Dawn on a Distant Shore
Page 55
Dear Liam,
I have never writ a letter before but Elizabeth helps me write one now to you, to say that we are soon on our way home. Runs-from-Bears will tell you how it is that my Father and Grandfather and Robbie are free. It is a good story.
On the long carry to the big lake we passed a sawmill. There was a man strung up from a dead oak and his hands struck off, we could not ask for what crime. Robbie's red dog Treenie is dead. A soldier shot her. It made Elizabeth gey sad, but this morning her cousin Will Spencer sought us out. That has been a relief to her, I think.
My little brother and sister are in health, and so are all of us, except Curiosity, who has caught a cold in her chest. She says it is Canada at fault, for no reasonable place should have such a cold, damp spring.
I wonder if you took that bear yet and if you hunt with my uncle Otter. If your leg is bothersome you might ask my Grandmother for a poultice. If I was there I would bind it for you.
We have met a man called Hakim, which means Doctor. He wrote his whole name down for me on a scrap of paper, it is Hakim Ibrahim Dehlavi ibn Abdul Rahman Balkhi. He comes from India where I think they must know very much about healing. He is a surgeon on a great ship called the Isis, which sails tomorrow for Scotland. His skin is not so brown as Curiosity's and not so red as mine. I think my Grandmother would like to meet him. I wish that you could, too.
Your Friend Hannah Bonner,
also called Squirrel by the Kahnyen'kehâka
of the Wolf Longhouse, her mother's people
13
Across the river from the cliffs that served as a natural palisade for Québec's upper city, the voyageurs and fur traders had established a town of their own, and it had an Indian heart. Even before Nathaniel and Hawkeye and Runs-from-Bears had managed to best the tide and the ice floes and get the canoe to shore, the sound of drums came across the water. For Hannah it was like a homecoming.
They beached the borrowed canoe on a grassy slope where fifty others like it dried in the afternoon sun. Hawkeye hired a Huron boy to watch over it and Hannah followed the men into the confusion, her hand firmly in her father's and Runs-from-Bears walking behind her. Her attention shifted constantly, for there was a great lot to see, and she wanted to remember it all to tell to Elizabeth and Curiosity.
The North West Company was hiring for the Montréal brigade, looking for voyageurs to paddle their cargo canoes inward to the great lakes. There they would meet the trappers who came out of the northern forests with beaver and mink and fisher furs. Hannah wondered if someday she would see the great white north. She would not mind hard paddling, if it took her someplace worth seeing. But there were no women around the man in dirty nankeen breeches and a rusty leather jerkin who was doing the hiring. He was talking in a big voice to a crowd of Abenaki and Cree in a combination of English and French and Atirondaks; it was a language stripped to the bone, just enough to conduct business: money and distances to be covered, rations of pemmican and pea-and-pork soup. Hannah had never seen any Cree before, although she had heard stories. Her father tugged on her hand before she could make out very much about them beyond the earbobs of silver in large circular shapes.
They walked past men and women with wares spread out on blankets: breeches and leggings, shirts of red-checked cotton, dull homespun, butter-yellow deerskin; hard-tack, venison jerky, and cakes of maple sugar; dried sausages as wide around as a man's wrist, but harder; bundled tobacco and stubby clay pipes to smoke it with. A woman of mixed blood with one eye as milky white as a wampum bead crouched before bowls of dried cranberries and blackberries, stringing them onto long threads.
Now and then someone would call out to them, raising an arm in greeting: long time no see, or by the Christ you're far from home! But they did not stop to talk or even slow down. Hannah could feel her father's urgency in the way he held on to her hand. So far they had seen one redcoat, but he had been arguing over the cost of a ragged bundle of second-grade beaver pelts and hadn't taken any note of them. They were counting on the crowd, and on the voyageurs' dislike of the English, to keep them out of trouble.
They passed an Abenaki camp where some boys not much older than Liam were roasting a dog over a smoky, spitting fire of green wood. One of them looked at her hard; he had a nose ring that shimmered against his upper lip and a panther tattoo on his forehead. She looked away and still felt his gaze like a stick prodding at her ribs.
Then Bears' hand on her shoulder pointed her toward a small camp under an outcropping of cliff. And there they were, her mother's people. Ten or twelve traders, all of them hunters but warriors, too, their scalps shaved clean around topknots shiny with bear grease. They were from Kayen'tiho, the village to the south of Montréal where Stone-Splitter was sachem; many of them were Wolf clan, and blood kin. Hannah felt completely safe for the first time since they had come to Sorel, and she wished that they hadn't left the women and babies behind in the protection of Robbie and Will Spencer. Surely they would be better off here than they were in port. This morning Hannah had counted two redcoats for every five men out of uniform from her perch on the window seat in the transom.
They were given corn soup in hollow gourds. Hannah ate and listened while the men talked first of family, of the hunting season, the season's trapping and how much money the furs were fetching, and whether it was worth the long trek to Albany for better prices. When those formalities were done, heads bent close together and newer stories were told, and nothing held back. All the men made a natural circle around her grandfather as he talked. Somerville, the gaol, the fire, the young man called Luke, butchers and farmers, Wee Iona ... Hannah followed the flow of the story again and the comforting rhythm of her grandfather's voice wove itself into a cradle that she could not resist. She fell asleep and woke with a start just a few minutes later to find the youngest son of Spotted-Fox standing over her.
