by Sara Donati
“Well,” Hawkeye drawled. “That ain’t it exactly, but I suppose it’ll do for a story.”
“It was a dangerous thing to do,” she pointed out.
Hawkeye shrugged. “Breathin’ was dangerous back in them days.”
“The point is,” Elizabeth continued resolutely, “that you would do the same in his place.”
He laughed out loud at that. “I would,” he agreed reluctantly.
Elizabeth said, “My father is talking of starting for Johnstown on Wednesday. Can you get word to Nathaniel?”
Hawkeye walked to the far end of the porch, and looked off into the gorge and the falling water. Without turning back to Elizabeth, he said, “Such a pretty spring day. Maybe you should take a little wander.”
The hair on her nape had begun to rise. She wasn’t sure why; she knew exactly why.
“Hannah!” called Hawkeye, and then when the child appeared at the door, he spoke a few words to her in Kahnyen’kehàka. Elizabeth, confused and still on edge, didn’t follow anything of what he said. But she saw that Hannah was looking at her with a shy smile.
“Come,” the child said. “I’ll show you where the wild iris grow. They’re up early this year.”
Light-headed, Elizabeth rose. “I’d like that.”
“I’ll see Curiosity back home myself,” said Hawkeye. “In case you’re delayed.”
To keep herself focused on thoughts other than their mysterious destination, and because she thought it prudent, Elizabeth tried to remark their path. Following Hannah, who was unusually quiet, they crossed from the glen over the narrowed gorge into the forest, where they passed through a carpet of anemone under a plantation of sugar maple and white birch not yet in leaf. Elizabeth saw that pieces of bark had been cut in neat rectangles from most of the birch trunks, and the sugar maple bore the signs of recent tapping.
They made their way up toward the backbone of the mountain, through stands of beech and maple interspersed with more birch and an occasional hemlock. Elizabeth had spent some of the difficult eight weeks learning about the forest from her students, and now she named the trees to herself. Occasionally she would ask a question, and Hannah would answer, naming the wild cherry for her, the yew, the trout lily which spread its strange yellow flower with mottled purple leaves in such profusion. She pointed to a porcupine’s den and, calmly, the tracks of a bear in the mud. Hannah answered Elizabeth’s questions without any of her usual elaboration, and after a while Elizabeth stopped asking. It was very cool in the wood, but she had begun to perspire.
At the top of the ridge, Elizabeth turned to look down on the forest, and stopped in wonder. It was as if they were alone in the world; there was no sign of Lake in the Clouds, or the village, or of anything having to do with human beings. Just the mountains and their spotty canopy of evergreens filling in with the tender first green of oaks and maple and beech, thousands upon thousands of them, as far as she could see.
Hannah was moving on, and Elizabeth followed her through forests, all red and white pine now, circumventing a marshy spot where a spring came to the surface. They came out of the wood onto a rocky plateau. A hawk passed overhead with a bit of moss trailing from her beak. The wind picked up, blowing Elizabeth’s skirts around her legs.
Silently, Hannah gestured with her chin. Elizabeth saw now where they were: below them was Lake in the Clouds, the gorge pointing in a crooked finger away from the mountain. With its weathered square-cut logs, the cabin looked like something grown out of stone. Under her boots, Elizabeth could feel the pulse of the water in the rock as it rushed to that point in the cliff face where it would explode in a waterfall. From here they could not see it fall, but they could hear it, muted.
There was a three-note trilled birdsong which Elizabeth would not have noticed, but Hannah raised her head and trilled back.
“Runs-from-Bears,” Hannah murmured in explanation.
There was no sign of him. Elizabeth realized that this was meant to be so: he had followed them at a distance. They would not have let Hannah walk through the forest by herself otherwise. Not given the events of the past few days.
Another call, from below. In response, Hannah pointed down the cliff. The incline was fairly steep, rock and scrabble and boulders. There was no visible path.
Elizabeth looked at the path and back at Hannah. “You want me to go down there?”
