Witch Child: Sorceress Part 17

'Remember when I gave you this?' He caught the string of bear claws that I still wore round my neck. 'I was so proud. I so badly wanted to be a son to you, to do anything that Black Fox could do ... '

'You have been a son to me. And I'm proud of you.'

I reached up to touch his face. He was tall now and his cheek was sanded with fine fair stubble. His body had a man's hard finish to it, but he had a boy's wide smile and his eyes were full of hope and expectation.

'And I'll make you prouder yet, Mary. I'm minded to join them French boys. I hear they're travelling far to the west.' His eyes took still more light at the thought of this adventure. 'Following the lakes, one going into another, until the last is as big as the sea. I've been talking to Satehhoronies too, and he says that there are great mountains beyond that where no white man has ever been, and plains and forests and rivers that no white man has ever seen. Maybe they'll name a river after me, or a lake, or a great mountain peak. Or maybe I'll name one after you.' He smiled down at me again, but his blue eyes were blurring with visions of the future and thoughts of farewell. 'Anyway, that's where I want to go, Mary. Voyageurs, that's what they call them, and that's what I want to be.'

'Then you must follow your destiny. Before you go, I have something for you.'

Knowing this day was coming, I had fas.h.i.+oned a bandolier for him to go with his knife sheath. He held it up, studying the patterns I had worked into it, showing our life together: wolf, lynx, fox, in forest, lake and mountain; all set around with a border of rippling water, and flowers and tall corn stalks. He put it over his head and arranged it across his chest.

'Thank you,' he said. 'Thank you, Mary. I will wear this always, that way I'll keep you with me.'

Ephraim left me then, and he did not return from Kahnawake with the rest of the men. He joined a French expedition heading west. He became a voyageur. He came to visit when the trail led him back this way. He'd arrive with a pack full of gifts and a fund of wondrous tales to tell. He'd stay a month, maybe more, but then he'd become restless to resume his wandering ways. He never lived a truly settled life again.8 I had one son remaining, Black Fox, now Tekaionhake. He would always call Ephraim brother, but he did not intend to go from the village. Already his eyes were turning towards a young woman, Kanehrat.i.take, Carrying Leaves. It was clear that soon there was to be a wedding. I set about preparing, trading red cloth from the Dutchmen, curing skins to the softest whiteness and tanning hide to velvet blackness. Then I began fas.h.i.+oning and embroidering garments for him. I did all the work myself, determined that my son would be the handsomest of grooms. She was daughter to the sachem and theirs was the finest of weddings. Tekaionhake joined his bride in her mother's long house. His life was with the tribe now.

Tekaionhake's young bride did not have an easy life. She feared for him as I had done and did still, for he loved the war trail. He was proving a fearsome warrior, renowned for his stealth, he was brave to foolhardiness and so ruthless that he won admiration among a people famed for their warlike qualities. He was valued, and his value would grow. War was coming between France and England. These two nations would pit the native people against each other, but the Kahniakehaka have ever loved a fight and there was no keeping them out of it. Tekaionhake fought with the rest of his tribe on the side of the English, the people who had killed his father. Such is the strangeness of life.

War kept us busy, but Satehhoronies and I treated all alike: sick, wounded, warrior or prisoner, it made no difference. Our lodge became famous. Not just among the Haudenosaunee, the People of the Long House, but among other nations. Many came and from all the four directions: young, old, men, women, Indian, African and European. They came to learn, from us and from each other. We taught them all we knew of the healer's skill. All we asked of them was that they came in peace and laid all hatred and difference aside, leaving it like their weapons outside the door.

That is the way I lived my life.

41.

Looking Gla.s.s Lake Agnes felt released. The sensation was almost physical. She rose as the sun was sinking over the water and set out for the cabin, her step quicker and lighter than it had been for some time.

Sim's truck had gone, but Alison's car was still there. Light spilled on to the porch from the half open door. She could see Aunt M sitting at the table. Opposite her sat Alison. They were deep in conversation. The oil lamp cast soft light on to a chaos of papers and maps spread out between them. Agnes faltered, then she halted, looking in from the outside. Up until now it had been just her and Aunt M, no-one else involved.

