Into the Wilderness

by Sara Donati

  He nodded again, and stole a sidelong glance at her from under the ragged fringe of russet hair. “You’re saying?”

  “I am saying that she has just shown a great deal of faith in you, Liam Kirby. She pointed out to you the cave where the winter provisions are stored, although it gives you power over us.”

  “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt any of you—”

  “I am glad to hear that,” Elizabeth said, and she stood. “But I am not surprised. Come now, and I’ll show you the cave.”

  Liam glanced doubtfully at his injured leg and the dingy wrappings that held the long splints in place.

  “We shan’t go far,” Elizabeth said, already off the porch. “Just down there to where the gorge opens on the other side, at the base of the cliff. From there you can almost see the cave, if you know what you’re looking for. Maybe Hannah will wave at us.”

  They crossed to the other side where the flow of water disappeared underground, and Elizabeth stopped as she often did to feel the earth vibrate through the padded soles of her moccasins. The water was still high from all the rain, marbled with foam and pushing hard on its way down the mountainside. As they walked along the lip of the gorge Elizabeth pointed out to Liam the natural stone steps that they used to go down to the water, covered with vibrant green moss.

  “Looks deep,” Liam said.

  “Deep enough to dive in, here.”

  The sound of the water was louder now, and they gave up talking. Elizabeth lifted her skirts, wishing once again for the courage to give up European fashion once and for all for the practicality and comfort of Kahnyen’kehàka dress. She climbed carefully over the first few boulders at the bottom of the cliff face, turning to watch Liam make his way. When she was satisfied that he could manage, she sat down at a spot she liked to think of as her own, on a fine flat expanse of rock with a natural footrest that jutted out over the gorge. From here she had a view of her cabin, and if she craned her neck backward, a glimpse of the rock shelf where she had once stood while Nathaniel tipped her back into the rushing water. Elizabeth wished suddenly for her shawl, for it was cooler here than it had been in the sunshine on the porch, the damp rock a cold seat, indeed.

  She pivoted, pointing the ledge and cave out to Liam, who peered upward with one hand cupped to his brow.

  “I don’t see anything!” he shouted.

  Elizabeth caught a flash of movement from the corner of her eye that brought her up short: Dutch Ton was standing on her porch. In one hand he held a haunch of venison; in the other, a hunting knife.

  She blinked to dislodge the mist of the falls from her lashes, and she blinked again. There was a pulse in her neck that was beating out of rhythm; she put one finger to it to still it. Liam was at her ear, but she could not understand him. She raised a hand and he fell silent, crouching down as if to hide. As if he saw the danger, or perhaps smelled the fear that rolled off her like sweat.

  It was him. Dutch Ton stood there on her porch, squinting into the sun. He wore a patch over one eye now, but he was wrapped in the same mangy buffalo robe she had last seen him wear at the campfire where Jack Lingo had tried to burn her.

  She thought that perhaps she might be able to breathe again if she could only stand, but all the muscles in her legs seemed to have gone to jelly. In some part of her mind she was thankful for the fact that Hannah was safe in the cave behind her. In another, she knew that if she could stay where she was, and be still, he might not see her. The angle of the sun was in her favor.

  She saw the red slash of his mouth opening and closing, spraying bits of meat. He was talking. There was another man behind him, just out of view inside the cabin. The door began to swing inward.

  He is dead. Jack Lingo is dead. She said the words out loud and firmly: an incantation, a prayer. But the door continued to swing in a clean arc. As clean as the trajectory of a bullet, or a rifle stock swung in anger.

  Spit filled her mouth in a bitter rush, and in her head a simple refrain: away away away. Elizabeth came to her feet with a jerk, barely noting the slick surface of the rock beneath her. She felt her moccasins lose purchase; too late. She threw her arms up and pitched forward into the gorge just as the second man stepped out into the sun, his hair and beard catching the light in a red-gold flare: Richard Todd.

