Into the Wilderness

by Sara Donati

  “Come with me,” she said, but he only smiled. There were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. She saw too that there was white at his temples, and that the line of his jaw had softened with age in the month since he had traveled on ahead. He walked away from her now; his boots made no noise.

  “Come with me,” she called after him again, but he only waved his hand in salute, and walked on. There was no sound except the calls of the birds overhead: gulls, wheeling in rainbow colors against a stormy sky.

  “I can’t fly,” she called after him, but he was suddenly gone, leaving her alone on this ship in the middle of an endless sea. “I cannot fly!”

  She tried, then. Tried to follow the birds and got just far enough to catch a glimpse of her father’s face: a blur of pale skin and the familiar features. She slipped away before she could hear what he had to say to her.

  Hannah woke, as she had hoped she would, to the sound of her father’s voice. What she heard now in his tone was not the rage she had half expected and might have welcomed, but something far more frightening. Despair had its own sound; it was one she had never imagined to hear from him. She looked down over the half wall that separated her sleeping space from the main room, and she caught just the flash of his profile as he disappeared into the bedroom. She had wanted more than anything to be with her father, but she did not want to follow him into that room. The thought of what he might have found there made her feel sleepy.

  Hannah wound herself in her blanket, buried her head down deep in the bedding, and insisted on sleep.

  She was on her back, her face turned toward him. The dressing on her head was scattered with traces of dried blood; her eyelashes were like bruised half moons against the milky white of her cheeks. He leaned toward her to call her name, and got no response.

  Falling-Day put her hand on his arm. “Yonhkwihsrons.” She struggles.

  Nathaniel nodded to show that he had understood: it was not the best news, but there was reason to hope. Elizabeth was trying to find her way back to them. Falling-Day left the room and Nathaniel sat on the edge of the bed to watch her sleep. So many times he had reached out for her in this bed, and she had turned willingly to him. She had come to him with laughter or small sounds of sleepy welcome, in grand silence or with teasing words.

  The smell of her could wake him from the dead; he knew this, he believed it absolutely. He hoped that the same was true for her, and so he stripped out of his buckskin and homespun and slipped naked into the cocoon of fur next to her. The corn husks in the mattress crackled as he moved closer to put his face to the slope of her shoulder where it met her neck, in that perfect curve that was now his solitary focus in the world. He rubbed his cheek against her skin and inhaled.

  She smelled of herself, and nothing more. The relief of this loosened the tears from his eyes. Eventually, calmed by the smells of her, Nathaniel slept and hoped that she was aware of him.

  The room was still dark when she woke him with an elbow and a mumbled curse. Unsure at first of what was real and what had been dream, he simply rolled away. Then Nathaniel sat up and leaned over her; he saw the meager light of the moon shining in her open eyes, her expression creased in confusion and irritation.

  “Boots,” he breathed.

  “I cannot fly,” she said, very clearly.

  “But you can, lass. You’re flying now. Don’t give up.”

  She scowled at him even as her eyes fluttered shut and she fell away to sleep again, suspended in his arms above the world.

  Elizabeth woke for short periods over the next day, sometimes talking or answering questions, sometimes without seeming to see any of them. When she began to turn her head and pluck at the furs in her struggle up toward the world again, Nathaniel fetched Hannah and kept her there.

  “Can she hear me?”

  “I think so. Talk to her.”

  Hannah’s face contorted with the challenge of it. Then she leaned forward.

  “Grandmother has been feeding you willow-bark tea,” she said. “For the ache in your head.”

  “Tell her to make it stronger,” Elizabeth muttered, one eye cracking open.

  Hannah grinned broadly. “I will,” she said. “I’ll go now and fetch it for you.”

  “No,” Elizabeth said, raising her hand an inch off the blanket. “Wait.” Her tongue came out to trace her lower lip.

  “What is it, Boots?” Nathaniel caught her hand.

  “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me about the baby.”

  He squeezed her hand. “The child is unharmed. We’ve been telling you so all along.”

  Elizabeth drew in one long, shuddering breath. “Good,” she whispered. “Nathaniel, I saw, I think I saw—”

  “Dutch Ton. Aye, he’s in the village waiting to hear how you are. He brought you these.”

  From the table he took the gold band that had once been his mother’s, and the silver hair clasp he had given Elizabeth as a wedding present. He put them in her hand. After a long moment, she looked up at him.

  “He meant no harm?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “Good,” she said again, her eyes drifting shut. Then they struggled open again and she gestured him closer.

  “That dream you had in Albany,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

  He put her hand to his cheek, and said nothing.

  When she was sleeping soundly again, Nathaniel left her to Hannah’s watch. The women gave him food, and then he went to clean up and see about fresh clothes. Most of the well-wishers and curious had drifted away when Elizabeth had first shown signs of waking, but he found Axel on the porch, nursing his pipe, and the judge.

  “Tell me about Todd,” Nathaniel said. He stood quietly until Axel had finished.

  The judge was looking pale; he had lost some weight.

  “Maybe you should go along home,” Nathaniel suggested. “You need some sleep.”

  He shook his head. “Not until she’s well again.”

  Nathaniel drew up, surprised. “That could take weeks, man. She knows you’ve been here and that you’re worried. And there’s Kitty and your grandson down there to look after.”

  The judge ran a trembling hand over his face. “I never spent enough time listening to her.”

