The Sachem was one thing; the inhabitants of the Ridge were something else. I couldn’t stop the more suspicious-minded tenants thinking—or saying—that I was a witch, but it was another thing to have my own great-nephew saying so in public.

“Hmm,” I said to Tòtis. “Perhaps you could call me by the Mohawk name for witch?”

He frowned at me, puzzled. Ian, with a slightly odd look on his face, bent down and whispered something in the boy’s ear. Both of them then looked at me, Tòtis in awe and Ian with circumspection.

“I dinna think so, Auntie,” he said. “There is a Mohawk word for it, but it’s a word that means ye have powers, without sayin’ quite what kind of powers.”

“Oh. Well, just Great-auntie, then, please.” I smiled at Tòtis, who returned the smile, but with an expression of caution.

“Aye, that’ll do fine.” Ian got up and brushed crumbs off his buckskins. “Tell Uncle Jamie I’ve gone to have a wee keek at Ulysses. I want to make sure he’s really got off the mountain and isna lurkin’ about. And I want to ken which way he’s going. So as we can find him when we want him.”

132

Man’s Medicine

THE HOUSE BEGAN TO breathe again, as things eased gradually through the evening. Ian hadn’t returned, but I’d sent Jem and Tòtis up to tell Rachel where he’d gone, and both boys returned for supper. The weather cleared and warmed, and a wonderful sunset spread a blazing curtain of bright-gold cloud in the western sky. Everyone went to sit on the porch and enjoy it, and I told Jamie—who had come down to eat—where Ian was. He’d paused for a moment, brow furrowed, but then nodded and relaxed, taking my hand. The vibrations of Ulysses’s visitation were still with us but beginning to fade, though the presence of Corporal Sipio Jackson in my surgery was an uneasy reminder.

I organized the four older girls into shifts to sit with Corporal Jackson and administer food, if wanted, honey-water, whether wanted or not, and laudanum, if needed. Then I fumbled my way upstairs, my eyes already closing, and fell asleep with no memory of undressing.

When I woke, somewhere past midnight, I discovered that this was because I hadn’t undressed at all but merely collapsed onto the bed. Jamie was sleeping deeply and didn’t stir when I got up and went down to relieve the watch and check on my patient.

Agnes was dozing in my rocking chair, but stirred and rose groggily when I came into the surgery. I put a finger to my lips and waved her back. Her knees folded at once; she was asleep again almost before her bottom hit the cushion. The chair rocked gently back under her weight—she was visibly pregnant by now—then came to rest. The only light came from the smothered embers in the tiny brazier on the counter, but the diffuse glow made the surgery seem soft and dreamlike, glimmering among the bottles, hazy among the hanging herbs drying overhead.