Original Death (5 page)

The corporal grabbed the gun with a sour look, then cocked it, aiming it in Duncan's direction before tossing his ax to Duncan's feet and marching to a log by the nearby stream. Duncan gathered his neck strap into a coil, pulled the loop over his head and tucked it into his belt, then paused for a silent prayer with his palm on the venerable tree before moving toward some sturdy saplings.

As Duncan worked at cutting poles, Sagatchie consulted the sky, the wind, the surrounding trees, and finally a hawk circling high above before selecting a sunlit patch above a short waterfall. The Mohawk made a round of each of the scaffolds, murmuring quiet words, as Duncan worked the posts into the earth.

There should be other rites, Duncan knew, daylong rites spoken by wise old sachems and tribal matrons, with loved ones joining in, but for Hickory John there was no sachem but Conawago, no matrons, no clan members to gather and recall the heroic deeds of his long life. Like Conawago he was of a disappearing breed, not just because he was Nipmuc but because he was a woodland Indian. Perhaps his greatest achievement of all was that he had survived from the time of the endless forest, from a world that had not known the boundless ambition of Europeans.

Duncan again choked away his questions about Conawago, determined not to break the reverence of the place. At last they were ready to
raise the dead man onto the platform. As they pulled the shroud from the body, Sagatchie seemed to grow more troubled. He looked to the sky and spoke something that sounded like an apology.

“Your friend,” he suddenly said to Duncan. “The Nipmuc with the kind eyes.”

“Conawago.”

“Conawago,” Sagatchie repeated with a nod. He spoke in a low voice, nearly a whisper. “He told me you were trusted by the dead. That you could read them. Why did he say that? What did he mean?”

“Sometimes the dead can leave behind questions they need to be answered. There were many questions left at Bethel Church.”

“But you did not even know him.”

Duncan recognized the invitation in the warrior's voice and saw the nervous way Sagatchie looked at the other dead, as if unsure they would approve. Duncan knelt beside Hickory John. “Did you?”

Sagatchie looked into the dead man's face as he spoke. “Towantha wandered through the towns of the Haudenosaunee when I was young, never staying more than a few weeks in one place, though my mother once asked him to live with us in our longhouse, with our clan. You could see he was lonely, but he always embraced life's joys. He would carve things, beautiful things. Bowls with stags leaping along their sides. Pipes for the old men, war clubs for the young ones. He was always looking for something. At first it was for a sign of his people, who had been forced long ago from their homes along the Hudson. Later it was sacred places. He knew about places no one else did. When I stood no higher than a yearling deer, he took me to a cave with paintings of bison and huge bears and told me it showed the lives of people from before time, from tribes who only live in the spirit world now.”

Sagatchie walked slowly around the body. “They will take long to paint his life on the other side,” he added, then gestured Duncan toward the dead Nipmuc and stepped away to gather cedar wood from the stream.

Duncan clenched his jaw and lifted the dead man's hands, both of which had been crushed, studying their ruin of broken bones and cuts.
He lifted away the shirt, noticing that someone had tried to wipe away the bloodstains. A cloth, which Duncan recognized as one of Conawago's precious linen handkerchiefs, had been placed over the hole in his chest. Duncan lifted the linen to probe the wound, then moved to the bruises and cuts that covered the dead man's face and shoulders. When he finished he gazed silently at the dead man, recollecting how he had been killed differently than the others, and separately. The others had died in a row, with Hickory John facing them. He had been forced to watch them die. Duncan looked up to find that Sagatchie had lit a small fire and was extending a piece of smoldering cedar wood around and under the scaffold. The fragrant smoke would attract the spirits.

“First he was bludgeoned,” he explained when the Mohawk paused at his side.

“I know not this word.”

“Beaten with something. I saw a bloody wheel spoke in his shop. They beat him, and then they broke his fingers, probably with the hammer that killed the others. The breaks don't line up, which means his killers broke his fingers one by one, probably laying each one on his anvil. They knew who he was, knew they were destroying his ability to work, to carve those animals and make his wheels.”