Aunt M solved her dilemma. She pulled herself up from her chair and came to the door.

'Come on in here, Agnes. It's getting cold and I want to shut the door.'

Agnes sat down at the table to begin the last part of Mary's story. Alison listened with rapt attention right through to the end, only stopping Agnes now and then to change the tape in the little recorder she had brought with her.

'They founded a secret medicine society open to men and women alike, and to every tribe, even whites.' Agnes finished. 'And that's it. That's how she lived her life.'

Alison's finger hovered over the 'off' b.u.t.ton. She looked up at Aunt M, ready to ask if this secret medicine society was still in operation today. Something in the older woman's eyes told her that might be one enquiry too far.

'Alison should tell you about what she found out in Montreal.' Aunt M could feel the question coming on and was anxious to deflect it. Secret medicine lodges were not to be discussed.

'Oh, well ... ' Alison laughed. 'I guess I thought it was quite a big deal, but it rather pales compared to what you guys have discovered.' She looked at Agnes. 'Will you write it down for me?'

'Sure, of course.'

'That's wonderful.' Alison smiled. 'I want to put it all in "as told to Agnes Herne". Just before you came in, your aunt was going to show me the box.'

'Oh, yes. The box.'

Aunt M got up and pulled a trunk from under the bed. She opened it up and reached in for something, bringing it back to them cradled in her cupped hands as if she was carrying a nest full of bird eggs.

She put it in the centre of the table. A birch-bark box decorated with moose hair embroidery. Agnes recognised it immediately.

'Could it be the same one?' Alison asked, her voice hushed, her eyes wide as if it was something alive.

Aunt M shook her head. 'Most likely not.' She smiled when Alison looked a little disappointed. 'I don't see that it matters.' She turned the box around in her hands. 'The patterns are what's important, not the fabric. They would remain, worked in by each woman who made it again. That way they stay fresh.'

'Let me see.' Agnes leaned across the table.

The toggle fixing the lid was a little black head of a fox. She hadn't noticed that the first time, it had just been a toggle back then. It was still stiff to work. She twisted it out of the loop of plaited gra.s.s and lifted the top, tilting the box so Alison could see in as well.

'Oh, my gos.h.!.+' Alison suddenly found it quite hard to breathe.

Agnes had not seen these things since childhood. She had not asked for them when she first came to visit. There had been matters more pressing. She had not wanted to see them then. Now she did. She leaned over, looking closer. They seemed smaller, more human scale and battered, in the way of things remembered or imagined, or long antic.i.p.ated but never seen. They were no less special for that.

'Pick 'em up,' Aunt M said. 'We ain't in a museum.'

Agnes shook her head. No. She did not want to touch them. To look was enough just now.

Alison didn't want to touch them, either. She didn't feel it was her place to do so, not before Agnes, but she was having a hard time keeping her hands on the table.

'They could definitely be hers,' she said, her voice rising in excitement. 'That slip of paper would be all the proof needed. And the half silver s.h.i.+lling in the centre of the gorget?' She craned her head closer. 'It has to be a match. I'd have to take them back to test ' She turned to Aunt M, suddenly anxious, mindful of what Agnes had told her, not wanting to seem to take anything for granted. 'That's if, that's if, well, if you don't mind. If you'll give your permission.'

'Ain't mine to give.' Aunt M shrugged.

'I'm sorry?' Alison looked utterly mystified now.

'Ain't mine to give. I ain't the owner.' She nodded to Agnes. 'Better ask her.'

'Oh, no, Aunt M.' Agnes put up her hands.

'I'm not taking no.' She pushed the box towards her niece. 'You have them. You've earned them. They are yours now.'

'No, they're not.' Agnes smiled, carefully fitted the lid and pushed the box across the table. 'Not for a while, at least. I want Alison to have them for now, so they can be verified. Then I want them to go to her exhibition.'

