by Lori Benton
“I canna prove he meant to murder me,” he finished by saying. “But I dinna think he’ll give up trying to do me harm if I stay. One of us will kill the other, eventually.”
Face darkened, Blackbird replied in Tsalagi. “You maybe cannot prove it, but I believe it. That one came to me the day you left for the hunt. He asked to be my husband. I refused him.”
About to roll up his bedding, Alex went still, certain he saw that other suspicion in Blackbird’s eyes—that there had never been a second Tuscarora skulking in the woods that day, waiting to brain him over the head; more disturbing still, that the story Cane-Splitter told of her husband’s murder was a lie.
“I will know the truth,” she said. “But Cane-Splitter is not your concern, Alex MacKinnon. You must go from this place. Take the holy man so he might live. And so you will live.”
Moments later Little Thunder came in, saw what he was doing, and blurted, “I go with you? I help?”
Alex sighed, closed his eyes, then looked at the boy, waiting with fragile hope that he must dash. He held out an arm. “Come here.”
Little Thunder must have heard the denial in his voice, for he burst into tears as he rushed into Alex’s embrace.
“Listen,” Alex said in Tsalagi, holding him. “I not take you from mother. You man here. Her only.” He glanced at Blackbird over her son’s head.
She made a sound of affirmation, lips pressed tight.
Little Thunder pulled away, face contorted with unhappiness. “I know you must go. The holy man is sick. Will you come back when he is better?”
He took the lad by the shoulders, holding his gaze. “We see again, you, me. Be strong for mother. Help her.”
The lad nodded, fiercely driving away his tears. “Still I go with you.”
“Lad, ye canna do both,” Alex said in English.
Little Thunder shook his head. “Both.”
“I dinna ken what ye mean.”
The lad said something earnest in Tsalagi that Alex didn’t catch. Blackbird gasped. Alex looked to her, questioning.
“My son has new name. That is what he say. No more Little Thunder. He is now Thunder-Going-Away-Across-the-Mountains.”
The lad was nodding, gazing solemnly at Alex. “Thunder-Going,” he said, enunciating each word with care. “With you. Going here,” he added, and made a fist above his heart.
* * *
As word spread of his departure, the members of Pauling’s flock came to say their farewells if he was awake, to pray for him if he wasn’t. Some brought provisions for the journey. Only Jemma and Runs-Far watched the night through with Alex, taking it in turns to sleep.
During a lull in visitors, Jemma glanced across the lodge to where Alex sorted through the reverend’s belongings, choosing what to add to his own pack in the hope the man could walk come morning if unburdened. Alex caught her scrutiny sidelong, but she dodged a meeting of their gazes.
“Jemma…?” The reverend’s voice unraveled like a thread from his nest of blankets. Alex rose as the gaunt face turned in his direction. “Is that Alex returned?”
Though he’d spoken briefly with the reverend, mostly Alex had kept to the shadows, letting the Cherokees have their time with the man. Crouching now beside the bench, he reminded him, “We leave come the morn. Ye’ll walk out of Crooked Branch’s town if ye can. Else I mean to carry ye.”
Pauling’s eyes widened. “You told me so…I thought it a dream.”
“We ain’t letting you die, Reverend. You need that bark.” Jemma shot a glance at Alex. “But it’s only him going with you. Not me.”
Pauling’s fevered eyes reflected resignation. “Timothy?”
“He there,” Jemma said with a nod toward Runs-Far, asleep on a bench. She fetched a dipper of water from a bowl nearby and handed it to the reverend, who pushed himself up to drink. Then she looked again at Alex, amber gaze guarded. “I stole my own self, remember? You ain’t giving me back.”
Alex put a hand to her shoulder. “Ye’re Shelled Corn’s daughter now. Ye decide where ye go. Speaking of…ye’ve talked with Runs-Far, I take it?”
Jemma softened as she took the dipper from Pauling and filled it again. “He said we got your blessing.”
