He snorted half-derisively. “Well, to tell you the truth, your lack of apparent grief had begun to bother me. A mother generally doesn’t lose a daughter without weeping, hair-pulling, and hysteria.”
“Not when you are the Weroansqua’s daughter,” Shell Comb said wearily. “Such things are for others, not for the pride of Greenstone Clan.”
At the tone of her voice, Panther asked, “So, tell me, do you think your mother could have had Red-Knot killed?”
Shell Comb’s head remained bowed. Only after a long moment did she say, “No.”
“And why not? Surely she understood just how dangerous a marriage with Copper Thunder would be.”
“Dangerous?” She shifted, staring at him through the darkness. “You don’t understand, do you? We’re losing, Elder. Cycle by cycle, the Mamanatowick tightens his control on our southern borders. Stone Frog and his Conoy raids from the north are taking a toll. We can no longer spare the warriors to send on punitive expeditions. With the growth of the Great Tayac’s strength on the upper river, the balance has been changed.”
“The way Okeus made the world, it is supposed to change.” He paused. “And, I think if you decide to go ahead and marry the Great Tayac, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to live dangerously. In a very short time, you’ll regret that decision.”
“I’ve lived dangerously all of my life, Elder.” She straightened her back, arms braced on her knees. “I’ve paid for my mistakes. Oh, have I paid. Sometimes, I wonder how I managed to do the things I’ve done, but I tell myself, 7 am the Weroansqua ‘s daughter!” I do what I have to. The cost has been greater than you could know.”
“So, you will add another mistake to a long list?” He paused, weighing his words. “Copper Thunder isn’t any different than the Mamanatowick. If anything he’s more ambitious than the other chieftains. He’s seen the Serpent Chiefs, and pictures himself as one.”
She paused thoughtfully, then asked, “What happened between the two of you?”
“Many years ago, I killed his father and captured him and his mother. His father was a Trader. The man’s timing was bad. He was visiting and trading in a village I overran for my chief.” Panther shrugged. “If Copper Thunder’s father had stayed out of it, I might have let him go. Instead, he felt an obligation to stand by the chief, a man called Stalks-By-Night. Grass Mat’s father picked up a war club and joined the fight. He killed my lieutenant, and I killed him. After the battle, I claimed Copper Thunder and his mother for myself. They went back to my house as slaves.”
“How did he get here?”
“Ran away most likely. I’m sure he’s not keen on having the knowledge spread that he was once a slave.” Panther sighed. “I might have done you a favor, that long-gone day, by cutting off his head instead of taking him back to carry water and firewood.”
“That’s why he hates you?”
“I can’t blame him. I ruined his life.”
“And his mother?”
“She served my needs while I was there. After I left she went to another and I don’t know what happened to her. Dead I suppose. Originally, she was a woman from the upper villages. The Trader arrived one day and they fell in love. She went with him, back across the mountains to trade on the great rivers. She was used to being well treated, and never adapted to being a slave. Grass Mat was still young. A boy is more flexible, but those days of beatings and living like an animal soured something inside him, made him what he is today.”
She clapped her hands together and leaned forward to spill more water on the hot rocks. As the steam rose, she asked, “What about all of those tattoos? Do they have a meaning?”
“Those are the marks of a Serpent Chief. Your Copper Thunder is trying to make himself into the very man he hated so passionately as a boy. Envy, like the bite of a copperhead, can dispense the most deadly of venoms.”
“He says that you poisoned your enemies, that you were very good at making your rivals disappear.”
He took a deep breath. “You have told me that in your life you have made more than your share of mistakes. As a young man, so did I. And like you, I have paid for them.” He barked a harsh laugh. “Anything that Copper Thunder tells you about me, well, if it’s not true, it ought to be.”
“So, you were a great, influential War Chief. What did you do? Dally with the Serpent Chief’s wife? How does a feared War Chief end up as a witch on an island in the Salt Water Bay?” He closed his eyes, seeing himself as he had been, tall, strong, wearing brightly dyed fabrics, his body decked in necklaces of shining copper. From his house, high on its mound on the western end of the plaza, he could see out over the shining Black Warrior River, across thatched houses among the cornfields beyond. His ranks of slaves knelt at his feet, heads down. His hair was festooned with feathers of blue, yellow, and orange, held in place with a burnished copper hairpiece. There, at the foot of his high square mound, stood a pyramid of human heads as tall as a man, all rotting in the bright sunlight. Even now, so many years after, and so many days’ journey away, the smell cloyed his nostrils. He could still hear the buzzing of the flies.