Chapter 24
Grey Coat’s lodge was cosy and everyone who could squeeze in did so. The curious who couldn’t find a space crowded around the door or peered through one of the round windows, a strip of bark curtain pulled back to facilitate this.
The honoured guests – Ethan, Lochranza and Wellow – sat on the floor opposite Grey Coat and next to a simple hearth over which the carcass of a roe dear was being slowly roasted.
Fat sizzled and spat into the glowing embers, the smoke and heat going up the chimney.
Lochranza’s eyes were drawn to it. The chimney was so European and unexpected.
Noting her interest, Ethan whispered into her ear. ‘Chimneys were as swiftly adopted as muskets.’
Grey Coat spoke good English, though Ethan seemed to understand the Shawnee words he sometimes fell back on.
As they talked, they passed a tobacco pipe between them – a calumet as Lieutenant Wellow informed her when Ethan and Grey Coat were engrossed in conversation.
Fresh cornbread dipped into the fat dripping from the carcass was handed to them, along with a fruit drink she was told was made from bilberries.
Everyone seemed to be smiling, chattering, laughing and joking as though no serious business was going on at all.
Lochranza drank everything in, reaching the conclusion that before the coming of European settlers these people had lived in a kind of Garden of Eden. It wasn’t the first time she’d made the comparison about this beautiful, huge country and she was sure it would not be the last.
The women she’d been preparing corn with chattered words she could not quite understand, but she smiled anyway. She heard Wellow clear his throat and when she looked at him, he was blushing. She guessed the reason why.
‘What were they saying?’ she asked him, Ethan being unaware, still in conversation with Grey Coat.
‘They said something about… ahem…’ His face turned from pale pink to deep red. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. You being a lady and that, I don’t know that I should say…’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Lieutenant. Tell me what they said. I promise I will not reach for the smelling salts. I’m made of sterner stuff than that!’
‘They said that having looked you over and seeing you’ve got…’
‘Go on!’ she rasped, keeping her voice low.
‘They said that you have good…’ He cupped his hands over his breasts.
The women, watching all this, roared with laughter, then nodded their heads in approval.
Lochranza sensed there was more and urged Wellow to tell her.
Seeing how embarrassed he was, the women added more comments that made him look as though he wanted to vanish.
‘They say you look like a woman who is enthusiastic when it comes to… coupling… and that they hope you have many children…’
Although they understood little of what was said, the women judged by the young man’s awkwardness that he’d repeated everything. Their noisy laughter and clapping was only silenced by a look of condemnation from Grey Coat himself.
There had been no sign of the negotiations being complete, until he stood up, an imposing figure. All faces tilted to look at him, their expressions a mixture of awe and great respect.
Grey Coat looked both the leader of a people and a doting grandfather, a man of complex responsibilities, no different to many European men and possibly a good deal better than some of them.
Lochranza’s heart went out to him.
Holding his head high, his deep-set eyes narrowed against the smoke from his pipe, he began to speak.
‘For thousands of years we have sung and danced in praise of our land. This is our country. We sprang from her, and like our mothers and our grandmothers, she has taken care of us. When the white men first set foot on our land, they were feeble, hungry. They could not fend for themselves, so our grandfathers, the Mohawk, the Mohican, the Choctaw, the Seneca; all these people helped them survive. Once they became aware of the white men’s avarice, they sought to resist their advance.
These tribes, our grandfathers and uncles, made war thinking that in time they could wipe out all the white men.
Just a short while ago, led by our great leader Tecumseh and backed by the English soldiers who pledged to honour ownership of our lands, we fought against those that call themselves Americans.
The pledge was not met. The white men agreed their own treaty between them.
’ He shook his head while still holding it high.
‘The white men are as the stones on the ground, the trees in the forest. When the stones are cleared, more make their way to the surface, preventing us sowing our corn and beans. When a tree is felled, the seeds they have dropped are already rising in the ground. So too are the white men. We cannot go on running forever. The time of men making decisions is over.’ Grey Coat turned his head and looked down at a man he counted as a friend, a comrade who had championed the Shawnee cause.
‘So, my friend Ethan. Our people will stay to meet their fate. We will only run if we are pushed to do so, for then it is as decreed by Waashata Manitou, the Great Spirit. Or, as you say in your language, it’s in the hands of God. What will be will be.’