“Ye do, mo nighean. I’m happy for ye, after all ye’ve been through.”
A shadow of that old haunted look crossed Jemma’s face. She opened her mouth to speak, but Runs-Far stirred, rubbing his eyes. She went to the lad, and moments later lay down to sleep beside Blue Jay.
Runs-Far wrapped a blanket around Pauling’s shoulders and sat beside him, unhappy over the looming separation. “I am not ready,” he said in English. “I am young. Not an elder. Not even a husband…yet.” He glanced at Jemma, already asleep.
Alex drifted back to sorting through what they’d take in a few hours’ time, but heard Pauling’s labored reply: “Do you recall the words I said when last we spoke of this? Let no one despise your youth.”
“They are words. Hard to do.”
“The Almighty will complete the work begun in you, my Timothy. And the work He will do through you.” Pauling paused, then said, “Teach the people as I have you. Respect your elders. Be patient with all. Encourage the weak. Always remember…you do nothing in your own strength. Wait on the Lord. He will instruct you…”
The man was passing on the mantle of shepherd to Runs-Far, yet the words stirred in Alex like living things, casting him back over the seasons of his life to see the pattern that had emerged time and again, whether or not he embraced it. Others had looked to him, yet his own strength and wisdom to lead had failed him every time. It hadn’t been enough. Not at Culloden. Not on the James & Mary. Not at Severn. Yet he’d denied the Almighty could be both sovereign and good, not with the proliferation of evil he’d seen. Only in choosing to trust himself, and failing at every turn, was it made clear that in giving men a choice to believe and obey, God must allow an alternative, that the potential for evil must exist for those who wouldn’t choose Him.
As he’d once done. But no more.
The choice made by heart in the heat of a miraculous moment, in that mountain draw, he now confirmed by reason, casting his lot with a God he didn’t fully understand, rejecting the alternative—trusting in men, whose propensity for greed, weakness, and outright evil he understood all too well.
Including his own.
“You were my first convert among your people,” Pauling was saying to Runs-Far. “First to embrace Heavenly Father’s mercy, and my friendship. You have nearly mastered the reading of it…so I leave my Bible with you.”
Runs-Far drew in his breath. “That precious thing. You give it?”
“With all my heart.” Pauling slid a hand toward the head of his sleeping bench and drew out his battered copy of the Scriptures. “You will find my scribblings in the margins, if you can decipher them—for what they’re worth.”
A tear ran down Runs-Far’s cheek. “They are worth everything.”
Pauling placed the Bible in Runs-Far’s hands. “With every thought of you, I’ll be thanking the Almighty for your life, my Timothy, and petitioning heaven on your behalf.”
“Will you come back to us?”
“If God wills it…many times.” Runs-Far helped Pauling lie down. Before the man drifted off again to sleep, he caught Alex’s gaze. “I will walk in the morning. How far, I cannot say.”
Alex was relieved to see him sleep.
Runs-Far stood and looked at Alex, his uncertainty evident. The lad might love the Almighty and have a heart for his people, but he couldn’t be more than sixteen.
Alex stood before him. “He chose well,” he told Runs-Far, placing a steadying hand to his shoulder. “Trust his choice.”
Runs-Far nodded once. “And you keep him alive. I need him.”
* * *
Hours later, with dawn
approaching, Jemma woke to find Runs-Far sleeping. She came to stand next to Alex, crouched and tying shut the flap of the bulging knapsack. “How you going to carry all that? Why won’t you take a horse?”
“A horse has to rest and graze. We’ll go faster over mountains without one. If I must, I’ll leave the tools behind. I dinna think the man weighs much more than my pack as it is.”
Jemma didn’t reply. A trickle of gray around the door-hide illumed her face enough to show a troubled look.
“Whatever ye’re wanting to say to me, Jemma, if ye dinna tell me now, ye may never get the chance.”
“I know.” She heaved a sigh older than time. “Hard getting the words out, is all.”
“Aye, I see. Come here.” He led her to a bench.
