The Ransom of Mercy Carter (15 page)

Mercy’s aunt, grandmother, Snow Walker and three friends of Nistenha’s had been discussing earring choices. It was time for a trip to Montréal, said Nistenha, so Mercy could choose earrings at the French market. Indian women had whole baskets of earrings and Mercy must have at least one pair of her own.

Sadly, Mercy put her hands up to remove the earrings. Snow Walker very gently stopped her and positioned herself between Mercy and Ruth.

Instead of giving Snow Walker a shove, Ruth said, “Montréal is wonderful, Mercy. It’s a real city. Wait till you see what French women wear. Their dresses shine, and they have tiny little shoes and their hair is full of ribbons, and Mercy, they even wear scent! The buildings are stone and the nuns who have Eliza live in a building four or five times as large as our meetinghouse in Deerfield. Maybe ten times larger. The nuns dress like Father Meriel. Long black gowns with hoods and white collars and huge crosses and knotted cords at their waists.”

“No English,” said Nistenha.

“I’ll say anything I want,” Ruth told her. “Anyway, nothing about Montréal matters. Even your earrings don’t matter. I have news, Mercy.”

“News?”
My brothers, thought Mercy. She leaped up, hope racing from heart to feet. “Sam?” she whispered. “John? Benny?”

Ruth yanked her outside.

“My brothers!” cried Mercy.

Nistenha and Snow Walker came outside with them.

“I didn’t see your brothers,” said Ruth. “I didn’t see anybody. But we’ll all see each other soon. It turns out that Boston has a very important French prisoner. A man named Batiste, who has been sinking English ships for years, but they caught him. They should have hanged him as a pirate, but instead he’s in jail. The French want him back. The whole reason they came to Deerfield and got so many prisoners was so they could force Boston to exchange Batiste
for
us!”

“My brothers, Ruth. Did you learn anything? Sam? John? Benny? Did you see any of the fathers and mothers? And Daniel—I’ve never stopped worrying about Daniel.”

“Munnonock,” said Nistenha sharply, “no English. Spukumenen, go home.”

“My name is Ruth,” said Ruth, who never cared if they got angry with her. “What right do you have to take away my language?” she snapped at Nistenha. “You’re just a nasty old squaw.”

Squaw
was more of an English word than a Mohawk word, and it was neither polite nor friendly. Mercy didn’t like hearing it used for Nistenha. Besides, Indian daughters did not talk back to their mothers or aunts. It was as bad as swearing had been in Deerfield. Mercy looked away from Ruth.

“Munnonock, go indoors,” said Nistenha. “Spukumenen, no English.”

“No!” shouted Ruth. “You Mohawks took my family, my home and my town. You will not have my tongue as well.”

Mercy felt as if they were both slapping her face.

Ruth’s eyes were fierce. She grabbed Mercy with hands that were hot and fevered. “Mercy, stop letting things happen. Tannhahorens and Nistenha want you for their daughter. You cannot let that happen. If they adopt you, they will not sell you home. You will be here
forever
. Thirty years, even! They will marry you to an Indian boy. Tannhahorens and Nistenha don’t have children, Mercy. You would be their hope for sons. Do not cooperate. Remember that Tannhahorens is nothing but a murderer. Do not allow them to put earrings in your ears or baskets in your hands. Don’t pray with Father Meriel. Don’t kneel during Mass.
Ransom is coming.
”

B
y summer, Kahnawake children had stopped wearing clothing.

Mercy could not get over the sight of hundreds of naked children playing tag, or hide-and-seek, or competing in footraces. The boys—naked!—went into the woods to shoot squirrels and rabbits and patridge. They used bow and arrow, since their fathers did not like them using guns yet. Even the six- and seven-year-olds had excellent aim.

Joseph didn’t go entirely bare, being a little too old, but wore a breechclout, a small square of deerskin in back and another square in front, laced on a slender cord. The boys played constantly. They were stalking, shooting, running, chasing, aiming, fishing, swimming—they never sat down.

The men, however, mainly rested. They liked to
smoke and talk, and when they were showing a son or nephew or captive how to feather an arrow or find ducks, they did it slowly and sometimes forgot about it in the middle.