Sagatchie considered Duncan's words for several heartbeats. He clenched his jaw. “You are saying they made sure he took long to die.”

“He suffered long,” Duncan agreed.

Sagatchie spoke to the dead man now. “Like a captured warrior who frightened his enemies.”

The words caused Duncan to hesitate. The Nipmuc had indeed died a warrior's death. “I think he was tortured for some knowledge,” Duncan continued, “some secret, and when he would not talk they lined up the others in front of him. I think the raiders meant to leave no witnesses in any event, but they made sure to kill the others in front of him, slowly, one at a time, meaning to break him. When they finished with the others and he still did not speak, they found another way to threaten him.” Duncan
touched the strange medallion he had found in front of the Nipmic's body, still in his pocket. “He finally spoke, and they finished him with a blade to his chest.”

Sagatchie frowned, as if not certain he could accept Duncan's words. “You speak as though you were there with the killers, like Sergeant Hawley said.”

“I was trained as a healer, to understand the many ways of the human body. I came with Conawago to celebrate with Hickory John, not to bury him.”

Duncan returned Sagatchie's intense stare. It was the way Conawago had studied him when they had first met. It was as if certain members of the tribes could see into another human in ways unknown to others. Sagatchie took a beep breath and raised a hand to the sky. Duncan was not certain what had just happened, but the distrust was gone from Sagatchie's voice when he spoke.

“Your friend would not let go of this one when we found him,” the Mohawk said. “He was wild in the eyes and frail in the body. I took him to a bed in one of the houses.”

Relief washed over Duncan. Conawago was safe.

Sagatchie made one more solemn circuit around the body, holding the smoldering wood near it. “You are finished?”

When Duncan nodded, Sagatchie gestured for Duncan to help remove the dead Nipmuc's shirt. “They must see the greatness of the man who is coming to their door,” the Mohawk declared, and he pointed to the intricate designs tattooed over much of Hickory John's upper torso. Each of the tattoos told a story, Duncan knew, stories of great achievements and spiritual victories, some no doubt lost in the fog of time. Some might well be from rituals no longer known by the tribes. Duncan found himself looking back at the trail. Conawago should be here, Conawago would recognize the stories.

Sagatchie touched the small amulet pouch hanging from his neck, which Duncan knew contained a token of his protector animal spirit, then
lifted his face to the sky. “Hear me, oh great ones! I am Sagatchie of the Wolf clan, born of the Mohawk! I give you Towantha of the Nipmuc people! He knew how to release the spirits that live inside wood. He brought joy to the young of the tribes. As a boy he ran in forests that had been untouched by ax and saw.” The Mohawk ran his fingers along the tattoos, gazing at them as if reading from a book. “He journeyed to the big water. He carried wampum belts to the Huron to seek peace between our peoples.” A twig snapped, and they looked up to see several deer. The animals were not frightened, but seemed to be listening. Sagatchie raised a hand in their direction as if in respectful greeting then continued, studying another tattoo of wavy parallel lines and small horned animals. His brow furrowed for a moment then lit with surprise. “He journeyed long ago to the great Mississippi and saw bison that covered the land like blades of grass.”

As he gazed upon the dead Nipmuc, Duncan regretted more than ever that he and Conawago had not met the man. Surely if Hickory John had kept up his search, the two men would have connected. But he had given up and settled in the little community of Indians who followed a god not his own, making implements for people not his own, so he could give young Ishmael a steady life.

As Sagatchie rose, Duncan silently followed his gestures and lifted Hickory John to the high platform. He knew some of the death chant from sitting at Conawago's side at all too many burials, and he joined in Sagatchie's singsong prayer as they set natural adornments around the body. A twig of crimson maple leaves. A turtle shell. A clump of star moss. The skull of a small mammal.