  Falling seemed to take a very long time: long enough to hear Liam’s high-pitched scream, loud enough to be heard over the falling water. His scream echoed, or perhaps that was another voice, from behind the falls. She twisted away to protect her belly, taking the slap of the water at an awkward angle and plunging down to the bottom. A flash of pain as she struck her head on a ledge of rock and then she was shooting up, vaguely aware that the water was hazy red with blood and that it must be her own. She broke the surface gasping, kicking against the heavy tangle of her skirts without effect. The force of the water tumbled her, once and then again.

  Elizabeth thought of Nathaniel and of the child, and she went down in a great tide of sorrow and regret.

  Liam would dream of it for years: Many-Doves coming through the falls as soon as Elizabeth hit the water, diving after her like a hawk after a trout. But Richard Todd was closer: he had already gone in from the other side, dragged Elizabeth up by her hair and flipped her over the edge of the gorge before Doves got there. Liam didn’t see what happened then because he was on his way, pushing until his leg burned like hellfire. By the time he got to the other side, the two of them were already on their knees next to her.

  He told himself that dead people didn’t bleed like that. No matter how white and still, somebody pumping blood the way she was had to be alive. Many-Doves had her hand pressed to Elizabeth’s head above the left ear. The blood welled up between her fingers and wound over her arm and wrist like snakes.

  With a single jerk, Todd ripped the sleeve from his shirt and handed it to Doves. She took Elizabeth’s head in her lap, the wet hair trailing over the rounded mound of her belly. The tendons on her forearm popped with the effort of pressing the linen to the wound.

  Todd bent over to lift Elizabeth’s lids one after the other. He studied her eyes closely, and finally sat back on his heels looking thoughtful. Then he made a fist and jammed two knuckles hard into Elizabeth’s breastbone. Liam flinched, but Elizabeth’s eyes only fluttered open. Her face contorted briefly and then her eyes closed again.

  Hannah and Falling-Day came out of the woods. Hannah threw herself down next to Elizabeth and burst into noisy tears. Before Liam could get to her, Richard Todd leaned over and put a hand on her shoulder.

  Liam had never heard him speak Mohawk before. Now he spoke to Hannah in that language, and the sound of it brought her wet face up in blank amazement. She turned to her grandmother with a question. Falling-Day was bent over Elizabeth, and Liam could not see her face, but the answer she gave Hannah seemed to calm her further. She got up, wobbling a little, and wiping her face with the back of her hand, ran off toward the cabin.

  Hannah ran. She ran for blankets. She ran for water, for rags, for her grandmother’s baskets of herbs and roots. She ran down to the village to deliver Falling-Day’s message to Axel; she ran on to the judge.

  There, she collapsed in Curiosity’s arms and sobbed for ten minutes before she could find words, Mahican or Kahnyen’kehàka or English, to describe what had happened at Lake in the Clouds.

  For all its boniness, Curiosity’s lap was made for little girls, even one with legs as long as Hannah’s. Curiosity held on tight and listened while Hannah told her and told her again, drawing the picture with words and her hands and sudden short bursts of tears, pressing her hands to her face and her face to Curiosity’s apron front. She smelled of yeast and roasting goose and lye soap. Comforting smells. She could have gone to sleep there on Curiosity’s lap in the middle of the judge’s kitchen.

  But Curiosity was talking to her daughters, and it was their turn to run. Polly started throwing things into a basket at her mother’s directions. Daisy opened the back door and shouted
for Galileo, gave up and went out after him.

  After a while Curiosity set Hannah down on a stool and smoothed her hair. Then she went off to tell the judge what had happened, and where she was going. Before the last of her skirts had disappeared through the door, Hannah was up again and off to finish her errands.

  On the slope below Little Muddy, she heard a rifle shot. Hannah made herself stand still until the wind brought the acrid smell of the gunpowder to her, and then she set off again. She found Bears crouched next to his kill, reloading his gun.

  Hannah loved Bears; she would have married him herself if she had been old enough. Whatever language came out when she opened her mouth, he understood; he understood even when she didn’t talk. Curiosity knew how to hold little girls, but Runs-from-Bears had a different kind of comfort to offer. He slung the rifle around, lifted the doe over his shoulders, and they set off running together.

