The Ransom of Mercy Carter (19 page)

When he married, though, he wisely moved his bride south to a Connecticut farm. No Gillett would be caught in another Indian attack.

Only Carters, thought Mercy grimly.

Such an escape would be harder for a girl.

She must find a protector. Perhaps a priest returning to his French cathedral. A French wife returning to visit her mother in Paris. A kind, fatherly sea captain.

It won’t be hard to leave Kahnawake, she thought. They trust me. Especially after today, warning them about Mr. Williams.

Mercy decided to act immediately, before she thought about it too long and the attempt seemed too frightening.

Nistenha was stirring the stew that had been simmering since the shopping party left in the morning. “May I go back to Montréal by myself tomorrow?” Mercy asked. “I have my two baskets of sassafras to sell. I didn’t see anybody else in the market with sassafras. I want to buy presents for everybody.”

Buying gifts for others was always smiled upon. And the French loved sassafras, believing that it cured anything.

“Yes, Munnonock, you may,” said Nistenha.

As easy as that. Mercy marveled. Tomorrow she would escape. It would be another unknown, but it would be in the direction of freedom.

Mercy Carter was going home.

I
N THE MORNING
, of course, there was Mass.

Mercy was able to look at Father Meriel and see that Mr. Williams was correct. In his swishing black robes, the priest skulked around trying to grab the souls of children whose bodies had already been grabbed by Indians. You almost had me, she thought.

After Mass, the Indian men took advantage of the soft earth to dig out corn barns. These were pits the size of mass graves, to be lined with sheets of birch bark, into which hundreds of baskets of dried corn kernels would be poured. Covered with pine straw, then another layer of birch bark, and mounded with dirt, the corn would stay dry and sweet all winter.

Everything here was corn. Boiled, roasted, baked, ground, dried; combined with squash or kidney beans; with meat; with syrup.

Mercy turned her back on Tannhahorens as he dug out a corn barn. I will never see you again, she thought.

In the longhouse, Nistenha’s stew pot had kidney
beans, chunks of venison and of course corn. While everybody else went to out to shell more corn, Mercy ate heavily to prepare for her escape. She would need money. Sassafras was a good excuse to go into Montréal, but it would not buy her passage.

She could hardly carry off the beaver skins stacked and waiting for Tannhahorens to sell in Albany. But lying beneath Nistenha’s platform was her jewelry box. Tannhahorens was a very successful hunter and trapper, and his wife had fine adornments. Nistenha’s cross was almost as magnificent as Father Meriel’s. Studded with real gems, it had been bought one year when Tannhahorens came upon a great many beaver furs.

Now Mercy wondered exactly how a person “came upon” beaver furs. Did a person slaughter the trapper?
He splits the door
, she thought, raging all over again.

Mercy pulled out the jewelry box and stared down at the splendid cross. Nistenha never wore it in the fields lest the chain break. In the firelight, the facets of the jewels glowed like embers.

I can’t steal, she thought. Certainly not from Nistenha. She never hurt me. I cannot pile that sin on top of my other sins.

Ruth would say:
They stole your life! Your family! Your home! Of course you can take their stupid Catholic cross
.

It was possible to enter a longhouse in silence, because no wooden door creaked, no wooden floorboard groaned, no heavy shoe tromped. Mercy was unprepared
to find Nistenha at her side. Shame made it impossible to look Nistenha in the eyes.

“Yes, daughter,” said Nistenha. “Wear my best cross. This is your first time alone in the city. You must look beautiful. We will be proud.” Nistenha put the chain over Mercy’s head and also slid six silver bracelets up her arm. They were fat bracelets, so that her arm was solid with silver from wrist to elbow.

Money, thought Mercy. I have plenty of money now.

“Come, Munnonock,” said Nistenha. “Spukumenen’s father awaits.”

Ruth
was going into Montréal? Mercy froze. She could not imagine taking Ruth with her. Ruth had never cooperated with anything in her life. Ruth would find a thousand things wrong even with this plan.

