He turned back to Ishmael. When he struck the boy again, knocking him to the ground, Conawago moved quickly but Hetty was faster, darting forward and covering the boy with her body. Simon grabbed the back of her shirt and heaved her aside like a sack of flour.
“You shame your father and me!” she cried from the ground, but her son was beyond hearing.
Simon grabbed Ishmael and lifted him upright. “Your grandfather’s head sounded like a ripe melon when I hit it! He just kept singing like the others, the old fool.”
“His was a warrior’s song!” Ishmael shouted back. “I heard him! He died with more honor and bravery than you’ll ever have!”
The fury with which Simon pummeled the boy was frightening to behold. He pounded the boy, knocking him to the ground. Suddenly his pistol was aimed at Ishmael.
“No!” Conawago shouted, and he charged at the schoolteacher, who shifted the gun towards the old Nipmuc.
As Duncan leapt forward, a brown shape hurdled past his shoulder.
The pistol fired, hitting the hell dog in the chest, but the great creature still clamped its jaw around Simon’s throat, sending him reeling backwards. Simon dropped the pistol to beat the dog with his fists, staggering backward, struggling to get the furious animal off him. Then they were gone.
Man and dog disappeared over the high cliff. By the time Duncan reached the edge, there was nothing but a ring of ripples where they had vanished into the water.
The Mingoes roared into action, lifting war axes to strike as Duncan threw himself against Ishmael and rolled away with the boy in his arms. Conawago stood over Hetty and was raising his own club to defend her when their attackers abruptly stopped.
Impossibly, Duncan heard a bagpipe. He followed the confused gaze of the warriors toward the head of the trail from the boat landing.
William Johnson stood there, leaning on a walking stick, beside Woolford and a solitary piper of the Black Watch. Emerging at a fast trot from the trail behind them was a seemingly endless line of Iroquois and Highland warriors.
By midmorning of the second day, Johnson and his army were gone, his flotilla of sloops, bateaux, and canoes stretching out for a mile down the river, joined by more and more Caughnawags pushing off from the bank. The Irish colonel had wisely chosen not to press Duncan for a detailed account of his travels since they last met. Indeed, the head of the tribal and militia troops had seemed to lose all interest in reports from the field of war when he discovered who lay on the scaffolds on the high point over the river. He was visibly shaken by the death of his friends. Immediately he had turned to Tushcona and Adanahoe.
“You are blinded by tears of grief. I would wipe them away with my words,” he said, the opening lines of the Iroquois condolence ceremony. He had gestured to Kass to join them as they settled in a small circle to continue the ritual.
Nearly an hour had passed before one of his men interrupted to report that the half-king was among the dead at the old abbey. Johnson rose, promising to return to Onondaga Castle to conduct a weeklong mourning ceremony, then he hurried to the barnyard to look at the bodies. His eyes grew round. “I hope the Iroquois understand the miracle you have worked for them,” he said to Duncan and Conawago, pumping their hands.
He had given them free rein to dispose of the bodies, and after consulting with the elders, a mass grave had been dug at the far end of the old slave-trading field. The terrifying Revelator, shaper of tribal nations, was just another renegade corpse tossed into the hole. When the grave had been filled, they had used the posts the Mingoes had raised to light a bonfire over it. The heat and ashes would bind them in the earth for many years, Adanahoe declared. The elders wanted such men kept out of the spirit world for as long as possible.
Much more care had been taken for another of the dead. After Johnson’s men had recovered the bodies of the two who had fallen off the cliff, Hetty had insisted on burial in the ground for her son, but over the grave, alongside the scaffolds of the two fallen Iroquois, she had directed the building of a third scaffold. On it she had arranged the body of the courageous brown dog. If any had doubted her claims that a warrior, her husband, had lived inside the beast, none did now. Hetty had dutifully cleaned her son’s body but had shed no tears and offered no words over it. Over the warrior with the four legs she had wept, then cleansed it with great care while chanting the mourning songs. Before they had raised him onto the platform, she had woven small, bright feathers into the long hair of his legs, as though to help him fly to the other side.
“He was the best of companions,” Duncan offered as she worked, trying to break through her grief. He watched as she cut away a lock of the brown hair and carefully folded it into her amulet pouch. “I am sorry, Hetty,” he said. “I should not have done it, but. .”
She looked up to see the folded doeskin in his hands.
When she did not respond, he laid it flat on a rock. At the center of the chronicle of her life was the ivory ring carved with dragons. Her hand trembled as she lifted it and held it close to her eyes. “I was very young when my father died,” she whispered. “My mother was sick and decided to send me to my uncle in America. On the day my ship sailed she gave it to me, saying my father had always worn it around his neck.” She sighed. “In my life I had only one true love,” she said and began tying the ring into the hair of the dog’s neck. “He will like having dragons with him on the other side.”
“I never had the honor of his name,” Duncan said. “I do not know what to call the creature in my prayers.” He was not sure she had heard him, and after a long silence he retreated.
“Roghskenrakeghdekowah,” she said to his back. When Duncan turned, a tear was rolling down her cheek.
“War chief,” Duncan translated, and he solemnly nodded. “I should have known.” He pulled out the elegant dirk Cameron had given him. With a prayer in Gaelic, he laid the dirk against the dog’s body and backed away.
Hetty had sat by the scaffold for hours, oblivious to the others, oblivious even to the brief thunderstorm that swept over the island. Although others tried, only Ishmael was finally able to speak with her and lead her back to the abbey. After a hot meal, the boy sat with her and asked her to explain the images on the doeskin.
Now the Welsh woman, looking frail and hollow, stood with the rest of them as they watched the great flotilla recede toward Montreal. It was Conawago who broke away first, followed by Ishmael. Minutes later they turned to see the two Nipmucs waiting below the knoll with shovels in their hands.
They moved in silent procession to the site of their first great fire, on the night they had burned the old torture posts. Everyone remained strangely quiet as they shifted the ashes to the side to expose the bare soil. They dug deeper, making a large square several inches deep, then they pried and loosened the packed soil until finally they exposed the first of the kegs. Following Duncan’s directions, Tatamy’s men had buried the kegs deep, sitting upright.
No one spoke until the kegs were lifted out, their chalk signs of the Jacobites conspicuous in the bright sunlight. Duncan, borrowing Conawago’s ax, shattered the top of the nearest keg. For a fleeting moment he thought they had been terribly mistaken, for all he could see was gunpowder, but then Conawago sank his fingers into the keg and extracted a bright silver coin from the black grains.
Duncan handed the ax to Ishmael, and the Nipmuc boy, amusement growing on his face, opened the other kegs while Tushcona and Adanahoe followed, sifting up handfuls of coins from each to confirm its secret contents.
Duncan walked around the kegs. “I never thought we would get this far,” he confided to his companions, and he looked up to Woolford.