The Heretic's Daughter: A Novel - By Kathleen Kent Page 0,14
in the ground to give fair warning to the other tribes.” He stopped for a moment to light his pipe with a taper pulled from the hearth. His exhaled breath sent smoke from his nose down his cheeks, and he pitched a ragged, suffering note to his storytelling.
“A certain Captain Gardner had been mortally wounded in the head and chest during the battle and would allow no other physician but I to attend him. Blood ran down his face in rivers where his skin had peeled away from his skull like a soft-boiled chestnut. I lifted him up and called him by name. ‘Captain Gardner, Captain Gardner, can you hear me?’ He looked up at me, his life force flowing out of his veins, and thanked me for my service. He died in my arms. We carried him back to Boston, where he was buried with all due honors.”
We all sat in silence and watched the firelight on white birch form dancing pictures of massacres in the snow. Henry then said, “Father, show us the scar from the battle.”
Aunt frowned at this, but Uncle cheerfully opened his coat and shirt to reveal an angry scar that cut downward across his chest, just under the left nipple, to the tender part of his belly. As he tamped out the remaining embers of his pipe, he said in closing, “Only a year ago during the coldest months were Schenectady to Salmon Falls to Falmouth attacked by the French and Indians. Hundreds were killed and captives taken. Women with child ripped open, their babes dashed on the rocks. People think that the winter season forbids the stirring about of the Indian” — and here he looked up at me — “but it seems the snow and cold does not keep them from our door.”
Suddenly Aunt called out, “Enough!” Her jaw quivered as she hurried to draw the bolts on the door, and the look in her eyes spoke of days and nights spent in fear of such a raid coming to the Toothaker farm.
That night I lay staring into the darkened room, every sound, every shadow, turning to creeping horrors. I pulled Hannah against me as a shield until I thought my scalp would crawl off my skull with fright. After many hours I fell asleep and began to dream. I saw the terrifying faces of Indians, their skin painted as bright as any scarecrow, forcing their way into my grandmother’s house, carrying with them impossibly long and sharpened butchering knives. It was to my family they had come, but I could not sound the alarm, for my body had been left many miles behind. I watched them gather around my brother Andrew’s cot and saw the sheet pulled back from his head. He lay there unmoving, his pale blue eyes resting in the middle of a bloody mass that had once been his face. Every bit of flesh had been flayed from his muscles, skinned as neatly as an autumn hog.
When I opened my eyes, Margaret was kneeling next to me, her face solemn, her eyes wide and unblinking. I began to cry and she bent down close to my ear and whispered, “Come and sleep with me.” Together we carried Hannah into my cousin’s room and crawled into Margaret’s bed. She held my hands between her own and breathed her moist, warm breath over my fingers. Her breath smelled sweet, like porridge with sweet-gum syrup poured through. Her lips curled up in a knowing way, her eyes slanted to a drowsy pitch. “No one tells stories like Father. He weaves them out of the very air. But I have stories to tell as well, Sarah.”
Through the matted light I could see the delicacy of her, the smooth whiteness of her skin, as she talked. Her voice was low and strangely hoarse as she hummed some bit of nonsense. She placed her arm tighter around my shoulders and pulled my head to her neck like a piece of lump metal to a polished lodestone. We fell asleep, the three of us close together, Margaret’s fingers wound tightly with mine. We woke to my aunt standing startled over us, saying, “Margaret, what have you done? You have put yourself in danger.” We lay there, looking at her as if she were an intruder in her own home.
“There is naught to do for it now, God help us.” She knelt down by the bed and said a silent prayer. I looked to Margaret, but