Into the Wilderness

by Sara Donati

  Missing were Julian and Billy Kirby, and some of the trappers who had been hanging around the tavern lately. But they weren’t far off.

  Ian finished with a grin and a flourish:

  John Barleycorn was a hero bold

  Of noble enterprise

  and if you but once taste his blood

  It will make your courage rise!

  Elizabeth was the last person in the world to look for courage in a bottle of whiskey, or to promote such an idea, but she had allowed Ian this poem. It was a surprising but wise thing to do, and Nathaniel found himself admiring her tactical skills, once again. Latin or French poetry would have shown off her students’ skills, but earned her no marks with the men of the village; “John Barleycorn,” on the other hand, they could much appreciate. But it had also sent many of them back to the ale barrel, which was certainly not what she had in mind.

  From his spot near a window, Nathaniel caught a flash of blue disappearing around the corner. Reflexively, he touched his rifle. He should go out there, put a stop to whatever trouble was brewing before it got out of hand. But it was Hannah’s turn, and the sight of her so grown-up and pretty was hard to turn away from.

  She took her place in front of the room and curtsied, completely at ease. Nathaniel didn’t recognize the dress she was wearing, pale yellow with ribbons in her hair to match. It made the copper of her skin shine, her plaits stand out glossy black. She looked more like her mother with every passing year. On his deathbed, Chingachgook had called Hannah “Little-Bird,” the name Sarah had gone by as a child. But there was a solidness in Hannah that Sarah had never had, something she had more in common with her mother’s sister, and her grandmother.

  Many-Doves and Falling-Day were sitting in the second row, off to one side. Their whole attention was fixed on Hannah.

  A hooting laughter from outside, closer this time. Jed McGarrity caught Nathaniel’s eye and raised a brow.

  There was no help for it. Nathaniel cast a regretful look at his daughter, and slipped out the door with Jed and Axel right behind him.

  The schoolhouse windows stood wide open in spite of the cool evening air, so that the building seemed to bulge and pulse with all the life inside it. As they walked away Nathaniel was aware of Hannah’s voice, clear and strong. There was a hint of Falling-Day’s rhythms in her tone now: a gift she had inherited from his own mother, the ability to take on voices that were not her own. She had insisted on a Kahnyen’kehàka story, and Elizabeth had not tried to dissuade her. Nathaniel followed along with one part of his mind as he made his way past the outhouse to a stand of evergreen just behind it.

  “Brother Fox saw a woman with a cart filled with fish, and as he was always both hungry and lazy, he thought up a good trick. Pretending to be dead, Fox lay down on the path so that the woman would pass him. The woman saw the fox and thought that she should have his good pelt, and so she picked him up and put him in her cart with her fish. Behind the woman’s back, Fox emptied the cart of the fish and crept away himself.

  “Later, Brother Fox met with Wolf, and told him of this very good trick.”

  There was laughter from the shadows, and a wolflike howl.

  “Get a good hold on your temper, Nathaniel,” Axel said softly. “ ’Cause they’ll do their best to get it away from you.”

  In the schoolhouse, the barest hint of a pause and then Hannah’s voice carried on:

  “But the woman was not so dumb, and having figured out what foolery had been played on her, she understood the Wolf’s game as soon as she saw him lying in her path. For his trouble, Brother Wolf received a good beating instead of a fish dinner.”

  “Look, Middleton, we got company.” Billy Kirby straightened up out of the shadows. He had been drunker before, but not by much. With him a trapper, the nameless kind who came into the village to drink and bother women who would never have any interest in him. The stench of liquor and sweat hung around him like a cloud of blackfly.

  Behind Nathaniel, Jed drew a disgusted sigh and let it go with a rush.

  “Middleton!” brawled Billy, half turning. “He was there a minute ago,” he said, his face creased in confusion.

  “You could use a place to lie down, Billy.” Axel scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Why don’t you head on home?”

  “You ordering him off this place?” asked the trapper, peering up from his spot on the ground owlishly. “He’s the sheriff, you can’t order him around like that.”