Alison reached out and their hands met in giving and receiving. Alison had been all but overwhelmed when she first saw the box opened. Now to think that it was being given into her keeping it made her feel quite faint. These things were being lent to her, and it was a very great honour. She'd been talking all day; talking and asking questions. Now she could think of nothing to say. All she could do was look at Agnes and smile back her wonder and thanks.

'You got that little tape machine running, Alison?' Aunt M turned to the younger woman. 'Story ain't finished yet, y'know. Now,' she settled in her seat, folding her hands on the table. 'Tekaionhake, her son, the one they called Black Fox, had a daughter. She was called Ojijiagauh, Little Flower, because she was like her grandmother. She had her looks, her ways, her laugh. She grew into a beautiful young woman and followed the medicine way.

'When Katsitsaionneh, Bringing Flowers, was finally laid to rest, her granddaughter released a white bird above her grave, as was the custom in those days, to bear her spirit aloft and speed it on to the plains of heaven. As she let the bird go, a jay darted out of the forest. They flew away together, up and up, until they were just specks in the great blue of the sky, until they could be seen no more. That was the story told to me. That is the story of the grandmothers.'

Agnes listened to her aunt tell it and it was as if she was meeting herself coming back. The story she'd seen unfold and the one that had just been told, they were one now. That should have brought some kind of closure; instead it made her feel lonely. With Mary gone from her, she felt bereft and even more lost than she had before. She frowned and looked up at her aunt, her grey eyes pleading for help.

'Sometimes it's hard,' Aunt M stood up. 'It's hard for us to find our place, to know where we fit in the world. The way I see it is like this.'

Aunt M opened another box and took out a wampum belt. It was about two feet long and four or five inches broad, made up of many small white and purple beads worked into a repeating pattern.

'Ever seen one of these?' she asked Alison.

'Only in a museum, but I know how important they are.'

She knew the belts were very special, sacred. Laws, treaties, were talked into them. They held the history of the people.

'Glad you do.' Aunt M looked stern.

She did not like the way wampum, gehsweda, had been dishonoured, devalued and disrespected over the years. First by the Europeans who had mistaken value for money, then by collectors, and now by ignorant people who used it as a slang term.

'Wampum was never used by native peoples as money. These belts carry the word, the code, the law. They are sacred and a living part of us. They are still used now and always will be. Each bead is treated with great reverence, but each bead is very small.' She put forefinger and thumb a quarter of an inch apart.

'On their own they fall and scatter.' She opened her palm and turned her hand. 'Put them together though, and you've got something else. Together they make up something big. Together they preserve the words.' She looked over at Agnes. 'This is how I figure it: you, me, Mary, the people in her life, the folk Alison has found out about, Alison herself, we're like the beads on this belt. Look at us apart and you can't tell a lot. But put us together and then you can read the whole story.'

Historical Notes Note 1. Elias Cornwell (?1631-1713) The Reverend Elias Cornwell was a prolific writer. His archive contains many publications, including pamphlets and sermons, although it is the diaries that interest us here. These run to many volumes, spanning the clergyman's whole life, from his days at Cambridge to his eventual career as an established and well-respected minister in Boston. The entries referring to his time in Beulah are interesting because they provide a very different perspective on Mary's flight from Beulah, and also offer additional information about the fates of others involved in her story and the fate of the community itself. The relevant pa.s.sages are included here.

g Excerpt from Elias Cornwell's journals (from volumes 6 and 7) November 1st, 1660 I must recount certain doleful and terrible events lately occurring here in Beulah. They concern the orphan Mary Newberrie. This girl (I hesitate to call her by that name, besmirching, as she does, all womankind, not least the spotless maidens, the very flowers of our community, that she has used so cruelly), this girl was welcomed among us with most Christian charity. All unknowingly, we sheltered in our bosom a serpent, a servant of the Evil One Himself. Only G.o.d knows what havoc she might have wreaked if she had not been discovered. But He ever watches over us, like to a father, and I truly believe that He sent His servant, Obadiah Wilson, as an holy Angel to deliver us from harm.

g November 2nd, 1660 The wicked flee when no man pursueth (Proverbs, 28, 1) and so it was with her. She has fled the town. And although we have searched most thoroughly, for a night and day ranging far and about, no trace of her has been found.

