by Burning Sky
It seemed answer enough for Anni, which was good, for Willa had no intention of admitting to her other reason for putting off her return to the farm.
She’d come into the village weeks ago to replace the missing spade. Now, with more hands willing to help, she’d finally broken away from the digging to acquire another. In the end she’d bought two blades from Keegan’s store, spade and hoe. They lay in the grass nearby, tied in sacking. Even without them, some of the corn and squash had already gone into the ground, and she had planted her garden.
In the gray half light that morning, while Neil and the children slept, she’d gone out to water the herbs transplanted from the forest over the past few days. The plot, enlarged from the ground originally broke, was surrounded now by a six-foot wattle fence fitted with a gate Neil had fashioned. Spaced in rows and beds within were burdock, snakeroot, cohosh, sorrel, chamomile, sweet flag, pennyroyal, and more. Once the watering and a bit of weeding were done, she stood in the open gate, admiring the well-ordered sight. She didn’t hear Neil cross the yard, soft footed in the moccasins she helped him to make the evening before, until he spoke.
“You’ve a canny hand with the green things,” he said, so close behind her his breath stirred against her hair. “I dinna think ye lost a one.”
She didn’t let him see her surprise or her pleasure at his praise. He’d taken great interest in the herbs, quizzing her on their uses, impressing her with his knowledge of some of them.
As he peered into the green domain within, his shirt sleeve brushed the sleeve of her shift, all she wore. His voice rumbled near her ear, lightly teasing. “Maybe I should let ye bring them all to me and draw them in the comfort of our cabin yard.”
Our cabin yard. She turned and faced him, struck by his words.
They stood nearly eye to eye, with the sky above them gone the color of a pearl, the sun sending its first rays darting through the tops of the trees. Below that arc of light, shadow turned his eyes a deeper blue, but they were clear enough to speak his soul. He’d come to think of her cabin as home, though she hadn’t given him that right. It discomposed him to reveal it—she could see that—yet having done so, he stood by it, letting her receive it as she would.
What she’d done was fled. From the garden, and from what else she’d seen in his eyes, a well of tenderness and wanting that seemed to surprise him, but terrified her bone deep with the impulse it had stirred. She’d wanted to take his sleep-tousled head between her hands and press her mouth to his, to taste his lips and feel the roughness of his cheeks. Instead, she’d hurried away to put on more clothes and saddle his horse for the ride into Shiloh, thinking he had not read her so easily as she had him. Thinking she was safe.
“Samuel—give it back!”
“You had your turn. It’s mine!”
The querulous voices of the twins inside the cabin jarred Willa from thought.
Anni started to heave herself up from the grass, an ominous hint of thunder on her brow. “They’re meant to mind their lessons till dinner.”
As if sensing the impending maternal storm by some thickening of the air, the twins ceased their argument. Peace descended, save for the mill noise and a distant clanging from the smithy.
“You haven’t lost your knack with a needle, I see.”
Willa smiled at Anni’s words. With the small break in field work before she had replaced the spade, she’d found time to piece a petticoat and short gown from cloth purchased at Keegan’s store. Her efforts pleased her, but it was still strange to be wearing English clothes again, with her hair pinned off her neck.
“Is your Scotsman still with you?”
She did not smile at those words. Already flushed from the kettle’s steam, Willa felt a deeper warmth creep into her face. “He is not my Scotsman. But yes, he is still there.”
She suspected Neil MacGregor could for some days now have managed to look after himself and his horse. Instead, he had stayed, making himself helpful, true, but also allowing himself to form an attachment with Joseph’s foundlings. It was unwise of him to have let it happen. When their parting came, it would be painful. The sooner now it happened, the better. For everyone, she thought, shaking off a second time the memory of Neil’s sleep-shadowed face.
“Is it true, what I hear?” Anni asked.
“That depends on what you have heard.”
“That you have two children at your cabin as well. Indian children.”
“It is true,” Willa admitted, her mind spinning with ways Anni might have heard about them. “Did Francis see them?”
