“Well, then. Go. Tell him, not me.”
Clutching the book to her chest, she exited the lodge and slipped into the gathering darkness.
~~~~~
The sliver of a moon played seek-and-hide with foamy clouds that hung like spirits above the dark, woodland canopy. The sound of rushing waters was ever in the background of the village, its signature melody. It was as soothing to Katari as the hum of crickets in the dewy grass or the chirp of tiny frogs along the shoreline.
She also remembered nights, however, filled with the jangle of wagon wheels and the bark of raucous laughter flowing through the window from a distance. She could nearly feel the stuffiness of the little wood-hewn room, and hear the groaning creak of its floorboards if she dared to tread upon them. And, clearest of all, she recalled the sound of Nicholas breathing, steadily, near to her in the dark.
The Big House was both still and darkened. Katari hesitated, wondering if she should slip inside or announce herself. She did not want to frighten Opichi unnecessarily, and yet she did not exactly wish for an audience.
She carefully lifted the door-flap and inched herself inside. Maluwe. She could not remember in which direction Nicholas had chosen to bunk. It was likely that he did not wish to lie close to the couple during the hours of sleep. She cocked her head and listened for the unmistakable snoring of the bear-man.
There…Katari heard Pétant’s rasping snort from somewhere to her right in the gloom. She took two hesitant steps toward the left. “Nicholas?” she whispered.
The sharp click of a stone of flint was followed by the feeble light of a candle in the room’s dark interior. Opichi’s dour face emerged from within the gloom, highlighted by the flame’s glow. Her brows were furrowed and her lips pursed in a little round oval that mirrored the shape of her abdomen over which she had crossed her arms.
“Where have you been?” she hissed.
Pétant chortled in his sleep and Katari looked over her shoulder in confusion, wondering why Opichi was not lying next to him.
“Yes, I am sitting on Nicholas’s bunk,” Opichi whispered heatedly. “And, do not worry, Katari, for nothing will wake that great bear from his dream-sleep other than the firing of a musket ball.”
“Opichi, where is Nicholas?” Katari pled, not wanting to deal with more questions or accusations at this moment.
“He has left this place. This village. He would not listen to my reason. Nobody does. No one respects a simple robin.”
Katari sighed, dismay flowing through her limbs once again. She sat on the corner of the bunk heavily. “Cloud Walker’s youngest boy of but four winters broke his leg, and badly. I was summoned. I could not get here until this moment.”
“Well, then you must leave swiftly. This is why I waited for you, sitting awake when my baby is so tired in my belly that I could sleep for days.”
“Leave?”
“Katari. How can one as quick and bright as you be so very blind? Nicholas is a good man, and he loves you greatly. Why do you hesitate? I did not hesitate, when I found the man I wanted, and came of age.”
A sound of indignation erupted from Katari’s throat. “Nicholas Belline sent me away! Then he returned with you to taunt me so with innuendoes and presents…”
Opichi nodded. “Yes, he left more gifts behind for you as well. He wished for me to give them to you, in order to remember him by.”
“He did?”
She pointed to a basket on the floor, lifting the candle aloft. Katari knelt and looked through the items. There was a thick book on White medicine, its treatments for various ailments, and the lore and reason behind them. There was an exquisite bracelet of finely pounded silver in the shape of moving serpents, inlaid with bright blue stones like she had never seen. A little bag of dried tea leaves inscribed with symbols she could not understand, but understood its origins were from over the giant sea. And, yet another gilded tome of stories by the word-warrior, Shakespeare.
Beautiful, exciting gifts from far away, filled with the promise of adventure and cultures that Katari had never experienced. A fierce ache squeezed her heart with the knowledge that Nicholas had carefully picked these for her alone. They were the finest of brides-gifts that she could ever hope for.
Katari choked back a sob. How could emotions of the heart go so awry, and be so difficult to express?
“You must understand something, Katari,” Opichi announced quietly. “It is about Nicholas, and his nature. He has experienced more grief than you or I put together.”