The men came back from searching. The weather has turned freakishly severe even for this harsh climate, with great cold and snow flying too fast to see anything. The searching parties risked losing men, or dogs, or both. They have found nothing. No trace. No tracks in the snow lying thick on the ground. Some say she brought the snow on in order to hide her flight and filled her tracks as she made them. Others say there are none to find. They say she flew, as her kind are said to be able to do.

g November 3rd, 1660 The snow blew and the wind howled all last night. With daylight the storm at last abated but snow lies to the eaves of the houses. I deem it fruitless to hunt more, but Reverend Johnson sends the men out again and orders them to take every dog they have with them. He is determined that she shall not escape.

g November 5th, 1660 The men come back and report still no sign of her. It is as if she has vanished. The more superst.i.tious hold yet more strongly to the notion that she has flown on a stick or been borne off by devils. The less fanciful are inclined to believe that she lies buried in snow, frozen in the forest, or that she has been taken by wolves or some other of the fierce wild creatures that dwell in its depths. I fervently pray that this is so and that this perfidious creature, this limb of Satan, has indeed perished.

That I ever entertained tender thoughts in her direction! My blood runs chill in my veins to think on it. The Reverend Johnson, wise in so much else, was wise in this also. For he did warn me even as I sought to protect her and protested her innocence, quoting to me from Proverbs, Chapter 5, verses 3 to 5: g For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on h.e.l.l.

g Those were his words to me, but I was too blind to see. I own that I was a credulous fool to be near ensnared by her wiles, but I must not use myself too harshly. I was cruelly duped. For her words were honeyed, and winning were her smiles. She was indeed fair, and as subtle and beguiling as the very serpent. I have truly escaped a terrible fate and thank G.o.d most fervently for delivering me from this female fiend, this very Lilith.

'And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets' (Ecclesiastes, 7, 26).

g December 2nd, 1660 A thaw came, swift and unexpected, taking much of the snow. This has been followed by a sharp frost, freezing the roads and making it easier to travel. Obadiah Wilson is anxious to be gone, feeling that his work in Beulah is done.

g December 4th, 1660 Obadiah Wilson has been persuaded to stay for a little time longer. There is concern over one of the afflicted girls. Hannah Vane continues to do poorly. It is feared that others in our midst are still busy about the Devil's business and that they do come upon the unfortunate girl, to the very great impairing of her strength and wasting of her spirits.

My own fear is for Obadiah himself. For this is the season for rheums and colds and he is frequently racked with coughing and daily spits blood.

g December 20th, 1660 The frost holds, turning all to iron. Again I find truth in Proverbs 28, 1, viz. 'The wicked flee when no man pursueth,' for Martha Everdale and Jonah Morse are gone. Even though this is not the season for it, they are travelling on. Obadiah Wilson smiles between his coughing. There is no smoke without fire, he says, and witches seldom work alone.

g January 6th, 1661 Perhaps Obadiah Wilson was right, for little Hannah is somewhat recovered. Wilson says that this is a sure sign that the evil has gone from us, and I pray that it is so. He himself is preparing to leave. His work here is done, but he will be needed in other places if the Devil is not to break forth again in our fair New England. Although this is a bad time for travelling, the roads are firm and there is little snow. I have offered to go with him to Salem, for I do not think that he would survive the rigours of the journey if he travels alone. His coughing is no better. He is little more than skin and bone and lately a violent fever racks his body and spots his cheeks. He needs the services of a doctor and we have none here, nor apothecary now, nor any skilled in herbs and healing. If he does not seek help soon, I fear that it will be too late.

g February 9th, 1661 Obadiah Wilson has been taken from us, G.o.d rest his soul. He died yestereve, seized with a fit of coughing that would not stop. He died of haemorrhage, choking and gargling, drowning in his own blood.

g March 1st, 1661 At last the year is turning, the thaw has set in now, heralding the Spring. The afflicted girls have all but recovered. The Reverend Johnson has been tending to the Vane sisters, Deborah and Hannah, since the curse of affliction fell heaviest upon them. Deborah, the elder of the two, does especially well. All afflictions left her some time ago and she fairly blossoms in his presence.