A Puritan must rise before dawn and never take his ease. Puritans believed in working hard. But for an Indian man, working hard was something to do for an hour or a week. After he killed the moose or fought the battle, an Indian took his ease. Hunting men and animals was dangerous; he deserved rest afterward, and besides, he had to prepare himself to do it again. A Deerfield man didn’t risk much plowing a field. A Kahnawake man risked everything going into a cave to rouse a sleeping bear.

Mercy was outdoors more than she had ever been.

She had thought that after the horrifying journey of ice and snow, she would never want the outdoors again. But spring and summer were joy.

“You’re not joyful because you love the outdoors,” said Ruth. “It’s because you don’t have to be afraid of the Indians anymore. Anything they could do, they’ve already done.” Ruth was in a terrible mood because ransom had never arrived.

Joanna said Ruth was in exactly the same mood she had always been, and if only fire
would
eat Ruth, everybody would be happier.

Every night, Mercy obeyed her uncle Nathaniel and remembered. She was careful about it, though. Some
memories must not be taken out, or they brought on homesickness. It hurt to pull up the misty image of her mother sitting at the loom, smiling as the pattern of her weaving appeared. She did like to remember her father’s deep voice as he read the Bible, working his way through all sixty-six books and then starting over as soon as he finished. She would remember the children falling asleep in laps; flames casting soft shadows over beloved faces. Her memories were sweet and warm. But when she shared this, Ruth demanded, “Tell me one thing sweet and warm about the attack.”

Ruth was lucky to see things clearly. Mercy was losing track of who had done what to whom. Every day it seemed less important to remember the attack. Memory was passing away like morning fog, first gray, then clear, then gone.

Father Meriel called this forgiveness.

Ruth called it forgetting, and she called it evil.

Mercy also knew that they were not living in ordinary Indian ways. Her Indians were Frenchified. They were Catholic. But before any of that, they were Indian and carried with them the ancient feuds of their tribes.

Especially during ball games, when the men bet so much and played so hard, the teams divided along tribal lines. Mercy would feel, between the Abenaki and the Mohawk and the Huron, history she did not have and did not want to have.

She was always relieved when ball games were over.
They generally ended in laughter, payment of bets, men’s arms around each other’s shoulders as they went off the field. But not always. There were times when tempers on the playing field were tempers on a battlefield and Mercy would pray for peace.

More often, she just wasn’t home. In summer, Indian women rambled as much as the men. They wandered far afield for every berry in its season. They foraged for birds’ eggs and tasty greens. They went night fishing in creeks, one holding the torch to bring the fish to the surface, another perched on the rocks to spear the fish when it rose to the light. When they came home, they weeded among the pumpkins and fat dark beans and rows of tobacco.

There was no end to the sewing, any more than there had been in Deerfield. Mercy learned to shape moccasins and get a needle through thick bear fur to make a hat. She learned how to paint designs on hides, to embroider with European beads or with shells and feathers. She would sit outside, crosslegged like Nistenha, enjoying the patient labor of needlework and the yellow heat of the sun.

Women and older girls continued to wear skirts, but tunics were stored for the summer. All the girls and women were bare-chested.

“There’s no place you can look without seeing them,” said Ruth grumpily.

Mercy thought about taking off her tunic in public,
but she didn’t. Eunice Williams did, but she was little. Joanna was ready to do it, but she told Mercy she would wait until Ruth was not around to scold.

All the Indian boys and some of the girls loved to swim. They stayed away from the rough currents of the St. Lawrence and spent hours every day splashing in the shallows.

“Come, Munnonock,” said Snow Walker. “I’ll teach you. We swim like dogs and dogs do not sink. You’ll like the water. You’ll feel sleek as an otter.” She took Mercy’s hand. “Come, sister.”

“Mercy,” warned Ruth, “when she calls you sister, you remember your real sister, do you hear me? Your dead sister.”

It was worth going into the water just to get away from Ruth’s nagging. Mercy waded in, appalled by how cold it was. Snow Walker towed her around for a minute and then let go. At first Mercy couldn’t take two strokes without having to stand up and reassure herself that there was a bottom, but soon she could swim ten, and then twenty, strokes. Joseph, who had been swimming with the boys, paddled over to admire her new skill.

Snow Walker coaxed them to put their heads under the water and swim like fish. Mercy loved it. Wiping river water from her eyes and laughing, she shouted, “Come on in, Joanna!” In front of Snow Walker, she spoke Mohawk. “It feels so cool and slippery inside the water.”