  There was a comfort in running, when the rhythm was right. Hannah ran hard behind Bears, keeping her toes turned inward on the faint forest path, relieved to have him lead the way. She kept her eyes focused on the flashing heels of his moccasins, looking up every now and then, because she must, to the doe. Seeing the long, elegant arch of her neck and the dark eyes, glazed and lifeless.

  They had no power to force Elizabeth back from the shadow-lands until she was ready to come, but there were things they could do for her. The women stripped away the wet clothes and wound her like an infant in fur and doeskin. Falling-Day burned thistle and hawthorn to give strength to her heart and blood; she steeped little-man-root in corn water and dribbled it into her mouth, spoon by spoon. Richard Todd watched without comment. When Falling-Day began to sing a healing song to summon Bone-in-Her-Back home to them, he left quietly.

  Falling-Day watched him go. The gaunt lines of his face spoke of the injuries he had suffered, but there was something else: over the long summer some of the anger which had always burned so bright in him had gone out. She wondered what he knew of her youngest, her Otter. When there was time—when Bone-in-Her-Back had come back from the shadowlands—she thought she might be able to talk to Richard Todd about that.

  While her mother mashed dried flag-lily root and precious sunflower oil into a poultice, Many-Doves washed the blood from Elizabeth’s face and hair, working carefully around the dressing that bound the wound closed. When she had finished, she put her ear to Elizabeth’s belly to try to hear the child’s music: the beat of a strong heart. Her own child flexed and turned under her heart, as if he heard it too.

  Liam had been watching from the corner, hoping for some work, some way to help. But the women did not need him, and he could not run errands as Hannah did. When the medicine smoke tickled his throat and made his eyes water, he finally got up and went out to the porch, where Richard Todd was drying out in the sun. Dutch Ton had disappeared, but Axel was there, wanting the story. Liam told it in a hoarse voice.

  “By God Almighty,” Axel said for the tenth time. “I wish Nathaniel was here.”

  At the thought of Nathaniel, Liam could barely swallow.

  Axel was squinting at him. “You didn’t push her in, did you, boy?”

  “No!” His head came up and his color, too; he could feel himself burning like a torch.

  “He didn’t have anything to do with it. She saw somebody she didn’t expect to see and she slipped, knocked her head, and went under. That’s all.” Todd had taken off what was left of his shirt and he wrung it with a twist.

  “That’s all it was,” Liam echoed.

  “What were you two doing up there, climbing around on the rocks—a breeding woman, and you with your leg the way it is?”

  Liam felt Richard’s sharp gaze on him, and his belly filled with dread. Had he seen Doves come through the falls? Did he know the secret of the cave? Dutch Ton might know, too, if he had caught sight of Many-Doves, and understood what he saw.

  “She wanted to show me something,” he mumbled. And, without meeting Todd’s eye: “Where did Ton go to?”

  “I passed him on my way here,” Axel said. “He was headed down to the village, seemed like. Was he traveling with you, Todd?”

  Richard shook his head. “I found him helping himself to the larder,” he said. “I hadn’t seen him since March, but Elizabeth had. He gave me these for her.” He pulled a silver hair clasp and a ring out of his pocket. “Lingo took them off her, I guess.”

  There was a silence as they thought of Jack Lingo, and what Elizabeth had experienced at his hands.

  “No wonder she started at the sight of Ton,” said Axel.

  Richard’s head turned toward the forest and the sound of horses coming fast. “That’ll be the judge.”

  “Not alone, sounds like.”

  The judge pulled up in front of the porch, with Galileo and Curiosity close behind. The men sat and stared at Richard Todd, but Curiosity slid down from behind Galileo’s back in a flurry of bright skirts.

  “I might’ve knowed that you and trouble would show up here together,” she said. “Ain’t you ever satisified, Richard? What have you done to her now?”

  Liam came to his feet to tell them the truth of it, but Axel had already stepped out, one hand raised in a peaceful gesture. “Hold up, now. Alfred, Curiosity. Galileo. First off, she’s alive and it looks like there weren’t no real damage—”

  The judge’s face contorted at this, but Curiosity’s froze. “Since when you a doctor, Axel Metzler? Let me in there, I want to see that child for myself.”