The little girl nodded as if this were nothing so terribly unusual.
“Aren’t you coming?”
Hannah shook her head. “Take off your boots,” she said practically. “It’ll be easier barefoot.”
Her nerves humming, Elizabeth complied. After a moment’s thought she took off her stockings, folding them neatly.
“Go on,” Hannah said, smiling now. “He’s waiting for you.”
· · ·
It was strange to feel the ground under her bare feet and she went slowly at first, testing each foothold. Twice she grabbed at a shrub growing from the rock face, so that her hands were sticky and pungent with evergreen sap. Pausing to catch her breath, Elizabeth wiped her fingers on her handkerchief. She wished for something to drink. She wished herself on level ground. She wished herself back in England, at aunt Merriweather’s whist table with a book hidden on her lap. She wished for all these things, and none of them.
She hadn’t known that fear could be intoxicating.
He was waiting for her. She tried to gather her thoughts, but they slipped away in a flurry of images, all of them Nathaniel.
Elizabeth worked her way down another thirty yards in stops and starts to a little plateau like a pocket torn in the cliff face. She wondered where she should possibly go from here, and then, from the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of movement.
Nathaniel was standing behind her. He had materialized out of rock, it seemed, and now without a word gestured for her to follow him. He put his hand on her shoulder to guide her up; she felt its heat through the layers of her cape and clothing. Nathaniel pointed to the first foothold and then the next, and she moved as he directed her. Then he scrambled past her to pull himself up into a crack in the rock face. He turned back and reached down a hand.
He stood poised there, his face composed, his eyes flashing something she could not quite name, but which was familiar to her, and offered his hand. Elizabeth looked at Nathaniel’s hand, the broad expanse of it, the long, hard curve of his fingers. She gave him her own hand and let him pull her into the side of the mountain.
She realized it was a cave even as she came through, but it confused her to see sunlight refracting on the walls. Coming from the dark into the glare, she blinked for a moment until she could make sense of the light and noise. The outermost face was not rock, but moving water: they were behind the waterfall, not a hundred yards from Lake in the Clouds. The rush of falls produced a breeze which caught the loose hair at her nape and temples and set it dancing. A fine mist swirled through the small cave. It felt good on her flushed cheeks.
Nathaniel was standing before the wall of water, sun on his hair and shoulders. From the back he was a stranger, a wild frontiersman with his loose hair and buckskin shirt and beaded leggings. There was a knife at his waist, and his rifle leaned against the wall within arm’s reach. Then he turned and his strong profile came into view. Distracted, the rush of her own blood as loud in her ears as the falling water, Elizabeth saw the wolves’ skulls which had been wedged into a long crack in the wall. While Nathaniel walked toward her she counted them: seven. There were seven.
He stopped before her, his eyes moving over her face. She saw that his brow was beaded with sweat although it was cool here. He’s as nervous as I am, she thought thankfully. She was glad it was too loud to talk; it gave her an excuse to look at him, to remind herself of the things she knew but had begun to doubt: the way his jaw curved, the straight line of his eyebrows, the way he looked at her. She hadn’t been imagining it: it was there, his wanting her. Nathaniel caught her hand and drew it up between them and
then turned to lead her back farther into the cave, through a narrowing and then into another room.
Here the light was less but so was the sound of the water. Elizabeth moved forward tentatively, starting at the feel of something furry brushing against her bare feet. She pushed up against Nathaniel and yelped softly.
“No, no,” he said calmly. “Look. It’s just pelts.”
This cave, bigger than the one before it, was crowded. There were baskets and barrels, a makeshift table with a betty lamp at its center. Provisions hung from pegs driven into cracks in the walls, strings of dried squash and apples and braided corn. On smaller pegs nearest Elizabeth was a selection of clothing, bullet pouches, knives in their sheaths and powder horns. And everywhere, on every surface, were pelts tied into neat bundles.
“The winter’s work,” said Nathaniel, following the path of her gaze.
“Hidden Wolf,” she said, finally understanding.