Silence fell on the assembly both inside and outside Grey Coat’s lodge. If they felt great fear, it did not show on their faces. There was only a resigned acceptance that destiny would decree what would happen next. Afterwards, they would do whatever they had to do.
Fat sizzled and sent flames from the fire up into the chimney with a great whoosh. Sombre thoughts, expressions and silence disappeared in a cacophony of noise.
The lone voice of the shaman, a bull-headed man with a hooked nose, his hair festooned with feathers, began crooning a sad lament, full of tone but light on words. Others joined in.
The women began slicing the cooked meat, chunks of it passed round along with more cornbread. Conversation recommenced, complimenting rather than competing with the shaman’s song.
Ethan seated himself between Lochranza and the lieutenant and whispered to her.
‘Eat enough for the sake of politeness. The lieutenant’s already lit a campfire on the edge of the village near where the horses are tethered. I intend leaving early in the morning.’
The sound of drums accompanied them to the place where the lieutenant had lit a campfire. They’d walked in silence, affected by the warm welcome of the people and Grey Coat’s pronouncement that he would not leave until forced to do so.
Ethan looked more melancholy than Lochranza had ever seen him. She briefly touched his shoulder.
‘You’ve done all you can. You’ve advised them to move on.’
Steam rose hot and aromatic from the coffee poured by Lieutenant Wellow into tin cups. It had been boiling a long time so was both very hot and very, very strong. Lochranza sipped at it gingerly. Ethan drank so quickly that she thought his mouth must be on fire.
The sky that had been bright with stars clouded over.
The darkness was total. The lieutenant covered the fire with damp kindling to douse the flames but leave the embers burning for morning.
There was just enough smoke to keep wild animals at bay.
It was the smoke they smelled first and stayed away from knowing that fire followed in its wake.
Lochranza lay on her back looking up to where the moon had been, wishing they were back at the fort, exploring each other, speaking of the future and she voicing her concerns about her past, the one she could not remember.
She sighed. ‘I feel sad for Grey Coat and his people.’
‘We all do,’ said Ethan. ‘Now get some sleep. We’re leaving here early.’
She was too tired to question why the urgency and fell into a dreamless sleep. Unusual. If she had been conscious of the fact, she might have wondered why the sudden blank, like an empty cup ready to be filled with a fresh brew.
Her eyes closed. She slept, perhaps for an hour. Perhaps for two. And then…
What was that?
She felt a lump in her back, a tickling on her cheek. My plaited hair, she thought on touching it, the feathers tickling her cheek.
She raised herself onto her elbows. Everything was pitch-black, but the air trembled with the sound of nervous horses, whinnying and stamping their hooves.
‘Get up!’
Ethan’s hands dragging her to her feet.
‘Take this.’ Ethan’s voice.
She felt a pistol being pressed into her hand. She could only just about make out his dashing silhouette in the darkness and the lieutenant not at all.
Shots were fired. A horse screamed, then another and another.
‘Damn! They’re shooting the horses.’
Horses, freed from their enclosure, whinnying and screaming with panic, thundered away in the opposite direction to where they were hiding, their hooves pounding the earth close to where she’d been standing.
Somebody shouted something in French.
‘I might have guessed,’ muttered Ethan. ‘French mercenaries. Outlaws! Brigands!’
‘Can’t you bargain with them?’
‘My name is spit upon by the French.’
Lochranza believed it. She knew Ethan was a spy, perhaps as much for the Americans as the British. No matter which way his loyalties lay, he had contrived against the man every French colonial regarded as the greatest leader they’d ever had, Napoleon Bonaparte.
He didn’t need to add that as niece to Britain’s most successful spymaster, the French would regard her as a great prize – just as they had in New Orleans, depending how many were among this ragtag band.
The shouts of men and the screams of women and children sounded from the village.
Lochranza grabbed Ethan’s arm. ‘Do something! If you don’t, give me some shot and powder. I can shoot.’
She heard him sigh. ‘I don’t doubt it!’
Fires had been started in the village. Silhouettes of men wearing hats and waving muskets showed against the back glow. Ethan cocked his pistol, Wellow his musket. Lochranza loaded her pistol and took aim.