Nistenha smiled. “No. Spukumenen stays here. Even she must help with the corn. Her uncles, though, have arrived in Montréal with many furs. Her father, Otter, goes to get them and will take you. You will ride home sitting on top of much beaver.” Nistenha kept fixing Mercy’s hair, although it was perfect; Snow Walker had fussed with it before Mass. “Much depends on you, daughter.”

Mercy said nothing to that, and Nistenha did not elaborate. Together they walked out of the longhouse, out of Kahnawake village and down the steps of the stone jetty.

She had not had to steal the cross. It had been given to her.

I
t was cold on the water.

Otter did not paddle smoothly and icy spray hit Mercy’s face and arms.

She was not wearing the clothing she would have chosen. To go with the glittering cross, Nistenha had insisted upon her best tunic and her finest fur hat. Into her hair, Nistenha had woven shells and bear claws. Hardly the garb of an English girl seeking a cabin on a French ship.

Around them were another two canoes from Kahnawake, men bringing wives and sisters and mothers. Mercy managed to chat about shopping at the same time she stared down the river, holding her breath, praying the ships had not yet sailed. Finally she could make out their masts.

Her plan was still possible.

Otter tied up at one of the small jetties, and the men left to do their trading. Mercy knew by now that they were all smugglers. They claimed loyalty to the French and were always willing to help the French fight the English, but in the end, furs were sold to whatever buyer paid the most. It happened to be the Dutch in Albany. However, since the Dutch promptly sold those furs to England, it was forbidden to sell to the Dutch.

No Mohawk paid the slightest attention to the law.

The Indian women began shopping and exchanging news. There were Norridgewock and Oneida and Cowasuck Indians to talk to; there were French fur traders and jewelers and a display of glass.

Mercy traded her sassafras for a long gray wool cape with a hood. It would wholly cover her Indian clothing. The women protested vigorously; it was dull, it was ugly, Munnonock had a better cape at home. Why not purchase this pink scarf, embroidered in a riot of green leaves and white flowers?

Slowly the women separated, one going to the ironmonger, one to the shoemaker to sell him leather, one to the tattoo artist to buy needles.

Mercy turned down a lane with no shops which led past the enclosed gardens of the convent. In the shadow of the nuns’ world, Mercy pulled her hair out of its braids and flung down the Indian junk tangled in it. Shells and claws. She saw herself as Ruth did; as Cousin
Mary had—a pathetic little English girl trying to curry favor with savages.

Using her fingers to comb her hair, Mercy put on the long gray cloak, and this time she did not cover her hair; its golden sheen and her blue eyes were her proof that she was English.

Then she walked back to the wharf.

S
HE HAD LOST HER FEAR
of small boats. After all, Indians handled canoes well and rarely went out in bad weather, and Mercy could now swim. But how alien were these great vessels, with their rope ladders and furled sails, stinking tar and shouting sailors. Their wooden bodies creaked like a hundred doors. They pulled the floating dock up and down so that everybody standing on it also bobbed and swayed.

She had heard that the sailors slept in hammocks, like Indian babies. Would they give her a cabin? Would she have a tiny room, with a tiny bed and a tiny window? Or would she too have a sling hanging from the ceiling? No matter how much beaver they had on board, no matter what profit they expected from it, surely they would want this jeweled cross as well. They could pry the gems out and set them into necklaces and earrings for their wives or sweethearts.

Mercy steered clear of the French
voyageurs
, who had brought the fur bales to Montréal. They were Indian
lovers and might hold her until Otter came back. It was easy to recognize a
voyageur:
They thought nothing of paddling sixteen hours a day, five miles an hour. Their arms were as big as other men’s thighs.

She was the only girl anywhere and the only child.

A dozen filthy swearing French sailors wrestled with barrels of water they would need for the voyage. Great tangles and whorls of rope lay everywhere. Unsold fish rotted in abandoned baskets.

She had practiced French in her mind, but now she lost the words. She could not even remember the right English words. She possessed only Mohawk.

If Otter or the other men saw her here, what would they do? If the captain did not have space for her, how could she coax him to fit her in anyway? Who was the captain? What if the captain just laughed and sent for Otter?

The dock lurched and Mercy staggered a little.

One of the sailors left the others and sauntered over to her. He was tall and thick-waisted, with a matted beard and a well-chewed pipe.

