It was, in truth, all wiin could do to contain wiin’s fury. As they went on through the forest and toward the mission house that must be the origin of those words, wiin grew increasingly angrier until they reached the clearing where the arch of the bridge began, and the description of the torments of hellfire resounded clear and loud with the gruesome enumeration of all the body parts through which the devil’s servants would insert torture implements to those among the listeners who persisted in rejecting the good news. Odahingum could barely keep wiinself from bursting into rage, running across the bridge and hurling a knife at that preacher’s throat.
“Is something wrong?” Samuel asked wiin.
“Everything about missionaries is wrong.”
Bridget took a moment to pay attention to the sermon and said, “I don’t have much sympathy for Catholics myself, but hell is very real.”
She spoke with such conviction that wiin couldn’t help but laugh, and the laugh made the fire inside wiin subside. “Your people have a really low opinion of the Great Spirit.”
It took her a second to infer that le Grand Esprit was the way the Jesuits had understood and named the god of the Ojibwe. The apostle Paul had employed a similar tactic with the Greeks, speaking to them in their own terms. And she wondered, if the priests were following so biblical an approach, what could have gone so wrong for them in China.
Odahingum started walking down the slope that led to the bridge. “Well, you’ve seen what they’re like. Do you still think you want to come?”
Unwilling to drop the matter, but aware that she ought not to give their guide cause to leave them stranded, Bridget turned to Samuel. “You can’t pretend we’re not here to finish our parents’ mission.” She was whispering in Dutch, but with an urgency that made Odahingum turn wiin’s head back at them in obvious disbelief. She conjectured Samuel could have been teaching wiin some Dutch during the journey.
Samuel replied, in the same tone, “Never learned to stop chewing at a meatless bone?”
She pointed at Odahingum. “Don’t we have a responsibility for her?”
His patience was wearing thin. “First, how on Earth are we responsible for a full-grown adult who has, in fact, prevented us from starving for the past weeks? And second, the word is wiin.”
“Oh, please. You don’t even know what that word means.”
“It has meaning for wiin, so I’ll keep using it.”
She sighed. “That… person, as well as every other Native, is in a state of spiritual darkness.”
He decided he’d had enough. “You’ve been fishing and eating and walking and sleeping next to wiin every day. Are you honestly going to tell me you’ve sensed even the faintest trace of evil in wiin? Because I’ve never in all my years met anyone as sure-footed, as open-handed, as truthful, as capable, as wide awake or as fully human as—” He had to stop, for he’d just noticed he was in love.
“Say what you will of earthly virtues, but I’m talking of the preservation of the true faith.”
“Meatless bone, I tell you.”
“It was our parents’ and therefore our calling.”
“Calling!” he exclaimed, and Odahingum, who by this point was already halfway across the bridge, stopped and turned around.
“What’s this now?” wiin asked in French.
“Bridget is convinced we’re major figures in God’s plan.”
Such a statement was empty sounds to wiin’s ears, and wiin resumed walking.
Samuel went on, “What do you suppose we’ll do when we’re settled among the French? Do you plan to convert them away from Rome?”
“They deserve that opportunity.”
“Oh, you think you’d be doing them a favor?”
“No, I’d be freeing them—”
“You,” Samuel began, and by that syllable alone she could tell he was furious, “have no clue of what freedom means. You dare speak not one word to me about freedom.”
He turned away from her to follow their guide on the bridge, but she refused to give up and went after him. “I’ll ask you your own question. What will you do when we settle?”
Without looking back, he replied, “Me? I only know one way to live. I deal with the world I find myself in. Not the next one. This.” He expected a protest but heard none. “I’d gladly show you how I do it, but I can’t help you if you insist on thinking you’re too special for it.”
That hurt her. She needed a minute alone to recover. She lagged behind and stood at her end of the bridge, sorting out her thoughts. Above everything else, it bothered her that Samuel could see into her with that much acuity. Tired of suppressing tears, her gaze fell on the image of herself that the river gave her, and she contemplated it for a good while, until a shape moved deep in the water, darkening the reflected sun.
“There’s something in the river,” she cried out in French, and the others looked over the edge of the bridge.
“I know that shape,” muttered Samuel, and before he had time to recall from where, something resembling a log emerged above the water, and it rotated, as if driven by a will, until he saw its end and the hole in it. “It’s a cannon!” he screamed, but his voice was lost in the explosion, and they felt the stony arch shake under their feet, and when a cloud of dust erupted at the point where it met the other shore, he felt a surge of panic. “Bridget, run back!” he yelled, but the second shot silenced the warning, and his cousin was engulfed in another burst of stone and dust.
With both ends destroyed, the middle of the bridge collapsed. Finding wiinself suddenly thrown into cold water, Odahingum hurried to the surface to take air. Wiin grabbed Samuel and struggled to swim away from the rubble and back to the last place they’d seen Bridget. Still another explosion followed, but they dared not look in what direction it had aimed, and it was only when they reached dry land that they saw, on the opposite shore, what the cannon was doing: house by house, the Jesuit mission was being destroyed.
Samuel crawled toward a tree, trying to not make himself too visible. Still shaking from the cold, he strained his sight and his brains, until the shadow submerged beneath the cannon found its match in his memory. “I know that shape!”
Odahingum joined him by the tree and stared at him, not understanding. “What is it?”
“It’s something I saw in Amsterdam. It’s a ship!”
“A ship that goes under the water?” Wiin tried to approach the river to get a better look at what lurked beneath the cannon.
Samuel snatched wiin by the arm and dragged wiin back behind the tree. “You’re lucky it’s pointing at the town, for we’d be dead if it’d seen us.”
“You say you know what that is. What that is makes no sense.”
“When I saw the design, I found it ridiculous too. I didn’t see what the point was of building a ship that was all closed, without masts or sails. But now I see it. It’s the perfect way to attack and remain unseen.”
Wiin felt revulsion for the idea. “Who is capable of waging war by such deception?”
The cannonballs kept falling on the last house standing. The wails of the injured now filled the forest like the dreadful preaching had minutes before.
Samuel let himself fall on his knees, overwhelmed by the noise and the ideas dancing in his mind. He thought of searching for Bridget, but he deemed it unlikely that she would have survived the blast. “I… I saw it on some papers. I couldn’t read what they said; Bridget thought the design was Danish.” And that last bit sparked another chain of ideas.
Odahingum chanced a quick glance around the tree, at the remains of the bridge. “We must go to the town and assist the wounded.”