Read Original Death for Free Online

world that had not known the boundless ambition of Europeans.
    Duncan again choked away his questions about Conawago, determined not to break the reverence of the place. At last they were ready toraise the dead man onto the platform. As they pulled the shroud from the body, Sagatchie seemed to grow more troubled. He looked to the sky and spoke something that sounded like an apology.
    â€œYour friend,” he suddenly said to Duncan. “The Nipmuc with the kind eyes.”
    â€œConawago.”
    â€œConawago,” Sagatchie repeated with a nod. He spoke in a low voice, nearly a whisper. “He told me you were trusted by the dead. That you could read them. Why did he say that? What did he mean?”
    â€œSometimes the dead can leave behind questions they need to be answered. There were many questions left at Bethel Church.”
    â€œBut you did not even know him.”
    Duncan recognized the invitation in the warrior’s voice and saw the nervous way Sagatchie looked at the other dead, as if unsure they would approve. Duncan knelt beside Hickory John. “Did you?”
    Sagatchie looked into the dead man’s face as he spoke. “Towantha wandered through the towns of the Haudenosaunee when I was young, never staying more than a few weeks in one place, though my mother once asked him to live with us in our longhouse, with our clan. You could see he was lonely, but he always embraced life’s joys. He would carve things, beautiful things. Bowls with stags leaping along their sides. Pipes for the old men, war clubs for the young ones. He was always looking for something. At first it was for a sign of his people, who had been forced long ago from their homes along the Hudson. Later it was sacred places. He knew about places no one else did. When I stood no higher than a yearling deer, he took me to a cave with paintings of bison and huge bears and told me it showed the lives of people from before time, from tribes who only live in the spirit world now.”
    Sagatchie walked slowly around the body. “They will take long to paint his life on the other side,” he added, then gestured Duncan toward the dead Nipmuc and stepped away to gather cedar wood from the stream.
    Duncan clenched his jaw and lifted the dead man’s hands, both of which had been crushed, studying their ruin of broken bones and cuts.He lifted away the shirt, noticing that someone had tried to wipe away the bloodstains. A cloth, which Duncan recognized as one of Conawago’s precious linen handkerchiefs, had been placed over the hole in his chest. Duncan lifted the linen to probe the wound, then moved to the bruises and cuts that covered the dead man’s face and shoulders. When he finished he gazed silently at the dead man, recollecting how he had been killed differently than the others, and separately. The others had died in a row, with Hickory John facing them. He had been forced to watch them die. Duncan looked up to find that Sagatchie had lit a small fire and was extending a piece of smoldering cedar wood around and under the scaffold. The fragrant smoke would attract the spirits.
    â€œFirst he was bludgeoned,” he explained when the Mohawk paused at his side.
    â€œI know not this word.”
    â€œBeaten with something. I saw a bloody wheel spoke in his shop. They beat him, and then they broke his fingers, probably with the hammer that killed the others. The breaks don’t line up, which means his killers broke his fingers one by one, probably laying each one on his anvil. They knew who he was, knew they were destroying his ability to work, to carve those animals and make his wheels.”
    Sagatchie considered Duncan’s words for several heartbeats. He clenched his jaw. “You are saying they made sure he took long to die.”
    â€œHe suffered long,” Duncan agreed.
    Sagatchie spoke to the dead man now. “Like a captured warrior who frightened his enemies.”
    The words