The general’s sneer was aimed first at Duncan, then Conawago. “A dead Scottish clan? An extinct woodland tribe?”
Johnson blew a plume of smoke into the general’s face. Calder’s hand closed into a fist and then relaxed, as if he accepted the rebuke.
In the brittle silence, Conawago produced the belt of purple beads and solemnly unrolled it on the table.
The general began to wave his hand as if in dismissal, but Johnson pushed the hand aside as he leaned forward. “God’s breath!” the Irishman gasped. “What have you done?”
Duncan had no reply. Woolford bent over the belt, tentatively pushing its edges, turning over one end to study the knots. He and Johnson exchanged somber glances. “It is indeed the work of the Council weaver,” the ranger whispered.
“A bunch of cheap beads,” Calder said. “A child’s plaything.”
“I assure you,” Johnson said, “this is anything but child’s play. If you understood, General, you would be shaken to the bone. Such a belt carries the full power of the Iroquois League, the word of the Council, and the touch of the gods. It has to be satisfied, as the elders would say. And this kind of belt is only satisfied with blood.”
“You are speaking like some drunken mummer.”
Johnson looked at Conawago, as if for help, but the Nipmuc would not speak. The Irishman paced around the table, feverishly working his pipe. “These gentlemen,” he finally said, indicating Duncan and Conawago, “are on a mission of blood for the Grand Council of the Iroquois League. A secret mission.”
“Nonsense,” Calder snapped. “We are all on a glorious mission for our blessed King George, to assure British victory over the damnable French. To establish British freedom over this continent.” The general’s words were dismissive, yet he could not take his eyes off the belt. The longer he stared at it, the angrier he seemed.
“And what, General Calder,” Conawago asked quietly, “does this continent look like when it has become entirely British?”
“Sir?”
“Where in your British freedom are the Iroquois, where are all the men chained to labor by British indentures, where are the Lenni Lenape, the Huron, the Shawnee, and the African slaves?”
Duncan shifted to the edge of his chair, ready to stop the blow that surely would come.
But the general only clenched his jaw. “When the French are defeated, you will see that the hand of the king is merciful.” He saw Conawago’s disapproving frown, and his anger ignited once more. “And if you are not prepared to make sacrifice in that cause, then you are my enemy!”
Conawago replied in a quiet voice. “Then you do not understand who your enemies are, sir.” He sipped from his mug before continuing. “For generations,” Conawago explained, “the Iroquois tribes have been the bridge, the buffer between the French and the English. The English have supplied guns and goods and signed treaties with them because they kept the French at bay. After so many of their people were lost to war and disease in the last century, their connection with the British became the real source of Iroquois power, assuring they would be respected by all. They have fought as surrogates for British soldiers, died instead of those soldiers. Do you need reminding it was they who died for Colonel Johnson’s victory at Lake George, not British troops?
“Remove the French threat, and the leverage of the Six Nations is gone,” Conawago continued. “They become just another impediment to British expansion.”
“Nonsense,” the general snapped back. “The king has always remembered his friends. They have nothing to fear.” The general looked to Woolford, as if for confirmation, but the ranger captain just stared impassively at the belt.
“You do not know who your enemies are,” Duncan repeated. “Let us go north. The half-king has no tolerance for diplomats. He has warned that any outsiders who came before him would become his men or hollow men. Your nephew is in grave danger.”
“This half-king is little more than a child who speaks in the riddles of children. And you, sir, are so naive in the ways of the world that you are frightened by him.” The general abruptly rose. “Damn you, McCallum! If you had not connived to obtain the protection of the Iroquois Council, I would have you in irons! You will not go north! You will not meddle in affairs of the state! You will not interfere with the progress of my northern campaign! Venture another mile to the north, and I will forget my generosity. You will be dragged back to Albany and chained to the wall of the iron hole until you rot!” Calder marched to the door and turned. “This tavern is closed! You will sleep here tonight while I decide what to do with you!”
Duncan watched the door, half expecting provosts to bring manacles. When he turned he found Johnson and Woolford still staring at the wampum beads. Conawago had taken his mug to the water barrel on the far side of the tavern.
“Do you have any notion of the gravity of this belt?” Johnson asked Duncan. The Irishman kept his hands away from it now, as if he were frightened of it.
“I have seen war belts before.”
“Not like this you haven’t. These aren’t just two men on the belt. They are you and Conawago. It’s a very old thing, something I have only heard about at council fires but never seen.”
“They knew Conawago and I had a chance of getting through where a large war party would not.”
“When I was a wee lad, my grandfather would speak of the heroes of old,” Johnson explained, “who would leave on holy missions to slay dragons and other preternatural beasts. The names of the heroes were inscribed on stones out on the moors where they had fallen. The Haudenosaunee have similar legends of heroes sent on impossible missions to save the tribes from grave harm. Solitary warriors sent to turn back huge war parties or force fierce beasts back to whence they came. There are still shrines at special trees deep in the forest kept to honor them, though more and more of the trees are being forgotten. Those heroes are said to have carried belts like yours, for their missions of little war.”
“I don’t understand.”
Johnson looked to Woolford as if for help. The ranger’s face took on a melancholy expression. “Accepting this belt is like a vow. The images aren’t just a map, Duncan.” He pointed to the rays over the stick men. “Do you understand what this is?”
“We both ran the dawn runner course. They sent their dawnchasers.”
Woolford grimaced. “Would that it were true. No. It is a gate, a threshold. He pointed to the waving lines, then the concentric circles. Two men must go up the Saint Lawrence, to a place the Iroquois call the hole in the world. Then the two men must go into the hole, across to the other side. It is not just a prophesy. It is a truth in the eyes of the tribes, a promise, a duty now.”
Duncan looked at Conawago, who lingered at the water barrel, staring pointedly into the water as if waiting for Woolford to speak the words to Duncan he had been unable to. “Across?”
Woolford folded the belt very carefully, not looking up. “Conawago and the elders know. They are certain these mysteries must be resolved on the other side.”
“Speak plainly, damn it.”
When Woolford did speak, it was in a whisper. He looked up with anguish in his eyes. “You promised to die, Duncan.”
It was late in the evening when Woolford returned to the tavern, admitted by a provost who warned the ranger he would have only a quarter hour with the prisoners. Woolford dropped a linen-wrapped bundle on a table and uncovered a loaf of bread and a cold leg of mutton. Conawago rose from the hearth. He had chosen to sleep since they had been locked in the tavern, as if to avoid Duncan.
“There was news,” he announced as Duncan began to eat, “a letter from Albany.”
Duncan paused, sensing the hesitation in his friend’s voice.
“Duncan,” the ranger continued uneasily, “there was no time to send to that lawyer in New York town. I discovered the name of the magistrate in Albany who passed sentence on Eldridge, but the crusty old fool wouldn’t see me.” Duncan took another bite as Woolford stepped to the water barrel for a drink. “So I wrote to Sarah Ramsey,” he said into his mug.