The Ransom of Mercy Carter Read online

  “Nistenha,” said the woman, tapping herself to show this was her name.

  “Nistenha,” Mercy repeated dully.

  “Munnonock,” said Nistenha, tapping Mercy.

  “Munnonock,” agreed Mercy.

  Nistenha stopped only three houses away, lifted the flap and ducked inside.

  Sally Burt lay on rugs by the fire, in labor. “Oh, Mercy!” she cried. “Oh, thank God! Hold my hand. I begged them to send for you.”

  For me? thought Mercy, truly honored. Not for Sarah, not for Ruth, who are older and wiser, but for me?

  So Mercy sat, holding Sally’s two hands, while Nistenha and the other women helped and talked in their language and gave Sally medicine to drink.

  “I told myself I wouldn’t scream,” Sally told Mercy. “No matter how much it hurts, I am not going to scream. Indian women probably grunt once and they’re done.”

  Sally and Mercy giggled, although Mercy was terrified. In spite of all the births happening all the time in Deerfield, she had never seen one. Women dealt with it, while children and fathers stayed far away.

  But this was Sally’s first, and she didn’t know what it would be like either.

  “Oh, no!” said Sally. “Oh, no, Mercy, it hurts so much! I’m going to scream after all!”

  They giggled again, and Sally screamed.

  “Did anybody hear me?” gasped Sally.

  “They could hear you in Boston,” said Mercy, and the girls giggled again.

  But Nistenha spoke anxiously and earnestly in Mohawk. Mercy strained to understand, because it sounded important, and everything in childbirth was important. She simply could not get the words.

  From outside the hut came a woman’s voice, an English voice, speaking English. Who could it be? Not a Deerfield captive; they couldn’t have learned enough Mohawk that fast.

  “She’s telling the mother not to scream,” said the voice. “If she screams, her child will be born a coward.”

  Nistenha put a cylinder of wood in Sally’s mouth and Sally bit down so hard Mercy thought she would break off a tooth, but it absorbed the pain, and Sally did not scream again.

  By now the longhouse was packed with women jabbering and offering advice, none of which Nistenha appeared to want. The room was exceedingly hot. Nistenha wiped the sweat off Sally’s forehead and four rough hours later, without a second scream, Sally Burt was delivered of a boy.

  Nistenha lifted the baby, cleaned him and wrapped him while Mercy stared, awed at the fragility of newborns. They wrapped Sally too in a fresh sheet of European cloth and spooned soup into her. When they finally handed her the baby, Sally unwrapped him to check. “Oh, he’s beautiful!” she cried. “He’s perfect! Look at him! Mercy, isn’t he wonderful?”

  “Nistenha!” cried the women in a chorus.

  Mercy was surprised. She must have misunderstood the ladle woman’s name.

  Now every woman in town trooped in to admire the new baby, who was squalling and turning himself redder than any Indian. Among them was a white grandmother, who had been taken captive, she told them, thirty years ago. It was her voice that had translated for Nistenha.

  Thirty years! thought Mercy. She imagined herself growing old here. No. It could not happen to her.

  At last they let Sally’s husband in. He was pale and shaking and loaded with presents that Indian men had given him in honor of the event. Nistenha arranged the gifts where they could be admired. Mercy was dumbfounded to see a beautiful imported wool dress, fine furs, bracelets of silver and a cradle board so delicately carved she did not think a Deerfield craftsman could duplicate it. It was not new; it had been cherished by some Indian parent for some Indian child.

  How strange the Indians were. They rejoiced over this birth—they who had not let other babies live.

  “Benjamin,” said Sally to her husband, lifting her face for his kiss. Her joy filled the room. “Come look at our son! He’s perfect! It wasn’t hard at all! Everything’s fine!”

  Mercy could not imagine how Benjamin felt, his son born among Indians. No house for the boy to grow up in, no farm for him to work, no grandparents. Just captivity. But from their faces, neither Sally nor Benjamin cared.

  She remembered the last day of her mother’s life, the new baby Marah handed over to a neighbor to nurse, and Mother telling Mercy good-bye. Childbirth was so dangerous. Please, God, let Sally be fine! Please, God, let the baby stay well!

