Language of the Bear Read online

  “They’re still young.”

  “And girls, too. Maybe it’s just men who need to find trouble for themselves.”

  “I know of a young woman who caused a bit of trouble when she married the quhanstrono living in the woods instead of a respectable Susquehannock.”

  His mother smiled. “I could choose my own husband. Besides, that was a good kind of trouble.”

  She squeezed his shoulder and stretched to kiss his cheek. “It’s good that you go,” she said then, her voice going subdued. “You know the English better than any. And you know enough to be wary of their laws and promises if you ever listened to your father.”

  She smoothed one hand along the back of his head as she took a breath through her nose. “Remember to pray. All the jogah beyond the village do not know you, and can be tricky.”

  “Yes, mother,” he said with a smile.

  She huffed, but smoothed her hand along his shaved scalp again. “Then may Hahgwehdiyu clear your path and bring you home soon.”

  Wolf Tongue rose and adjusted his bag on his shoulder so it wouldn’t catch against the tomahawk tucked into his belt. “Now go,” she said. “I’m sure there’s a young woman who wants to make some trouble with you.”

  Wolf Tongue offered her one more smile and kissed her forehead.

  When he stepped from the shelter of the Wolf Clan’s longhouse, he again adjusted his bag. He’d packed the necessities, including food that would last four days if he rationed himself, and the leather bag was heavy against his shoulder. He didn’t know exactly what he would need, so he’d also stowed away extra wadding and balls for his musket.

  As he walked through the village, musket held in one hand, others stepped out from their homes and stopped their work to wish him off. A woman and her three children paused at their hide-scraping and he nodded and smiled. Smiling still hurt in his jaw where Kicks-the-Oneida had struck him and his lip had swollen slightly.

  He flexed his jaw and increased his pace as he thought of Fox’s Smile. He didn’t want to keep her waiting, though there was one more person he wanted to see before he could meet her.

  As he came to the longhouse he sought, he stopped outside to rest his musket against the bark exterior. Above the arching doorway, the family had painted designs of the turtle in stark white against the gray bark. Wolf Tongue pushed aside the heavy blanket in the entrance as he slipped inside.

  Long rows of bunks and racks for tools stretched twenty strides ahead. Drying meat hung by the fire in the center of the lodge, and its smoke hung like a mist through the entire building. Runs-in-Water sat on a pile of robes just beside the fire and he motioned to Wolf Tongue to join him.

  Runs-in-Water was younger than Wolf Tongue, and not nearly as tall. He still wore his deerskin cloak over his shoulders even by the warmth of the fire. His hair was fashioned in the usual Susquehannock style, shaved but for a tuft at the crest of his skull. Today, Runs-in-Water hadn’t tied any decorations in it and it hung limp, like a streak of black paint down the back of his head.

  “I thought you’d spend your last moments in the village with Fox’s Smile,” he said as Wolf Tongue sat.

  “I will. So I don’t have much time. I just wanted to say farewell before I left.”

  Runs-in-Water smiled. “I’m flattered. The man who bested Kicks-the-Oneida wants to see me.” Then, his face hardened slightly. “Listen, I don’t know why you even wanted to go.”

  Wolf Tongue’s brow furrowed. “What?”

  “I don’t know. It’s almost like Lifting Smoke wanted you to go. No one knows what the English want. Usually, when they come, they come to trade or steal or beg for a thousand warriors to help them fight. But this time?” He blew a long breath through pursed lips. “Who knows what Lifting Smoke is sending you off to. And you want to go?”

  Wolf Tongue cocked his head. “It’s got to be cheerier than conversation with you.”

  Runs-in-Water’s frown deepened. “I’m serious. The English and the French take slaves and send people back across the water. What if that’s what he wants?”

  “Well then, I’ll kill him, escape and come back to marry Fox’s Smile.”

  Runs-in-Water’s eyes widened. “Ah. Is that what this is about?”

  Wolf Tongue squirmed. The ground was hard without a blanket to sit on. Farther down in the longhouse, Runs-in-Water’s sister coughed.