“What doesn’t he see?” Anni hesitated. “They aren’t yours, are they?”
“No, Anni. The parents of these two are dead. The girl was shot. Not badly. A gash on her leg. Neil has been tending her.”
“Shot?” Anni’s brows rose toward the ruffle of her cap. “And your Scotsman is tending her?”
“He is not my—” Willa drew a breath. “He’s a physician.”
“Is he?” Anni sounded delighted. “A man of many talents. Might he be convinced to stay in Shiloh, do you think?”
Such an arrangement might seem perfect to Anni, but the very thought of Neil MacGregor staying in Shiloh clenched her chest tight with a longing quickly smothered in fear.
“No. He has obligations elsewhere.”
Anni widened her eyes at Willa’s blunt reply. “All right. It was only—ouch!” She slapped her arm above her elbow, then rubbed the spot. “Oh, fiddle. It’s started. Black flies.”
Willa grimaced. Black flies were another reason she’d broken ground as quickly as she could. Their inevitable invasion would have made such work a misery had she waited, though she didn’t seem as much to their tastes as some. The numerous bites Anni suffered as a girl had risen like marbles under her skin and tormented her with itching. “I will start praying for windy days.”
That drew Anni’s laughter. “I used to ask you to pray for wind in springtime, didn’t I? Charles says I overreact, but I swear they come looking particularly for me.” Anni glanced about with a hunted look and shifted closer to the smoky wash fire, where she peered up at Willa. “By the way … the Colonel was here for supper last night and mentioned talk of the government inviting the Iroquois to a peace council, down at Fort Stanwix. Maybe at the end of summer.”
“A peace council? But there is already peace.”
“I think it’s more to do with the land,” Anni said hesitantly, as if she didn’t know how Willa would take her words. “Anyway, I thought it would be of interest to you.”
“It is.” A weight like stones settled in her heart. It seemed always to come down to land. She was no different than the rest of the People, trying to hold on to what remained of their ancient Longhouse territory against a tide of settlers pouring in. Maybe the Oneida, at least, would be allowed to stay where they had been for so many generations. But even if they were, it could never be the same for them, as it would never be the same for her.
Anni, watching her have these troubling thoughts, seemed to regret bringing up the subject. “So, did you find these children like you did Mr. MacGregor, astray in the woods?”
“They were brought to me.” Willa paused with a petticoat lifted to wring. Anni rose and took it by one end and began twisting, while Willa turned from the opposite direction.
Across the dripping garment, their gazes met. Anni raised a brow. “Brought to you?”
Willa chewed her lip, realizing she should have better guarded her words. One moment talking to Anni felt like talking to a stranger, the next like being girls together again, with no secrets between them. “I will tell you, Anni, if you promise not to repeat my words to anyone. Please, for the sake of our friendship as girls.”
“For the sake of our friendship now.” Anni gave the petticoat a final twist and released it to Willa’s grasp.
They walked the short distance to the hobblebush thicket growing along the edge of the yard where the land sloped off steep to the creek and the mill
below. Willa shook out the petticoat and spread it to dry. She drew a breath and said, “I have a brother. A man born to my clan. He’s called Joseph.”
Willa didn’t miss the confusion, then the shocked comprehension, that crossed Anni’s face as she mouthed the word clan, though she recovered as they returned to the washing. “A brother?”
“He’s helping me for a while. Hunting for me so I will have meat for the winter. I could not dissuade him from it.”
She fished out another garment and held it up, dripping.
Anni didn’t take it. “Orphans are one thing, Willa, but a warrior? Mohawks killed my mother and Edward. They mutilated our soldiers—probably my brothers—at Oriskany. And you’re harboring one of them in your cabin?”
Willa looked into the eyes of her oldest friend. “You are washing your clothes with one of them.”
Anni’s face paled. “You wouldn’t have chosen to be if they hadn’t forced you.”
“No. But—”
“But nothing, Willa. Do you know how dangerous it is, what you’re doing? Even keeping those children is risky—”
“I am not keeping them. And Joseph isn’t living at my cabin. As I said, he is hunting meat for me—that is how he found the children. Soon he will go. He will take the children when he does.”
