A low sigh escaped Conawago’s lips.
“Butterflies,” a small, tentative voice said. “There is a valley full of butterflies where she lives now.” Alex had found his tongue. “She used to visit it often, would tell me about it.” He spoke very slowly, seeming to struggle for each word. “She makes meal with a magic pestle, never having to add more maize. And there are. . ” His lips twisted in frustration and he made a sign of something large and round with his arms, then turned and spoke in a tribal tongue to Conawago.
“And pumpkins,” Conawago translated, “fields full of pumpkins.”
“Pumpkins,” Alex nodded. “She likes pumpkins.”
Duncan dared not speak for fear of spooking the boy. In the spreading darkness only his gaunt face was visible, lit by glowing embers.
“When we arrived at the German mission, Adam said we weren’t prisoners,” Alex continued, “but they all treated us as if we were.”
“When she came to visit him, he sent her away,” added a new voice, low and strained. Woolford, turning halfway so he could still watch the night.
“Not right away,” Alex explained. “They spoke first, Adam and Sarah and she. They didn’t know I was watching. Adam gave her something, told her she had to flee to the farthest of the Indian towns. I don’t think they even saw when I followed her, hanging out the Reverend’s cabin window. I thought no one else saw. I caught up with her behind the furnace. We slipped into the forest past the charcoal piles and ran. One of the Germans knew the trails, though, and led the soldiers onto the path that goes over the ridge, while I took her around it, because of my twisted ankle and because she was with child, four or five months with child.
“Suddenly they were there, leaping down the hill, calling out. She was terrified, pushed me ahead, clutching the sacred thing in both hands, the thing that Adam had saved from an old chief at the massacre, the thing he ran down the waterfall with and had given her for safe-keeping. I didn’t understand the ways of those men in red. I was in front of her when she fell on her knees, and I turned to see the thing that grew out of her breast. She stared at it, touching it with one hand, not understanding. She even tried to get up, but that metal had taken all her strength. Not a night passes when I don’t see her like that, her hand on the metal growing out of her, covered with her own blood. I was as confused as she was. I, too, had never seen one of those things before.”
“What things?” Duncan asked, his throat tightening.
“A musket sword.”
Woolford spoke again, in a desolate whisper. “Bayonet. A bayonet in her back.”
The tale opened a frigid chamber inside Duncan’s mind. He was back in Flanders, learning for the first time what the English soldiers had done to his family.
“Sometimes I find a snake in the forest and ask to visit her,” Alex said. “They live in the valley of the butterflies, just like Adam promised they would. By a river, because of Adam.”
“They?” Duncan asked. “Who else is there with her?”
“Adam. He just came a few weeks ago.”
A new chill crept down Duncan’s spine as he exchanged a haunted glance with Woolford.
“What do you mean beside the river, because of Adam?”
Alex looked up uncertainly, then gazed into the embers. “A spirit totem is his secret, not for words of men.”
But Duncan did not need to be told. The beaver. The beaver had been Adam’s sacred sign, the beaver who had been carved on the mast when Adam died, the beaver who swam deep.
“She didn’t want to leave him at the mission that day. Adam said she had to save the ancient thing, or the soldiers would find a way to use it against her people. He promised she would be safe, that there was nothing to worry about, that he knew she would never let go of it, never let it fall into enemy hands, that it would protect her, that if anything happened to her he would know. He vowed on the spirit of their child that if she went to her sacred land before him, he would know and he would join her.” Alex poked at the embers. “Sometimes when I see them, there is a small shape in the shadows behind them. It’s him, I think. Their son.”
There was no sound for a long time, none except the distant lonely call of an owl.
“I killed them,” Alex said in a tiny voice, filled with pain.
“Impossible,” Duncan said.
“I didn’t understand until later, when I heard those soldiers complaining. They had been told there would be a large reward paid for Sarah. They thought I would have family who would pay as well. It’s why they followed, because of me. What they took from her only paid for a few mugs of rum.”
When Duncan finally stirred, Alex was asleep, his head on Conawago’s leg. He rose and stepped across the fire. “You knew about the thing she was protecting, the ancient thing,” he said to Woolford’s back. “You recovered it.”
“Like the boy said, it took awhile to understand. When I did, I rescued it from those who stole it. But Adam decided to flee that very night, as far from the army as he could go.”
“But why didn’t he run back into the woods?” Duncan asked.
“Because he knew there were men who would use him against the Indians. Because he heard that Major Pike was coming the next day to interrogate him, and if he went among the Iroquois, Pike had ways to find him.”
“You recovered the ancient thing and then it was stolen from you on the ship.” The bear, Duncan knew now, had been in the bloodstained doeskin pouch passed around the prisoner’s hold. He glanced at his pack, where the bear lay snug against his pipes.
“I was trying to keep it safe. I never expected Adam to take it with him. He must have decided it was the only way for it not to be used against his wife’s people.”
“Or he could not abide that it was in your possession. You belonged to the ones who killed her.”
Duncan regretted the words instantly. For a moment the sturdy ranger looked as if he might weep. “It was a mistake, McCallum. Those soldiers didn’t understand. Some may have wanted a bounty. But all of them assumed she was stealing Alex back into slavery.”
Duncan settled onto the ground by the fire. It was a long time before he slept. When he awoke two hours before dawn, he saw that Conawago had replaced Woolford as the sentry. He rose and gestured the old Indian back to the sleeping forms by the fire, to take his turn on watch.
Crickets chirped along the spring. An owl called in the distance. Duncan lay back on a rock and stared up at the stars.
It wasn’t the sunlight that woke him, nor the morning calls of the birds. It was the cold steel of an army sword pressed against his jugular.
“Breathe wrong and you’re a dead man, McCallum.”
Duncan resisted only for a moment. The instant he twisted his neck he felt his skin begin to break, sensed something warm oozing down his neck. He froze and looked up into the cool gray eyes he had first seen at the army headquarters in New York. Major Pike had abandoned his wig, but had added a pistol and a silver-hilted dagger to his belt.
“Careless of you to venture forth without your patrons,” the officer hissed. “No royal cousin to interfere. No soft-hearted general.”
Someone at the edge of his vision lowered a pack and extracted something, clinking of metal. A red-coated soldier stepped beside Pike carrying a set of manacles. As Pike looked up, Duncan twisted slightly, trying to see the rest of the camp. It was empty. What had Pike done to his companions? He had failed them, had fallen asleep while on watch. Duncan’s hand reached for his belt. His tomahawk and knife were gone.
“Where is he?” Pike demanded. He placed a foot on Duncan’s belly, jammed the sword’s point against Duncan’s heart. It was the action of a hunter about to dispatch his wounded prey. The soldier, a brawny man with a face like a hatchet, bent over Duncan and fastened the manacles around his ankles.