  His friend leaned in closer. “You think this will prove you enough to Lifting Smoke and Sits-by-the-Tree so that you can marry their daughter.”

  Wolf Tongue shrugged. “Lifting Smoke just doesn’t have a sense of humor. Besides, if that does happen? There are worse things I could win.”

  “True.”

  Wolf Tongue leaned forward to clasp one hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Be well. When I return, I’ll bring you fortunes and three English wives to give you sons.”

  “White women are ugly.”

  Wolf Tongue rose. “Then they’re your only hope.”

  Runs-in-Water shook his head and waved his friend off, and Wolf Tongue ducked out the door.

  Even after the interior of the longhouse, the daylight seemed weak. The clouds had formed a gray dome over the earth and the wind rolled back and forth like a petulant child. It was as if the village tottered on the edge between winter and spring and might yet fall back into Gohem’s frigid grip before the flowers began to bloom.

  The village was surrounded by a waist-high earthen mound with a deeper ditch on the far side. On the east side, the fortification opened to allow one main road out of the village and down the slope of the hill. To either side of that entrance, they had recently built wooden palisades that stretched fifteen strides in either direction. It was there that Fox’s Smile waited.

  She wore her hair long and unbraided today so that it mingled with the fur on the hide cloak she pulled tight against her shoulders. A wrapped skirt with a beaded hem peeked out from beneath her buckskin overdress.

  Wolf Tongue pulled her tight against him and kissed her. After a moment, she pushed at his chest. He pulled away slightly and brushed her hair back off her shoulders, letting his hands rest there. He felt her sigh.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  She folded her arms across her chest and looked out at something down off the hilltop. “You shouldn’t have to do this.”

  Wolf Tongue shrugged. “We don’t even know what this is.”

  “That’s even worse,” she said, looking back at him. “What if you don’t come back?”

  “That’s going to make it hard for you to marry me, then.”

  Her eyes hardened, her jaw clenched. Wolf Tongue sighed and let his hands fall from her shoulders.

  “I need to do this,” he said.

  “Why? To prove that you’re Susquehannock? Or to earn some glory for yourself?”

  “It’s not glory I need.”

  Fox’s Smile shook her head. “You think you need to prove that you’re one of us because your father was English. But you don’t.”

  “No? Your parents certainly don’t like my mixed blood.”

  “No one cares. I don’t even think my father cares.”

  Wolf Tongue shook his head. “What would you have me do?”

  Fox’s Smile licked her lips. “Come with me.”

  Wolf Tongue’s forehead crinkled in confusion. “Go with you where?”

  She took a breath as if to steady herself. “We’ll leave. Be married elsewhere. Go live with the Lenape or the Seneca like the others.”

  Wolf Tongue stared at her in disbelief. Did she think his task so dangerous that he certainly wouldn’t return? They’d never spoken even in jest of fleeing the Susquehannock to start their life together. It should be here, in this village, that they began their family.

  When he didn’t answer she took his hand. Her fingers were strong and she gripped it as if for support as much as to offer it. She ducked her head to catch his eye. “I’m not a little girl who wants to run away when she can’t have wha
t she wants. We’d still be close enough to our people that we’d deal with them and come for the celebrations. I won’t pretend that it will be easy or that we won’t anger a few people by leaving. But I’m a grown woman and can choose my husband, and if leaving will make that easier, then let us do that.”

  Wolf Tongue clenched his jaw and looked away. The wall of wood and bark behind her loomed stark and solid, while on either side the land opened to fields of green-brown undergrowth and the bony arms of trees of the forest to the east.

  “Or,” she said, “we can stay here and you can live with me in my mother’s longhouse.”

  His eyes snapped back to her and she watched him with a shade of a grin pursing her lips and lightening her eyes. A small chuckle escaped his lips and her smile widened.

  How beautiful would life be? To leave and live with Fox’s Smile? To forget the craziness of this secret task the English came begging for. What did he need to prove? He’d just bested Kicks-the-Oneida, shown that he was as much a warrior as any man in the tribe. He looked down the road, a winding path of packed dirt with lumps of snow still clinging to the earth in places. At the bottom of the hill, the English soldier huddled beneath a bare tree.

