Duncan flinched. As ever, Conawago's arrow had hit the mark. "It's a dark, cold spot in my heart that seems to ebb and flow like the tides. I don't think it will ever go away."
"How old were you? Eleven? Twelve?"
"Ten," Duncan replied. "I was ten when the English killed them."
"And hundreds of miles away at school. Do you possibly think you could have stopped it?"
"I would have died with them. I should have died with them."
"I was the same age when the Jesuits took me away," Conawago said after a long silence, "promising I would return with knowledge to help my people. When I finally came back I had all the knowledge but my people had vanished. I spent most of my life looking for them. You must not spend the next fifty years looking for ghosts." The old Nipmuc extended his hand to guide Duncan back from the edge.
An hour after leaving the council fire Duncan sat on a solitary ledge, the moon high overhead, scanning the low starlit horizon of the lands below. He gazed down at the Indian camp three hundred feet beneath him, where he had sat in silence after the haunting words of the chief, letting the tobacco smoke waft around them, until finally Conawago had turned to explain.
"I spoke about you," he had said in a near whisper, "and of our time in the great woods. Old Belt believes there is a reason men like you and me survive the loss of our tribes, believes that we have special voices that reach the spirits. He says the Iroquois must learn all the ways to connect to those spirits. Word has come to him of a plaid man who can make the voice of the old ones."
When Duncan had raised his brows in confusion Conawago motioned toward the shadows. There he saw his friend had brought his tattered haversack into the lodge.
Understanding at last, Duncan had taken the bag and disappeared into the darkness, alone. Conawago knew well the solitary communion Duncan now needed as he unpacked the bundle wrapped in tattered muslin. With slow, reverent motions he laid the intricately crafted pieces in a pool of moonlight before assembling them. The first test of a reed brought a reply from a whippoorwill.
"You are clan chief," a familiar voice called from inside him, in the tongue of the Highlands, "which means you must show the others the right thing to do." Though he had first heard them spoken at his father's investiture many years before, his father often repeated them to him in his dreams. "Never mind that we will never see the Highlands again," an exiled countryman had declared to him the year before. "Your clan is all those under the boot of the world."
At last the bladder bulged with air, the reeds were wetted and set, the drones tuned. He clamped the blowstick in his teeth and began fingering the chanter. He could not have foreseen how every fear, every resentment, every longing for the justice that always seemed to elude him would crest in that moment when the first notes sounded, sweeping over him in a heart-thumping crescendo. By the end of his first tune he thought he would weep. By the end of the second he was no longer mournful, he was fighting, he was standing against the world, he was the last pipe speaking for the lost clans and dying tribes, and in that moment he would have charged a line of infantry alone, sword in one hand and pipes in the other.
He did not know when Conawago arrived to sit on a moonlit rock nearby, did not see the painted Iroquois bucks who had earlier assaulted him arrive to sit facing outward as if to protect him. He played the rally songs of long-ago battles, the airs from Highland romps, the ballads of women sending their men to do battle against impossible odds. As the moon crested he discovered the great brute McGregor sitting beside him, sobbing like a bairn.
CHAPTER SIX
Magistrate Brindle was ill-pleased with Duncan's musical performance, his nephew Felton reported as Duncan rose up from under the wagon after a few hours' sleep. Horses had been spooked. Several of the Welsh teamsters had insisted a banshee was descending on the convoy. As more grievances were recited, McGregor appeared at Duncan's side. Something like rancor flashed across the gangly young Quaker's face, then he shrugged, offered an exaggerated bow of his head, and retreated.
As Duncan made ready for travel he glanced up at the high ledge where he had played the pipes. Conawago was there, stretching in the dawn light, waking with the Iroquois chiefs. They had arrived the night before with wondering eyes to listen as he had played, had nodded solemn approval when he had finished. When Duncan had left them they were settling down on a bed of moss as Conawago pointed to the sky. "Ootkwatah," he had heard his friend say as he stepped away. "Pleiades." He was explaining to the chiefs the European names for the constellations.
Van Grut now approached, extending a tin mug of tea, which Duncan ravenously swallowed. He uneasily eyed the four young red-painted warriors who had followed him back to the magistrate's camp. They had been highly animated since hearing his pipes, pointing at Duncan and making low exclamations to each other, words that might have been praise or might have been the opposite. He no longer knew whether they plotted to protect him or harm him, though he had no doubt about their intentions for the breakfast the Quakers had been cooking.
"Yo ha!" one of them suddenly moaned and held his cheek, dropping a piece of bacon he had furtively lifted from the breakfast pan. When a companion bent to retrieve the meat a pebble flew from under the wagon and hit him in the temple. He cursed, but the other bucks laughed and pointed to a diminutive shape hiding behind a wagon wheel.
"Mokie!" Duncan called out and scooped up the girl as she darted toward him. He found himself embracing the girl with more emotion than he would have expected. He released her, turning her around to examine the wound on her head. "I proclaim you healed," he offered good-naturedly.
"They say it was you making that music last night," the girl said. "I heard it like in a dream, far away but asking me to come to it. Something kept pulling me back, but I went toward the music. Then suddenly I opened my eyes, and I was in Mama's arms."
"Bagpipes, lass. I breathe into a little pipe, and the voices of all my grandfathers come trilling out the other end."
She embraced him again, then insisted he sit while she brought him a meal of bacon and bread, the best breakfast he'd had in weeks. She disappeared inside the wagon with more food, but was chased out by her mother, who declared they would eat in the fresh air. Becca climbed down from the high gate then reached up. To his surprise it was Skanawati who handed down the infant, Penn, then with a rattling of chains the Onondaga chief climbed down. He smiled not with his mouth but his eyes as he recognized Duncan, then cupped his hand over his heart and swept it toward the sky. "I too heard your grandfathers," he said. "My heart was soaring."
Duncan grinned for a moment at the man then, without thinking, reached out to examine the cuts and bruises on the chief s arm where the Virginians had beaten him. Skanawati pulled away, sitting down on a log to gulp down a tankard of water brought by Mokie. With intense curiosity Duncan watched a small group gathered near the front of the wagon. Magistrate Brindle was leading his Quakers in morning devotions, his nephew Felton now reciting from the Bible.
"In the village of my family," Skanawati suddenly declared, looking north, "this is the moon of the singing-" he paused and made a hopping motion with his hand.
"Frogs," Duncan offered.
"Singing frogs. The children catch them on the leaves where they dwell. They bring them into the longhouse to hear them sing at night and laugh when they see their throats swell up with air. Frogs and children share great joy in the spring."
They watched the teamsters hitching the mules and oxen to the wagons. Some began moving down the road.
"A young woman was killed at that last boundary tree," Duncan announced. "An Iroquois woman, we think. And her husband, a man named Cooper."