I am also most pleased with the progress that I have made with Sarah Garner. She has become my particular responsibility, and I pride myself on how well she does under my care. All fits and afflictions having ceased some time ago, she prospers mightily. Indeed, I would think my work done, except she implores me so to see her still in case the evils come again. She weeps when I am leaving, and her mother says she pines most piteously for my return. For my part, I own that I have grown fond of her. She is a most sweet child, so different from that other, as innocent and guileless as the day. As soon as I feel that she is recovered sufficiently to take up wifely duties, I hope that she will make me the happiest of men.

g August 14th, 1661 The weather stays hot and sultry, most unpleasant. My fears grow for the Reverend Johnson. His new young wife has failed to lift his mood and he has become ever more melancholy. He sits in his room and broods. His beard and hair are streaked with white and grow increasingly unkempt. When he does not keep to the house he has taken to wandering far and wide. I fear that he is falling victim to a distemper of the brain. Certainly, he neglects his duties most shamefully. I have to visit the sick on his behalf and have taken Sunday services four weeks in a row.

g September 8th, 1661 Terrible news this day. I hardly have the strength, nor the will to write. The Reverend Johnson has been found drowned. He was discovered this morning, face down in the swamp.

g September 26th, 1661 The Reverend Johnson has been laid in the Burying Ground, next to the wife he lost a year since and those of his children taken unto G.o.d, although some do mutter that he has no place there at all and should be put outside the wall. Rumours abound that the melancholy he had lately suffered seized his mind entirely and that he is guilty of self-murder. This is a terrible accusation and one that I have taken care to repudiate most vigorously. How could any man of Reverend Johnson's virtue commit such a hideous sin? How could he turn his back on our Lord and follow the path of the despised Iscariot out to the Judas tree? It is a double crime against G.o.d and Commonwealth; it is not in his nature to do such a thing, but still the rumours persist. He was found in a pool both brackish and shallow, where the water is scarce a foot deep.

g October 5th, 1661 The Reverend Johnson's death, most especially the manner of it, has come as a very great shock to Beulah. Many have been deeply affected by it. Not least little Hannah Vane. It seems to have turned her wits entirely. She refuses to eat or drink and loses flesh by the day. She has not left her bed since the news of his death, but lies curled with her face to the wall. Sarah thinks her not long for this world.

g October 14th, 1661 Reverend Johnson's death has thrown all into doubt. Many of the people here came with him from England, crossing the seas at his bidding, following him into the Wilderness, as the Israelites followed Moses. Others came later, as I did, in very great faith and belief in him and his vision of a City on the Hill.

Now many are saying that vision was false. They say now that Reverend Johnson did not choose well when he planted this settlement. He was no farmer and his visions blinded him to the poor quality of the land: the soil is hard to work, every acre must be wrested from the forest, and the presence of the swamp gives off an evil miasma and brings mosquitoes in summer and bothersome flies.

g October 20th, 1661 John Rivers has received news of his brothers, whom he came here to seek. Harvest is done and he prepares to leave. With the Riverses go Tobias Morse and his wife Rebekah, and their little child. I do not know where they go, but have heard that they mean to travel south and west, even as far as Connecticut.

g October 24th, 1661 Reverend Johnson's widow, Deborah, wastes no time in finding a husband. My good wife, Sarah, tells me that she is to marry Ned Cardwell, a man inferior in station, an erstwhile hireling of Deborah's uncle. I express my very great surprise. I tell Sarah that Cardwell must be marrying her for money. I know that Reverend Johnson left his wife well provided for. Sarah says that must be so, but I have lately learned that Deborah and Cardwell long had an understanding, perhaps more than that. I would not, of course, repeat this to Sarah. Such talk would offend her modesty and bring the blood rus.h.i.+ng to her cheeks.

g October 26th, 1661 Hannah Vane did not live to see her sister's nuptials. She died this day, wasted away.

g October 27th, 1661 Deborah and Ned Cardwell are married, but Sarah tells me that they plan to leave for Gloucester. Ned is done with farming, so he declares, and wants to use his new-found wealth to open a tavern. Gloucester is a seaport and thus has opportunities for enterprises of that sort.