  Fox’s Smile squeezed his hand and brought his attention back to her.

  “I can’t,” he whispered, and it hurt to say it.

  She sighed, released his hand and then caressed his forearm with her fingers.

  “I thought you would say that.” Her voice was sad and low. “I just …I worry for you. You don’t need to go and I’m afraid you won’t return.”

  He set his musket on the ground, then took both her arms in his hands. “I do need to go. For you. You say you would make things easier, and so would I. If I do this thing, whatever it is, we can stay here in the village when I return. With our families and friends, where we belong. That will be much easier for both of us.”

  Then he shrugged and said, “And don’t be afraid. I can handle anything they want. My father was English, so dealing with these crazy people is in my blood.”

  Fox’s Smile blew out an exasperated laugh. Wolf Tongue cut her off with a kiss. She pulled at him, holding him tighter and closer. He inhaled her scent and tasted her and for those moments he wondered how he could ever refuse her anything. Then, their lips parted and they rested their foreheads against one another.

  “Come back soon. And whole,” she said. “Hurry, before I get bored and wander off.”

  “If you left it’d only be to track me down because you can’t live without me.”

  “I like more of a challenge. Following your stench would be too easy.”

  Wolf Tongue chuckled and twisted to nibble at her ear. She turned and his lips met hers again.

  Without another word, they parted. Wolf Tongue bent to retrieve his musket from the ground while his left hand still held to Fox’s Smile. Then, with one more glance, he stepped off past the border of the village.

  Two – Code Duello

  Under the skeletal branches of the trees, the wind played. The air smelled of snow.

  Lieutenant Hugh Pyke inspected his pistol in the grey light, while his second, Sergeant Davies, stood by his side scratching at his scraggly beard. Some fifteen paces away stood Rider Thornwood and his second, a man Pyke didn’t know with the last name of Button.

  From across the way, Button called out, “Though Mr. Thornwood is, um, indeed prepared to defend his honor, it is my, um, noble obligation to inquire once more … is there no other way that the demands of honor can be satisfied?”

  Pyke said, “The gentleman should know of the other way.”

  Thornwood stood there defiantly, his arms folded over his belly and with one foot jutting out. From what Pyke knew, Thornwood was no soldier but rather a pampered government official who’d lived off the public teat for most of his career. When the man wasn’t busy filling some sinecure or other, he was attempting to seduce some poor girl who didn’t know enough not to swoon over his affected pomp.

  Pyke let Button’s question hang in the cold Pennsylvania air. As a gentleman, he was supposed to consider the prospect. So he maintained a momentary, thoughtful silence for the sake of appearance.

  Sergeant Davies cleared his considerable throat and, with the slightly off pronunciation Pyke had noticed among the colonials, said, “Sir, it’s my duty to ask you. Can we settle this without using the barking irons?”

  “The man’s a back-biter, and the worst kind at that,” Pyke said.

  “Couldn’t agree more, sir, but he’s also a government official.”

  “If he’s dueling, he’s no Quaker.”

  “Ain’t just Quakers anymore that run things in the Province,” Davies said uneasily. “You could be in for a world of trouble with this one.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant. I’m well aware of who—and what—this man is.”

  “Um, perhaps you—” Button began again in his weak voice.

  With as much bravado as possible, Pyke shouted, “Does the gentleman recant what he said about Miss Bennett?”

  He still couldn’t believe he’d overheard the man in the tavern, detailing what were his obviously fictional conquests of Miss Bennett in the bedroom.

  Davies muttered something under his breath. Pyke knew why: he was giving Thornwood no respectable out. No gentleman would ever admit to speaking out of turn. Pyke was forcing Thornwood into the duel.

  “Mr. Thornwood cannot recant what he did not say,” Button responded.

  “So then the gentleman again questions this Officer’s honor? I heard the words spoken myself.”

