Into the Wilderness

by Sara Donati

  Elizabeth caught up Nathaniel’s hand, and jerked it, hard.

  “Let me answer,” she said hoarsely. “Please.” She stood like that with him until she felt his reluctance break.

  The words were there, she could say them: But he can father children; I carry his child. It would break the back of the only argument Richard had which meant anything to these women; it would resolve the issue of Nathaniel’s manhood. She felt color flooding her breast, moving up to her hairline. Nathaniel was looking at her, they were all looking at her. She dropped her gaze to the ground, cleared her throat, and tried to summon the words.

  When she looked up, Throws-Far was with them. He had stepped out of the deepest shadows into the firelight, appearing like an apparition. With a nod to each of the clan mothers, he addressed She-Remembers.

  “May I speak?” Into the terrible tension around the hearth, he brought a quiet voice, without anger or threat.

  She-Remembers murmured her agreement, while the other two simply nodded. Made-of-Bones threw a nervous look in Nathaniel’s direction.

  Richard stood motionless, all the anger in his eyes suddenly masked. There was a stillness in him, the same stillness she had seen on the shore of the Hudson while he watched her say goodbye to Nathaniel so many weeks ago. He could bide his time, when it served his purposes. His intent and resolve were as clear and marked as the streaks of paint on Throws-Far’s face.

  “I came today because He-Who-Dreams summoned me to help. He sees more than one kind of sickness in this man, who is both my brother and a stranger to me. And so I speak, although I see that he does not want my help.”

  There was no tone of complaint in Throws-Far’s manner or words, just simple statements put forth with great deliberation.

  “This man has never lived among the Kahnyen’kehàka,” said Throws-Far. “Even when his body was here, his heart was back with the O’seronni. He could not be one of us. He could not forgive me for putting the white ways behind me.”

  Richard was not looking at his brother, but his face trembled and the line of his jaw hardened. A drop of sweat fell onto his shirt and was followed by another.

  Throws-Far directed his comments to the clan mothers, as if they were alone. “Even now he will not see me. There is a hardness in his heart that makes him blind. But he can hear me. I can tell him that I have four fine sons and two daughters who make me proud. He is their uncle. He knows this now, and can never put this knowledge from him.”

  The wind rose and shook the bark roof of the longhouse. The night was all sound: the drum and rattle, crickets and the faraway echo of the wolf, and above it all the prayers of the faith keeper, drifting into the night sky for the sake of a man who stood here, his face glimmering with sweat and his eyes blank with resignation.

  Throws-Far listened to the faint voice of He-Who-Dreams for a time, and then his face cleared of this preoccupation and he turned back to the clan mothers.

  “A warrior can have a father’s heart. So I ask Cat-Eater, would you do to this child what was done to you? Would you destroy a child to avenge our mother?”

  Richard’s head snapped up, and for the first time Elizabeth saw him focus on the man who stood opposite him. His face flushed a vivid red, his mouth twisted in indignation and an undisguised pain.

  Throws-Far met Richard’s stare calmly. “Do not let the bitterness in your heart rule your mind. Put Hidden Wolf behind you.”

  “Who are you to tell me what to do and how to live?” Richard asked woodenly.

  Throws-Far blinked. He opened his mouth to speak again, but his words were uncertain, and even his voice was different, higher and younger: “I am your brother,” he said in English. “I was once called Samuel.”

  Just above their sleeping platform, there was a break in the roof of the Wolf longhouse that would displease Made-of-Bones greatly. Had she known of it, she would have sent one of her grandsons immediately to climb to the roof and repair it. But she didn’t know, and Nathaniel was glad of the view of the heavens, on their last night with the Kahnyen’kehàka.

  He lay on his back watching the stars in the sky. They had a knowing glitter, like the eyes of the great cats when they lie in wait in the bush. Cold and hot all at once, something too bright to comprehend.

