The Ransom of Mercy Carter Read online

  The eagle took off with a muscular thrust, and a single feather swirled down, turning like the winged seed of a maple. Joseph flung away his pack, jumped over fallen branches and leaped upon a rock, reaching and stretching. The feather fell into his hands.

  The Indians were joyful, as if the eagle had intentionally sent its feather to the English boy. “Sowangen,” said Joseph’s Indian, tapping Joseph’s chest. Joseph too had a name now. Sowangen.

  “Tell me your name,” said Joseph.

  “Aronhiowosen.”

  It means “Great Sky,” Mercy thought.

  The sky above truly was great—infinite snow falling over infinite wilderness. But the greatness of the Lord seemed diminished.

  AT LAST they rested.

  Tannhahorens sat, as Indians did, without a substitute for a chair. The English would look for a stump or stone so they could sit up high. Indians preferred the ground, even when it was wet. He stroked his silver cross, as if comforted by its shape, although Mercy could not imagine Tannhahorens ever in need of comfort, and then he rested the cross against his lips.

  She found herself wishing she possessed something that spoke of God; that she could have always with her, especially when God seemed to vanish as easily as small brothers and hope.

  She sighed and then in shock saw for the first time just how tiny their band was. Five Indians. Six captives. Eben Nims, Sarah Hoyt, Joseph Kellogg, Ruth Catlin and Eliza, the widow of Andrew.

  The Lord was truly against her.

  Why do I have to be with Ruth? thought Mercy. She’ll throw things and she won’t do her share. And Eliza! She’s still blind with grief over Andrew. You have to lead her. Joseph will go off hunting with his Indian and have a wonderful time. Eben and Sarah will fall in love and hold hands. I’ll be stuck making sure Ruth doesn’t attack anybody and Eliza doesn’t fall off a cliff.

  Mercy looked around to see if they were going to have anything to eat, and of course they weren’t, so she couldn’t even distract herself with food.

  EBEN REALIZED that he need not worry about being burned or tortured. He was going to starve to death. Eben had thought that up here, where nobody lived or ever had, the deer would be standing in rows in the woods awaiting a bullet. He had expected rabbits and grouse, moose and beaver. But there was no game.

  They built shelters from woven branches, piling spruce and hemlock on top to keep out the snow. Each day some of the Indians left to hunt and each day they came back with nothing. It had never occurred to Eben that an Indian could go hunting and find nothing.

  He was not sure how far they still had to go to reach Canada.

  He had seen a map once that showed the Connecticut River, how it split the colony of Connecticut in half, then cut up through Massachusetts, headed north through unknown lands and bumped into Canada. The northern part of the map was guesswork. Eben needed a French map, which would show the city of Montréal, where the French kept their government, and the St. Lawrence River, down which fortunes in fur were shipped. He could not ask his master. An Indian kept his map in his head.

  The only good thing about this rough land was firewood. No human had ever gathered a fallen branch here. So they could stay warm, but they had nothing to cook over the flames.

  It seemed to Eben the Indians ought to worry more about this than they did. They spent every daylight hour looking for game, found nothing and did not mention it. Instead, they sat by the fire, smoked and told war stories.

  It was the captives who discussed food, describing meals they had had a month ago or hoped to have in the future. They discussed pancakes, maple syrup and butter. Stew and biscuits and apple pie.

  Ruth said to Mercy, “You and Eben and Joseph are so proud of your savage vocabulary. Tell them they’re Indians, they’re supposed to know how to find deer.”

  “There aren’t any deer,” said Joseph.

  Ruth snorted. “We just have stupid Indians.”

  Suddenly the whole thing seemed hilarious to Mercy: a little circle of starving white children, crouching in the snow, and a little circle of apparently not starving Indian men, sitting in the snow, all of them surrounded by hundreds of miles of trees, while Ruth spat fire. “Ruth,” said Mercy, “do you know what your name means?”

  “My name is Ruth.”

  “Your name is Mahakemo,” Mercy told her. “And it means ‘Fire Eats Her.’ ” Mercy began to laugh, and Joseph and Eben and Sarah laughed with her. Even Eliza looked interested, but Ruth, furious to find that the Indians were laughing at her instead of being respectful of her, began throwing things at Mercy.

  Mercy rolled out of range while Ruth pelted her with Joseph’s hat and Tannhahorens’s mittens and then with snowballs; finding them too soft, Ruth grabbed her Indian’s powder horn.

  Mercy jumped up and ran away from Ruth and out into the snow, and in front of her were a pair of yellow eyes.

  The eyes were level with Mercy’s waist. They were not human eyes.

  No deer for humans also meant no deer for wolves.

  Mercy meant to scream, but Tannhahorens got there first, in the form of a bullet. Wolf for dinner.

  It turned out that the English could eat anything if they were hungry enough.

  THEY MARCHED UNTIL THE CAPTIVES could not take another step. Eben dragged Eliza half the way and Sarah dragged her the rest. Mercy and Joseph took turns hauling Ruth. That night they slept like rocks, and in the morning Mercy understood why bears spent the whole winter sleeping. It sounded good to Mercy.

  Perhaps it sounded good to the Indians too, because they did not leave camp. Instead, they built two fires, gathering an enormous woodpile.

