Into the Wilderness

by Sara Donati

  Elizabeth grimaced. “I expect Julian has quite a lot to say. But perhaps I should hear my father’s message.”

  Curiosity smoothed out the material of her apron. “Pretty much what you think. You ain’t welcome at his door, until you see the error of your headstrong ways and do what’s called for.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I expect he won’t be satisfied unless you put your husband aside—not likely, is that, seein’ what you got to show for your time in the bush. Todd will have to live without this mountain. Where is he anyway? Did y’all meet up with him?”

  “Oh, yes,” Elizabeth said. “We did. It’s a long story.”

  “He headed back this way?”

  “I assume so. Curiosity.” Elizabeth leaned toward her. “My father’s debts have been paid, and his taxes as well. All his financial problems should be resolved. Richard Todd might try to take me before a court of law for breach of promise but there is no claim he can make against my father, so please explain to me what this is all about. I simply do not understand.”

  “It’s about his pride, child. You embarrassed the judge in front of the whole territory.”

  Elizabeth flushed. “Only because he left me no choice.”

  Curiosity had not lost the knack of a sharp look. “Am I criticizing you?”

  “No.” Elizabeth sat back. “I’m sorry, of course not. But I am nervous about … everything.”

  “Naturally,” Curiosity raised a brow. “But you done good, child, and not just for yourself.”

  “I’m afraid that the villagers won’t agree with you.”

  Curiosity laughed out loud, and then shook her head. “You still got some friends down there. But mostly you got folks worried. They want to know what plans your menfolk have got for this mountain, and some of them are mighty uneasy.”

  “Uneasy enough to burn crops?” Elizabeth asked.

  Curiosity shrugged. “You scare one stupid man, he’ll most likely run off. But a crowd of stupid men—there ain’t nothing more dangerous, or meaner.” One corner of her generous mouth turned downward. “It’s our bad luck, you see, that Paradise got more than its fair share of men couldn’t find their hindquarters with both hands.”

  Elizabeth stifled an uneasy laugh, but Curiosity was not smiling. She leaned toward Elizabeth. “I ain’t telling you nothing your people don’t know already, but you watch yourself, and that child, too. Stay clear of Kirby, and Dubonnet and Southern, most of all.” She straightened, and the frown line between her brows was replaced with a genuine smile. “Now, there’s Falling-Day.”

  On the porch of the other cabin Falling-Day’s small, straight form had appeared with her daughter and granddaughter behind her, and Curiosity raised a hand in greeting.

  “Let’s us women have a look-see round this new home of yours,” she said, rising. “And a little talk ’bout happier things.”

  There were three rooms, a great luxury in a village where most cabins had only one. The long main room had a hearth of flagstone at one end and a loft at the other where Hannah slept. Like the older cabin, there was a work and storage room as well as a bedroom. There were few pieces of furniture, some of it with the same sharp tang of newly cut wood as the cabin itself, while other things—the table and benches, the rifle rack above the door, the bookcase, the bedstead—showed signs of careful mending.

  Curiosity examined everything in great detail, keeping up a running conversation with Falling-Day while they discussed spinning wheels and scraping frames, cooking kettles and lamps. Elizabeth and Many-Doves spent this time unpacking the baskets of books, while Hannah flitted back and forth, alternately picking up volumes to look through them and then trying on Elizabeth’s hats and making silly faces at herself in her hand mirror.

  “Ooooh,” she called out, opening a small trunk filled with Elizabeth’s boots. She immediately began to tug at her moccasins, engaging a sharp comment from Falling-Day.

  “Oh, let her.” Elizabeth laughed. “I doubt I’ll have much use for them anymore.” She reached over and picked up a boot of fine deep-blue morocco leather, its neatly turned toe edged in brass. “They were never very comfortable,” she admitted.

  The sight of all her worldly belongings spread out around her on the plank floor of the cabin made the finality of her new situation clear as nothing else had, not even waking this morning in her own home with her husband next to her. She would never return to her father’s home, or to her aunt’s.