Others talk of leaving also. A new settlement has grown up to the north where our little river joins a greater. Reverend Johnson frowned upon any intercourse with our neighbours, fearing unG.o.dly influences, but now he has gone and news comes that this other towns.h.i.+p is seeking for settlers and that good land abounds with fis.h.i.+ng aplenty where the river falls and copious meadowland.

g November 1st, 1661 I myself have resolved to leave Beulah. I intend to take Sarah and the babe she expects (for we are blessed!) to Boston and seek for a ministry there. I have ever found the people here to be of a poor sort, ignorant and for the most part uneducated. I wish to live in a community more congenial, which will provide proper sustenance to both mind and spirit. Even so, I would have stayed to do the Lord's work here in Beulah, had the people seen fit to choose me as their spiritual leader. Instead they seek another. So be it.

Note 2. Deborah Vane A search of the Ess.e.x County records shows that she failed to prosper after she left Beulah. After she married Ned Cardwell, they moved to Gloucester and bought a tavern. It was not long before they began to appear in the court records for violent behaviour, often directed towards each other. Ned was often the complainant.

1. Offered in evidence by Ned Cardwell against Deborah Cardwell on a charge of common a.s.sault, Ess.e.x court records, 1665: g She took me by the throat & with her fist did punch me in the breast so that I was faint with wont of breath. Then she came upon me with a hatchet, forcing me to flee ...

g 2. Evidence offered by Deborah Cardwell on a plea of self-defence: g After he hath given me several blows, threat'ned me with whip and knife, and altogether used me most barbarosely.

g Court decision: defendant found not guilty, but both warned to mend their ways for 'their several riotous behaviours' under threat of fines and the whipping post. Further indictments for drunkenness (both of them) in 1667, 1668, and for keeping a disorderly house. In 1669 they both stood accused: g For having received into your house and given entertainment unto disorderly Company and ministering unto them wine and strong waters unto Drunkenness and that not without some iniquity both in the measure and pryce thereof.

g Licence revoked.

Deborah Cardwell's name occurs on a 1670 pa.s.senger list manifest on the s.h.i.+p Fortune bound for Virginia. No Ned Cardwell on the pa.s.senger list.

In 1673 Mistress Cardwell, late of Ma.s.sachusetts, appeared before the justices for allowing her premises to become 'a veritable baudie house and meeting ground for rogues, wh.o.r.es, desolute and rooking persones'. This is the last doc.u.mented reference to Deborah.

Note 3. Fate of Beulah Beulah disappeared from the historical record some time in the 1660s. This disappearance is not all that surprising. Many towns sprang up about that time; while some grew, others decayed and died. This could happen for any number of reasons: some were too isolated from other communities, vulnerable to local Indian hostility, others had been established in inauspicious places. In still others the inhabitants had fallen out among themselves. Sometimes the ruling regime was too rigid or too lax, causing settlers to leave and not be replaced. If the population fell below a critical ma.s.s, then the settlement was no longer viable.

Without historical record, there can only be archaeological evidence.

g Beulah? Could be fwd fr Toni T: FROM: InHouse Archaeology http://www.InHouseArch.com/editorial/20010408/1047257.asp Latest Finds g A site between Lowell and Billerica has been yielding interesting finds. Site Director and a.s.sociate Professor of Anthropology Ed Jordan reports on last summer's dig. Jordan and his students spent two weeks last summer in digging a site which provided the local university with a chance to examine what life was like for European settlers in the middle of the seventeenth century. While some of the sites that have been examined have been thousands of years old, the program's summer 2000 dig examined the 'Dowell Site' in the Billerica area. The site was believed to have been an English community that existed between about 1650 and 1670, said Jordan. The discoveries from the site are now on display in the local library.