  Joseph was stripped of his English clothes. Too torn and filthy to bother with, they were tossed into the woods. He was given a long deerskin shirt and leggings that hung from thigh to ankle, held up by cords strung to a belt. Then came coat, hat and mittens, all Indian.

  How dark Joseph’s hair was. How tan his skin. Joseph looked like a young brave.

  In a moment, the Indians did the same with Eben, whose coloring was very English, ruddy cheeks and straw-yellow hair. He did not look at all Indian, but in deerskin, he looked tough and strong and much older.

  The girls were nervous. They did not want their clothes stripped off their bodies, no matter how torn and filthy. But Eben’s Indian, Thorakwaneken, hoisted a flintlock musket and looked questioningly at each girl.

  Mercy could not imagine what he was asking of her. Eliza did not notice him or the gun. And Ruth was the last person to whom a sensible Indian would hand a weapon.

  Sarah, however, nodded. “I’m a good shot.” She took the musket from Thorakwaneken.

  Food was such a problem that even Joseph and Eben would be armed and sent forth to hunt. The girls would stay by the fire with enough wood to last for days, and Sarah to fend off wolves.

  EBEN AND JOSEPH and their masters went south. Thorakwaneken had both gun and bow, but Great Sky planned to rely on bow and arrow.

  Arrows could be shot in succession more quickly than a gun could be reloaded. And arrows were silent.

  For Joseph, Great Sky had a small bow and arrow, yet another carefully considered supply brought from Canada. Great Sky set the boy’s hands in place to pull the bow and helped him nock the arrow on the taut sinew. Eben watched enviously. “Please?” he begged. “I can do it. I know I can.”

  He thought Thorakwaneken almost smiled and saw now that the Indian carried two bows on his shoulder. The one he had brought for Eben was a man’s bow.

  Joseph and Great Sky went one way, while Eben and Thorakwaneken walked another. It was an hour before Thorakwaneken stopped at a clearing. He had been hunting for an edge to the wilderness.

  All that appeared was a rabbit, looking as tired and hungry as Eben. In another world, one small rabbit would mean nothing, but today it was meat.

  With Thorakwaneken standing behind him, guiding, Eben drew the bow taut and aimed. It amazed Eben that the Indian would risk losing a meal by le
tting Eben try.

  The rabbit struggled a little in a soft patch, Thorakwaneken nodded and Eben loosed the arrow. The rabbit was theirs.

  Eben was so excited he wanted to dance and yell, but Thorakwaneken stopped him with a finger on his lips. In silence they retrieved the rabbit and Thorakwaneken let him carry it.

  In the spring, thought Eben, I’ll learn to canoe. Maybe trap beaver.

  The French and Indian border wars were about beaver. Well, not in real France and real England; they were fighting about their kings and queens. But in the New World, it was fur. Who trapped it, who sold it, who made the profit.

  France wanted to own every river and every beaver skin the Indians brought down that river, and they killed Englishmen who got close or greedy. Destroying Deerfield probably had more to do with fur than with children or ransom.

  Now, if Eben had been out here with Englishmen—

  Well, he never would have been. The English would get here tree by tree, using axes to remove the wilderness so they would never actually have to set foot in it.

  If I were Indian …, thought Eben.

  His hair prickled. The bow in his hand shocked him. If I were Indian?

  Lord, he prayed, take these thoughts from me.

  On the far rim of the clearing, they found deer tracks. Now the Indian shifted his gun. There would be no teaching here. This was survival.

  An hour later, Eben understood why Thorakwaneken had brought him along.

  It was on Eben’s shoulders that the deer carcass was carried back to camp.

  SARAH NEVER set the flintlock down.

  Ruth sat as close to the fire as she could get, having armed herself with a clublike branch. Eliza they had moved close to the fire and were watching lest she get too hot or too cold.

  Mercy had not let herself think about Deerfield. But today she could not escape her thoughts.

  The image of her father alone in an empty house tortured her. He would wonder now about the value of the molasses and tobacco that had seemed so important to him when he left. He would have found Tommy’s body, and Stepmama’s, and the baby’s. The burials would be over, and the minister from Hadley would have come to send their souls to God. Father would be sorting through their remaining possessions, although Mercy could think of none.

  Mercy’s grandmother had stitched a sampler when she was a girl in England: stiff pink roses climbing a bright green trellis. It had borders of interlocked keys and little squares of needle lace; an alphabet and a Bible verse. Philippians 4:8. It had been stretched on a frame of wood, and how Mercy’s mother had cherished that sampler. It spoke of elegance and the Old World and the luxury of time. That sampler made it possible for Mother to believe that one day, yes, she would have windows with diamond panes.

  Mercy knew Tannhahorens did not have the sampler. But other Indians had also been in the house and done their share of ransacking. She prayed the sampler was there for Father, because pinned to the back were locks of hair Mother had cut from her children’s heads. Five locks: Sam, Mercy, John, Benny and Tommy. Mother had died before Marah’s little head grew any hair.

  Half the day passed before Sarah spoke. “It’s my father’s gun, you know,” she said. She moved her thumb off the long shaft so Mercy could see the carved initials: D.H. for David Hoyt.

  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.

  THEY 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.”

  RUTH 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 a
s 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.

  THEY 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.”