“Why grandfather?” Tanaqua asked him. “Why let yourself become a slave?”
The Susquehannock made a motion with his shoulders, an attempt at a shrug. “I am no slave, Tanaqua my son. It’s just the way to be with these men here, and to be close to the earth. Young Winters always allowed me my walks out at night.”
“Why the Blooddancer?”
“Because he always had the strongest magic. Once I had talked with the old Trickster, in his lodge in the north. It was the night I left for the last big war with the Carolina tribes. I visited with him often after that, in my dreams. I always knew he and I had unfinished business,” he added. “One more battle.” His attempt at a grin was interrupted by another seizure. Duncan mixed a sedative and propped him up for a long drink.
“We’ll be missed,” Duncan said as Jaho began sleeping. “If they come for us they may try to drag him out as well.”
Tanaqua nodded and reluctantly followed Duncan back to the fields.
The next day Trent, escorted by two sullen marines, opened the door before the morning bell to retrieve Duncan. Horses were waiting, including a mount for Duncan, who hesitated at the door, looking back at Jahoska. The old Susquehannock had not recovered consciousness all night, or at least not awareness. He had awakened in the small hours only to rave in his old tongue, not responding when they spoke to him. Duncan had seen the same symptoms in the Edinburgh wards of the aged. The brain might work but the tongue could not, or the brain would dwell only in places of the distant past. When Tanaqua had forlornly embraced Jaho, pleading with him to come back, the old man had patted him on the back and continued speaking in his lost tongue, as if comforting a frightened son.
Trent led the way at a trot, down the track that bisected the fields, past the African sheds toward the manor, and then up the slanting road that crossed the ridge to the mill. The other marines stood in a single rank near the dock, weary and frightened, their sergeant nervously watching the mill, where Kincaid stood on the porch with Alice Dawson and an African woman Duncan took to be Lila, the maid assigned to the mill. Only Alice moved, rushing to Duncan’s side as he dismounted. “He was still warm,” she said. “I thought there might be a chance . . .” Her words faded and she shrugged, then led him into the building.
Hobart’s bedroom was at the end of the corridor, past a door with a crudely painted cross. Several crates had been pushed to the walls and were covered with the officer’s clothing and belongings. A sword and pistol hung on a peg above the rope bed where the officer was sprawled.
Lieutenant Hobart was beyond Duncan’s help. His face and hands were contorted, his eyes wide and terrified. He had died in excruciating pain.
“They say he played whist with the men until late in the evening, then no one saw him again.”
On a chair near the bed, Hobart’s spectacles lay on three folded papers. Duncan made no effort to conceal his motions as he collected the papers and pushed them inside his waistcoat. “The lieutenant came to his room alone last night?” he asked.
Alice pulled Lila from the shadows by the doorway. “Alone?”
The maid nodded but kept her eyes on the floor. “I thought he was going to call for me like he often does but he had had too much ale. I was on my pallet at the other end of the corridor and watched as he stopped at the spirit dungeon. He pulled his dagger out and stared at that door.”
“Spirit dungeon?” Alice asked as Duncan began examining the body.
“You know, where they keep that Indian god. The lieutenant woke up from a nightmare last week, pushing me out of his bed onto the floor. He said they had to chain it and beat it, that it would learn not to mock him in his dreams.”
“Speak sense, child,” Alice chided. “Beat whom?”
Duncan answered for the frightened slave. “Blooddancer.”
Lila gave a vigorous nod. “The god in that mask.”
Alice put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Surely you’re not frightened of some old wooden curiosity.”
“No ma’m. It’s just that he wouldn’t be concerned about you, now would he?” Lila declared with a shuddering breath. “He isn’t your god and he has no feud with you. He’s their god, our god, and the soldiers have been hurting them.”
Alice took Lila’s hand in her own to calm her. “I woke up when Lieutenant Hobart came out after one of his nightmares last night,” the slave continued. “He stormed to the spirit dungeon, threw open the door, and fired his pistol at it, cursing the thing inside. Then he came back in here and didn’t come out. No one came into the building, I swear it. No one flesh and blood.”
Hobart had apparently passed out in his clothes. His gorget was still around his neck. Duncan lifted it and paused, seeing no sign of the stolen Delaware medallion, then fingered the lieutenant’s right sleeve near the elbow, where two little circles stained the fabric red.
“What do you mean our god?” Alice asked the African girl.
“The Indians were born out of the land here, just like my people were born out of the land in Africa. It’s why their skin is stained from the soil, like ours. The most powerful gods are the ones that bind a people to the earth.” Lila’s eyes widened as Duncan ripped open the sleeve. She pointed at the ruin of Hobart’s exposed arm. “Like the god that sent the serpent that done kil’t him.”
Alice took a step backward and quickly surveyed the floor around them.
The snake must have been huge. The distance between the two fang marks was nearly as long as his thumb. The dead man’s arm was grotesquely swollen and the skin around the punctures had turned a greenish blue.
“His door was ajar when they found him,” Alice said.
“Snake come in, snake go out,” Lila concluded. “Just like that red god done told it so.”
Duncan quickly examined the rest of Hobart’s body. “It could be an act of-” he caught himself.
“An act of God,” Alice finished, with a hollow whisper, then seemed to collect herself. “We have huge vipers, water moccasins we call them, that live in watery places. A mill would always be home to mice, making it a good hunting place for them.”
Duncan completed his examination, then looked back at the upended crate that had served as the officer’s bedstand. “Hobart was drunk. It was dark. He had taken off his spectacles and may not have seen what it was. He may have swatted at the snake and angered it.” He searched the pillows, and under the officer’s blankets, finding nothing.
“It’s gone,” Alice said. He did not tell her he was not looking for the snake.
“Two nights ago,” Lila confessed, “he dragged me into that room and told me to spit on the god. When I refused he slapped me, then he opened his britches and made water in front of the god, taunting it, saying ‘how do you like my offering, you ugly old thing?’ That’s why he died. I went to the old grandmother in Ursa’s shed for a charm-” Duncan now saw the bundle of feathers stuffed up her sleeve “or it might have kil’t me too.”
Duncan was not inclined to argue about the power of Iroquois gods. The snake may indeed have been sent by the twisted-face Trickster. But it had not been the snake who had taken the little quill-work medallion Hobart had stolen from Rachel Rohrbach.
When he finally followed Alice and Lila into the corridor, he saw the red back of a marine rushing outside. The door with the painted cross was now ajar. Inside, a candle had been lit below the red mask. In the wall beside the mask was a single round bullet hole. Underneath it, beside the rattle with four claws, was a freshly laid pile of British military hardtack and a cup of tea.
That night, after checking on the still-comatose Jaho, Duncan gestured for Webb and Murdo, and brought out the papers he had taken from Hobart’s room.