Katari looked at her friend in surprise, knowing of the abuse that she suffered at the hands of Le Tousse and his men.
Opichi nodded. “You see, I had a wonderful childhood. It was filled with family, play, and gentle structure. I was loved. I was taught. I was wanted. So when bad things happened, I always had my memories. I remembered who I was.”
Katari had never asked Nicholas about his youth. She was too afraid of discovering that he had a family, wife, or lover that he pined for, one that he wanted more than her. She had been too selfish to wish to know the truth about him. Katari was instantly washed in shame. “What happened to him?” she whispered.
“Nicholas was pushed from his home at the age of seven. His mother did not love him or want him. He did not know his father. He was not taught his people’s ways. He had no noble birth, no family, and no status. All he knew was hunger and the constant threat of death, should he chose not steal, lie, and cheat...all dishonorable things.”
Katari’s eyes widened. “How do you know of this, Opichi?”
“Only through pulling the truth from my husband. Nicholas has frequent night-terrors, you see. I hear his cries.”
Katari traced the cover of the Medicine journal, a gift so thoughtful and sweet, from a man who had done nothing but care for her safety since pulling her unconscious body from the oxen dray.
“There was a girl,” Opichi continued. “One that Nicholas, although only an eleven year old orphan, came to love like no other. She died, Katari, and not easily, either. Nicholas took the blame upon himself for not being able to save her.”
“They were but children,” Katari whispered. She thought of the White students playing outside the school near Fort Orange, and the broken look on Nicholas’s face as he viewed their youthful joy. “No one adopted these orphans?”
“The White ways are different,” Opichi explained sadly. “Many do not revere their children, and care for each one with a tribe’s unified love. If a blood bond is broken, then children will suffer terrible consequences. There was a whole group of orphans who Nicholas could not save. He was taken from them, and put into servitude. Slavery, really. Pétant protected him after that.”
It was an unthinkable sadness. Katari’s people put the needs of their children – anyone’s children in fact – far above the needs of themselves. Should a parent die, the tribe would step in, and nurture the youth with an intensity equal to the blood bond. It was their way. What Nicholas suffered was unthinkable.
“The girl’s name was Claire,” Opichi continued. “The one that he loved so. And she was a very frail child. Nicholas felt that he failed her. This is all that I know.”
“Why did he leave here in the deep of night so abruptly?” she wondered.
Opichi shook her head. “I do not think he will return, Katari,” she announced soberly. “He was resolute. He had lost the very reason that he came with us. He had ceded you to White Lynx.”
Katari moaned softly, a sound of loss.
“You must not dally, Katari!” Opichi hissed. “I did not delay when my heart announced its love intent to me. We both have chosen White men. It is so. It is just. They are good men, loving men, and true warriors of their own kind. Why do you not see this?”
“I do,” Katari returned resolutely. “I will make haste.” She rose and moved toward the door. “Do not tell my brother for as long as possible. He will wish to ride with me, and thus cause me delay, and I will never catch up to him. I know Nicholas, and that he will rid
e hard and long for days.”
Opichi nodded. “Yes, this is true. He went North. Go quickly, and then return to me. With your man. I wish to be at your wedding as you were at mine.”
Drawing in a long breath, Katari slipped from the Big House and into the shrouding darkness of night.
~~~~~
Katari did not take the time to pack. Speed through the night hours was the only way she could hope to catch up to Nicholas.
When she reached the village’s animal enclosure, she slipped up to a startled pony, calming it with a handful of corn and a gentle touch upon its soft muzzle. His name was Alàpilahtu, which in her language meant one who does things quickly. After slipping a rope bridle over his head, Katari used a stump to push herself up and onto his back. She had always been too short to mount a horse from the ground, much to the teasing delight of her brother. Grey Wolf was the most accomplished of horseman, and could mount at a dead run from behind, launching his body through the air like the explosion of a mountain lion, without a sound or bolting the animal.
