Into the Wilderness

by Sara Donati

  “I’m going for help,” she said quietly. “But I want you to know something before I go.”

  Elizabeth crouched down to bring her face closer to Richard’s. She could see that he was in considerable pain, but that he was never going to admit it. For a moment she wondered at him, what a complex man he was. Then she thought of Nathaniel alone with him, and at his mercy. She said: “I’ve shot one man I didn’t mean to. It won’t be hard to shoot the next one, if I’ve got good cause.”

  “Promise me you’ll answer the summons to appear before the court, and I promise you I won’t lift a hand to hurt him.”

  “Or to help him, either.” She almost laughed. “Your word is less than worthless, Dr. Todd. I will make you a promise. If you hurt him, then a court of law would be the best you could hope for. I doubt Hawkeye would be so kind. I know that I would not.”

  He was watching her closely. “You’re not as tough as you think.”

  “For your own sake, you had best hope that you are wrong.” She began to turn away.

  “Wait.”

  Richard shifted on his pallet, grimacing. The wrappings on his hand were bloody. “I swear on my mother’s grave that I’ll do what I can to keep him alive until you get back. If you promise to meet me in a court of law and answer the charges against you.”

  “I am starting to wonder if you are completely sane,” Elizabeth said quietly. His face was haggard, every crease caked with dirt. There was no sign of the elegant Dr. Todd who had proposed to her in such formal terms in the Bennetts’ parlor, the man who painted landscapes and wore velvet waistcoats. And yet, somehow she had the sense that while much of the paint and glitter had been scraped away, the real Richard Todd was still not completely in evidence.

  “Do we have an agreement?”

  Nathaniel coughed in his uneasy sleep.

  “On your mother’s grave?”

  He nodded, and Elizabeth inhaled. “Then I agree. But only if my husband survives, is that clear? If I find him in good condition on my return, then I will answer your charges in court.”

  Richard’s smile was a frightening thing.

  Elizabeth turned away and made herself ready. With the musket and knife tucked into her belt and the powder horn slung over her shoulder, she lifted the pack of provisions to her back, and glanced at Nathaniel. Without another look at Richard Todd, she set off, the red dog trotting beside her.

  XXXVI

  The red dog woke her at sunrise by pushing its cold nose into her neck. Elizabeth gasped and rolled over and then, suddenly remembering where she was and why, she sat up. There was a muffled woof and a single, appreciative thump of a tail.

  “Wretched beast,” she muttered, rubbing the heel of her hand on its bony skull. The fire had gone out, insufficiently banked. It was the animal’s warmth that had kept her from waking in a shiver. She wondered if fleas would be worth the comfort. “I don’t suppose you can fetch wood, can you? Never mind. No time anyway.”

  How long had she slept? She had made a hasty camp at twilight and fallen immediately to sleep. Eight hours, perhaps; it felt like less. Elizabeth ate a breakfast of raw oats and dried meat, staring into the bush as she chewed. A long day of walking ahead of her. She forced herself to swallow and took another mouthful. The dog watched her, one brow cocked. Then she snuffled and rolled onto her back, waving her bent paws slightly and casting Elizabeth a hopeful look.

  “You don’t really think I’m going to stick my hand into that mess, do you?” Elizabeth asked, even as she leaned forward to scratch the dog’s freckled belly. She was surprised to see that the teats were elongated; a bitch, with a few litters in her past. Elizabeth thought of uncle Merriweather, how much boyish enthusiasm he had shown when one of his retrievers had whelped. It was the only time he had ever gone into the kitchen, to visit the litter in its nest of wood shavings by the hearth. And how cook had hated having him there, disrupting her routine and staff.

  “Treenie,” Elizabeth said, thinking for the first time in many months of the cook at Oakmere, a wiry twist of a Scotswoman with a face like an overripe tomato, a carving knife for a tongue, and fists like raw joints of beef.

  The dog rolled to her feet and stood wagging her tail.

  “It’s as good a name as any,” Elizabeth said. “I must call you something if you’re going to come along.”