  “That’s true enough, Gordon,” said Axel with a soft laugh. “I can’t order a man off land that don’t belong to me. That would be up to Nathaniel here. Me, now I could tell you to stay out of my tavern—if I was riled enough.”

  The trapper held up a hand in surrender, and then pulled himself to his feet to shamble off into the woods in the direction of the village.

  Billy wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and considered them from under half-raised lids.

  “Came to fetch my brother home,” he said. “He don’t belong in there with that woman and her brats.” Billy glanced uncertainly around himself, and then jerked with his chin toward the schoolhouse and the sound of Hannah’s voice. “I don’t want him hearing none of that Mohawk nonsense.”

  Axel moved forward another step, and Jed came up on the outer flank.

  “We’ll send him home for you,” Axel said easily. “You go on ahead now, while you’re still healthy.”

  Billy’s face clouded with doubt, and then cleared suddenly. “Maybe I’ll just come on in and join the party. Tell a few Mohawk stories of my own.”

  “There’s children in there,” Jed said. “They ain’t doing you any harm, Kirby. Let them get on with their party in peace, why don’t you?”

  Billy flushed, the color moving up from his collar to mottle on his neck and jowls. “There won’t be any peace in Paradise until things is settled,” he said. His gaze flickered toward Nathaniel and away again. “Until we run you squatters out and get the mountain back. You got the gold, don’t you? Think you can buy your way clear. Well, you can’t. O’Brien will find it and take it away from you, and then we’ll get the mountain back.”

  There was a scab high on Billy’s cheekbone, a relic of the last beating Nathaniel had given him. Nathaniel fixed on that, and tested the weight of the rifle in his hands. Hannah’s voice came into the silence:

  “Next Brother Fox met Bear, who also wanted fish. Fox told him: ‘Down at the river there is an air hole in the ice. Put your tail down into it as I did and you can pull up as many fish as you can eat.’

  “Bear, always hungrier than he was bright, did as he was told. And instead of a fine fish dinner he froze his tail off in the icy water.”

  Billy had a keen look about him, eager now. “Don’t want to break up your woman’s little party, do you? Worried about making her mad?”

  “You are surely the stupidest creature God ever put on this earth,” said Jed, his voice low and hoarse. “Are you forgetting the beating you took from this man the last time you was drunk?”

  “He won’t fight, not now,” Billy said. “Look at him, he’s scared. Not of me, no. But she’s got him tied up in a knot.”

  Nathaniel turned back toward the sound of his daughter’s voice; because it was the right thing to do. For her, and for himself, and for Elizabeth. Behind him, Billy Kirby laughed.

  “I guess I’d toe the line, too, for a woman who’d brain a man with his own rifle. What I’m wondering is, what old Jack got up to before she laid him low. Maybe Lingo ain’t gone, really. Maybe he left a little something of himself behind, growing—”

  As he swung around Nathaniel caught a glance at Axel’s expression, drawn down hard and resigned.

  At the last moment, some part of his reasoning self stopped him and Nathaniel lowered his aim from that point high on the bridge of the nose where the bone could be shoved into the brain, and the rifle butt took Kirby square in the mouth. His head jerked back with the sharp crack of breaking teeth, and he collapsed backward, cou
ghing and spitting blood, his hands pressed to his ruined mouth. Nathaniel put his foot on Billy’s throat and leaned in.

  “Nathaniel,” Jed said at the count of three, when Billy’s bucking and kicking had started to ease up.

  Axel knocked him away. “You don’t want to hang for Billy Kirby,” he said. “He ain’t worth it.”

  His face set hard, Nathaniel reached down and pulled Billy up by the shirt, and held him at a distance while he bled and retched and tried to catch his breath. When it was clear he wouldn’t die straight off, Nathaniel dragged him down to the lake, tinged red with the sunset. Kirby hit the water with a splash and Nathaniel waded in after him to pull him out, shook him as easily as he would shake a wet dog.

  “Can you hear me, Billy?”

  The ruined mouth stretched, broken teeth and bloody pulp. Nathaniel shook him again, and he nodded.