  “Go on in,” Axel said. “But you should know first that it was Richard here who pulled her out of the gorge.”

  Halfway up the step, Curiosity stopped. She pivoted toward Todd, her mouth as hard pressed and shiny as a knife. Her eyes traveled over his wet clothes and bare chest, and then she fixed on Richard’s face.

  “Close to a year now, I been wantin’ to speak my mind to you and I guess the time has come. Money talk louder than truth in this world and I don’t doubt you can still make folks see things your way by rattling the coin in your pockets. But not me. No, sir. I got something for you, though: I got what you need to hear.”

  Galileo made a soft sound, and she silenced him with a flash of her eyes. Richard stood with his arms crossed, a vaguely curious expression on his face.

  “Go on, then,” he said. “I suppose there’s no stopping you.”

  “You sowed some seeds here last winter,” she said, as if he had not spoken. “Got men’s minds all twisted up about these people, about this mountain, and whose right it is to call the Wolf home. Then you run off after a woman who didn’t want you and you didn’t want, neither, thinking you could have your way if you just grabbed hard enough. While you was gone, things got nasty around here. We buried four men who would be alive today if you hadn’t put your greed to work on ’em. I guess you probably know about Julian—I can see from your face that you do.”

  She came closer, one long, bony finger poking at his chest.

  “You pulled our Elizabeth out of the gorge today and saved her life, that’s a start. I guess you owe her that and more, the way you been houndin’ her. But I’m here to tell you, Richard Todd, that what happened here don’t put paid to everything you got to answer for.”

  Liam felt slightly sick to his stomach, but Todd looked down at her calmly.

  “I am aware of all that.”

  “Are you?” she said, grimly. “We’ll see, now won’t we?”

  And Curiosity turned on her heel and walked to the door, where she stopped to stare back at the judge, one brow raised. With his face averted from Richard Todd, he climbed the steps and followed her inside.

  Axel ran a hand over his face. “Jesus nah, that woman could carve oak into toothpicks with that tongue of hers.” Then, reluctantly, he smiled. “And ain’t she fine to listen to?”

  Richard grunted, and pulled his mangled shirt back on. “If you’re not on the other end of it, I suppose. I expect Nathaniel will have words for me, too. Tell him I’ll come by as s
oon as Elizabeth’s on the mend. We’ve got things to discuss.”

  “Ja, if he can wait that long,” Axel said. “Where can he find you, if he can’t?”

  “If I’m not at home, I’ll be calling on Kitty.”

  “Mrs. Middleton.” Liam spoke up. “She’s Mrs. Middleton now.”

  Richard nodded. “For the time being, at any rate.”

  It was terribly unfair, but Hannah had seen that look on her grandmother’s face before and she knew that no argument would shift her purpose. Her eyes burning with exhaustion, she finally gave up her spot at the foot of Elizabeth’s bed and climbed the ladder to the sleeping loft. But not before she had extracted a promise from Doves that she would come to fetch her when Elizabeth woke. She used those words, but her eyes said something else. Twelve hours after the accident, Elizabeth had still not broken through to them; Hannah did not need to be told that this was a bad sign.

  The cabin seemed overcrowded with people: the women moving back and forth, always with something in their hands. Liam and the judge and Mr. Witherspoon sat at the hearth, talking little and dozing now and then. Other men from the village were out on the porch. Bears would have let her come and sit with him, but he was gone with Joshua Hench to find her father on the Albany road and bring him home. The only comfort about going to bed was that perhaps when she woke, they would have returned. Hannah wanted her father very badly. She pressed her face into her blanket, willing her tears not to come.

  Elizabeth had never had a talent for colorful dreams. Perhaps, she had always thought, because her daydreams were so elaborate and carefully detailed that she had no imagination left when she finally went to sleep. But somewhere, somehow, she had learned the art of dreaming in color, for all around her was a deep hyacinth sea, a color she had never seen before her first voyage by ship, when she had left England for a new life with her brother at her side.

  Julian stood beside her at the rail now, the wind ruffling his dark hair and his face shadowed with beard stubble.

  “Watch the birds,” he said, pointing. “They will show you the way.”