  Elizabeth shifted her head to a more comfortable position on Nathaniel’s shoulder. She was nowhere near sleep, which surprised him given the long events of the evening. There was a hollow feeling under his ribs when he thought about it, what Todd had tried to do. What he was still trying to do and would die trying to do, if he persisted.

  “It’s over now,” she said softly, reading his thoughts, or the tension in his shoulders.

  He let a finger trail over her temple and down the side of her face. “You don’t think the man has changed because his brother tried to speak some sense to him?” He didn’t like the bitterness in his voice, but it was there all the same.

  “People change,” she said. “I have changed.”

  Nathaniel grunted. “Tomorrow morning when we take this business before the sachem, then we will see how changed Richard Todd is.”

  She rubbed her cheek on his chest, put her mouth softly against his neck. His skin flared in an arc from the touch of her lips to his groin, and he turned, carrying her with him. Richard Todd was banished: in the faint light of the moon and the embers of the hearth fire there was only the outline of her face, her sweet, strong face in the shape of a heart. In the shape of his own heart.

  He kissed her cheek and found it wet. “Why do you weep?” he asked, astounded.

  “I want to go home.”

  “We start tomorrow.”

  She nodded, but she was not with him in her mind.

  “Tell me,” he said against her mouth. “What is it?”

  “Nathaniel. It is over. You needn’t fear Richard’s claims about you—they are not true. And there is proof, now.” She took his hand and carried it down to press it flat on her lower belly. “There,” she whispered, her forehead against his. “We have made a child, you and I.”

  At first the words were as meaningless as birdsong. He heard himself draw in breath and let it out again. Under the curve of his palm her warm skin rose and fell on the tide of her breath. It was her face that told him clearly, the joy in it and the fear in equal measure.

  “Are you certain?”

  “It has been six weeks since I bled—” she whispered. He put a thumb against her lips, and his forehead against hers.

  In that instant Nathaniel knew the depths of his self-doubt. Exposed suddenly to light and air, the fear that he had lived with for ten years simply withered away to be replaced by an elation that clenched his heart, and would never let go.

  He said something he had never admitted to himself before: “I didn’t believe it was possible.”

  She was pushing closer, winding her arms and legs around him to make a cradle of herself. With her voice and with the body which sheltered his child, Elizabeth rocked the breath of hope back into him.

  “I never doubted you,” she said softly. “Never for a moment.”

  XLII

  The Strawberry Festival ceremonies required a great deal of preparation from the Kahnyen’kehàka of the Wolf longhouse, so that well before dawn hearth fires were stirred and torches lit. Half asleep, Elizabeth lay quietly listening to a muted argument between Crow-Flying, Spotted-Fox and their son, Little-Kettle, who would be taking part for the first time in the Feather Dance. He had particular notions about his face paint, it seemed, which did not suit. He was threatened with a consultation with the clan mother and the conversation took an abrupt end, just as Made-of-Bones appeared beside their sleeping platform with her usual bowl for Nathaniel.

  Her mouth was set in a harder line than usual, and she did not meet Elizabeth’s eye. The outcome of the discussions in the Bear longhouse clearly did not please her in the least, for while she was always short and sometimes rude, she had never before failed to respond to a greeting.


  “Splitting-Moon will prepare enough medicine for your journey,” she said to Nathaniel as he sat up to take the bowl. “Bone-in-Her-Back can make an infusion?”

  “I can,” Elizabeth answered for herself.

  Nathaniel drank, and then handed the bowl back to the old woman. For a moment they both held it fast, his strong brown fingers and hers, a few shades darker and twisted with age, the nails ridged. “There is no way to repay you for the gift of my good health,” Nathaniel said. Elizabeth watched Made-of-Bones take in this message: I am thankful, but I will not deliver my daughter to you.

  She made a flicking gesture with her fingers, as if to brush away his words. “When are you leaving?”

  “You know that we have unfinished business with Cat-Eater after the Feather Dance.”