“You remember asking me how Blue Jay come to be?” she blurted, barely seated. “That day by the river.”
“I’m not likely to forget it.”
“It was Mister Reeves. And he done it more’n once.”
Pain in his jaw; he was grinding his teeth. “I’m sorry, lass. Sorry we didna see it when something might have been done. I mind Joanna was worried about ye, going about as ye were in lad’s clothes, hair cropped…”
Her hair had grown in the months since. She’d grown too. A little taller, fuller. A mother now. Still so very young.
“It was my hair he liked,” she said. “That’s why I cut it off.”
Alex didn’t want to be having this conversation. Didn’t want to understand the mind of a man who would abuse a slave, much less one as young as Jemma.
“I think he thought I was younger than I was.”
“Younger?” he echoed.
“Uh-huh,” Jemma said. Then the floodgates opened, and she was spilling. “He told me he’d do worse things did I ever tell, but one time Demas tried to get me to say whether Mister Reeves ever bothered me. Don’t rightly know all he was on about, something ’bout breaking a vow.”
“What d’ye mean, a vow?”
Jemma shook her head. “That Demas scairt me nigh as much as Mister Reeves, cornering me that day in the dairy shed. Then Mister Reeves hisself caught us, and I was thinking it was gonna get worse, until Miss Joanna found the lot of us and hauled me out.”
He remembered the day, the altercation in the stable yard.
“Then I got away from all that, on account of you,” Jemma continued. “Now I got Blue Jay and Runs-Far and Shelled Corn. I got so much.”
He wanted to draw her close, kiss the top of her head. Given all she’d just said, he didn’t dare, but she leaned her head briefly against his arm and his heart melted, sensing her trust. But when she straightened, a frown pinched her brows.
“Is there more, mo nighean?”
Jemma reached up and touched one of her braids. “I said it was my hair he liked. Figured it was on account it’s fair. Not as fair as hers…”
A faint breeze swayed the door-hide, raising a chill on Alex’s calves. A deeper chill gripped his heart.
“Hers?” he asked, already knowing what sort of monster he’d left the Careys to face.
“I don’t think it was me he wanted,” Jemma said. “Those times he was hurting me, Mister Reeves called me Charlotte.”
38
OCTOBER 1748
Alarmed to see Mister Reeves exiting Papa’s room, Joanna grasped the door before he could shut it and pushed past him, halting at sight of Papa seated near the window, a ledger open across his lap. His breakfast was nowhere in sight. Aware of her heart’s pounding, she stepped back and shut the door.
Mister Reeves stood in the passage, expressionless.
“Forgive me,” she hurried to say to cover her too obvious relief. “I bear ill news, but…I’ll not interrupt now.”
Since sharing her hopes for Severn’s future, Papa had been holding things back from her, shutting her out of even the smallest matters concerning the plantation. She’d given Phineas Reeves a weapon—the truth—which he was well practiced at using against her. She suspected he’d been busy twisting Papa’s rejection of her plans into a barrier of mistrust.
“Perhaps you’ll tell me your ill news?”
The challenge in those hazel eyes constricted Joanna’s throat.
After the incident with Demas and the oleander, Papa’s health had taken a turn for the better. She and Azuba had ceased their close monitoring of his food, thinking that, having lost his scapegoat, Mister Reeves wouldn’t dare continue his tampering.
For a time they’d been proved right, until Papa’s ailment flared anew a few days past.
So it had begun again—the watching, the pretending.
But today another matter had arisen. “Three field hands are missing this morning. Phoebe and Mari say they ran in the night. Did you know?”
Mister Reeves showed no surprise at the news. “Had you been patient a moment, I’d have allayed your concern. They didn’t run. I sold them.”
“Sold them? To whom?”
“A fellow on his way downriver to Wilmington. Late last night.”
Joanna hadn’t known the three missing slaves well, but one had been Sybil’s kin. An uncle, she thought. “Papa had no objection to the sale?”