Katari never could match Grey Wolf’s physical talents. But she could cling to a pony like a burr as she did now, leaning low over Alàpilahtu’s neck with her hands wrapped tightly in his thick, brown mane. She prayed he would be as swift and sure-footed as his name implied, and his previous rider’s had boasted.
Skirting the village so as not to wake anyone, or draw unwanted attention, they reached the North Trail both quickly and quietly. Katari gave the willing pony his head, nudging him into a gentle lope with only the light of the half-moon to guide them. It would have to be enough.
When dawn’s light finally began to break through the thatch of branches above them, Katari was exhausted. She reined the pony to a walk. He was breathing hard as well and surely needed to rest. It was unlikely that Nicholas had moved as quickly through the darkness as she had done. As Katari wondered why she had not yet come upon him, a trickle of unease entered her mind. Opichi had been certain that Nicholas had traveled north. Could she have been mistaken? Had she been riding the wrong way?
As the pink and golden rays of the sun’s rise illuminated more of the forest, Katari saw that ahead lay the ruins of a campfire. She smelled the remnants of a cooked meal, and the acrid and lingering scent of charred wood. Her unease melded into hope. This had to be Nicholas’s campsite.
She reined her pony in, and dismounted to investigate. There were a metal tins and dirty plates near the fire pit, which still smoldered from recent use. Scraps of what appeared to be burned turnips and the round bone of a ham hock had been discarded into the leaves.
Nicholas had never been this untidy in his habits. He had fully put out every fire, and any remains of food had been taken far from the site so as not to attract unwanted animal visitors. He would not have left used utensils behind, haphazardly. Her heart sped up at the sudden implications.
“What have we here?”
Katari gasped and whirled. A grey-haired man with thin lips and a bulbous nose that had quite obviously been broken more than once stood only ten steps behind her. He grinned, showing missing teeth.
When hard fingers encircled her forearm, Katari opened her mouth to scream. But before she could release a sound, a thick hand that smelled of the same burnt meat clapped firmly over her lips. She was then jerked back against a second thick, male body. The grey-haired man clapped in approval and chortled as her pony’s reins were taken. She had been ambushed.
Chapter 24
The rough-looking men possessed an accent that was difficult for Katari to interpret. She thought that they spoke in a coarse form of French, but they had odd words for certain things that surely came from other languages. Their grunted phrases contained some Dutch words, and certainly some Iroquois, the northern tribe her people called Haudenosaunee.
It seemed though, that the crux of her problem was that they were not the kind sort of men. In fact, they were very bad men. She could smell the stink of their sweat, too, from where she sat against a tree with her wrists bound in front of her. Unfortunately, they had been wise enough to hobble her ankles, as well as her arms. Katari knew that she could have outrun them both, had she only found the chance. Even the younger man was on the portly side, and huffed now as he toiled with the horses. They were both heavily bearded with hairy arms.
The subject matter was Katari herself – and that was more than obvious. Where she had come from, what her value was, and what they would do with her. She held her tongue, not giving away that she understood many of their garbled and drawling words. The old one blew saliva on the ground frequently, like it had done him some terrible wrong. Who would spit on the earth itself? It was an offense to the Creator.
Katari did not like the way that either man looked at her. Their sly and frequent glances made her skin crawl with the wish to hide away. With dismay, she realized that they highly enjoyed the look of her, and that they considered the capture of a Native woman to be a prize of great value.
Now, Katari wished that she had not told Opichi to hide the news of her departure. At the very least, her brother Grey Wolf was a good ten hours ride to the south. She did not know where Nicholas was, but by this point she was certain that he had not come by way of the North trail, or she would have caught him.
Katari had always relied on luck and her family to guide her path through life. Good fortune had always followed her. She was blessed through girlhood, charmed, and always the lucky one. Until this past year, that is. Now, ill fortune followed her like a sly and hungry mongrel, nipping her heels at every step. The hairs of her neck rose up when the young one smiled at her, yet again.