  “This morning Throws-Far left us,” she said. “His brother went with him.”

  Nathaniel’s sleepiness was suddenly gone. “Where is Otter?”

  Made-of-Bones spread out one hand and closed it in a sweeping curl of her fingers. “Gone, with the warriors. And his Windigo rifle.” Her mouth turned up at one corner. “Vous et nul autre.”

  Elizabeth felt her skin rise and flush all along her back. Nathaniel put a hand on her arm; it was only that, its warmth and weight, that kept her from shaking. He was staring at the old woman; she looked back at him, one white brow raised, and then she left them.

  “Nathaniel,” Elizabeth said hoarsely. “What does it mean?”

  Outside, the faith keeper’s song began, calling the Kahnyen’kehàka to the festivities.

  Nathaniel swung his legs down so that he was sitting on the edge of the sleeping platform, all tension and concentration where just a few minutes ago he had been sleeping with his body curled around hers, his hand on her belly.

  “Otter hasn’t gone after Richard,” she said out loud, wanting it to be so.

  Nathaniel shrugged. “Maybe not.”

  Elizabeth thought of Otter at the Stick Beating Dance, his gaze always fixed on Richard.

  “But perhaps,” she conceded reluctantly. “Otherwise he would have taken his leave of us.”

  Nathaniel grunted, running a hand through his hair. “He don’t know what he’s getting himself into.”

  Elizabeth was torn between worry and irritation, and with something smaller and meaner: she did not want to chase a nineteen-year-old bent on revenge into another wilderness, for the sake of a man whose greed had nearly cost her everything she held dear in life. Or even, God forgive her, for his own sake.

  She leaned forward to put her chin on Nathaniel’s shoulder. “I owe him a great deal,” she said. “But it is time to go home.”

  “We’ll go home,” he agreed, touching her cheek. “The boy has the right to fight his own ghosts.”

  They took leave of Stone-Splitter and He-Who-Dreams formally, presenting their small store of tobacco as a gift. Then they visited each of the clan mothers, and accepted well wishes. She-Remembers gave Elizabeth a carry bag decorated with elaborate quillwork and beads. Two-Suns had a pair of fine doeskin leggings. It occurred to her, as it had every day that she had spent with these people, that everything she wore and everything she ate came from them, but that this was taken for granted: their generosity was fundamental to their character. She wished she had some way to repay them for their kindness, and said this to Robbie, who was busy with his gear.

  “I’ve no’ a doot the day will come when they will need your friendship,” he said quietly. “Or that ye’ll remember the kindness shewn ye.”

  Made-of-Bones came down to the river at the last minute, Splitting-Moon behind her. They had provided baskets of herbs and other gifts for the Kahnyen’kehàka at Hidden Wolf, and Elizabeth saw the old woman’s eyes moving over the way these things had been packed in the canoe. Then she repeated the messages she had already given Nathaniel for her daughter, until she was satisfied that he had each of them word for word.

  She seemed to hesitate and then she turned to Elizabeth. “The O’seronni medicine to keep the brûht away, the one that turns your skin brown—do you have any of it?”

  Elizabeth glanced at Nathaniel, who looked as puzzled as she felt. “I do not,” she said. “Nathaniel?”

  “There’s a half bottle, in my pack.”

  The old woman produced a small satisfied grunt. “Stay away from it,” she said to Elizabeth. “And suffer the bites.” And she left them without another word of farewell.

  “What was that all about?” Elizabeth asked Splitting-Moon. “I know she is upset with me, but to wish me bitten …?”

  “Le pouliot,” said Splitting-Moon, glancing over her shoulder. “It is poisonous.”

  “I assumed that pennyroyal is poisonous to the blackfly. But not to us—I used it, we all used it,” Elizabeth protested, her nose flaring as she remembered the strong tang of the sticky liquid.

  “It is poison to the child,” Splitting-Moon said, her gaze firmly excluding Nathaniel and Robbie from the discussion.

