"Then if you went to school, you tell me how the fossil got in that rock."
Trust Cissy to make something as simple as this into a test.
"Well, when the fish died," Reid began, "he got buried in the mud. And when that mud hardened into rock, it made the impression you found today."
Cissy nodded, momentarily amazed, momentarily satisfied.
Still feeling battered, Reid managed to set Cissy on her feet and come to his own beside her. It was time to head back to the cabin, though he wasn't looking forward to explaining any of this to Livi.
"Reid?" Something about Cissy's tone made him squat down beside her again.
"What is it, Cissy?"
Her face screwed up, her eyebrows pursed. "Will my papa be a fossil, too? When he died, we buried him in the mud."
Reid felt the air in his lungs go stale and thin, felt the world wheel around him. With her forthrightness, her innocence, and her childish logic, Cissy had loosed all the grief he'd been holding inside. He ached with it, his chest heaving and his eyes blurring with tears.
Howling at the moon hadn't helped assuage this terrible pain. Looking for the men who'd killed David hadn't. Neither had running away from the world of responsibilities David had left behind.
Livi, Livi's baby, Cissy, and Tad were David's legacy. They were David's bequest to him. Reid had to stop denying it. As he stood there holding this wet, bedraggled child between his hands, this child he'd nearly lost, he wondered if he was worthy of David's trust. Was he strong enough and brave enough to watch over David's family? Was he wise enough and kind enough to give what each of them might demand of him? He'd asked Livi these same questions weeks before and judged her lacking. How could he claim to be any more able than she after what had happened today?
Reid felt daunted by the prospect of keeping David's family safe. Yet he accepted that David was alive in each of them, and as long as Livi and the children flourished, a bit of David would live on. It was up to him to keep them together, keep them happy, keep them whole.
"Reid?" Cissy was growing impatient. "Will my papa be a fossil, too?"
Reid swallowed hard. "It takes a long time for a fossil to form," he answered carefully. "A very long time."
"Until I'm grown up?"
"Even longer than that."
"Until I'm married?"
"It takes lifetimes, Cissy. More years than you can count."
"I can count pretty high," she warned him. "One. Two. Three. Four—"
"Cissy? Cissy!" A frantic voice came to them through the shivery sound of windblown leaves. "Christine Arabella Talbot, you answer me!"
Cissy broke off counting and looked at Reid. "She never calls me that unless she's mad."
Reid heard not anger but desperation in Livi's tone.
"It's going to be all right," he told Cissy as he rose and took her hand.
"We're here," Reid shouted back as they moved along the far bank toward the cabin.
They met Livi just beyond the trees. She was clutching Cissy's discarded shoes and stockings so tightly that her knuckles were white. Her face looked blanched and stark.
"Cissy and I decided to take a little swim," he told her, trying to make light of something far more serious.
Livi wasn't fooled. She splashed across the stream and caught her baby tightly in her arms. Reid could see how Livi's hands were trembling as they smoothed back her daughter's straggling hair, as they skimmed up and down her limbs, seeking any sign of injury.
He entirely understood her anguish and it humbled him.
Finally she knelt back on her haunches and set Cissy before her. "Cissy Talbot! What have I told you about wandering off by yourself? It was bad enough when you did it in Lynchburg, but here—"
Livi left the thought unfinished and dragged her baby close against her chest again.
Reid watched the two of them, Livi's arms enfolding Cissy, her hands splayed across her daughter's back, her face buried in the soft, warm curve of her little girl's neck.
A thick protectiveness rose in him, a fierce determination to keep them safe. Reid freely made the pledge to David he'd been fighting to avoid.
At length Livi rose and lifted her daughter in her arms.
Reid waited, anticipating Livi's smile, her thanks.
She scowled at him instead. "I'll deal with you later!"
With a glare that promised retribution, she spun back in the direction of the cabin. Reid watched Livi and Cissy go, feeling angry, unjustly accused, and all of ten years old again.