  “The judge will be waitin’ on his supper,” Curiosity announced as if she had read Elizabeth’s thoughts. “I had best be on my way. I expect we will see you at church in the morning?” This was addressed to Elizabeth.

  “Is it Saturday? I hadn’t thought about church,” she admitted, wiping her brow. “Do you think—”

  “Yasm, I think. It ain’t the worst idea, showin’ up at services. Get folks used to the sight of you. It’s why we brung up your trunks this afternoon.”

  “What is your opinion?” Elizabeth asked Falling-Day, who was very quiet.

  The older woman thought for a moment, her broad face giving away nothing of her feelings. “The judge is unlikely to be there, isn’t that so, Curiosity? So I think that it would be best for you to go, otherwise they will say that you hide from them.”

  Curiosity laughed out loud. “This one never did learn how to walk away from an argument, but I guess they’ll figure that out soon enough.” She wiped her hands on her apron, and headed for the door. “Where have those men got to?”

  Hannah jumped up to join her, so that Elizabeth’s sun hat slipped forward over her face. Extricating herself, she offered to take Curiosity to the sheds where Galileo and Nathaniel were talking, and the two set out together.

  “There’s some of my soap in one of those baskets,” Curiosity called over her shoulder on her way out the door. “And some other odds and ends. Now I expect to see you and that husband of yours tomorrow, you hear?”

  “Come back soon,” Elizabeth said, her throat suddenly tight with tears.

  “Good friends are a great treasure,” Falling-Day said just behind her.

  “Yes, she is a good friend to me. To us.” Elizabeth turned back into the cabin. “I wanted to thank you,” she said. “For whatever part you had in all this—”

  “It is good that you are here,” Falling-Day said. “For all of us. And since my daughter has taken a husband, we needed more room.”

  “I am sorry to have missed your wedding ceremony,” Elizabeth said to Many-Doves. “And I am sorry all of you could not be at mine. Was this to be your cabin?”

  Many-Doves shook her head. “I belong at my mother’s hearth,” she said. “But you need one of your own. And I think that there will be much back and forth between the two, anyway.” A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “Especially at mealtimes.”

  “I’m afraid that Nathaniel would starve before I learn how to cook properly.” Elizabeth gestured over the piles of books. “Philosophers and playwrights are well and good, but I should have sent for a cookery book or two, as well.”

  Falling-Day smiled, setting Elizabeth more at ease. She was just wondering how to broach the complex topic of laundry when from the open door she saw Galileo and Curiosity appear from the sheds leading the packhorses, with Nathaniel close behind. He made a sign to indicate that he was going to see them a part of their way, and the women waved until the small party disappeared on the path.

  Many-Doves left them, picking up a hoe on her way to the small cornfield that lay in the sunshine at the widest part of the glen, at the edge of the cliffs.

  “There’s a meal to cook before the men get back,” Falling-Day announced in Hannah’s direction. The little girl had been running around the cabin, dragging a frayed rope for Treenie to chase. In response to her grandmother’s voice, she dropped her rope and the red dog collapsed in a tangled heap at her heels. She looked up at Elizabeth and then at her grandmother with pleading on her face.

  “If you
can spare her,” Elizabeth said, “I would be glad of her help getting the cabin in order.”

  Falling-Day blinked, slowly, and then nodded. “If you want the child with you, yes.”

  Hannah let out a hoot of satisfaction and set out once more with the dog in pursuit.

  Of all the Kahnyen’kehàka she had come to know, Elizabeth found Falling-Day to be the most inscrutable. While she had shown nothing but kindness and generosity, there was a reserve about her that made it very difficult to speak up in the older woman’s presence. Falling-Day’s silences, while never edged with the same kind of disdain that women sometimes used to make their displeasure known, were absolute and impenetrable. Elizabeth wondered, as she had many times on the long journey home, about this woman who had left her mother’s longhouse against custom and expectation to take her children to be raised in her husband’s village, and then to a cabin in the wilderness, in isolation from other Kahnyen’kehàka. She had seen her husband and sons killed, and carried on to raise Sarah, who had spent her life trying to be something she was not, and Otter and Many-Doves, who were unapologetically Kahnyen’kehàka. This was the woman who had, by some accounts, rejected Nathaniel as a son-in-law, but had come to live with him to raise his child upon his mother’s death.