Joanna shook her head. “I can’t see where I’m going on land. I don’t want to be blind in water over my head.”

“Ruth!” yelled Joseph, in English so she’d answer. “Try it. I won’t pull you under by the toes. I promise.”

“Savages swim,” said Ruth. “English people walk or ride horses.”

By now, Mercy had flung her tunic onto the grass and was as bare as everybody else. When Ruth scolded, Mercy ducked under the water and stayed there until the yelling was over.

“Just wait till you get out, Mercy,” said Ruth. “The mosquitoes are going to feast on your wet bare skin.”

Mercy translated for Snow Walker, who said, “No, no. We grease to keep the mosquitoes away.”

Joseph, of course, had been greasing for weeks, but so far Mercy had not submitted. Ruth, unwilling to see Mercy slather bear fat over her nakedness, stalked away.

“Good,” said Snow Walker, giggling. “The fire is out. We are safe now.”

Mercy was startled. “I never heard you use her old name.”

“I don’t call her Let the Sky In,” explained Snow Walker. “She would let nothing in but storms.”

Snow Walker’s not such a fence post after all, thought Mercy. “Snow Walker, why have they given Ruth such a fine new name?”

“I don’t know. One day at a feast, the story will be told.”

“They’ll have to gag Ruth before they tell it,” said Joseph. “She hates her new name even more than she hated her old one.”

They got out of the water, racing in circles to dry off, and then Snow Walker rubbed bear grease all over Mercy.

“I can’t see you from here, Munnonock,” said Joanna, “but I can smell you.”

“Want some?” said Mercy, planning to attack with a scoop of bear grease, but Joanna left for the safety of the cornfields and her mother. Snow Walker went back in to join a water ball team.

The two white captives were momentarily alone. They switched into English.

“Mercy,” said Joseph very quietly, “I’m going to be adopted.”

She almost congratulated him. It was what he wanted. He loved Great Sky and Great Sky loved him. But everyone said if you were adopted, you would not be ransomed home. “Don’t tell Ruth, Joseph,” said Mercy anxiously. “She’ll think you have a choice.” In fact, a captive was not asked whether he wished to be adopted; it was the decision of the captive’s owner.

“Father Meriel wants me to be baptized Catholic at the same time.”

Mercy swallowed. “You do have a choice about that, Joseph. You must refuse. You would go to hell, you know it.”

“Father Meriel says Catholics do too save their souls. And I like Mass.” His almost Indian face stared into hers. “So do you, Mercy.”

Last Sunday a visiting priest had taught the congregation a long slow repeating chant in Latin, called the Te Deum. Four hundred Indians sang it together, and Mercy’s heart nearly burst at the beauty of the men’s voices.

The Deerfield frontier had been hard, and God had not made it easier. Just when the sky seemed blue, the children sweet and the crop good, God would fling hail at the corn and smallpox at the babies.

But the French God slipped like a strong shadow behind the path of the Indian spirits. He was a gentler God. In Deerfield, Mercy had been taught to fear the Lord. Father Meriel wanted her to love the Lord. Still, for Joseph to become Catholic …

“I will keep the name I was given on the trail,” said Joseph. “Sowangen.”

“Eagle,” repeated Mercy. It was an honorable name.

“Because from the beginning I was brave,” said Joseph.

“It is so,” said Mercy, and realized that she and Joseph had gone back to Mohawk. What would Ruth say if she found out Mercy’s thoughts were in Mohawk? In that language the words
eagle
and
adoption
had a beauty and a resonance that made Mercy tremble. And my real mother, thought Mercy. What would she say if she
knew that my head spins with Indian words? That I like Mass? That I’m happy for Joseph?

An elm-bark canoe drew up to the stone jetty and the captives turned, as always, to see who it was.

Three white men. Not priests. Nor were they dressed like fur traders. Two stepped easily out of the rocking narrow boat. French officers, Mercy decided, but not in parade dress. Just long guns slung over their shoulders.

Dugouts were so solid you could jump up and down inside the well of the boat, but canoes tipped, and passengers not used to a canoe were terrified of being dumped into the river to drown. The third man, definitely afraid of the canoe, had to be helped out.