  “I want you to hear me clear. My wife is carrying my child, and I’ll kill the next man to suggest otherwise. You got that?”

  Nathaniel looked up on the shore. Axel and Jed were still there, Axel leaning on his rifle, pulling on his beard. Behind them was Julian.

  “Middleton? You hear me?”

  “Oh, yes, quite definitely,” Julian said softly.

  From the schoolhouse, the sound of singing. A young girl’s voice, sweet and clear.

  “Now, one more thing. You leave off beating that brother of yours, or I’ll come after you and make you regret it.”

  Nathaniel let Billy Kirby go with a jerk and a splash. He leaned over to wipe his hands on his shirt and then he walked up the shore. Julian stood there, watching impassively as Billy vomited.

  “You got something to say, Middleton, then say it.”

  His eyes narrowed, Julian looked away. “I believe Billy touched on all the salient points.”

  “When are you going to stop hiding behind other men and settle your own business?”

  None of his usual grin, now. “When the return is higher than the required investment.”

  “You will never get the land,” Nathaniel said. “Or your sister.”

  Julian said: “And I shall never stop trying.”

  “I lost my temper,” Nathaniel said shortly. “It’s that simple.”

  Elizabeth was sitting on their bed with a handkerchief in her hands which she folded small, spread open on her lap, and folded small again. In the corner was an embroidered lily of shaky proportions, bracketed by her own initials. The Glove girls had given her this gift; Elizabeth blinked at it and the flower swam briefly in what threatened to be tears.

  “I was trying to save your recital, damn it.”

  “Yes. I know.” She looked up at him finally, and taking a very deep breath, she managed a smile.

  Nathaniel drew back, frowning. “Tears? It went well, Boots, didn’t it?”

  “It did go very well,” she agreed. “Better than I had hoped.”

  “What is it, then? You’re not crying for Billy Kirby?”

  Lifting her head, she met his gaze. “You do know, don’t you, that Jack Lingo did not—”

  He interrupted her by pulling her into his arms. His own expression was tense with regret. “I know,” he said. “I know, Boots, I know that. Oh, Christ, I shouldn’t have told you what he said.”

  She put her face to his shoulder. “You do believe me?”

  “Yes,” he said, and he kissed her. “Yes, I believe you. It was just Billy Kirby’s half mind at work.”

  “No,” Elizabeth corrected him. “It was my brother.” And the tears came then.

  He held her while she wept, rocking her gently with his face against her hair. He could not correct her, and so he said nothing at all.

  “It’s late,” he said finally. “You need your rest.”

  She shook her head and held on harder to him, rubbed her cheek against his. Ran her hands under his shirt and around his waist. He moaned, softly, against her hair.

  There was a timid knock at the door, and they moved apart. Hannah appeared, looking woeful but determined.

  “What are you doing up?” Nathaniel asked, surprised. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “Grandmother has my book,” Hannah said. “I had other things to carry, and she said she’d bring it up.”

  Elizabeth had given each of the students a book, suited to their interests. Hannah had been so overwhelmed by her copy of Cowper’s Anatomy that she had been struck speechless.

  “You can get it from Falling-Day in the morning,” Elizabeth said, glancing out the window into the darkness. “It’s too late to read, now.”

  “Oh, please,” Hannah said. “Please let me go get it. Grandmother won’t mind.”

  Nathaniel glanced at Elizabeth, and raised a brow. She nodded, reluctantly, and Hannah turned and was gone. They listened to the sound of her bare feet on the floorboards and then the front door closed behind her.

  “Where were we?” Nathaniel asked, pulling her back to him across the bed.

  “You were about to kiss me.”

  He laughed. Against her lips he said, “Nothing gets by you, does it?” She kissed him back, warm and playful: she tasted of molasses and cider. Moving down the long column of her neck, he nipped and teased her until she captured his face between her hands and brought his mouth back to her own to draw him down into a long kiss that left her gasping slightly, and straining upward into his hands.

  Nathaniel reached for the candle, but she caught his wrist. “I want to see you,” she said. “Let me see you.”

