by Shawnee Moon
“How would you know?” The words were out of her mouth before she could think.
Instantly, Cameron’s faded eyes registered hurt. Then, he hid his feelings with a wry chuckle. “I can’t argue that, lass,” he admitted.
Cailin glanced back at Sterling. He crouched motionless, waiting, a weapon in each hand. Ohneya didn’t disappoint him. He dashed at Sterling, whirling his hatchet in a wide arc over his head. Sterling feinted right, then ducked to the left as the Mohawk swung at his face. Cailin saw only a blur as Sterling’s arm moved, but it was all too fast to comprehend.
Ohneya spun around and faced Sterling again. A thin red line opened along the war chief’s right hip. Cailin was puzzled. Had Sterling cut the Mohawk with his knife?
The Indian charged again. This time, Sterling didn’t dodge away. He blocked the blow from Ohneya’s tomahawk with his own and slashed at the Mohawk with his knife.
The mob roared as the two slammed together and locked, sinews straining, steel weapons flashing in the sun. Sterling’s back was to Cailin. Cords of muscle stood out across his shoulders and back, and down his thighs. Sweat poured off both men, and Sterling’s night-black hair clung to his damp skin.
Cailin’s blood turned cold. Unconsciously, she fingered the amulet around her neck.
“Don’t be afraid to use it,” Cameron urged her. “The power of the Eye of Mist is real. It can save his life if you call on it.”
Cailin dropped the pendant as if it had burned her. Such talk was superstitious nonsense, as foolish as Moonfeather’s story about a ghost wolf. She’d not let herself believe it.
She’d tried before—when her mother lay dying. She’d tried and failed, and the bitter taste of failure and loss had never left her.
No, she’d not make that mistake again. Sterling must live or die by his own strength. All her love and prayers were as useless to save him as this heavy gold pendant.
A roar went up from the onlookers as Sterling went down with Ohneya on top of him. The Mohawk drove the ax into the earth inches from Sterling’s skull. Then Sterling’s knife cut a gash across Ohneya’s forearm. There was a brief, violent struggle, and the two sprang apart to rise and face each other with hate-filled eyes.
Blood caked with dirt smeared Sterling’s forehead. Cailin had been certain that the tomahawk had missed him, yet a thick red path continued to slide down the left side of his temple. Ohneya’s wounds were bleeding as well, and the sight of blood aroused the crowd to a fevered pitch. Stamping and yelling, they pressed closer, constricting the area of combat.
Ohneya hurled his tomahawk. Sterling ducked, straightened, and threw his. Neither weapon found its mark, and the Mohawk threw his knife at Sterling and pounced on Sterling’s tomahawk. In the split second he took to pry it from the dirt, Sterling buried his knife in Ohneya’s right upper arm.
Ohneya stumbled to his knees and seized the blade to pull it out. Sterling darted forward and drove his weight into the war chief’s back. Ohneya fell with Sterling straddling his prone body.
Cailin clapped a hand over her mouth.
Somehow, in the midst of his attack, Sterling had seized the tomahawk. He raised it over Ohneya’s head with his right hand and pinned Ohneya to the ground with his left. The Mohawk onlookers fell silent, waiting for the death blow to fall.
“Kill him!” Lachpi urged.
“Finish it!” cried Kitate in Algonquian. “Finish him now!”
Sterling glanced toward Bear Dancer and the council. “I claim this life!” he shouted in the same language. “And I trade his life for that of my wife.”
Ohneya’s woman shrieked in lamentation and crawled toward Bear Dancer on hands and knees. “Give me my husband’s life,” she begged. “The father of your grandchildren. Spare him.”
Bear Dancer nodded. “We will release the white woman unharmed.”
Sterling got up cautiously and stepped back, tomahawk ready in case of any trickery on Ohneya’s part. The Indian’s wife scrambled out of the dust and ran to him. Sterling backed away and threw down the tomahawk.
“Why didn’t you kill him?” Cameron whispered hoarsely.
Cailin could stand still no longer. She rushed toward Sterling, but before she could reach him, a brave tossed Ohneya a lance. Cailin screamed as the Mohawk raised his arm to cast the spear at Sterling’s back.