  And then in came Father Meriel, also carrying packages, which turned out to be a folding table, a white cloth embroidered in white to spread upon it, a cup of silver and a beautifully bound leather book. Mercy feasted her eyes on the beautiful things. How Mother would have loved that white cloth with its white needlework!

  But there was a grim reason why ministers came to a birth. The baby must be baptized, in case he died. If he had not been baptized, God would not take his little soul. But Catholic souls were damned. A baptism from Father Meriel would be worse than letting the baby die unbaptized! And yet what if the baby died and his soul floated hopelessly for eternity? Should they let this man that Ruth said was going to hell put his magic cross on the baby? But he was a man of God.

  Oh, how Mercy wished for Mr. Williams.

  “I’m not Catholic,” said Sarah, trying to hide the baby under her sheets.

  Father Meriel opened his leather book. It was a church record for a name and a date in order to preserve the child’s soul forever and ever.

  Sally’s husband Benjamin touched the book, overwhelmed by fear for his little boy. “Yes. Baptize him, please, Father Meriel,” said Benjamin. He looked desperately at his wife, who after several amazed and horrified moments nodded.

  “His name will be Christopher, then,” said Sally. “Bearer of Christ. Will you say it in English as well as French, Father Meriel? I want it to hold.”

  “I will say it in four languages,” said Father Meriel, “for you are among Indians who also love your son. And I promise that it will hold.”

  “But,” said Mercy, although it was rude to interrupt, “that’s just three languages. English, French and Mohawk.”

  “Marie,” he said, remembering her with a smile. “The church has yet another language. It is called Latin.”

  And there, in the hut of Mohawk Indians, an English Puritan was baptized in Latin by a French Catholic priest. And then baptized in French, in Mohawk and finally in English.

  The baby was safe.

  The baptism would hold. The whole room felt it and knew it.

  “Thank you,” whispered Sally.

  When the priest had packed up and most of the women had left and the men had taken Benjamin out with them, Mercy asked, “Father Meriel, what does nistenha mean?”

  “It means ‘mother.’ ”

  “How nice!” said Sally, breaking into another glowing smile. “They were all congratulating me on being a mother! Christopher,” she crooned to her son, “I’m your nistenha.”

  The woman who had called herself Nistenha was folding the messy delivery cloths and putting them in a basket to carry away, probably to wash in the river.

  How dare you! thought Mercy. Do you think you can adopt me? Do you think I will cave in as easily as Sally and Benjamin caved in to that Catholic priest? Do you think I will throw away my real mother? Do you think I will ever call you by that sacred name?

  She stumbled outside to cool her angry heart. She took care to avert her eyes from the French flag and the Catholic church. She turned until she was facing southeast.

  I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh thy help.

  O Lord, send help from Boston.

  Ransom us.

  Chapter Seven

  Kahnawake

  April 20, 1704

  Temperature 56 degrees

  The town was Kahnawake and the river was the St. Lawrence: no soft Massachusetts brook but a thundering expanse, with constant traffic of pirogues, bateaux, dugouts and canoes bound for Montréal, a few miles downstream. There
were French voyageurs and Dutch traders, Ottawa and Menominee Indians, Sauk and Winnebago, Potawatomi and Fox bringing their furs from the far west.

  After so terrible a winter came an early spring. In canoes that held ten men, the Indians began coming as soon as the ice broke, bringing thousands of beaver pelts. Home they went, loaded with firearms and ammunition, brass and copper, jewelry and dresses for their wives, their paddles slicing vigorously through the water.

  But that was the river and the city of Montréal.

  In Kahnawake, the week following the captives’ arrival was marked by nothing at all.

  In Deerfield, men would have been out of bed before dawn, coming home for dinner at noon and for supper after dark, lamenting what had not been accomplished. The women would have woven and quilted, mended and cooked and scrubbed. Every child had chores: sewing, stirring, tending animals, minding babies. Then came Bible reading and prayers and at last, the exhausted collapse into sleep.

  But here in Kahnawake, nobody did anything. Every now and then, one of the women started another pot of stew, and every now and then, somebody wandered by and ate some. The children played, the men smoked, the women talked and the babies napped.