“It best be soon.” Anni glanced down at the mill, where Neil’s horse waited, tethered. She lowered her voice, though there was no one to hear. “There are men in Shiloh who’ll shoot Indians on sight and ask questions later, if they ask at all.”
Men like Richard? Willa almost asked.
“Aram Crane, for one,” Anni said, as if she’d heard Willa’s thought. “There’s been more than one Indian found dead in the woods since the Colonel hired on that man. He swears he finds them stealing from his traps. There’s never any witness to say otherwise.”
She took hold of the garment Willa held waiting and began to twist, leaving Willa a moment to think. She hadn’t had opportunity to tell Joseph what had passed between Neil and Aram Crane at the smithy, and aroused her suspicions that Crane was the deserter Joseph sought. Francis had gotten her warning to him; he’d been leaving kills at the islet and had not come to the cabin even once. Now, she wished very much he would risk it.
“Where did Aram Crane come from?” she asked. “And how long ago?”
Anni’s hands stilled. “He wandered in with a few families returning from the fort, late last autumn. I don’t know much about him, except that he’s good with horses, and he has a powerful hate of Indians.”
“Then it is not possible,” Willa murmured.
“What isn’t possible?”
“That he was the one who killed my parents.”
Anni frowned. “But you don’t know your parents were killed. They could be in Canada or—”
“I found their graves.”
Anni took a step forward, the twisted garment clasped between them, sympathy contorting her features. “Willa, I’m so sorry. How did you find them? Where?”
“In the woods. Francis tried to lead me away before I saw them.”
“Francis knew they were there? He knew?” Her eyes widened in such surprise there was no denying Anni had known nothing about the graves. Not that Willa had suspected she did.
“He seemed to, yes.”
Anni’s face paled from surprise to alarm. “You don’t think he had anything to do with their deaths?”
Despite her passing suspicion weeks ago, Willa didn’t believe it. “I doubt it, Anni. He was little more than a child at the time. But I did wonder … Francis can read and write, yes?”
Anni looked puzzled at the question. “We tried teaching him. Who can say what sticks in his mind? Why?”
“The graves are marked with my parents’ initials. I thought maybe Francis did that much.”
Someone besides whoever killed them must have buried her parents’ bodies or at least marked the graves. Someone meaning to preserve the memory of Dieter and Rebecca Obenchain, hidden away in their sepulcher of holly. Not someone attempting to cover their deaths and leave their whereabouts clouded with suspicion.
Anni’s thoughts had followed a different path. “You have to tell the Colonel, Willa. This could lead to proving your parents were murdered, that maybe they weren’t Loyalists—”
“No, Anni.” Whoever killed her parents might still be in Shiloh, near enough to cause more harm should he, or they, learn the graves had been discovered. “Say nothing of them. Not yet. I—”
From the corner of her eye, Willa caught sight of a figure below, beyond the creek. Old Maeve Keegan was hobbling up the road again.
“I’ll be back, Anni,” she said, and ran for the path to the mill.
The old woman had reached the dooryard by the time Willa exited the mill. “Mrs. Keegan!”
Maeve halted, swaying over her cane. Breathless from her trek, she greeted Willa with a grasping claw of a hand and bright blue eyes. Willa leaned in close to hear her creaky voice above the mill fall. “Wilhelmina. I was after comin’ t’ see … comin’ t’ tell …”
“Darn it, Ma!” a man’s voice called over the faltering words. “Just hold her there, Miss Obenchain!”
Jack was already on his way up from the store, threatening to cut short the moment with her grandmother’s friend.
“Mrs. Keegan, what is it you want to tell me? Something about Oma—your friend, Dagna?”
The old woman beamed. “Dagna Mehler.”
“Do you know what happened to my grandmother?”
Maeve’s brow puckered. Her voice thinned, quavering with uncertainty. “What … happened?”
Willa tightened her grasp on the frail hand. “Try to remember. Please.”
