The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [72]
His current status as captive is the result of a schism precipitated by a love affair with one of his converts. Not the affair as such—as he explains to Roger, the Mohawk do not practice marriage in the European fashion, and have no objection to cohabitation by willing partners—but rather his repudiation of it. Learning that his lover was pregnant, Father Alexandre experienced what he thinks was a heavenly message revealing the error of his ways, whereupon he promptly removed himself from the girl’s longhouse.
However, he had established a policy of not baptizing children unless their parents were both practicing Catholics in a state of grace, fearing that otherwise the Indians might—as they did elsewhere—view baptism as merely a superstitious charm against evil, rather than a sacrament. Bound by his own policy, therefore, he cannot baptize his child—his lover remained a convert, in spite of considerable reason to renounce her faith, but he cannot absolve himself of sin—and thus achieve a state of grace—because he cannot bring himself to stop loving her.
It is this delicate situation that has caused his present difficulties; the nonconvert population has never been fond of him, and tolerated him only for the sake of a high-ranking man who was one of his converts. This man, the grandfather of the infant in question, is now infuriated at the priest’s refusal to baptize his own child, and has withdrawn his protection. The priest has been brought to Snaketown to face the judgment of the Council there—and Father Alexandre is not hopeful of his prospects.
Père Ferigault’s story distracts Roger from his own misery, but adds to his fear, as the Indians remove the priest temporarily in order to torture him. Why is Roger held here? Is he meant to face a similar fate?
Roger is, in fact, merely being hidden in order to prevent the Frasers from catching sight of him until a bargain has been concluded for his ransom. Jamie has come with his entire stock of whisky, prepared to give it for Roger’s release, but—no more trusting than the Indians—has cached it in the woods until the bargain is made.
For their part, some of the Indians are willing to accept the bargain, others— wary of the effects of liquor on the people—are not. Some women of the village show a disposition to keep Roger and adopt him into the tribe—a Mohawk custom with some captives.
In order to show goodwill and demonstrate the quality of the goods offered, Young Ian arranges—through the offices of the young woman with whom he has formed a relationship—a small ceilidh, a whisky-tasting party at which stories are told and songs sung, involving several of the more prominent men of the village. Claire is invited to share the fire of Tewaktenyonh, an elderly woman of some importance in the village, sister to both the war chief and the sachem of the village.
Claire has with her the opal unearthed with the skull she found on the mountain a year earlier—an opal that makes the Indians very uneasy indeed. While the men are drinking, Tewaktenyonh asks to see the stone, and upon hearing Claire’s story of its discovery, tells a story of her own—the story of Otter-Tooth, a strange man who came to the village some forty years before.
Urging the Mohawk to attack and drive out the white settlers, Otter-Tooth made a name for himself as a warrior, but incurred the villagers’ uneasiness. The Mohawk do not make war for no reason, and there was neither treaty nor friction requiring it— yet Otter-Tooth urged war with greater and greater urgency. Finally he so disturbed the village that he was ordered to