  “I should like very much to have Hannah spend some time with me,” Elizabeth confirmed, struggling with the urge to look away from Falling-Day’s steady gaze. “She has her first home with you, but I hope that eventually she will be equally comfortable in both cabins. Your mother was very worried about her upbringing in the Kahnyen’kehàka way. I wanted you to know that I will not interfere.”

  There was a subtle shifting in Falling-Day’s expression. “The only way to bring Squirrel up truly as a Kahnyen’kehàka woman would be to send her to my mother’s hearth.”

  “Oh, no.” Elizabeth tensed in her surprise. “You don’t want to send her away—”

  “I did not say that,” the older woman interrupted gently. “She is Nathaniel’s child, and she must learn to live between two worlds as he does. It would be wrong to send her away from him, just as it would be wrong to let her forget my daughter, her mother. Do you agree?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Yes, I do.”

  “And when you hold your own child in your arms? Will Squirrel still be welcome at your hearth?”

  Elizabeth felt her face flooding with indignation, but the older woman held up a hand to keep her from speaking.

  “I offend you. But I speak the truth: it would be better for her to stay with us if she cannot be sure of her welcome once this new child arrives.”

  After a long silence in which she knew herself never to have been so closely observed, Elizabeth said: “Nathaniel has given me many gifts, but none is so precious to me as his daughter. My own child could not be more loved.”

  “Bone-in-Her-Back,” Falling-Day said in the Kahnyen’kehàka language. “You are a strong woman. You have shown yourself to be braver than most, and a true friend. And you bear Wolf-Running-Fast children who will bring great joy to this family.” She hesitated, her brown eyes probing deeper. “I will trust you with the care of my granddaughter, but I will watch you.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Elizabeth answered. “And I will need your help.”

  There was a flash of satisfaction on the older woman’s face, and Elizabeth was struck suddenly by her resemblance to Made-of-Bones. She pointed this out.

  Falling-Day blinked. “All women are alike when they fear for their children,” she said. “Kahnyen’kehàka or O’seronni, when a mother rises to defend her own she is like sister bear.”

  There was the sound of Hannah’s high, lilting laughter.

  There’s nothing more dangerous or meaner than a crowd of stupid men.

  Elizabeth thought of Jack Lingo, and there was a familiar tingling, the sparking of nerves all the way to her fingers. At the time, standing over his bloodied body, she had thought that she would never again be able to raise a hand in anger, but now she knew that she was capable of more, and perhaps worse.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “That is a lesson I have already begun to learn.”

  XLVI

  When they had been home almost a week, Elizabeth left the cabin in the early morning to fetch water and found Robbie and Chingachgook sharing a pipe on the porch. Robbie was dressed for travel.

  “Oh,” she said. The prickling in her throat wouldn’t allow any more of a greeting.

  “Aye, lassie, it’s time that I was awa’. Dinna fash yersel’, Boots. Ye’ve no’ seen the last o’ Robbie MacLachlan.”

  Robbie was the only person besides Nathaniel to call her Boots, and the simple affection in his voice brought her dangerously close to tears. It had been just three months since she had come to know the old Scot, but she could hardly imagine being without him.

  “Grandfather,” she said to Chingachgook. “Is there nothing we can do to convince Robbie to stay in Paradise?”

  Chingachgook’s smile moved his face into a mass of wrinkles in which his dark eyes almost disappeared. “I have known this man for many years,” he said. “It is not an accident that my people gave him the name Wind-Walker.”

  Nathaniel came out onto the porch and Elizabeth caught up his hand, squeezed it hard.

  “Robbie is leaving.”

  He nodded. “I thought he might, soon.”

  “What about the old schoolhouse?” she asked. “Couldn’t he have it for his own? It’s in good repair.”

  Before Nathaniel could reply, Robbie spoke up.

  “Ach, weel.” He sighed, and shifted his rifle sling to a more comfortable spot on his back. “I canna deny but it’s a temptation. I will make ye a promise, lass. Should this winter be as unco’ hard an’ lonely as was the last, then I will come tae bide in yon wee cabin, ’gin ye still care tae see the likes o’ me on Hidden Wolf.”