  Her eyes were soft and slightly glazed with the look she had sometimes when they were alone, and sure of the time they had together. He undressed her, and her skin rose to his touch and the cool night air. When he had stripped down Nathaniel drew the covers over them: a different kind of cave, rich with their smells and echoing with the small sounds she made.

  Elizabeth put her hands on him to pull him closer, wound a leg around his hip, and ran her mouth up his neck to find his ear. But he resisted her, holding back when a simple forward movement would have joined them.

  “Boots,” he said. “Slow down. There’s no hurry.”

  She shook her head: whether in contradiction or dismissal, he could not tell. Twisting in his arms, she pulled away and then pushed him down. In a single movement she had straddled his belly and bent over to kiss him, all soft and warm, her breasts against his chest. There was a furious tide running in her, and he could not resist its pull, did not want to.

  “Holy God,” he muttered, his hands on her thighs, his thumbs seeking. “You’re as slippery as the road to hell.” And he lifted her. Helped her move, put her where they both wanted her to be, and arched up to meet her. Her hair fell around them in waves, pooling on his legs and belly. His fingers tangled in it where his hands gripped her hips.

  He let her have her way, finding her own rhythm. In the flickering candlelight, he watched her face contort, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth. And then her eyes flew open and her face dropped forward and she came with a shudder and a small, wordless cry.

  She was content to let him lead, then. To be turned onto her back, her arms spread wide with his fingers intertwined in hers while he held her down and found his way into her again. Between them, the swelling of her belly where their child rested; Nathaniel was overcome with the need to cover them like a shield, to hide them from the world, to keep them safe at any cost, to keep them to himself alone, forever.

  As was her habit, Elizabeth fell asleep straightaway, but Nathaniel lay awake in a cocoon of melancholy and worry. It happened sometimes, when they had been together; he bore it alone, knowing that it would be gone in the morning. The wind was high in the trees. There would be a strong frost.

  He was thirty-five years old, but he had never spent a winter alone on this mountain without his father’s guidance and support. At this moment, he could not deny that the thought frightened him.

  Nathaniel curled himself around Elizabeth, listening to the sound of her heart, and let himself
be lulled to sleep by its rhythm.

  Suddenly and completely awake, Nathaniel sat up in the dark. Something was wrong. He shook his head to clear it. On his bare skin the air was frost-cold.

  He blinked in the darkness, listening.

  Two heartbeats, where there should have been three; he could not explain how it was he knew this, but he did. He reached for his breechclout in the dark.

  “What is it?” Elizabeth said sleepily.

  “Hannah.”

  He was pulling his shirt over his head.

  Elizabeth sat up. “She’ll have gone to sleep in the other cabin.”

  Outside, a faint sound: the rolling beat of hooves. Elizabeth was awake now, reaching for her own clothes, tripping after him into the other room.

  The sleeping loft was empty. He dropped back down the ladder, his bare feet slapping hard on the floorboards.

  “Nathaniel,” Elizabeth said, trying for calm. She was struggling with the flint box and the candle. In the small new light, he grabbed his rifle from its rack over the door with one hand, his powder horn and bullet pouch with the other.

  “Nathaniel, she’ll be asleep with Falling-Day.”

  The sound of a single rider, closer now.

  “Nathaniel Bonner!” A boy’s voice, cracking with panic.

  “That’s Liam Kirby,” Elizabeth said, dread flooding through her, cold and harsh.

  They went out on the porch. Liam sawed at the reins, cursing. He whipped his head toward them as the horse danced away.

  “The schoolhouse! Fire!”

  And he wheeled, and was gone again into the woods. Nathaniel broke into a dead run for the barn as Runs-from-Bears appeared out of the darkness, racing in the same direction.

  “Oh, God, my God,” Elizabeth said. She bolted for the other cabin, toward the flame of a single candle, mumbling a prayer: Let her he there, let her he there safe. Her skirt caught on a root and ripped; she ran on, screaming Hannah’s name. The women came flying off the porch to meet her as the horses thundered past, the men riding bareback.

  “Hannah?” she asked, grasping at Falling-Day’s arms.