Mister Reeves held her stare. “You seem distressed, Miss Carey. I should have thought the news would please you.”
“Why would you think so?”
“You wanted a simpler life, no slaves to serve you. Perhaps you may yet get your wish. I’m doing all I can to see you and Charlotte—and Captain Carey—keep this roof over your heads, but my options are limited.”
“Why didn’t you tell me of the sale?”
“It was my and Captain Carey’s decision.”
“So Papa knew of it beforehand?”
Mister Reeves made a dismissive gesture. “He’s finally giving Severn his attention. I’d like to see him continue undistracted.”
They faced each other, mistrust all but shimmering on the air. Joanna was first to lower her gaze.
Mister Reeves started for the back door.
“Shall I see you at dinner?” she called, hoping for an idea of where the day might keep him, and how long.
He didn’t pause or look back. “I cannot say, Miss Carey. Good day.”
In the kitchen, Joanna found Marigold about to carry in Papa’s breakfast. “I’ll take it, Mari, but first…are you sure the missing field hands weren’t sold? By Mister Reeves.”
“No one been sold, Miss Joanna.” Marigold drew her to the end of the kitchen, away from Phoebe and her girls, including Sybil, who didn’t look like a woman whose kin had been sold downriver, but rather one in possession of a satisfying secret.
“I know Mister Reeves ain’t sold ’em,” Marigold said, low-voiced, “on account he come last night to ’Lijah, tried to make him say what’s going on—where the hands had run to. ’Lijah say, ‘How you think I know anything about it?’ Mister Reeves say, ‘You thick now with the slaves having all but married one.’ ’Lijah didn’t tell him nothing—if he even knows. I didn’t ask.”
Joanna wouldn’t either. She knew all she needed to know. Did Mister Reeves think her incapable of uncovering the truth, or did he no longer care if she did?
“Miss Joanna,” Marigold said, “how long till you tell Master Carey all you know? He got to take your word, now Mister Reeves done outright lied.”
The truth. Would it set them free at last?
“You’re right, Mari.” Somehow, she’d make her stepfather hear her and believe the man he’d entrusted to an appalling degree had been all along a serpent, striking at their heels.
* * *
Papa, seated still by the window, didn’t touch his breakfast once she related her conversation with Mister Reeves that morning in the passage. Face set, he glanced at the ledger on his bedside table, in his eyes frustration—with her. “I k
now the slaves ran away, Joanna. Phineas told me this morning.”
“He told me otherwise—stood right outside this room not half an hour ago and said he sold them downriver. Which is the truth?”
Papa reached for the cup on his breakfast tray, grimaced at its contents, and set it down again. He rubbed his eyes, then fixed a strained gaze on her. “Speaking of truth, why did you never tell me about Demas?”
“That he ran? I told you when it happened.”
“That he ran, yes. Phineas told me the entirety of it. Demas is to blame for my infirmities.”
She hadn’t known Mister Reeves had been so forthcoming about his slave, but they were telling each other so little these days, she and Papa.
She’d been seated on the edge of her stepfather’s bed, but rose now and paced toward the blue-manteled hearth, its fire lit but dying. She turned and faced Papa. “It’s true Mister Reeves brought his so-called evidence—the oleander—to the smithy, but no one saw where he got it.”
“From Demas’s cabin,” Papa said.
“No one saw it.”
“Demas ran rather than dispute the accusation.”
Joanna wanted to scream, but kept her voice level. “No matter how much preference Mister Reeves has shown him, Demas is still a slave. What would have come of it had he stayed? He’d have been locked in that smokehouse like Alex was, given no chance of pleading his case.”
“MacKinnon again?” Papa winced, a hand going to his side. “Does everything come down to him with you?”
“Perhaps it should. Did Mister Reeves tell you it was he set Alex at liberty?”
Papa’s face went a shade paler than his pain had rendered it. “He did not. Is it true? Or do you wish only to discredit Phineas further?”