Time seemed to stop for her. She could feel the agony of her own scream, see the confusion in Sterling’s eyes, and smell the stench of death. She extended her hand, but the motion was so slow that it was unreal.
Then she heard the long, drawn-out howl of a wolf. Not far off, but here in the midst of the crowd. Sterling heard it. She could read the knowledge in his face.
And Ohneya heard the wolf as well. His white-rimmed eyes widened with fear. The lance fell from his fingers. He clutched his throat and staggered back.
The medicine man cried out. “The Shawnee witch has proved his courage! Burn him!”
Suddenly, everything was happening at once. Cailin watched stunned as the Mohawks surrounded Sterling. She could no longer see Ohneya. She tried to get to Sterling through the throng, but Cameron caught her and yanked her back. “Don’t shame him, or yourself,” he told her.
She struggled against him. “Let me go to Sterling,” she insisted. “Let me go to him.”
“No.” Pulling her against his chest, he forced her back to where Moonfeather stood watching impassively.
“Stop them!” Cailin said. “You must stop them!” Signaling to her men, Moonfeather ordered them to clear a path for her to the rock where the medicine man stood. With brawn and nerve, and the butts of their long rifles, they did as she asked. Kitate grabbed her around the waist and lifted her onto the natural platform.
“Burn him if you will,” she shouted in Iroquoian, “but know that the price is war with the Shawnee.”
“What is she saying?” Cailin demanded of her father.
“She tells them the Shawnee will go to war if they kill Sterling,” Cameron translated.
The masked man howled, shook his rattle, and began to berate Moonfeather loudly.
“He says that she is no true peace woman,” Cameron said. “He says that she is an imposter and cannot make good on her promise of war.”
Bear Dancer shouted something.
“He is telling the shaman that he’s still the leader,” Cameron explained.
Jit-sho pointed at Moonfeather with his staff and hurled insults.
“Witch.” Cameron continued to translate. “They are both witches. Kill them all.”
Kitate, Lachpi, and the rest of Moonfeather’s Shawnee cocked the hammers on their rifles and put solid rock at their backs.
The Mohawk ceased their clamor and stared at Moonfeather and Jit-sho. When the peace woman spoke, her words rang out with authority.
“She challenges Jit-sho to a test of fire,” Cameron said. “If he dares to accept, he must risk the loss of his immortal soul. She promises to send him into the place of ice and eternal darkness, beyond the ... something about a ghost swamp.”
The shaman’s scornful acceptance needed no translation. He thumped his staff and shook his rattle as Kitate helped Moonfeather down.
“What does it mean?” Cailin asked her father. “What is a test of fire?”
“This woman must walk over hot coals,” Moonfeather explained softly.
“So will the Mohawk shaman,” Koke-wah put in.
“That’s impossible,” Cailin replied, wondering if they’d all gone mad. “No one can do that.”
“A peace woman can,” Lachpi the Delaware assured her. “A true peace woman has the power.”
“And if this ... this trickery doesna work?” Cailin asked.
“Then she’ll die,” Cameron answered. “And so will the rest of us.”
Chapter 26
The drums kept up their savage cadence until Cailin thought she would run shrieking from the longhouse. War cries mingled with yelps and bursts of chanting as the Mohawk prepared for the spectacle of
two opposing shamans in public combat.
Night had fallen. Cailin had seen nothing of Sterling since the Mohawk tied him to the torture post and drove the Shawnee delegation back into their quarters. Even Moonfeather’s quiet good sense seemed to have left her. She’d not spoken more than a few words to Cailin after she offered Jit-sho the fire challenge. Now, she too was gone. She’d left the ceremonial building with several older Mohawk women, leaving Cailin alone with Cameron and the Indians.
She knew that Cameron was extremely upset by Moonfeather’s decision. Worry was etched on his face. For the first time, he looked like what he was, an aging man out of his own element. Wordlessly, he paced up and down, driving a fist into his other palm, saying nothing.
The Shawnee were stoic. Lachpi smoked his clay pipe and stared into the tiny fire; the others sat with folded legs and expressionless features, waiting.
