Page 16 of Dark Tides
“At three,” Alys ruled. “For an hour.”
JUNE 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND
Ned had pulled his ferry to the north side of the river and left it grounded where the shallow pebble beach made a dry landing place for passengers even when the river was in flood. He picked up his basket and walked up the narrow trail to Norwottuck village, his dog Red—named in memory of his old English dog—following at his heels.
He paused while he was still half a mile out and, self-consciously, cupped his hands to his mouth and made the “urr urr whoo hoo” call of the native owl, and waited till he heard the cry back. This was his permission to come to the village. He started on down the path and saw an old woman walking easily towards him. She must have been more than sixty but her hair, worn long on one side, was still black and her stride was confident. Only the deep wrinkles on her face and neck showed she was an elder of the village, a person of wisdom and experience.
“Quiet Squirrel,” Ned said making a little nod to her. “Friend.”
“Nippe Sannup,” she said pleasantly, in her own language.“Netop.”
Ned struggled to reply in the native tongue. “Netop, Quiet Squirrel. Want candlewood, want sassafras,” he said. “Me come look-find?”
She had to hide a smile at the big man talking like a child. “Take what you need from the forest,” she said generously. “And I have something to show you. I don’t know if you Coatmen like this?”
She unbuttoned a satchel at her side and proffered a lump of rock. Ned took it from her hands, turned it over to examine it, and saw that the pebble had been cut in two and each half was hollow, but inside a tiny cave of diamonds sparkled with purple and blue crystals.
He looked from the jagged gems to Quiet Squirrel’s face.
“What this?” he asked.
“Thunderstone,” she told him. “It protects from lightning strike.” When he frowned, uncomprehendingly, she raised her hands to the sky, and made a rumbling noise in her throat and then a “crick! crick!” noise. She brought her hands down, making a jagged gesture. “Lightning,” she told him. She lifted the stone above her head and smiled. “Safe. This is a thunderstone: it protects from thunderstorms.”
Ned nodded. “Lightning! Safe—I understand.”
He thought at once that this would be something his sister in London could sell to merchants whose high wooden roofs left them vulnerable to lightning strike, whose terror was fire, who had sworn their city must never burn again. She could sell it to the new builders in London who were putting up church spires with brass weathercocks, and bell towers with bronze bells. “You got lots?” he asked. “Many? Many?”
She laughed at him, showing her teeth ground down from a diet of hard vegetable and grit. “Coatman!” she exclaimed. “You always want more. Show you one thing, you want a hundred.”
Ruefully he spread his hands. “But I can sell this,” he admitted in English, and then tried her language again: “Trade. Good trade. You want wampum?”
She shook her head. “Not wampum, not between you and me, not between friends.” She took his hand to try to explain to him. “Wampum is a sacred thing,Nippe Sannup. Wampum is a holy thing. Youshould give it as a gift, to one you love to show them that you value them. It’s not a coin. We should never have let your people use it for coin. It is not for sale. It shows love and respect. Respect is not for sale.”
Ned grasped one word in ten of this but knew he had somehow offended. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. Big feet—” He mimed trampling on her feelings. “Sorry. Big feet.”
“What on earth are you doing now?” she asked him as he marched around the clearing trying to mime the idea of clumsiness. “You Coatmen are all quite mad.”
Ned returned to her. “Sorry. You have more? This? Fair price?” He dipped his head. “Not wampum—not you to me wampum. We are friends.”
She put her head on one side as if she were calculating. “I can get more,” she said. “But you will pay me in musket parts, and small iron rods.”
Ned recognized the English word “muskets.” “Not guns,” he objected. “No guns. No thundersticks. Not for People of Dawnlands. Very bad!”
“Not guns,” she agreed pleasantly. “But hammer, mainspring, frizzen.” She knew the English words for the parts of a musket, and showed him that she meant little parts of guns with her fingers.
“Why?” Ned asked uneasily. “Why want? Why want parts of guns?”
She smiled into his honest anxious face. “For hunting, of course,” she lied. “For hunting deer,Nippe Sannup. What else?”
He was troubled. He did not have the words to ask her why she wanted parts to renovate muskets, if her people were arming, perhaps for a foray against another tribe which would disturb the balance of the whole region—English settlements as well as native peace treaties. “But all happy?” he asked, feeling like a fool under her steady dark gaze. “All good friends?Netop, yes? You like Coatmen?” He could not mask the note of pleading in his voice. “Friends with us? Us Englishmen? Friends with me?”
JUNE 1670, LONDON
The front door closed behind James, and the two young women stood in silence to listen to the clatter of the horseshoes on the cobbles as he rode down the quay.
“And where does he go? Sir James? Does he have a town house?” Livia asked.
“I have no idea.”