* * *
It wasn't as if she were snooping, Livi told herself, her hand on the door latch to Reid Campbell's half of the cabin. It wasn't that she didn't have a right to go inside. She'd finished the mending she'd offered to do. All she intended was to put down the stack of neatly folded clothes and leave. How could Reid take exception to that?
But then, he probably could—especially the way he'd been behaving these past few days.
Since Livi had taken him to task the morning Cissy nearly drowned, he'd seemed less restless, more affable. He'd begun to take his meals with them, staying at the table after Violet and Eustace were gone, playing checkers or telling tales to Tad and Cissy.
Then, after sharing their noon meal two days ago, Campbell had inexplicably gone sullen and solitary. He'd either kept to his cabin or been off in the woods. He hadn't spoken to anyone or come by to eat. The children didn't understand why he'd withdrawn from them, and Livi didn't, either.
That was part of the reason she was poised outside his cabin door, ready to assuage her curiosity about the room that lay beyond it and the man who lived in it. She'd chosen her time with care, waiting until Reid had vanished into the trees. She should just go on in, she told herself, have a look around, and leave the clothes for him to find. It wasn't as if she were doing anything wrong. She'd discovered him snooping in her cabin a few weeks back.
Huffing away her reticence, Livi lifted the latch. It was cool and dim inside. The scent of sweet grass and cedar welcomed her. She stepped across the threshold and pulled up short.
Livi didn't know what she had expected. Not a cabin so neat it belied the familial clutter of her own. Not a hand-hewn bed and soft, woven rugs on the floor. Not shelves of books suspended above a writing desk. Some things were not so startling. There were skins on the walls, a musket and two fowling pieces hung on pegs above the mantel. Basic cooking utensils sat at the edge of the hearth.
That the fireplace itself was swept bare surprised her. That it had been sprinkled with something powdery and white made her even more curious about what Reid had been doing.
She laid the mending on the woven blue-and-white coverlet and moved further into the room. Once she'd taken a closer look at the firebox, it was the books that attracted her. Reid had several dozen fine, leather-bound volumes, some of them edged in gold. There were books on science and philosophy, on astronomy, economics, law, and poetry. Some were in Latin and a few in Greek. Reid Campbell had never struck her as a man who read. He had always seemed too restless, too impatient. It made Livi suspect that there was more to Reid than what she'd imagined.
But before she could reach for the first slim volume on the shelf, she saw what was laid out on the writing desk. On a bed of pure white sand was an object unlike anything she'd ever seen. It was a disk about a handspan in diameter, with the velvety patina of fine, old copper. Its surface had been worked in concentric circles with complex, almost mystical designs. She reached out to touch it, but something stayed her hand.
An aura of some ancient culture rose like a warm, soft glow against her palm. She sensed its power on a more-than-physical plane, though she would have been at a loss to explain what that mean. It was as if the copper disk resonated with a calm that was ages old, a tranquility that spread through Livi like a balm. She stood as if mesmerized, able to move but choosing to remain within the sphere of this inexplicable force.
"Livi?"
Reid's voice broke the mood, the serenity. Livi spun tow
ard where he stood in the cabin doorway, excuses clamoring in her head.
It was evident he had come from bathing in the stream. His hair shone slick with wet. His tow shirt clung in darker patches to his shoulders and chest. She could smell the freshness on him, the green of the woods.
"I—I—didn't touch anything," she stammered. "I only brought the mending."
He came nearer, filling the cabin that suddenly seemed too close a fit for his height, his breadth, the force of who he was. She retreated half a step.
"No, Livi. It's all right."
"Is it?"
He nodded. "I should have known you'd be curious about why I've behaved as I have these past few days."
"And why have you?"
"Do you know anything about Creek traditions?" he asked, surprising her. When she shook her head, he continued. "The most important time of year for the Creeks is now, when the first corn is ready to be harvested. It is a time to right past wrongs, prepare for another year, to purify oneself by cleaning and fasting."
"Is that what you've been doing?" She couldn't imagine why he was telling her this.
