“They turned toward home, but his voice followed them. At night, they could not sleep for the evil words in their ears. In the day, they heard cries and whispers from the trees along their trail. Some of them said it was only ravens calling, but others said no, they heard him plainly.
“At last, my brother said it was clear this man was a sorcerer.”
The old lady glanced sharply at me. Je suis une sorciere, I’d said. I swallowed, and my hand went to the amulet at my neck.
“The thing to do, my brother said, was to cut off his head, and then he would talk no more. So they went back, and they cut off his head, and tied it in the branches of a spruce. But when they slept that night, they still heard his voice, and they woke with shriveled hearts. The ravens had picked out his eyes, but the head still spoke.
“One man, very brave, said he would take the head, and bury it far away.” She smiled briefly. “This brave man was my husband. He wrapped the head in a piece of deerskin, and he ran with it, far to the south, and the head still talking under his arm all the time, so he had to put plugs of beeswax in his ears. At last he saw a very big red cedar tree, and he knew this was the place, because the red cedar has a strong spirit for healing.
“So he buried the head under the tree’s roots, and when he took the beeswax from his ears, he could hear nothing but the wind and water. So he came home, and no one has spoken the name of Otter-Tooth in this village, from that day until this one.”
The girl finished this, eyes on her grandmother. Evidently this was true; she had never heard this story.
I swallowed, and tried to get a clear breath. The smoke had ceased to rise as she talked; it had gathered instead in a low cloud overhead, and the air was thick with narcotic perfume.
The hilarity from the drinking circle had lessened. One of the men got up and, stumbling, went outside. Two more lay on their sides by the fire, half asleep.
“And this?” I said, holding out the opal. “You’ve seen it? It was his?”
Tewaktenyonh reached out as though to touch the stone, but then drew back.
“There is a legend,” the girl said softly, not taking her eyes from the opal. “Magic snakes carry stones in their heads. If you kill such a snake and take the stone, it will give you great power.” She shifted uneasily, and I had no trouble imagining with her the size of the snake that might have carried a stone like this.
The old lady spoke suddenly, nodding at the stone. The girl jumped, but repeated the words obediently.
“It was his,” she said. “He called it his tika-ba.”
I looked at the interpreter, but she shook her head. “Tika-ba,” she said, enunciating clearly. “This is not an English word?”
I shook my head.
Her story finished, the old woman sat back in her furs, watching me with deep speculation. Her eyes rested on the amulet around my neck.
“Why did he speak to you? Why has he given you that?” She nodded at my hand, and my fingers closed over the opal’s curve in reflex.
“I don’t know,” I said—but she had taken me unaware; I had had no time to prepare my face.
She fixed me with a piercing look. She knew I was lying, all right—and yet how could I tell her the truth? Tell her what Otter-Tooth—whatever his real name—had been? Much less that his prophecies were true.
“I think perhaps he was a part of my…family,” I said at last, thinking of what Pollyanne had told me about the ghosts of one’s ancestors. There was no telling from where—or when—he had come; he must, I supposed, be an ancestor or a descendant. If not of me, then of someone like me.
Tewaktenyonh sat up very straight at that, and looked at me in astonishment. Slowly the look faded, and she nodded.
“He has sent you to me to hear this. He was wrong,” she declared, with confidence. “My brother said that we must not speak of him; we must let him be forgotten. But a man is not forgotten, as long as there are two people left under the sky. One, to tell the story; the other, to hear it. So.”
She reached out and touched my hand, careful not to touch the stone. The glitter of moisture in her black eyes might have been from the tobacco smoke.
“I am one. You are the other. He is not forgotten.”
She motioned to the girl, who rose silently and brought us food and drink.
When I rose finally to go back to the longhouse where we were lodged, I glanced toward the drinking party. The ground was littered with snoring bodies, and the keg lay empty on its side. Two Spears lay peacefully on his back, a beatific smile creasing the wrinkles of his face. The girl, Ian, and Jamie were gone.
Jamie was outside, waiting for me. His breath rose white in the night air, and the scents of whisky and tobacco wafted from his plaid.
“You seemed to be having fun,” I said, taking his arm. “Any progress, do you think?”
“I think so.” We walked side by side across the big central clearing to the longhouse where we were lodged. “It went well. Ian was right, bless him; now they’ve seen this wee ceilidh did no harm, I think they’ll maybe be disposed to make the bargain.”
I glanced at the row of longhouses with their floating clouds of smoke, and the glow of firelight from smokeholes and doorways. Was Roger in one of them now? I counted automatically, as I did every day—seven months. The ground was thawing; if we traveled partway by river, we could perhaps make the trip in a month—six weeks at the most. Yes, if we left soon, we would be in time.
“And you, Sassenach? Ye seemed to be having a most earnest discussion wi’ the auld lady. Did she ken aught of that stone?”
“Yes. Come inside and I’ll tell you about it.”
He lifted the skin over the doorway, and I walked inside, the opal a solid weight in my hand. They hadn’t known what he had called it, but I did. The man called Otter-Tooth, who had come to raise a war, to save a nation—with silver fillings in his teeth. Yes, I knew what it was, the tika-ba.
His unused ticket back. My legacy.
58
LORD JOHN RETURNS
River Run, March 1770
Phaedre had brought a dress, one of Jocasta’s, yellow silk, very full in the skirt.
“We got better company tonight than ol’ Mr. Cooper or Lawyer Forbes,” Phaedre said with satisfaction. “We got us a real live lord, how ’bout that?”
She let down a huge armload of fabric on the bed and began to pull bits and pieces from the frothing billows, issuing instructions like a drill sergeant.
“Here, you strip off and put on these yere stays. You need somethin’ strong, keep that belly pushed down. Ain’t nobody but backcountry trash goes ’thout stays. Your auntie wasn’t blind as a bat, she’d ’a had you fitted out proper long since—long since. Then put on the stockins and garters—ain’t those pretty? I always did like that pair with the little bitty leaves on ’em—then we’ll tie on the petticoats, and then—”
“What lord?” Brianna took the proferred stays and frowned at them. “My God, what’s this made of, whalebones?”
“Uh-huh. Ain’t no cheap tin or iron for Miss Jo, surely not.” Phaedre burrowed like a terrier, frowning and muttering to herself. “Where that garter gone to?”