
faces,” he said quietly. “Look beyond them at the village.”

The land sloped gently up from the St. Lawrence River, and the village—much larger than Deerfield—was filled with long narrow houses with rounded roofs and no windows. The town was enclosed on three sides by its stockade, while the river formed the fourth side of protection. Beyond the town, muddy and patchy with old snow, were fields for corn. To the east of the town were stone buildings, quite beautiful and quite high. In Deerfield, stone was for foundations and wood was for buildings.

Alongside one of the stone houses stood French soldiers and above their heads flew a French flag. Its graceful gold fleurs-de-lis snapped lightly in the wind.

Mercy’s heart hurt.

She was truly and fully defeated. This was enemy territory. In this place she had two enemies: the French and the Indians. The English flag with its fierce lions, she might never see again.

The crowd descended on her, fingers exploring her yellow hair, black eyes staring into the blue of her own. Mercy got separated from the other captives. She prayed for them: for Eliza to stay stupefied, so she did not know what was happening. For Ruth to stay quiet, so she did not make things worse. For Sarah to stay brave—but Sarah would do that without Mercy’s prayers.

Lord God
, she prayed—and outside the stockade, between the village and the garrison, Mercy saw a church.

She had known that these were Praying Indians, but she had not realized there would be a church. Puritans did not have churches. No building made by man could be sacred. They had meetinghouses and used them to discuss broken fences or ammunition shortages as well as to worship.

Made of stone, gray and strong and serious, the church was where it should be, on a hill and closer to heaven. The roof was sharply pointed, as a roof was meant to be, instead of rounded like those of the Indian houses. On its peak was a cross. Mercy fixed her eyes on the cross. She would never wear one, like Tannhahorens, which would be a sin, but if she happened to see the cross in the sky, that would be God’s will.

Lord, stay with me
, prayed Mercy Carter.

T
HERE WERE SPEECHES
, none of which Mercy could follow.

There were presentations of prizes taken from Deerfield, distributed with much hollering and stomping. There went the flintlock musket Sarah had held, with her father’s initials carved in the wood. There went the packet of Benny’s fishhooks and the pewter cider mug that belonged to the Catlins. There was the shiny dark red quilt stitched in England by Eben’s grandmother:
countless tiny stitches forming a garden of puffy flowers and climbing vines.

The Indian women exclaimed over it. They knew what it was to put that many stitches into cloth.

One of the prizes was Joseph. In his Indian clothes, you could hardly tell he was English, and they walked him through the crowd to be petted and stroked.

People drifted up and wandered off and Mercy caught a glimpse of Joseph’s sister Rebecca standing on the edge of the crowd with two Indian women! And then, far to the rear, Eunice Williams! So she had not fallen off her sled. The other parties must have moved more quickly—found more game, perhaps—or taken a better route. And there was Sally Burt, still huge, and her husband! Who would have thought Sally could survive?

Mercy caught their eyes, one by one.
Be brave
, they seemed to say.
It’s not so bad
.

But for Eben, who in height and weight and strength was a man, it was going to be so bad.

Tannhahorens and Thorakwaneken walked off the jetty to smoke and laugh with warriors they had not seen in weeks. Then the captives were prodded out onto the packed dirty snow and arranged in a line.

From here, Mercy could see that this town was far more of a fort than Deerfield. Not only was the soldiers’ garrison up high, and made of stone so it could never burn, but hanging over the water were three cannon,
black holes staring grimly. Were the English ever to be so foolish as to sail north from Boston, hoping to defeat the French here, their ships would be blown to pieces.