"The Green Corn celebration has several parts. The first is to clean the house and carry out the ashes from the old year's fire. The next is to prepare to lay a new one. Then a man must fast to be certain he's ready to begin a new cycle of life, to eat the new corn."
"And what part does the copper disk play in all of this?"
"To the Tuckabahchee Creeks, these plates are sacred. They are to be taken out for display on the second day of the Busk and put away the following morning. For a woman to touch one of the plates profanes it."
"I swear I didn't touch it," Livi hastened to reassure him.
"Well, in this case, I don't know how much it matters. David and I found two of these disks in the possession of The Hair Buyer when he was captured in Vincennes. We each took one of the disks with the intention of returning them to the Tuckabahchee when we had the chance. David must have had his with him on the trail."
"I never saw it if he did," Livi said. "But why would Colonel Hamilton have had them at Vincennes?"
"He might have held them in order to exhibit his control over his Indian allies, or to force the Tuckabahchee to fight with the British during the war. Are you sure you didn't find one of these disks among David's things?"
Livi shook her head. "I've never seen a plate like this before today."
A flicker of uneasiness came and went between his brows as Reid carefully lifted the circular plate and slid it into an ornate doeskin medicine bag.
"I am ready to light the new fire now," he told her. "You may stay if you like."
"Are you sure?" she asked, strangely fascinated by the Creek customs and by seeing a side of Reid Campbell that she never imagined existed.
"I wouldn't have asked you if I wasn't sure."
Taking up a bow drill and some tinder-dry scraps of wood, Reid knelt before the fireplace. Holding the base of the drill steady with his knees, he worked a pointed stick in a central hole with the string and the bow.
"I didn't know that you even acknowledged your Indian heritage," Livi offered, hoping to draw him out.
"And wouldn't knowing it give those Tidewater aristocrats something to laugh about? James Campbell's son still honoring the old ways, still clinging to traditions that have long since become diluted in his blood."
She heard the bitterness in him and knew that it was justified.
"But you lived with the Indians, didn't you?"
Reid continued his work. "After the master at the school in Charles Town declared me unmanageable and expelled me, after my father and his new wife threw up their hands in despair, my grandfather took me to live with my grandmother's people. The family ties are far stronger in Creek society, and my grandmother had been an honored woman in her clan.
"I was thirteen when I went to live with them, angry, impatient and arrogant. One of my uncles chose to befriend me, and he taught me everything I needed to know: how to hunt and fight and be a man. He taught me honor and respect and self-control. At seventeen, I became a warrior. Because a flock of ravens circled the encampment just as I was proving myself, they gave me the name Ravens Flight."
"It sounds as if you were happy with the Creeks. Why didn't you stay with them instead of coming back to Virginia?"
Reid seemed entirely focused on the task at hand. "I came back because I didn't belong with my grandmother's people, either."
"But why?"
Livi knew she had no right to question him, no right to ask him things that he must have confided only to David. Still, she wanted to know. Reid was developing dimensions she'd never seen, shadings and striations. He was also showing her the other side of David's life. Now that David was gone, Livi yearned to glimpse the parts of her husband she had never been able to possess.
"It was my fault that I had to leave," Reid answered, intent on the bits of wood in front of him.
"How could it have been your fault?" Livi asked, instinctively defending him. "At seventeen, you were hardly more than a boy."
"I was old enough to kill, and that is what I did. I killed one of the other young warriors. It was an accident, but the Creeks believe that any death demands a death in answer. Like what I've vowed to do with David," he said, looking up at her. "It's the reason I can't rest until I've tracked down his killers and made them pay for what they did."
Livi nodded. In her mind's eye she saw how Reid must have been back then, bony and broad, all arms and legs. Reckless and intense, not knowing his own strength.
"But it wasn't me the other brave's clan chose to kill," Reid told her, his voice gone low. "It was my uncle, my strongest link with the tribe. Even though the Creeks consider it an honor to give your life for another, I couldn't accept that Soaring Eagle had died because of me. I couldn't accept that Creek tradition forbade me to avenge him. And without doing that, I couldn't to live on with my clan."