  “They are so lazy,” said Ruth. “It is sinful.”

  Mercy felt dizzy rather than lazy. From the hard labor of Deerfield, she had passed through the ordeal of the march and fallen into what? Standing around, staring around, and eating.

  The girls were at the bake ovens used by all the women of Kahnawake, dipping thin crisp corn cakes, hot off the pan, into thick maple syrup. Mercy could have eaten a hundred. She licked her fingers.

  Around the girls were barns and shacks and pens for the animals. Between them and the river were more than fifty houses, arranged in loose rows, each holding two families or more. There were hundreds of dogs, hundreds of children, dozens of horses and almost twenty captives. Except for Sally and Benjamin Burt, not one of the captives at Kahnawake was an adult. Nobody knew where the parents had been taken or even if any had survived.

  Behind the houses stretched fields to be planted with corn. “If you can imagine these people stirring themselves enough to plant seeds,” snorted Ruth.

  Closer was another field, avoided by the Indians, who yelled if anybody stepped in it while it was soft and muddy. It was nearly a mile long and a hundred yards wide, and Mercy had not figured out what made it special.

  Every day Mass was celebrated, some days by Father Meriel and some days by other priests. Mass washed over her like morning fog over the river, and like fog, it burned off during the day. It had nothing in common with the services and sermons of Mr. Williams, and to Mercy, it did not feel like religion or meeting. The priest was talking to a Christian God, but since he spoke in his church language, Latin, only God could comprehend.

  Mercy lived with twelve people, not so different from Deerfield—but in one room. Everything was in that room, hanging from the ceiling, stored in baskets that slid under the sleeping shelves, stacked in corners, attached to the walls or just left on the beds until it was time to lie down.

  Not that anybody cared when you lay down. Or when you ate.

  The family called her daughter, unless they were calling her sister, and so did the neighbors who dropped in. Indians were always dropping in. Since nobody was ever busy, it was never a problem.

  “It’s so disorderly,” complained Ruth. “And I cannot endure the smoke. They don’t even have chimneys, so the smoke just lies around and makes your eyes water.”

  But oddly, it was warmer without chimneys. At home, the flames went up that brick tunnel, carrying all the heat, so that you shivered only a foot from the fire. But in the longhouse, the heat lay down with you.

  Of course, so did the smoke.

  What Mercy could not get over was that husbands and wives lived apart.

  Even after they were married the men went on living with their mothers and sisters. Wives lived with their mothers, and the children stayed with them. Mercy, although she belonged to Tannhahorens, did not live with him and hardly ever ate with him. She lived with Nistenha, his wife, and with Nistenha’s mother, sister and brothers, and the sister’s children. The men in the house, therefore, were the uncles and not the fathers. The children of these uncles lived five houses away with their mothers.

  All her life Mercy had dreamed of marriage and having her own home, with her own hearth and loom and garden. Girls did not do that here.

  And when Mercy went to sleep at night on her plank bed, the married couples did not sleep, but did what married couples did. Right there, in front of everybody, while fire still lit the room. The men went home when they were done.

  Mercy did not discuss this with Ruth. She was not discussing anything with Ruth now. Throughout the march, Mercy had felt clever, possessed of sharp eyes and fine understanding. But in Kahnawake she felt dim and confused. Just when she seemed to be getting along, Ruth would throw her into a tizzy.

  “You know, Mercy,” said Ruth, “I never expected to live till spring, even in Deerfield.”

  Nobody else had expected it either.

  “I am so surprised to be alive,” said Ruth. “The march killed many, but it strengthened me. My lungs are better. Now I want to see fifty more springs, but oh, Mercy! I want to see them as an English girl living in an English colony, speaking English. I can hardly bear to listen to them jabbering in their savage tongue. Night and day, the word ransom pounds in my head.”

  But to the Indians, English was the savage tongue, and Mercy was not surprised when Nistenha interrupted them. “Munnonock,” she said firmly, “no English.”