  “In any form?” Elizabeth asked faintly.

  “No. Only if you drink tea made of it. If you put on your skin, it would not cause harm.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “Then I don’t take her meaning.”

  “My grandmother would counsel against any O’seronni medicine for a breeding woman. But it always puts her in a bad mood to have her family leave her.” Splitting-Moon offered a rare half smile. “I am afraid that she does indeed wish you bitten.”

  Paddling downriver, Elizabeth looked back to see Made-of-Bones standing on a rise above them. The force of her personality subdued by distance, Elizabeth saw her for the old woman she was, in the curve of her spine and the sparse white hair lifting in the wind. A woman who had lost most of the people she loved, and feared to lose more. Suddenly Elizabeth wished she had made more of an effort with her.

  Treenie whimpered a little and put her head on Elizabeth’s knee, and when she looked up again, they had turned a corner and Made-of-Bones was gone.

  She leaned toward Nathaniel and whistled softly so that he turned his head toward her. Behind her Robbie had already begun singing.

  “She knew. Made-of-Bones knew about the child,” said Elizabeth.

  Nathaniel nodded.

  “Do you think she told Richard?”

  “She must have,” he said. “Otherwise why would he take off the way he did?” Nathaniel asked, the sweep of his paddle as steady as his breathing.

  There is the question, she thought. Of the answer, Elizabeth was not quite so sure as Nathaniel seemed to be.

  PART III

  Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go?

  XLIII

  Late June, 1793

  By their fifth day on the vast lake called Champlain by the French who had claimed it, and Regioghne by the Hode’noshaunee, who knew it was the province not of men, but the warrior spirit who commanded the wind and waves, Elizabeth had learned that Robbie could not paddle without singing. He sang songs of the fur traders, the marching songs that he had learned in twenty years as a soldier, and a great number of Kahnyen’kehàka songs, one of which the canoemaker had composed and delivered with the craft:

  The canoe is very fast.

  It is mine.

  All day long I splash away.

  I paddle along, I paddle along.

  When he found that his music had a willing audience, Robbie opened up his treasure chest: the ballads and songs of his boyhood in the Scottish border counties. He had a deep, clear voice and an ear for a tune, and his music hung over the water like the shimmering dragonflies that followed them everywhere. Just now he was humming a melody that had been haunting him for days, a simple song that Elizabeth had begun to hear even in her dreams.

  While a canoe was not always the most comfortable form of travel, Elizabeth found that with Robbie behind her and Nathaniel in front, she was content. Shifting her weight to ease the ache in her knees, she fumbled her paddle and accidentally sprayed Treenie, so that she produced a startled but sleepy woof in response.
Nathaniel glanced back over his shoulder at the dog and then grinned at Elizabeth.

  It took a moment to get her paddle back in the water in the right rhythm. The men did not need her help, but she wanted the challenge of the task. She needed something to distract her from the constant preoccupation with her own inner workings, for sometime in the past few days a small kernel of nausea had taken up permanent residence. When she woke in the morning it was lodged high in her belly and almost possible to ignore. By midday it had grown like a spider’s web, working its way up to her chest, and by the late afternoon she could no longer take note of anything but the creeping fingers, pressing in the softest flesh at the back of her throat.

  I have learned to cope with many indignities in the past weeks, she thought to herself. But never will I become accustomed to being indisposed in public view.

  This day was hot and sunny, but the sweat on her brow was more a signal that she was approaching a crisis. Then she noticed that the sound of the water was shifting—she could hear white water now before she saw any sign of it, even before Nathaniel signaled to head to the shore of the little cove ahead of them. Elizabeth’s spirits lifted in the hope that she would be able to keep her distress to herself for once.

  “No rest for the wicked,” noted Robbie cheerfully, heaving his great frame out of the cramped space as they pulled to the shore. Elizabeth was up and away before the men could secure their paddles, returning very shortly to rinse her mouth with lake water.