Duncan turned to the man in confusion.
“Yesterday at sundown the beast went inside her hut after watching it all these days. The woman began chanting, loud enough for us to hear. Words of the savages. Some of my men said she was taking control of the animal. Some said she was entering the body of the beast. Might be we could have stopped the flames at the outset, but my men. .” the foreman shrugged. “No one wanted to.”
A sudden wind kicked up the pieces of charred snakeskin around the edge of the hut, stirring them into the air. They swirled over the ruins, several lighting on fire then rising up into the sky.
“Snakes are the messengers to the spirit world,” Duncan heard himself say. “Go-betweens, between us and the other side.”
The foreman took a step back, his worried expression now fixed on Duncan. He glanced at his men, half of whom had fled, then shook his head. “I’ll never get them back to work until I push these damned ruins into the river.”
There was no sign of Macaulay at the stream where Duncan had last seen him. Ishmael waited by the overhanging ledge holding a crude spear fashioned from a hickory pole and a sharp stone.
“The woman Hetty,” Duncan announced. “The mother of your schoolmaster. She’s dead, Ishmael.”
The boy cocked his head and seemed about to ask a question but remained silent, touching the amulet that hung from his neck and turning his gaze to the northwest.
“Where is it?” Duncan asked. “Did she tell you where the raiders were going?”
When the boy looked back there was worry in his eyes. “She would not speak but I saw that message belt. The old ones are ending all ties with this world, it said. There were symbols of lightning I did not understand.” He shook his head in despair. “Once the Nipmucs would have known how to stop such things.” He turned away as if he did not want Duncan to see his face, and he spoke into the wind. “But there are only two Nipmucs left in all the world.” When he turned to Duncan there was a new determination in his eyes. “The witch knew more. If she is dead, then there’s a place where witches are made,” Ishmael declared matter-of-factly. “If they are made then surely they can be remade.” He set off at a trot, spear in hand.
Minutes later they joined a game trail that led north, and as they crossed a ridge they began to glimpse a broad river in the distance below, the traditional path into the western wilderness. Ishmael pointed to it and set off with renewed energy. They had reached a fork in the trail at the bottom of the ridge when a burly man appeared from behind a tree.
“Macaulay!” Duncan exclaimed. “I thought you had second thoughts about leaving the regiment.”
“Naught left for me there.”
“It goes hard for deserters.”
The big Scot grinned. “Way I figure it, the army deserted me. And it only goes hard for those foolish enough to be caught.”
Duncan saw now the pack hanging from the man’s shoulder. “You’ve been busy yourself.”
Macaulay grinned. “Sometimes the quartermaster is careless with supplies.” He lifted the pack to his shoulder. “If we be going west, I know where the army scouts leave their canoes.”
Tenonanatche had been the great east-west thoroughfare of the Iroquois people long before Europeans had arrived and renamed it the Mohawk River. As they paddled upstream Ishmael offered the names of the decaying palisade towns they passed, abandoned in search of fresher soil for crops, and pointed out spirit sites on low overgrown mounds or huge trees that were said to harbor lesser gods of the forest. Duncan studied the boy with the strong face and penetrating eyes, realizing that Hickory John had shown him the sites just as Conawago had shown Duncan similar sites, and regretting the cruel turns of fate that had kept the last three Nipmucs from making such pilgrimages together.
The river was used by both the Iroquois and the soldiers who traveled between Albany and the western forts. Four times approaching canoes forced them to hide in overhanging alders. Once, six canoes loaded with scarlet-coated British infantry glided past going west. The others proved to be natives hurrying by as if on urgent business.
By late afternoon dark clouds began rolling toward them from the west. The storm moved quickly, flinging lightning into the steep hills. The wind rose, bending the grass along the banks, pushing the alders and willows, then with a sudden blast it jerked the bow of the canoe toward the bank.
Ishmael, clutching his spear, jumped off as they reached the shallows and pulled the canoe onto the muddy shore. There was no chance of maneuvering their light craft into such a wind, and the lightning was getting closer. Duncan called out for the boy to help haul the canoe higher up the bank, but suddenly Ishmael seemed to forget his companions. He stood staring into the woods.
Duncan leapt into the water, steadying the canoe for Macaulay as he climbed out. The sky was darkening rapidly, giving new brilliance to the violent flashes of lightning. Macaulay shouted at the boy to help carry their packs, but still Ishmael did not respond, and now Duncan saw that the boy was gazing down a tunnel of foliage, created by dense trees arching over a trail leading to a solitary bark lodge that appeared to have been abandoned many years before.
Macaulay gave a yelp as lightning struck across the river. Rain began slanting downward. He grabbed his pack and ran past them toward the lodge, Duncan at his heels.
They glanced at each other as they reached the sturdy structure, grinning at their luck at finding shelter, but Duncan paused. Ishmael still had not moved. The boy was already soaked by the heavy rain, and as a massive strike of lightning crashed behind him, Duncan darted back and pulled the boy to the lodge. He called the boy’s name repeatedly when he got him under the cover of the old bark roof, but Ishmael just kept staring, now into the shadows at the back of the longhouse. The wind was blowing even harder, the temperature dropping steadily. The river was barely visible through the sheets of rain.
Duncan saw that Macaulay too was staring, though it was at Ishmael. In his hand the big Scot clutched the iron nail many soldiers kept to clean their weapons. In the Highlands iron had always been a charm against evil.
“He’s soaked,” Duncan said. “We need a fire.”
Macaulay gave no sign of hearing until Duncan shook his arm and pointed to the pile of dry wood along one wall. “We’re not going anywhere the rest of this day,” he said. “You tend to the fire.” He gestured to the water dripping through the old bark roof. “I’ll make a dry place.”
Longhouses had a framework of beams overhead, where smaller logs provided shelves for storage and from which blankets or skins were hung to divide the dwellings into family compartments. Duncan found several old skins lying on the ground and draped them over a section of overhead beams above Macaulay’s sputtering flames.
Only when Duncan led Ishmael to the flames did the boy acknowledge his presence. “This is the place I sought,” the youth said. “But I never would have found it. The storm brought us here.”
Macaulay muttered a curse.
“It’s just an old Iroquois lodge,” Duncan assured him, but he recalled the boy’s earlier description of their destination: the place where witches were made. The tribes had their own lore of supernatural creatures. Hetty Eldridge had come out of the wilderness under the guise of a treaty, but in fact the tribes had forced her out because they preferred the witch to work her spells in the European world.
“There’s a tale of a magic trickster who travels in and out of the spirit world,” Ishmael said. “Sometimes she traps travelers to make them her slaves on the other side.”
“Traps them?” Duncan asked.
“Entices them with what they want. If you are hungry after a long day she will have pots of maize and strawberries waiting. If you need shelter a lodge appears.”