  They walked. For hours, they walked and Elizabeth talked to the red dog; it was the only way to keep her mind focused on the journey and off the cause of her errand. She was pushing hard, stopping only to drink at the river and relieve herself. Both of them ate on the go. Treenie disappeared on occasion, foraging ahead and loping back, almost puppylike, with the remnants of a rabbit or groundhog on her muzzle. Red squirrels chattered and scolded above them, and there was the persistent drone of a woodpecker no matter how far they went.

  The river meandered, but Elizabeth resisted the urge to make even the most obvious of shortcuts. With considerable luck, she might survive being lost in these endless woods, but Nathaniel would not. She walked harder, chewing tough chunks of dried rabbit and tossing Treenie the gristle. They were following a moose trail, fairly well marked; Elizabeth pulled up short in surprise to find a series of nests in the gentle hollows. Apparently turkeys had found the spot to their liking in spite of the traffic: each nest of twigs and dead leaves contained a large clutch of pale yellow eggs speckled brown. The hens were just out of sight in the underbrush, fussing furiously. Not hungry enough to rob nests, Elizabeth walked on without pausing. Treenie, not quite so fastidious in her appetites, hung back; a sharp word brought her to attention, and she slouched reluctantly past the easy meal.

  By midday the air was growing heavier and hotter. Sweat trickled down her back and sides and glued her hair to her temples. When a swarm of blackfly rose like a malignant cloud, Elizabeth thought with longing of the pennyroyal ointment and the bear grease, but she had left them behind for Nathaniel, as she had left almost all the provisions. She tied her kerchief around her nose and mouth and wiped the tiny black creatures from the corners of her eyes every few steps. Treenie’s eyes and nose were circled with a trembling black mask; again and again she resorted to plunging into the river to find relief.

  Eventually the river fed into a small, misshapen lake. Most of these lakes had no name, and in fact Elizabeth thought this one deserved none; it was too unpleasant a place. To her right was a vast tangle of dreary tamarack and cedar interspersed with dead-wood, bracken, and thorny shrubs. To her left, the lake itself was ringed by dead trees, their stumpy bare branches looped with garlands of lichen. On the far side of the lake the river spread into the deep shadows of the swamp, where the only real color came from the birds—yellow warblers flitting like wayward sunbeams, a red crossbill sitting low in a black ash—and from the luxurious carpet of deep green moss and ferns that covered everything. The air shimmered with heat and flies.

  “Here it is, Treenie,” Elizabeth said, wiping the blackfly from the corners of her eyes. “The worst of it.”

  She forced herself to sit on the edge of the river. While she recited to herself what Nathaniel had told her of the route, she ate, because she was hungry. Ravenously hungry, so that the last of the oats, all of the dried meat, the handful of beans disappeared in little time. This evening she would have to take the time to fish, or to snare. But first there was the swamp to be got around.

  Keep your wits about you, Hawkeye had said to her so many weeks ago. I’ve still got my best stories to tell.

  “I’ll have a few of my own,” Elizabeth muttered. She wished for Hawkeye, for Robbie, for Runs-from-Bears, even for her brother. Any way at all to be led.

  “I’m frightened,” she said aloud.

  The dog looked up at her, panting, and then snapped irritably at the insects hovering about her head. With an impatient snuffle, she started off. Elizabeth followed.

  · · ·

  Nathaniel woke with a start and reached for her, remembering even then that she was gone, off to
fetch Robbie. Who would either dig his grave or cart him out of the bush; what it would be was not quite clear. Breathing was a necessary misery. Beyond that, he itched, and he was thirsty, and his bowels gripped.

  “Breathe deep,” Richard Todd said from the other side of the fire. “You have to force the bad lung open.”

  Nathaniel blinked and attempted to focus on the man. The sweat had drawn crevices in the grime on Richard’s face, and his hair clung to his temples.

  “You’ve got a fever,” he observed, his own voice sounding hollow and hoarse in his ears.

  “Leg’s full of muck,” Richard said. “Need to clean it out.”