Livi stared down at the man who knelt before the empty fireplace, working to honor traditions he thought he had denied, living by a code and beliefs he told himself he'd given up. This was someone Livi had never seen before. She had feared and despised and fought this man for almost fourteen years, and she'd never really known him.
As she watched him work wood against wood in his quest for fire, one thing became clear to her. Whatever else might be in his heart, his birth and his upbringing had made Reid Campbell a dark and lonely soul, a strange and unlikely dichotomy. For reasons she could never justify, Livi wanted to change that.
Then all at once the hole where the pointed stick made contact with the base began to smoke. Still working the bow drill with one hand, Reid added bits of wood and char with the other. A small orange flame flared up, flickering and glowing as he breathed the fire to life.
He looked up at her, triumph on his face, a warmth in those clear blue eyes she had never imagined he was capable of generating.
It set off an answering glow in Livi's chest. "You've begun a new fire," she said, her voice breathy and low.
Reid nodded and transferred the flame to the chalk-white center of the firebox. He fed it and stoked it and blew on it until the new fire cast flickering golden lights against the throat of the chimney, against his skin.
"Is the ceremony over?" Livi asked as he rose from his knees. "You've lit a new fire, begun a new year."
"I must keep to myself today and tonight. If this were a Creek village, there would be speeches and dancing. We'd drink the sacred drink to further purify ourselves and bathe again tomorrow."
Livi nodded, acknowledging what he'd told her of his beliefs. "Thank you for explaining, for telling me all this."
"And thank you, Livi."
"What have I done that you should thank me for?"
He looked down at her for a very long time, his eyes unfathomable, his bright gaze holding hers.
"For doing my mending, of course," he said.
* * *
"Now that I'm thirteen, I don
't think I should have to milk the cow," Tad announced as he set the brimming bucket on the bench at the far side of the table. "Milking is women's work."
Livi couldn't help her start of surprise. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
"Well, Pa never milked except when you were sick," the boy reasoned. "And you never ask Reid to tend to Brownie."
"Brownie isn't Reid Campbell's cow," Livi pointed out, looking up from where she was separating the eggs she would use to make Tad's birthday cake.
It was the first proper baking she'd been able to do since they reached Kentucky. The day before, Reid had ridden over to Logan's Station and come back with both a cone of sugar and wheat flour—frontier luxuries he'd managed to get from a French trader who was passing through.
"Turning thirteen should mean something special."
Livi heard the wistfulness in her son's voice and wished she had the means to make this day one he would remember. In these past months, Tad had taken on responsibilities far beyond his years, faced hardships and dangers and heartbreaks that would cow a full-grown man. He deserved something to mark his fortitude and his courage. Instead she had nothing to give him but the truth.
"Tad, we've all got the same job on this homestead," she said as gently as she could. "That's making it through until harvest. It doesn't matter if I split rails or cook meals. It doesn't matter if you milk the cow or set snares as long as we're here to bring in the crops. As long as we have something to build our future on come fall."
Livi didn't dare think where that future might be. She had set her sights on a corncrib filled to the top, on a loft and a turnip hole bursting with bounty. She hadn't let herself look beyond that. She just hoped she'd made her son understand that those goals were all that could matter to any of them.
Livi expelled her breath in relief when Tad nodded. "All right, Ma. I understand. You want me to pour while you strain the milk?"
Livi shook her head. "I'll ask Violet to help me once I get this cake mixed up."
She knew he was pleased to escape the confines of the cabin. She would have been happy to leave it, too. The full, ripe heat of August lay thick across Kentucky, and the fire burning on the hearth made it unbearably hot. In deference to Livi's increasing girth and awkwardness, Violet had begun to take on more of the weeding and hoeing and gathering, leaving Livi to cook and tend the cabin. It was not a division of labor either of them particularly liked, but it was necessary.
A Place Called Home Page 22