Duncan folded Hickory John's shirt and laid it under the dead man's head, then he reached into a pouch at his belt and extracted a handful of precious salt. He poured the salt into a small pile on the linen near one of the dead man's ears, then sifted a handful of loose soil into a pile by the other ear.

“It is one of the old ways of my tribe,” Duncan explained, answering the query in the warrior's eyes. “Earth for the corruptible body, salt for the everlasting spirit.”

Sagatchie slowly nodded. “I cannot read all the stories. Someone should be here to speak the full tale of his life,” he said in a forlorn tone. “The women of his tribe should sing songs of lamentation all night. There should be a condolence of at least a week for one such as he.”

“Conawago will have songs when he comes,” Duncan offered.

The Mohawk cast a hesitant glance at Duncan. He seemed about to say something, but he turned to survey the forest floor and pointed to a fallen log. Duncan helped lift the log, and with a grunt of satisfaction Sagatchie swept up a small ring-necked snake. He held the snake close, whispering to it, then gently laid it on the dead man's breast. With an approving nod he watched the snake slither around his neck and disappear into the makeshift pillow.

The whicker of the horse broke the spell. It was late. They would have to hurry if they were to reach the settlement before nightfall. Sagatchie turned from the scaffold then hesitated and pulled a piece of paper from his belt and began to place it on the folded shirt. Duncan suddenly recognized it and put a restraining hand on the Mohawk's arm.

“That is Conawago's, a treasured letter sent by Hickory John.”

“He said I was to leave it with the body. He said those on the other side had to see it.”

Sagatchie did not resist when Duncan pulled the tattered paper from his hand. He, like Conawago, knew the elegant script and words by heart. The pain of the murder stabbed him anew as he read it one last time. When he finished his eyes were moist. “Surely this is something Conawago himself should do,” Duncan said. “He can bring it here tomorrow.”

“You do not understand, McCallum. Your friend is not coming.”

“But he is in the village resting, you said. He will want to come here, to sing the Nipmuc songs.”

“I said I took him to a house to rest. But he left after sleeping two hours. He had a wound on his shoulder that had bled through the bandage, so Madame Pritchard changed it. He was eating some stew brought by those farmers, and talking with them, walking around the room as if
to get strength back in his legs. I was keeping watch outside so they would not be disturbed. He found something, then spoke urgently with them. Suddenly he picked up his pack and rifle and climbed out a window. He nodded his thanks to me as he climbed out, then ran across the pasture to the northwest. His face was like a storm.”

Sagatchie took the letter, and Duncan watched in silence as the Mohawk reversed the fold so that the original address was on the outside. Duncan glimpsed words he had not seen before, scrawled along the back. He took the paper once more and held it in the sunlight.
Stay silent between the worlds
, the first sentence read, in Hickory John's hand though not as elegant as the words inscribed inside. They seemed to have been written hastily, as an urgent postscript, as if Hickory John had made a discovery just as he posted the letter.
Hasten
, it said at the end,
this is how we first die
.

“This is how we first die,” Duncan did not realize he had repeated the words until he looked up and saw the Mohawk. Sagatchie had gone very still. “What does it mean?” Duncan asked.

Sagatchie stared at the dead man. The warrior reached out and held the scaffold as if he had suddenly grown weak. He looked mournful again, but also worried. “It means this old wheel builder was one of the few who could save us.”

Suddenly the surly corporal shouted, complaining that they were losing daylight. Duncan stared at the Mohawk. The Mohawk stared at the dead Nipmuc. When the corporal threw a rock to get their attention, Sagatchie spun about as if he were going to attack the man. Duncan silently looped the prisoner strap over his head and handed the end to the Mohawk ranger, who reached up to touch the dead man one more time. The prisoner led his captor out of the grove of the dead.

The corporal, riding the horse now, led them back to the settlement at a fast pace through the lengthening shadows. Sagatchie remained in his melancholy mood. He remained silent even when the corporal paused as the buildings came into view and demanded the prisoner strap so he could force Duncan to follow at a half trot for their arrival in the village.