  “Sorry I can’t be of assistance.”

  Richard managed a hollow laugh. “I’ll wager.”

  Nathaniel struggled up by holding on to the wall, and then hung there, coughing. No blood this time; that was good. When his vision cleared again he made his way out of the shelter and around the corner, where he squatted while the world around him faded in and out of focus. What he wanted to do was to get down to the lake and lie in the water, where it would be cool and he could listen to the loons. He could wait for her there on the island where they had last come together … yesterday? He shook his head, rubbing his eyes. The day before yesterday, in the evening.

  He forced himself to take three deep breaths, and then hauled himself to his feet where he stood, swaying. The wind was up and there was the smell of a storm in the air.

  She would be halfway through the swamp now, if she hadn’t lost her way. If the storm didn’t overtake her, she would be out by sunset. If the storm didn’t overtake her.

  Treenie moved along with a certainty and steady enthusiasm that buoyed Elizabeth’s spirits. She followed the dog closely over hummocks of fern-covered moss and around deep pools of water. Where she waded, Elizabeth jumped; her moccasins were already wet through, but she could not quite make herself stomp knowingly through murky waters. Her affection and appreciation for the dog grew with every damp mile.

  By the late afternoon two things were clear: she should have saved the last of the dried meat, and there was a storm on the way. The constant drone and cackle of woodpeckers was replaced by the creaking of deadwood in the buffeting winds. In those rare spots where the sky showed itself it was as dark and unwelcoming as the swamp, churning with threatening clouds. She had thought to be out by the time it was full dark, but light was dwindling with the first trembling thunder. Treenie’s ears twitched and she let out a low whine.

  “Yes, and I know how you are feeling,” Elizabeth muttered. “But at least we are free of the blackfly.”

  The dog woofed at her dejectedly as the thunder rumbled again. With every new flash of approaching light they moved faster. Elizabeth stumbled for the first time with the distinct crack of a tree being hit: catching her leggings on an upthrusted snarl of cedar roots, she stepped into a pool and sank immediately to the waist, her moccasins settling into the ooze at the bottom. While she disentangled herself she tried to remember what she knew about appropriate behavior in a thunderstorm. To be waist-deep in water, she feared, was almost as sensible as to stand under the lone tree on a grassy meadow.

  The rain started just as she pulled herself to her feet. It crested and fell back in sudden jerking waves, cold against her heated cheeks. Treenie stood regarding her with a very clear brand of canine panic on her face while she tried to scrape the worst of the mud from her feet.

  “You are a terrible coward,” Elizabeth said loudly. Whether she meant this for Treenie or herself, she was not sure.

  The thick ground covering of moss absorbed the rain like a strange sea sponge, giving it up again with a loud hiss under each footfall. Elizabeth watched her feet closely, determined to avoid another tumble, and so she walked into Treenie before she realized that the dog had stopped. With a startled hiccup she looked up to see a huge beech tree directly in their path, wider around than Elizabeth could reach. This occurred to her because she was tempted to put her arms around it; it was the first beech she had seen since they entered the swamp.

  On one side of the beech was the river, which had inexplicably regained a semblance of banks, and on the other a great jumble of boulders, slimy with streaming lichen and clusters of red-yellow mushrooms. They had begun to scramble over when Elizabeth paused. In a flicker of lightning she had caught something on the trunk, what she had taken at first to be the claw marks of bears. She pulled herself up and stopped, to Treenie’s great annoyance, to read.

  CRESCENT ILLAE, CRESCETIS AMORES

  The names had been obscured by real claw marks, but the sentiment remained: “as these letters grow, so will our love.” Elizabeth reached up to trace the carving, wondering if she were developing a habit for hallucinations.

  Treenie had Elizabeth’s overdress between her teeth, and she tugged, hard.

  “We’re nearly out,” Elizabeth said, thumping her on the back. “And thank God.” In response the air lit with a triple pulse of blue-white light, followed almost immediately by the deep bass of thunder. Too close. She slithered down the boulders to the other side, and came up against a dead tamarack, already leaning precipitously.