“Excuse me,” she said, trying to pronounce it in the French way: “ex-cusay mwa.” She tried to smile, and he grinned back. The rotting stumps of his remaining teeth stuck up like pegs next to his grayish tongue. He answered her, however, in French-accented English.

“Girl! English, eh? What is your name? Indians stole you, eh? Tell me. I’ll send news to your people.”

His excellent speech meant that he did a lot of trading with the English. It meant, Mercy prayed, that he liked the English. She found her tongue. “Will you take me to France, sir? Or anywhere at all? Wherever you are going—I can pay.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You do not belong to an Indian?”

She flushed and knew her red cheeks gave their own answer, but rather than speaking, she held out the cross. The sun was bright and the gemstones even brighter.

The man sucked in his breath. He leaned very close to her to examine the cross. “Yes,” he said. “It is worth much.”

He straightened up slowly, his eyes traveling from her waist to her breast to her throat to her hair. The other sailors also straightened, and they too left their work, drawn by the glittering cross.

“So you want to sail with me, girl?” He stroked her cheek. His nails were yellow and thick like shingles, and filthy underneath. He twined her hair into a hank, circling it tighter and tighter, as if to scalp.

“You are the jewel,” he said. “Come. I get a comb and fix this hair.”

The other sailors slouched over. They pressed against
her and she could not retreat. He continued to hold her by the hair, as if she were a rabbit to be skinned. She could see neither river nor sky, only the fierce grins of sailors leaning down.

“Eh bien,”
said the Frenchman, returning to his own tongue. “This little girl begs to sail with us,” he told his men. “What do you say, boys?” He began laughing. “Where should she sleep? What am I bid?”

She did not have enough French to get every word, but it was the same in any language.

The sailors laughed raucously.

Indians had strong taboos about women. Men would not be with their women if they were going hunting or having important meetings, and certainly not when going off to war. She had never heard of an Indian man forcing himself on a woman.

But these were not Indians.

She let the cross fall on its chain and pushed the Frenchman away, but he caught both her wrists easily in his free hand and stretched her out by the wrists as well as by the hair.

Tannhahorens pricked the white man’s hand with the tip of his scalping knife.

White men loading barrels stood still. White sailors on deck ceased to move. White passersby froze where they walked.

The bearded Frenchman drew back, holding his hands up in surrender. A little blood ran down his
arm. “Of course,” he said, nodding. “She’s yours. I see.”

The sailors edged away. Behind them now, Mercy could see two pirogues of Indians drifting by the floating dock. They looked like Sauk from the west. They were standing up in the deep wells of their sturdy boats, shifting their weapons to catch the sun.

Tannhahorens did not look at Mercy. The tip of his knife advanced and the Frenchman backed away from it. He was a very strong man, possibly stronger than Tannhahorens. But behind Tannhahorens were twenty heavily armed braves.

The Frenchman kept backing and Tannhahorens kept pressing. No sailor dared move a muscle, not outnumbered as they were. The Sauk let out a hideous wailing war cry.

Mercy shuddered with the memory of other war cries.

Even more terrified, all the French took another step back—and three of them fell into the St. Lawrence River.

The Sauk burst into wild laughter. The
voyageurs
hooted and booed. The sailors threw ropes to their floundering comrades, because only Indians knew how to swim.

Tannhahorens took Mercy’s hand and led her to one of the pirogues, and the Sauk paddled close, hanging on to the edge of the dock so that Mercy could climb in.
Mercy could not look at the Sauk. She had shamed Tannhahorens in front of them.

Mercy climbed in and Tannhahorens stepped in after her, and the men paddled slowly upstream to Tannhahorens’s canoe. The other pirogue stayed at the wharf, where those Sauk continued to stand, their weapons shining.

Eventually the French began to load the ship again.

“Daughter,” said Tannhahorens, “the sailors are not good men.”

She nodded.

He bent until he could look directly into her eyes, something Indians did not care for as a rule. “Daughter.”

She flushed scarlet. On her white cheeks, guilt would always be revealed.

“The cross protects,” said Tannhahorens. “Or so the French fathers claim. Perhaps it does. But better protection is to stay out of danger.”