“Hidden Wolf,” he confirmed.
Everything of value, everything they needed to get them through the next year, was here. Anybody who wanted to force them out would only have to find this place. And they had brought her here without a word of discussion or warning or caution. Nathaniel had claimed her, and she had become one of them. This made Elizabeth immeasurably happy and unusually shy; she didn’t know where to look. And he was so silent; why didn’t he speak? She glanced up at him, and saw that he was waiting.
“I came to tell you—” she began, and then faltered.
His grip on her hand tightened. He waited.
“I wanted to say—” she began again, and then stopped once more. When she managed to meet his eye, she saw something frightened there. She watched him try to control his expression.
“Thank you so much, Nathaniel. For the schoolhouse.” This came out sounding very prim and dry and it was not at all what she wanted to say. But he was being distant and reserved; thus far he had done nothing more than take her hand. Irritated with her own clumsiness and with Nathaniel’s unwillingness to set her at ease, she pulled away and made a study of her bare feet.
“You’ve changed your mind,” he said woodenly.
“No!” Elizabeth’s head jerked up, surprise cutting through the awkwardness between them. “No. How could you think such a thing?”
“Maybe I was expecting more of a greeting,” Nathaniel said, and now there was at least the hint of a smile. “From my bride.”
All the fear and frustration of the past eight weeks had been pulsing close to the surface, and with one word Nathaniel had pricked it open. Very slowly Elizabeth leaned forward until her forehead rested on his shoulder, shuddering with pleasure and relief at the feel of him, at his smell.
His arms came up around her. Nathaniel knew that she needed comforting. He took his time, letting her get used to the feel of him again. He touched her hair lightly, her back. Little by little she relaxed against him.
“We leave on Wednesday,” Elizabeth said after a while. “And I’m worried.”
“About what?”
She shivered a little. “I’m worried that I’ll have to make a binding oath to Richard in front of Mr. Bennett before my father will sign the deed.” Nathaniel could tell by the rush in her voice that this was the very worst she could imagine. He felt more of the tension slip away from her, now that she had shared the burden.
“Todd is coming to Johnstown with you?”
She nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
“Well,” said Nathaniel, smoothing her hair. “We’ll have to think of a way to change his mind about that.”
She pulled away then, frowning. Nathaniel tensed, feeling the jealousies of the last weeks begin to simmer again. “Unless you’re worried about hurting his feelings.”
“Because I don’t like him doesn’t mean I want to see him hurt,” Elizabeth said, with a look Nathaniel thought her students must be familiar with. “It just means I don’t want to marry him. As you know very well.”
“We ain’t got much time,” he said slowly. “And I don’t see that we should spend it with Richard Todd between us.”
“Then promise me he won’t come to any harm.”
Nathaniel said, very evenly, “He won’t come to any harm unless he puts himself in harm’s way.”
“Are you always this sure of yourself?” she asked suddenly, her irritation showing in the way she suddenly met his gaze, unflinching.
“I’m sure of some things,” he responded calmly. “One of them is that Richard Todd ain’t to be trusted.”
“I didn’t say that I trusted him,” Elizabeth said. “In fact, I don’t trust him. But I still don’t like the idea of his being hurt.”
Nathaniel felt his temper rising to the surface. “You’re mighty worried about the man’s welfare, seeing that you don’t like him much.”
“You are not being rational,” said Elizabeth stiffly.
“Maybe not,” Nathaniel said. “But maybe rational ain’t what’s called for right now. It was damn hard, let me tell you, watching the man who has been doing his best to run me and mine off this mountain, seeing him lay claim to you as if you was a good horse. I told you he won’t come to harm if he stays out of harm’s way, and that’s the best I can promise. Is that good enough for you?”
Her color had risen, and her fingers twitched as if she wanted to hit him, or touch him. She put her chin up with that same flick of the head she had shown him the first time he spoke to her, when he had called her a spinster. One part of Nathaniel wanted to remind her of this, wanted to see her ruffle and flush and become uncertain. Because on the other side of the teasing there would be peacemaking, and they could get on with what had been started in the stable back in February. Nathaniel wanted that, but he was cautious. In the next few days he knew he would need all his skill and wits to keep them together, and alive.