  Treenie backed up against her knees, so that Elizabeth nearly lost her balance. She looked at the shivering dog, and then looked again. In the startling blue-white light which seemed to pulse on and on, every hair in her coat stood on end. And then the thunder sucked all sound from the world: the howling of the red dog, Elizabeth’s own scream, and the crack of a tree splitting open as easily as a ripe peach pit, just a few feet behind them.

  Elizabeth ducked under the tamarack and ran.

  “She’s likely sitting under a tree right now.”

  Todd’s voice, hoarse and weaker than it had been, came out of the shadows.

  A thump, and the fire flared up around the new log. Then it settled back down to hissing and sizzling under the persistent drip from the vent hole.

  “Or maybe wading down the middle of the stream.” Todd wheezed, and produced a wet cough.

  Nathaniel’s backside was sore, but there was no hope of breathing easily if he were to lie down. Swearing to himself, he shifted the thorny spine of a balsam branch out from under him, getting his hands tacky with the pungent sap.

  There was a flash of light, and in the distance, the answering rumble.

  “Have you ever seen a man killed by lightning?” Todd went on.

  “No,” said Nathaniel, wiggling his shoulders for easier purchase against the log wall. “But then the storm is young, and I may have the pleasure yet.”

  “If she dies, the court will take the Wolf away from you.”

  “Just yesterday you thought I killed her in cold blood.”

  “Well, she does have an irritating way about her,” Todd pointed out. “I’ve seen wounded cougars with more pleasant personalities.”

  Nathaniel dipped his tin cup into the water kettle. “Listen to you. All your shine is rubbing off, Todd.”

  “Tell me you wanted her for more than the land and I’ll call you a liar.”

  “I ain’t got the strength to get mad,” Nathaniel said wearily. “But I could work myself up, if you want to push things a little further.”

  There was a streak of white past the open door, and a high-pitched squeal as an owl swooped down and off with a struggling prize. Nathaniel started, feeling the sweat pearl on his forehead.

  “You couldn’t throttle a rabbit,” Todd observed. There was a pause, and the sound of chewing. Nathaniel had almost fallen asleep when the voice came again.

  “Besides, if you ever were going to kill me, it would have been back then. When Sarah died.”

  Nathaniel felt his pulse beat pick up; he was suddenly not sleepy at all.

  “You think it was my fault, I know you do. Everybody does.”

  It took a lot, but Nathaniel kept his peace.

  “Well, it wasn’t. Nobody could stop the bleeding. Curiosity couldn’t, either, nor your mother, nobody. I did my best.”
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  The storm swelled again, and the fire sputtered.

  “Goddamn it man, I know you’re awake. Say something.”

  “You’re sicker than I thought,” said Nathaniel. “To be running off at the mouth the way you are.”

  Richard grunted. “Fever,” he said. “Does the talking.”

  “You got nothing to say worth listening to.” Nathaniel tossed his cup and it clanged against the kettle.

  “Not like you can walk away from me, is it, if I want to talk to you. But if you don’t want to listen, then let me ask you a question.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Todd. Save your breath.”

  “Why’d you marry her?”

  He let the question hang there, not knowing which woman it was Todd was asking about. The one who lay all these years in her grave, a child in her arms whose father couldn’t be named with certainty. Or the one out there on his account, who might not make it through the night.

  Nathaniel said, “If you could have one of them, right now, which would it be?”

  “Why, Sarah,” said Todd softly, but without hesitation. “It was always Sarah. She was mine first.”

  Nathaniel looked hard across the fire, but he could see nothing of the man except one arm, bent up at an angle across his face. He wondered if the poison had got into his blood already, to have him talk so crazy.

  “She never told you, I know it. But she would have run with me, that winter I ran away from Kahen’tiyo. If she could have.”

  “Sarah would’ve been ten years old,” Nathaniel pointed out, trying to keep the irritation and anger from his voice, and not succeeding. That Falling-Day and her family had spent the winter that year in the Kahnyen’kehàka village to the north, he knew to be fact.