  “Sir,” Button continued, “I do not doubt that is what you, uh, thought you heard. But consider the setting in which you think you heard these words: a rowdy tavern filled with music, a place where things not even said are often heard, and, uh, if I may be so bold—”

  “You may not be so bold. If there is no other business, we should proceed with the matter at hand.”

  Then Thornwood surprised him: the man laughed. It was not the nervous laughter of a schoolchild being caught out by the headmaster for not completing his Latin conjugations the night prior. No, it was the laugh of a confident man well at ease in any situation.

  Under his breath, Davies said, “Be careful, sir. This bloke’s a government dandy alright, but he’s got right experience with a pistol. I could tell by how he was handling it a moment ago.”

  “The only man who needs to be careful around here is Mr. Thornwood.”

  “Quite right, sir. Quite right.”

  The two parties advanced and met halfway. Above where they stood, the canopy of trees opened and admitted weak, murky light into the forest. The sky was a dome of grey, promising rain or snow. All this talk of more temperate weather in the colonies was hogwash, as far as Pyke was concerned.

  Thornwood was a tall man with a roguish smile that must have charmed the ladies, but he walked with an affected air and seemed to bounce on his heels, so he was fooling no soldier. Still, though, Davies’s words of caution echoed in Pyke’s his mind. Thornwood knew how to handle a pistol. And a duel against any man was no laughing matter.

  The setting of the duel hadn’t been trifled over: the seconds had agreed to this spot, some two miles from Jenkins Town in the middle of Penn’s Woods, far away from prying eyes.

  Dueling was not specifically outlawed, but it had been increasingly frowned upon; and under the technical eye of the law, it was tantamount to murder, though Pyke had never heard of a dueler being charged with a capital crime.

  “If there’s no other business, then, we’ll mark the points,” Davies said.

  “The usual twenty paces?” Thornwood asked.

  “The usual with pistols is ten paces,” Pyke said.

  If Thornwood were afraid, he showed no signs.

  Davies said, “Very well, then. Mr. Button, if you will.” Davies handed a saber to Button. The two seconds, without another word, began pacing ten yards in both directions, leaving Pyke and Thornwood alone. Over
Thornwood’s shoulder, Pyke kept an eye on Button to make sure Button paced the requisite ten yards and no closer or farther before marking the point with the sword. He wouldn’t put it past Thornwood or Button to play fast and loose with the code duello.

  The corner of Thornwood’s mouth curled in a mischievous smile. “Listen, old boy, we don’t have to do this you know. We’re gentleman. I will delope if you will. Honor will still be satisfied.”

  “A lady’s honor has been tainted.”

  “By the lady herself.”

  “By a man calling himself a gentleman.”

  “You don’t understand. I’m not merely repeating what I was told, Pyke.”

  Pyke nearly drew and fired at that provocation.

  “I am telling you, man to man, that I know firsthand of Miss Bennett’s honor. You are not fighting a just war.”

  Pyke grinned but was boiling on the inside. The man was trying to weasel his way out of the duel. There was no way Damaris Bennett, that beautiful young woman, had …. He let the thought die. “You have the effrontery to lie to my face?”

  The soft, pudgy skin of Thornwood’s neck flushed. But Thornwood kept himself composed. “You’re about to give your life for a girl who—”

  Pyke held up a hand. “That will be quite enough, Thornwood. I won’t countenance any more lies about Miss Bennett. She is a dutiful daughter, a God-fearing Christian, and an innocent whose good name you decided to besmirch. Now you’ll pay for your sin in this life as well as the next.”

  Thornwood shook his head in disbelief. Then he stepped closer so the two men were mere inches apart. “Very well, Pyke. But you are no gentleman, sir. Your pig-headedness makes it quite obvious to me that you are not of noble stock. It does not surprise me, the misfortunes of your family of late. It is God’s way of punishing you and putting your family in its proper place.”

  Pyke’s rage nearly boiled over, but he checked it. No doubt Thornwood was goading him so he would not have his wits fully about him for the duel. He needed a clear mind, especially if Davies was correct and Thornwood knew a pistol. But how did this man know of his family and of their circumstances? The ocean separating England from the Province was apparently not wide enough.