And there was the matter of Richard Todd, still unresolved. He could see her weighing things, her eyes narrowed.
“Elizabeth. Is that good enough for you?” he repeated.
“Yes,” she said grudgingly. “It is.”
“Well, then.” Nathaniel nodded. “Then this is what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to keep Todd away from Johnstown—never mind how, I’ll work that out later.” Reluctantly, he stepped back a bit from her. “Now maybe we better talk about how we’ll meet up, before I send you home.”
“Oh,” Elizabeth said, feeling suddenly deflated. She tried hard to hide her disappointment, tried not to look at him, his face, his mouth. And failed miserably. She bristled with the need to put her hands on him and still she didn’t dare.
She said, “I’ve just spent eight weeks being pleasant to Richard Todd. Which I didn’t enjoy, though you seem to think I did. I thought you and I would have … a little time together.”
There, she thought, blushing and cursing herself for it. I’ve as much as dared him to kiss me, and what if he won’t? What if he doesn’t? There was a need in her that she couldn’t name and didn’t know how to tell him about, but she knew she must touch him, must have him touch her, or simply die.
He saw all this, and it made him glad and it frightened him, too. “Elizabeth,” he whispered, catching her up tight against him. “By Christ, don’t you think I know how long it’s been? But if I start, if we start—” And then he paused to kiss her, anyway, because she was so close and there was her smell that undid him, dried flowers and ink and her woman smell, and there was nothing more in the world he could think of doing. A rough kiss that drew from Elizabeth a sigh like the wind in the trees. Nathaniel pulled her up tighter against him and went on kissing her for a long time, until he could force himself to stop.
He buried his face in her neck, inhaling her scent. “If we start this now—”
She said, “It’s already started.” And she was right, he knew it; it was started and it couldn’t be stopped. There was nothing to do but to draw her down into the pelts, reaching behind her to snap a cord with a jerk of his wrist so that she could lie there in a j
umble of fisher fur as dark and rich as her hair while he kissed her mouth, and kissed it again, and touched her, her face, her throat, letting his mouth follow, his body tense with purpose even while hers softened, drawing him in.
Her eyes glowed in the half-light as he untied her cloak and tugged it out from under her. Concentrating on her face, Nathaniel pulled free the lace kerchief tucked into her bodice, drawing it over her skin. He dropped it behind himself and then, slowly, ran his knuckles over the swell of her breasts and down her body, half fearing that she would protest. But instead there was only the way her flesh rose to him, and the sound of her indrawn breath. She touched him then. Slid her hand into the open throat of his shirt to draw him down into a kiss deep enough to put an end to his indecision.
There were buttons and ties and hooks to be dealt with between long kisses. She helped him with her own clothes until only her shift remained, and then watched with a little frown of concentration as he sat back on his heels to pull his shirt over his head. He felt her hands on him while his face was still caught inside, her tentative fingers touching the Kahnyen’kehàka tattoo that circled his chest, tracing faded scars. When he had stretched out next to her again she found the one she wanted, a puckered bullet wound on his shoulder. She lifted her head to press her lips to it, the shy touch of her tongue moving him to hastiness. He drew her close.
“Is this what you want?” he asked, his cupped hands pressing her buttocks through thin muslin, seeing that she did want it in her face and the way she moved into his hands. But he needed to hear her say so.
She surprised him. “It’s you I want,” she said clearly. “Not Richard Todd. You.” And he understood that he had underestimated her frustration and anger and pure iron will.
He pushed the shift off her shoulders, helped her turn this way and that until she was free of it, her body white against the dark fur. The luxury of her breasts, firm and round and full, struck at him like a fist.
“Holy God,” he muttered, burying his face in the curve of her throat, his hands clenching on her back. He could feel all her furious determination draining away to sudden uncertainty.