  “You’re always welcome,” Nathaniel said.

  “We’ll look for you in the spring,” Elizabeth added, smiling now.

  Robbie took leave of Nathaniel and then Chingachgook, grasping the old man by the hand and the lower arm.

  “Great-Snake,” he said, with a sad smile. “Will I see ye again, auld friend, ’gin I come in the spring?”

  Chingachgook gave him a thoughtful look. “The Maker of Life is good,” he said, putting one huge, rough hand on Elizabeth’s arm in the gentlest of touches. “I hope to see my great-grandson before he calls me to the Council Fire. But don’t wait too long, my brother, I think he grows impatient and will not be put off very long.”

  “I willna tarry, come spring,” said Robbie. “I remember Nathaniel’s naming ceremony, muny years syne, and I wadna miss his son’s, no’ for a’ the deer in the wood.”

  Elizabeth touched Chingachgook’s hand. “Perhaps this child is not a son,” she said, and was surprised to see him almost laugh at her.

  “When I fly at night, I have seen my great-grandson in your arms,” he said, as if this were proof positive. Which, Elizabeth realized, it was, for him.

  Robbie whistled to Treenie, who came out of her sleeping place under the porch with her tail in a great sweep. “Come, lass, we’re awa’ hame.”

  At last he turned to Elizabeth. “Walk wi’ me a while.”

  “Go along,” Nathaniel said, taking the water bucket from her. “But not too far, mind.”

  “I’ll send her back straightawa’,” Robbie promised.

  When they had walked a few minutes in silence, he cleared his throat.

  “Weel, lassie.” The soft wattles of flesh on his neck were flushed bright with color. Elizabeth rubbed the heel of her hand over Treenie’s bony skull and waited, wondering what he had on his mind that he could not say in front of the men.

  “Ye ken I’ve spent some time in the village wi’ Axel,” he began. “For he’s a guid man and one I trust. A wee bit free wi’ the ale betimes, but he’s no’ got a crookit bone in his body, and a mind sae sharp as yer own. And there’s nane sae guid as his d
auchter. Anna is a fine woman.”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said slowly. “I think quite a lot of Axel and of Anna, as well.” When they had gone to the village for church services, Anna was the only one—besides Curiosity, and some of the children—to show Elizabeth a really warm welcome.

  “They are mair than guid friends, ye ken. They are the kind ye can count on when others are bluidy-minded.”

  They had come to the small stand of white birch which marked the turning of the path down toward the strawberry fields, and Robbie paused.

  “Wha’ I mean tae say is this: if there’s trouble, then get ye tae Axel, for it’s gey certain he willna desert ye in yer time o’ need.”

  “Robbie, you frighten me,” said Elizabeth. “With Nathaniel and Hawkeye and Runs-from-Bears, even Chingachgook, as old as he is—why would I have need of Axel’s help?”

  “I hae no’ a doot that yer menfolk can stan’ for ye; dinna mistake me. But there’s rough talk in the toon, lass, and I fear it will come tae a bad end. Truth be told, ’gin I could help it, I wadna leave at a’. But I made a promise tae an auld friend that I mun keep.”

  Elizabeth considered at length. “You know more than you are telling me,” she concluded.

  He nodded reluctantly, watching her from the corner of his eye. “Yestere’en I paid a ca’ on yer faither.”

  She shot him a surprised look. There was a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, unease born of distrust.

  On her second day home, Elizabeth had gone with Nathaniel to call on her father and brother, but a very grim-faced Curiosity had told her that the judge and Julian had just left for Albany, on business they would not name. She had never seen Curiosity so unsure of herself. Just yesterday afternoon, Runs-from-Bears had come in from his scouting to report that the two had returned home.

  “Why did you not tell me you were going, Robbie?”

  “Aye, weel. I thoucht it wad be better tae talk tae the judge man tae man, ye ken. And I didna tell ye straight after, for the twa o’ them put me sair oot o’ sorts.”