The two women now led Duncan out of the longhouse where he slept into the starlit night. Only a few torches remained burning. A solitary guard stood in front of the log structure into which Duncan was led.
“Why do we steal about in. .” The question died with a shiver of fear. The walls were alive with monsters. Hideous faces stared out at him though a haze of cedar smoke. A grotesquely long face with bulbous eyes and a huge twisted smile sneered at him. A beastly countenance with huge red eyes and a crooked nose glared down at the intruders. Five, ten, a dozen of the terrible faces glared from the walls. As Kass pulled Duncan through the torchlit chamber, he saw that she too was uncomfortable under the gazes. The spirit masks used in Haudenosaunee ritual were among the most sacred of objects. The tribes believed that once the masks were consecrated they were alive and had to be reverently cared for, even nourished with offerings of food. They were closely guarded when not in use by the secret False Face societies. To have so many together was, Duncan suspected, extraordinary, and this house was probably the only place in all the League where it was done.
A soft rhythmic drumming rose from the shadows, like the pulse of the spirits inhabiting the chamber. He found himself resisting as Kass tried to lead him on. The masks had a strange hold on him. The room was like a dream chamber, a place where men and spirits mixed. Kass pulled more insistently, leading him down a short, dark corridor to a chamber at the rear of the structure. She pushed aside a heavy skin that covered the entry and gestured him inside.
The room was lit with flickering bear fat lamps. More deerskin chronicles hung on the walls, some bearing images of the False Face masks, others outlines of bison, elk, and giant bears, animals not seen in the eastern forests for many years. Custaloga and the elegant woman Duncan had seen weaving wampum belts sat with Conawago on the floor before a bowl of smoldering tobacco.
Custaloga’s face was lined with melancholy and confusion. When he looked up he seemed unable to speak. Adanahoe appeared out of the shadows and motioned Duncan to a blanket on the floor then sat beside him, gesturing for Kass to complete the circle around the smoldering bowl. “Bethel Church was our greatest secret. We sent the most promising ones,” the first mother of the Council explained, “the ones who would best learn the European ways. They were to become our bridges to our future, the council decided. Each was the grandson or granddaughter of one of the great peace chiefs. They took new names, English names. Hickory John persuaded us it was for the best, for the good of our people, and he promised to look after them. They were the precious seeds of our new people, who would know how to live alongside Europeans, not underneath them. They would teach those ways to the rest of our people. Tushcona,” she gestured to the belt weaver, “made a chronicle so those in the future would know of our plans.”
The slow pulsing in the shadows grew closer. Tushcona the belt weaver began to softly shake a turtle shell rattle in time to the beat as Adanahoe continued. “There are those who say this stealing of our children is an act of the spirits, that they are telling us something. There are those who say we cannot interfere or the spirits will punish us. There are those who say it proves we must join the half-king. There are those who say we must go to war over such a grievous act, but we know not on whom to wage such war. Some of the Council have gone out in the moonlight to pray under the old trees.”
The gentle rattling and the quiet pulse of the drum filled the silence that followed. Conawago gazed at the rising thread of fragrant smoke. Custaloga closed his eyes and bowed his head. Tushcona, still working her rattle, began a whispered prayer. Adanahoe began rubbing a rough wooden slab with a smooth stick, making a sound like the rustle of grass in the wind.
At last Custaloga lifted his head and looked at Duncan. “Would the spirits lie in order to us to protect us?” he asked.
Duncan had difficulty speaking. He felt so inadequate, so small, in such company. “The twisted path of my life shows I understand little of what the spirits want.”
The old man studied Duncan, then Conawago, before replying. “I think the twisted path of your life shows the spirits have often sought to use you. What is needed now are those of both the forest world and the European world, who belong to neither.” The aged sachem leaned forward. When he spoke, his words had the sound of a solemn vow. “When the killer of gods is pushed out of the spirit world, we will need you to bind him down, to keep him from returning.”
Duncan’s mouth went bone dry. He knew he should protest, should laugh, should run away, but he could not move.
A new rattling sound disrupted the ethereal music of the chamber. Duncan forced himself to turn, and his heart leapt into his throat. A god was kneeling beside him, staring him in the face.
A long bloodred mask with a twisted mouth fringed with black hair was inches from his face. Wrapped around the arm of the man behind the mask was a messenger of the gods. The diamondback snake was huge, its head held firmly in the god’s hand, its tail shaking in a strange harmony with the reverent drumming and the murmured prayer.
Duncan was not sure he had not already entered the spirit world.
“It is said you can read the dead,” the old woman said. “What we need is for you to read the dead god.”
It was nearly dawn when they finally emerged from the spirit house. Several elders sat outside the door, waiting. One of them rose and gestured their small group to follow him. They made a silent procession out of the gate, to a circle of frightened men and women at the river landing.
Hetty stood at the edge of the circle, clutching Ishmael to her breast. Their guide pressed forward through the throng then stopped abruptly. The chieftain turned and gestured for Duncan. His gut tightened as he sensed the elder’s intent. For now a reader of the human dead was needed.
Black Fish would witness no more miracles. Duncan knelt at the body. The man who had energetically recounted the killing of gods and the resurrection of the half-king had been set in his death against a stump. The empty sockets where his eyes had been were fixed on the setting moon.
Chapter Eleven
“Never before has there been such a belt,” Conawago said. There was wonder in his voice, mixed with confusion. They had made camp at the water’s edge after their first day of travel from Onondaga Castle, and as Kass, Sagatchie, and Ishmael readied their camp for the night, the old Nipmuc sat at the fire gazing at a dark belt of beads in his hands.
They had been summoned into the Council lodge after Duncan had finished examining the body of Black Fish. “This is not a time for great war between the forest tribes,” Atotarho had declared. “But it is a time for little war between certain men,” he concluded, and he gripped both Duncan and Conawago on the shoulder while murmuring a prayer. He took the wampum belt from Tushcona and extended it in both hands to them. “We know you will show no fear when the time comes,” he declared as Conawago accepted the belt, then he retreated into the shadows.
Adanahoe then appeared. “It had already been decided before the killing,” the matriarch announced. The belt would have indeed taken hours to weave. “The Council cannot act as the Council in this matter. But these children are the Council’s great hope. A secret war is being waged against us, and we cannot stand idly by,” she had said as Conawago gazed at the belt with wide, disbelieving eyes. “This killing leaves us no time. The half-king will think it was the work of the Council, an act of hostility against him. If things are not made right, there will be open war between the tribes. Keeping the League alive is the most sacred of our responsibilities, and we will have failed. The forest will run with blood.”