The Ransom of Mercy Carter Read Free Page A

her brothers and ondown the narrow steps until she could see what blocked the way.
    Bodies.
    Only last night, Mercy had cleaned that floor with sand, scrubbing on her knees, sweeping it down the cracks, until the floor was white. Now it was red.
    In this warm familiar room where Father read every night from the Bible while Mercy knit, here the soldiers had bunked, and here they had died.
    They looked as if they had been talking or smoking their pipes and been slaughtered where they stood. It did not look as if they had fought back. Perhaps they had never even bolted the door, expecting to come and go when it was their turn to walk the stockade.
    She looked for Aunt Mary, Uncle Nathaniel and her two cousins, but they were not there dead or alive. Fire spread gaily from one soldier’s pile of blankets to the next. The painted Indian bumped Mercy in the middle of her back.
    “Step over the bodies,” said Mercy to her brothers. “We must go outside. Here, Tommy, I’ll help you.” She sounded as if she were lifting him over mud on the way to church. Perhaps the Lord had answered her prayer and made her brave. He had certainly answered another prayer: they were going to leave the stockade.
    Sam gave Benny a push and John a hand and then the Carter children were outside.
    The burning village was spectacular. Flames lit the sky. Snow gleamed gold and orange. From one house came deafening gunfire, Deerfield men shooting out the upstairs windows and Indians shooting back.
    The chaos was unimaginable. Painted and fearsome in the firelight, the attackers were red and white, black and white, black and red and white, slashed and zigzagged like lightning.
    The fire spread, with its own horrific sound, sparkling as it devoured.
    Hell will be like this, thought Mercy. All I love turned to ash.
    And then a unit of French soldiers in scarlet jackets with gold braid appeared. They even wore their swords.
    The presence of Canada French stunned her. For three hundred miles there were no roads; there were hardly even paths. They would have walked on frozen rivers; slept without shelter; eaten with their fingers. Just to get to Deerfield, this little button of a town in the middle of nowhere? How could Deerfield matter so much?
    A bullet took a Frenchman in the chest and knocked him down at Mercy’s feet. His companions surrounded him, exposing their backs to the Deerfield guns. Lifting the wounded man, they rushed him inside the Catlin house.
    The Indians paid no attention to the wounding of a Frenchman. In fact, they paid no attention to anything.As if nothing at all were happening, they lined their prisoners up. Mercy and Sam, Tommy and John and Benny stumbled into place, and now Mercy saw that the line was long. Dozens of children had been thrust out into the cold, where they stood stunned and silent. There were some parents.
    She counted the entire Kellogg family. All six Hurst children. Some of the Williams children. Mercy found herself next to the oldest Williams girl, who tried twice to speak and twice could not; who pawed at Mercy’s shawl and scrabbled at the fringe. What bodies had
she
had to step over to get out of her house?
    Her father was the minister. Mercy loved Mr. Williams. He was the voice of God. Deerfield could not survive without him. Surely
he
could not be dead. “Your father and mother?” Mercy said finally.
    “John and Jerusha,” came the whisper.
    John was six years old; Jerusha a newborn. If the Indians would kill John and Jerusha, they would kill Marah.
    Mercy left her brothers, running back into her house, slipping in blood and ignoring flames. Her Indian was at the hearth, adding pots and spoons to his bundle. Stepmama was standing next to him, staring blankly, the baby asleep on her shoulder. The savage still held Marah upside-down under his arm and Marah was still holding her beloved blanket. Mercy remembered that she too was carrying things: Tommy’s jacket, her own cloak.
    Mercy walked in front of the