Twice, Cailin had tried to go to Sterling. She’d walked boldly to the doorway and been stopped by the guards. No amount of pleading or anger swayed them. Whatever force or accident had made her invisible before was no longer working.
When the sound of the incessant drumming made her feel as though her skin was too tight, she leaped to her feet and tried to pass a third time. To her shock, the Mohawk brave grabbed her by the hair and yanked her within inches of his chest. Tears of pain filled her eyes, but he continued to twist the handful of hair until her neck was bent at an unnatural angle. Then he sneered and shoved her away. She fell heavily against a support post, got to her feet, and backed away, half-expecting him to pursue her.
By the time she reached her friends, her fear had turned to anger. She’d never thought of herself as a violent person, but she wanted to strike out and hurt the bullies holding them all prisoner.
Cameron stopped his pacing, looked into her face, and pulled her gently against his chest. For long seconds, she allowed herself the luxury of human comfort, then pulled away.
“This is hard on you,” he said.
“Will any of us get out of here alive?” she demanded of him. “Will Sterling? Will Moonfeather?”
He shook his head. “God knows. I pray so. This much I do know. I’ve made a new will leaving my plantation, Scot’s Haven, to you.”
“I don’t want anything from you.”
“You have my grandmother’s eyes ... and her dimple.”
She took a deep breath. She didn’t want to talk about this now. He hadn’t been there to care for her when she was a child; she didn’t need him now. “This is all a little late, isn’t it?” she said coolly.
“Nay, lass,” he said with a gentle burr. “’Tis never too late. I found that out with your sisters.”
She stared at him in astonishment. “I have half-sisters?”
“Aye.” He chuckled. “Three of them, all living, here in the Colonies. The youngest but you, Fiona, looks much like you do. And she’s as feisty as you are.”
She turned away from him. Sisters ... three more sisters. It was hard to imagine. “I have a sister in Scotland,” she said. “I don’t need any more.”
He laid a hand on her shoulder. “What I’ve done to ye is none of their doing. And when your temper cools, you’ll ken that,” he said, lapsing into a Highland brogue he’d not used for many years. “Sit ye down, lass, and hear what I have to say. With things as they are, there may not be another chance to tell ye what ye should know about me.”
“I told ye, I dinna care,” she protested.
“I am your father, and you’ll listen,” he said firmly, pushing her back until she sat down on the platform that ran along the wall. He took a seat beside her. “Listen and don’t interrupt. Did that stepfather you dote on teach ye no manners?”
“He did.”
“Good.” He flashed her a smile that nearly melted the frost that surrounded her heart. “Since time out of time, ’tis been the Stewart way to marry into good fortune,” he began. “I was sixteen and the sole hope of a widowed mother and younger brothers and sisters. Aye, I had a title, but we were poorer than our crofters. Many a time, I saw my mother go to bed hungry. So when a cousin arranged a marriage of convenience for me, I did as my mother bade me and accepted the lady’s hand and her great wealth.”
“And I suppose she was as happy as you with this arrangement?” Cailin asked wryly.
“Margaret’s parents were ambitious. They had acquired gold and land through commerce, and they wanted their only child to have the title of countess. I am an earl, if it matters to you.”
“It doesna,” she replied. “Born on the wrong side of the blanket, what care I for your titles?”
“It wasn’t a bad agreement for either of us. My family was secure, and Margaret had a boy husband who was too naive to interfere in her private life or to question her tastes.”
“Your bride wasn’t such a great bargain?”
“Margaret was a good woman,” he answered sincerely. “We never loved each other, but we became the best of friends. She taught me how to please a woman, and strange to say, I think she made a man of me.”
Cailin stared at the bark wall and didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to think about Cameron; she wanted to concentrate on Sterling.
“I was sixteen, Cailin. Sixteen to Margaret’s thirty. She wanted a child, and I needed an heir. We tried, but all of our babes were stillborn, blue, shriveled little mites. Margaret bled terribly with each pregnancy until her physician told me that another childbirth would kill her. I was twenty then, wed to an older lady I could not bed.”