  “Yes, English!” shouted Ruth. “Do not give in to her, Mercy! As long as we refuse to be Indian, when ransom comes, the Indians will take their money and shrug. Do not let yourself matter to them! And do not dare betray your real family by letting the Indians matter to you!”

  A FEW DAYS LATER, Tannhahorens brought Mercy to the stone jetty. Sarah Hoyt sat in a canoe with Indians Mercy had never seen before, while Eben stood on the dock. He had been partly stripped, his chest and face painted in stripes of black. His hair was now Indian style, most plucked out, a little bit left to pull back into a tail.

  “Sarah and I have been sold,” said Eben, “to masters in a town called Lorette. Tannhahorens said we could tell you good-bye.”

  “No!” Mercy was sick with fear. They couldn’t leave her here with just Ruth! Nistenha hardly ever let her near Joanna or Eunice or Rebecca or Sally Burt. What would she do for strength and friendship? “You won’t be here, Eben? Neither will Sarah?”

  How could the Indians move them around so often? When would this end?

  It would end with ransom, she thought. Until that day, they were booty like the white ruffled shirt. But how would Sarah and Eben be ransomed now? They’d been sold. Like horses.

  “They say Lorette isn’t so far, Mercy,” called Sarah, trying to smile. “Lorette Indians trade in Montréal just like the Kahnawake Indians do. Tannhahorens will take you to Montréal one day. We will look for you.”

  Mercy managed to nod. It was from Montréal that the ransom would come, because Montréal was French headquarters.

  Around Eben’s neck, loosely tied, was a beautiful collar embroidered with blue and black mountains. “Will you be a slave?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know.” He tried to smile. “In Lorette, they are Huron. Six of the dead Indians at Deerfield, including the one I killed, were Huron.”

  So torture had not been omitted, just postponed. It awaited Eben at this place called Lorette.

  She wanted to fling herself on top of Sarah and rip away Eben’s collar. She wanted to paddle down the St. Lawrence and out into the Atlantic Ocean and down the coast of Maine, to the safety of Boston. “Don’t go,” she mumbled.

  Sarah held her English kerchief over her mouth to hide her emotions, but Eben had steadied himself and stood patiently, waiting to leave. It’s worse for them, thought Mercy. They go to yet another unknow
n.

  Mercy knew then that she would do whatever Nistenha asked of her. She did not want to be sold to strangers and dropped into the bottom of a canoe to vanish into a different tribe with different plans.

  She tried to hug Eben, but he raised his hand quickly to keep her at a distance. He didn’t want his new Indians to see some weeping girl clinging to him. “The Lord bless you and keep you, Mercy,” he said, “while we are absent, one from another.”

  It was Mr. Williams’s benediction, the one she had heard every Sunday of her life.

  Sarah took her handkerchief from her face, turned away from Mercy and fixed her eyes on the horizon. She was not about to enter her new unknown as a weakling. So Mercy said nothing more, lest one of them break down. The unknown Indians paddled away.

  She had waved when Daniel disappeared into the mountains, but she could not seem to wave after Eben and Sarah. She stood for a long time, staring at the dwindling dots that were their canoes, until Tannhahorens took her back to the house.

  The act of going inside was the worst part of the day, partly because it was a house, and the only other house she had ever known had also been a home. Homesickness was like a knife. It cut constantly. Homesickness had become work; something to do.

  Lord, prayed Mercy, don’t leave me as Sarah and Eben have. Stay here.

  THEN ONE DAY, the town stirred and moved and suddenly everybody was rushing to and fro, preparing and carrying and gathering. Huge fires were built and haunches of deer were roasted. The bake ovens were full, batch after batch of hot breads laid on woven trays. Maple syrup was beaten into bear fat, to make a delicious salty-sweet butter.

  The men painted and prepared for war.

  Canoes packed with Indian men, women and children came from other towns. All had dressed in their finest. Beaver and mink and fox were mixed with English coats and Dutch jackets and French scarves. No man or woman was without jewelry: earrings and bracelets, necklaces and anklets.

  Mercy knew herself to be a Puritan: a plain dress with white apron and bonnet was the only fashion she had ever known. She could not imagine wearing jewelry, but neither could she take her eyes off it.