She’d startled Maeve with her urgency. Now she watched, helpless, as whatever memory about her grandmother that had surfaced slipped away, receding into the depths of the old woman’s failing mind. Maeve knew it too. She stamped her stick in frustration as Jack reached them.
“She’s done it again,” he said, puffing for breath. “Turned my back for an instant …”
Willa approved the man’s attentiveness to his mother, if not his timing. “She’s trying to tell me something about my grandmother.”
Jack looked embarrassed. “You oughtn’t to fret yourself over what she says. Gets the past jumbled with the here and now, she does. I’ll just be taking her home.” He nodded to Willa, then turned his mother back toward the store. “Now, Ma. Why must you bother Miss Obenchain so?”
Willa had the urge to stamp her foot too, watching the old woman being herded away. She started after them but stopped as Maeve uttered a bleat of protest loud enough to carry above the mill falls: “I know who I mean. Dagna Fruehauf Mehler!”
Willa halted, one of her own long-buried memories bursting to the surface at last. Fruehauf. That was her grandmother’s name before she married and the name of the Albany relation with whom her father once exchanged letters—letters that might, if they still existed, give evidence of her parents’ loyalties. And keep her lands from being auctioned.
Tilda Fruehauf. Her mother’s spinster cousin.
SEVENTEEN
Someone was yelling loud enough to raise the cabin roof. Willa slowed Neil’s horse to a halt in the yard and was halfway out of the saddle when Owl rushed from the cabin, face twisted in defiance.
“I didn’t do it—it wasn’t me!” The boy saw Willa as he leaped from the porch and shot off toward the sheds that sheltered their animals.
“Owl? Come back! It isn’t safe to—”
“I’m going to feed the chickens!”
But it was to the corral he ran, ducking behind the horse shed. Willa hitched the roan to a porch post and hurried into the cabin. Pine Bird huddled on the corner pallet, looking fearful. Neil MacGregor leaned over the table, hands planted flat. Between them were two of his drawings, completely defaced with ink splatters.
Raising his head, he looked at her with an expression she had never seen. There was ange
r in it, and bemusement, but more evident than either was a wrenching hurt.
And no wonder. She felt the wound of this violation like a hot twisting in her chest. “Did the boy do this?”
Not until she spoke did Neil appear to fully register her presence. His expression cleared. With surprising calm he said, “I expect so. Though ye’ll have heard him deny it.”
She came to his side and touched a fingertip to a ruined picture. The marring ink hadn’t dried. “Your beautiful drawings.”
“Aye, well …” A sudden smile crowded out the hurt in his eyes, warming their blue. “You thought them beautiful?”
“Of course.” Had she never said so?
His anger seemed to have fled; hers had not. Owl had been persuaded to help her in the field by driving off the birds that would steal the kernels and seeds before they could sprout, shouting and whistling whenever one was bold enough to land among the hillocks. Though he maintained his prickly aloofness with her, Willa had thought he’d warmed to Neil. Not as the girl had done, but Owl had at least shown him civility. She’d misread the boy.
“You helped his sister, saved her leg and maybe her life, and this is how you are repaid? Now I wonder if it was not he who took the spade and your glass, after all.”
Neil’s mouth quirked. “D’ye think he shot that arrow at the door too, whilst he sat there moping in the corner?”
“Of course I do not think that, but if you didn’t despoil the drawings, it must have been one of the children.” Willa crossed to the corner and stood before Owl’s huddled sister. “Did your brother put ink on those drawings? Did you see him do it?”
Pine Bird stared up at her, brown eyes huge in her thin face.
Feeling like a she-bear looming over a kitten, Willa repeated the questions. The girl flung herself beneath the quilt and set to crying. Willa bent to yank the quilt aside, but Neil stopped her, taking her by the arm.
She pulled free. “You cannot let this go without—”
“I ken that,” Neil said with exasperating calm. “But ye’ll get naught by frightening the lass. Let me talk to her, aye?”
Willa stared down at the shaking mound of quilt, and into her heart came a gladness that this bad thing had come between Neil and the children. Gladness. Why should she feel …?