I have never writ a letter before but Elizabeth helps me write one now to you, to say that we are soon on our way home. Runs-from-Bears will tell you how it is that my Father and Grandfather and Robbie are free. It is a good story.
On the long carry to the big lake we passed a sawmill. There was a man strung up from a dead oak and his hands struck off, we could not ask for what crime. Robbie's red dog Treenie is dead. A soldier shot her. It made Elizabeth gey sad, but this morning her cousin Will Spencer sought us out. That has been a relief to her, I think.
My little brother and sister are in health, and so are all of us, except Curiosity, who has caught a cold in her chest. She says it is Canada at fault, for no reasonable place should have such a cold, damp spring.
I wonder if you took that bear yet and if you hunt with my uncle Otter. If your leg is bothersome you might ask my Grandmother for a poultice. If I was there I would bind it for you.
We have met a man called Hakim, which means Doctor. He wrote his whole name down for me on a scrap of paper, it is Hakim Ibrahim Dehlavi ibn Abdul Rahman Balkhi. He comes from India where I think they must know very much about healing. He is a surgeon on a great ship called the Isis, which sails tomorrow for Scotland. His skin is not so brown as Curiosity's and not so red as mine. I think my Grandmother would like to meet him. I wish that you could, too.
Your Friend Hannah Bonner,
also called Squirrel by the Kahnyen'kehâka
of the Wolf Longhouse, her mother's people
13
Across the river from the cliffs that served as a natural palisade for Québec's upper city, the voyageurs and fur traders had established a town of their own, and it had an Indian heart. Even before Nathaniel and Hawkeye and Runs-from-Bears had managed to best the tide and the ice floes and get the canoe to shore, the sound of drums came across the water. For Hannah it was like a homecoming.
They beached the borrowed canoe on a grassy slope where fifty others like it dried in the afternoon sun. Hawkeye hired a Huron boy to watch over it and Hannah followed the men into the confusion, her hand firmly in her father's and Runs-from-Bears walking behind her. Her attention shifted constantly, for there was a great lot to see, and she wanted to remember it all to tell to Elizabeth and Curiosity.
The North West Company was hiring for the Montréal brigade, looking for voyageurs to paddle their cargo canoes inward to the great lakes. There they would meet the trappers who came out of the northern forests with beaver and mink and fisher furs. Hannah wondered if someday she would see the great white north. She would not mind hard paddling, if it took her someplace worth seeing. But there were no women around the man in dirty nankeen breeches and a rusty leather jerkin who was doing the hiring. He was talking in a big voice to a crowd of Abenaki and Cree in a combination of English and French and Atirondaks; it was a language stripped to the bone, just enough to conduct business: money and distances to be covered, rations of pemmican and pea-and-pork soup. Hannah had never seen any Cree before, although she had heard stories. Her father tugged on her hand before she could make out very much about them beyond the earbobs of silver in large circular shapes.
They walked past men and women with wares spread out on blankets: breeches and leggings, shirts of red-checked cotton, dull homespun, butter-yellow deerskin; hard-tack, venison jerky, and cakes of maple sugar; dried sausages as wide around as a man's wrist, but harder; bundled tobacco and stubby clay pipes to smoke it with. A woman of mixed blood with one eye as milky white as a wampum bead crouched before bowls of dried cranberries and blackberries, stringing them onto long threads.
Now and then someone would call out to them, raising an arm in greeting: long time no see, or by the Christ you're far from home! But they did not stop to talk or even slow down. Hannah could feel her father's urgency in the way he held on to her hand. So far they had seen one redcoat, but he had been arguing over the cost of a ragged bundle of second-grade beaver pelts and hadn't taken any note of them. They were counting on the crowd, and on the voyageurs' dislike of the English, to keep them out of trouble.
They passed an Abenaki camp where some boys not much older than Liam were roasting a dog over a smoky, spitting fire of green wood. One of them looked at her hard; he had a nose ring that shimmered against his upper lip and a panther tattoo on his forehead. She looked away and still felt his gaze like a stick prodding at her ribs.
Then Bears' hand on her shoulder pointed her toward a small camp under an outcropping of cliff. And there they were, her mother's people. Ten or twelve traders, all of them hunters but warriors, too, their scalps shaved clean around topknots shiny with bear grease. They were from Kayen'tiho, the village to the south of Montréal where Stone-Splitter was sachem; many of them were Wolf clan, and blood kin. Hannah felt completely safe for the first time since they had come to Sorel, and she wished that they hadn't left the women and babies behind in the protection of Robbie and Will Spencer. Surely they would be better off here than they were in port. This morning Hannah had counted two redcoats for every five men out of uniform from her perch on the window seat in the transom.
They were given corn soup in hollow gourds. Hannah ate and listened while the men talked first of family, of the hunting season, the season's trapping and how much money the furs were fetching, and whether it was worth the long trek to Albany for better prices. When those formalities were done, heads bent close together and newer stories were told, and nothing held back. All the men made a natural circle around her grandfather as he talked. Somerville, the gaol, the fire, the young man called Luke, butchers and farmers, Wee Iona ... Hannah followed the flow of the story again and the comforting rhythm of her grandfather's voice wove itself into a cradle that she could not resist. She fell asleep and woke with a start just a few minutes later to find the youngest son of Spotted-Fox standing over her.