No, he was not a good man. The first tinges of real, deep fear curled into her belly.
“Do we try to find her people?” the young one asked.
The old one spat into the forest floor yet again. His teeth looked blackened. Although his beard was grey, his eyebrows were as dark as pine pitch, which matched his grin quite suitably. “Louie,” he grunted. “How stupid are you?”
“I’m not,” Louie growled.
“You want an arrow straight up your hairy cul? Stupid, you are.”
“I want her, Tetue,” he grunted. “And that’s not stupid. Just a simple fact.”
Tetue chortled. Katari believed that his nickname was the French word for stubborn. “You and me both. She is exactly what we need, though, much more than a bit of wampum in trade. These breed of women can work from sunrise to set. Sew, cook… and lay down.” He laughed harshly at the meaning behind his words.
“She’s pretty,” the stupid one said.
“Yes, she certainly is. Look at her, built so sweetly and with that comely face. Her worth will depend on her nature, though.”
“Her nature?” Louie echoed.
“Yes, stupid,” he returned with a sigh. “How spirited she is. Whether she will do what she’s told. She’s little, but she looks feisty. Takes a bit to break those ones. Just like a horse.”
Katari felt tremors begin at the base of her spine. She didn’t understand all of their words, but certainly enough of them to realize that she was in serious trouble. She focused on keeping her face expressionless. She lowered her chin to her knees, as if in defeat. Katari did not wish to appear feisty. She did not wish to know what broken meant. She thought of her friend Opichi, and knew in her heart that it would be a horrible thing.
~~~~~
Biting the inside of his cheek, Nicholas closed his eyes briefly to ward off the string of filthy curse words that threatened to erupt from his throat. How could Katari have walked – no ridden – right into the midst of two of the sloppiest and filthiest trappers he had ever seen before?
Nicholas had smelled them long before he heard their ribald talk as they took their morning meal around the haphazard makings of a campfire. He had slipped off the trail quietly and into the underbrush, and then circled far around them. He had intended to simply ride onward when he reconnected with the main path. They were not worth bothering with at a
ll.
But then, he thought that he heard a female voice cry out. Just once. It sounded like fear, and that one cry was quite enough to give him pause. He needed to make sure there was no woman involved in their doings, for they were undoubtedly dishonorable. Nicholas had tied his mount securely on its lead, leaving it room to graze contentedly until his return.
When he had drawn close enough to visually take stock of the situation, his heart had sunk like a stone in the still waters of a pond. His impulsive Katari was in dire straits, yet again.
Nicholas had ammunition in his pack, two flintlocks, and a killer aim. He was tempted to quickly shoot them dead, and be done with the dilemma. Once glance and an earful of garbled talk had summed up the situation neatly. These two men were nothing but a pile of trouble for anyone they encountered, especially of the feminine persuasion.
He had seen it many times. For some unknown reason, certain White trappers felt that they had the right and the privilege to take Native women as their own property. They enjoyed the process of berating them, humiliating them, raping them, and forcing them into life-long servitude.
Nicholas knew very well what stark fear and knowledge of endless servitude was like. No innocent woman should ever fall beneath its talons. He gritted his teeth. He could kill them swiftly and then take Katari home to her people.
His fingers itched to take up his familiar weapons. The feeling of prickling along the back of his neck remained, as a sure sign of grave things to come. He wanted to attack, to approach the threat head-on, and to annihilate these men without a backward glance. They were worthless. Degenerates. They had tied up Katari, and their intent was to use her in as many ways as they could before discarding her like a scrap of meat.
Once, Nicholas himself had been a degenerate. Base-born, he stole, cheated, lied, and beat men when it was necessary. He had even killed two of them, although those men had been hell-bent on taking him down first. He hadn’t even flinched at the notion, either, or felt remorse when the deed was done. Was he still that same man at this moment?
Savage Journey Page 23