“You could have had your marriage annulled,” Cailin said. She couldn’t help picturing in her mind a dashing young Cameron unable to have normal relations with his lawful wife. And she couldn’t help the rush of compassion that followed.
“I took vows. I swore to be her husband so long as we both lived.” He sighed. “I’ve made my share of mistakes, lass, and I’ve disappointed a lot of people, but I couldn’t cast off my barren wife like a worn-out servant.”
“You stayed together?”
“After a fashion. We maintained the appearance of a respectable couple. Margaret could entertain and be entertained in the highest circles, and I had unlimited use of her funds for my own pleasures. She never minded my lady friends, and I never begrudged her hers.”
Cailin glanced back at him to see if she’d heard correctly. “Ye dinna mean ...”
“Aye, but I do. I kept her secret as long as she lived, and I’d not shame her now. Margaret preferred the caresses of women rather than men.”
“I’ve heard of men like that, but never women. Is it true?” she asked.
“Margaret was smart and witty, and we had much in common. God made her the way she was. Who am I, a sinner who fathered four daughters out of wedlock, to judge her? She never betrayed a friend or turned a hungry person from her door. You’d have liked her; I know you would.”
“She’s no longer living?”
“Margaret died of natural causes. I wasn’t with her at the end, but her dear companion of many years was. Margaret left Alice well provided for, and the rest came to me. I have given all my other daughters wealth and land. For you, I would do no less.” He chuckled. “I think Margaret would approve of her money passing to women, don’t you?”
“Sterling has land.”
“Wilderness. Virgin forest. A hundred years from now, it will be fertile farmland, but not in your lifetime. Scot’s Haven lies along the Chesapeake. Two thousand acres of cleared, rich earth and another thousand of woodland. You’ll have your own dock and three ships to carry your tobacco and grain to England. The house is modest by London standards, but grand enough to host the royal governor himself. Ease an old man’s heart and conscience, lass. Take it for your children and grandchildren, if not yourself. After all ...” He smiled and squeezed her hand. “A husband can love a rich wife as well as a poor one.”
She nodded. “I suppose, but you’ll be needing your home yourself for many years to come.”
He grinned. �
��Aye. I do intend to. I just wanted it settled between us that I’ve not left you penniless.”
“You’ve given me much to think on,” she admitted.
“So long as I’m clearing my conscience, I want you to be less harsh on your mother. She was very young when you were conceived, Cailin.”
“You loved her, didn’t you?”
“In a special way. I’ve loved many women—but none was the same, and I cherished my love for each of them.”
“’Tis better that you cared for each other, I suppose, than my being born to a married couple who despised each other.” She grimaced. “But knowing my mother, I’d wager she’d not have been so eager to lie with you if you’d not been a comely rogue.”
“As to that, I canna say. I always thought my charm had something to do with it,” he answered smoothly.
Lachpi approached them and said something to Cameron in Shawnee. Cameron frowned and answered in the same language.
Cailin glanced from one to the other. They were talking about her, she was sure of it. “What is it?” she demanded. “What are ye saying?”
Kitate joined the group and added his harsh comments. As he rarely spoke and hardly ever looked directly at her, she was puzzled.
Cameron exchanged a few more words with the two of them; then nodded and turned to Cailin. “Lachpi says that regardless of what happens to Sterling, you’re still in danger.”
She sniffed. “Since when is that new? I believe we’ve all been in danger since the attack on the farm.”
Lachpi shook his head. “No,” he said firmly. His English was soft and precise with a peculiar melodic ring. “This man Lenape—Delaware tribe.” He motioned toward Kitate. “Shawnee. There is still peace between Mohawk and Shawnee and Delaware. You white woman. No peace with Mohawk. Danger for white woman.”
“Why is that any different than Cameron?” she asked. “He’s white.”
Kitate make a clicking noise with his tongue.
“Not exactly,” her father said, unbuttoning his shirt cuff. He pushed back the full white linen sleeve to reveal a tattoo on the inside of his forearm, just below the elbow. “Many years ago, I was formally adopted into the Shawnee nation.”