  His agitation suddenly deflated, Nathaniel looked harder and saw clearly what he had missed, in his preoccupation with his own troubles. In the last month the judge had become an old man.

  “She would send you home herself if she could,” Axel said kindly. “She wouldn’t want you to get sick, waiting here.”

  The judge looked up at Nathaniel, hopefully.

  “That’s true,” Nathaniel said, and he saw the relief on the man’s face.

  “Maybe later today,” he said thoughtfully.

  Nathaniel nodded, and went off to find Liam, who was oiling traps in the other cabin for Runs-from-Bears. He asked the same question and got a longer, less-clear-but-more-detailed story of what had gone on at the gorge, and Richard Todd’s role in it.

  “I should have gone in after her,” Liam concluded.

  “Not with that leg,” Nathaniel said, absently. “And Doves was there. If it weren’t for the knock on the head, Elizabeth could have managed on her own anyway. But goddamn it, to be beholden to Richard Todd don’t sit well. I guess I’ll have to go look him up.”

  “He said to tell you that he’d be calling on Kitty.”

  “Did he? Looks like his judgment still ain’t any better than his timing.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Nathaniel shrugged. At the door, he turned back with a thoughtful look. “It means he’s still Richard Todd. It means, watch your back.”

  Elizabeth came fully awake to the first snow. Suddenly afraid that she had slept for weeks instead of days, she was distraught until Falling-Day told her that it was no more than mid-October, in spite of the waves of fine-grained snow which beat against the window.

  “I might think I was still dreaming,
if it weren’t for the ache in my head,” Elizabeth said, accepting a cup. When she had taken her willow-bark tea and some broth, Falling-Day helped her see to her needs, and then got Elizabeth settled against the bolsters, wrapped again in the blanket of pelts.

  “How long will this dizziness last?”

  Falling-Day lifted one shoulder and inclined her head. “Another week, perhaps until the next moon.”

  “Oh, dear.” Elizabeth closed her eyes. “The children will be very disappointed to have school put off again.”

  “I think they’re just glad to have you alive,” Falling-Day said, sitting down to pick up a basket of sewing.

  For a good while, Elizabeth was content to lie quietly and listen to the peaceful and familiar sounds of the fire in the hearth and the soft shuffle of moccasins in the other room. Nathaniel would be out hunting with Runs-from-Bears. She could hear Hannah and Liam talking; there was a rising tone of outrage and a small laugh in response.

  “Did you think I was going to die?” The question had been asked before she fully knew her own intention, but Falling-Day did not seemed surprised. She looked up from the overdress she was piecing together.

  “I worried, at first,” she said finally. And then she put her sewing down and laid her hands flat on her knees. Her eyes were very dark when they settled on Elizabeth’s.

  “You have never asked me about my daughter.”

  Elizabeth felt herself flushing with surprise. “I did not wish to intrude on your memories.”

  Falling-Day turned her face toward the window. When she turned back, there was a remarkable disquiet to her expression. “Sometimes, it seems to me that she cannot be very far off That if I call to her, she will come. She has been very strong in my mind these last days. She died at the first snow, did Nathaniel ever tell you that?”

  “No,” Elizabeth said softly. “He has never told me about her death, except that she died in childbed, and the child with her. And that his mother and Curiosity were here.”

  “And Cat-Eater. You do not like to say his name.”

  Elizabeth shrugged, unable to deny that this was the truth.

  Falling-Day said, “When I came out of the forest and saw him and Many-Doves bent over you, and the blood on his hands—I expected for a moment to see her there, on the ground. I was not with her when she walked the path, but I saw her go in my dreams.”

  Once Elizabeth would have had no response because the Kahnyen’kehàka reliance on dreams for information and understanding of the world had troubled her. Now her doubts were more about her own narrow view of things.

  When Falling-Day saw the willingness to listen in Elizabeth’s face, she nodded.

  “Cat-Eater was at Sings-from-Books’ side when she died. He could do nothing for her. But he could help you, and he did.”

  “You are trying to tell me something,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t understand.”

  “Then I will speak clearly. Perhaps it is time to make peace with him.”

  Elizabeth smoothed the pelt under her palm again and again. “Why do you say this to me instead of Nathaniel?”

  Falling-Day raised a brow. “Because you might listen to me, and you might make your husband listen to you.”

  “Your opinion is very important to Nathaniel.”

  “Not in this matter,” Falling-Day corrected her. “I did not stand up for him when my daughter turned to Cat-Eater, and he has never forgotten that.”

  Elizabeth had a question which she thought she must ask, or forever regret the lost opportunity.

  “You encouraged Sarah to go to Richard? This is hard to understand, given the role he played in the attack on your village, and the death of your husband and sons.”

  Falling-Day blinked at her. “Cat-Eater never raised his hand to any Kahnyen’kehàka.”

  “Nathaniel believes that he caused the attack.”

  “I know what Nathaniel believes,” Falling-Day said. “But I was there, and he was not. Cat-Eater saved Sky-Wound-Round’s life. He saved my life, and Otter’s.”

  “Otter sees things differently.”

  “Men do, for the most part. Boys almost always see things as simple when they are not.”

  “Richard saw you bound like animals and marched down the road. And then he tried to have Nathaniel shot.”

  Falling-Day paused to gather her thoughts. “I do not deny that his hatred for Nathaniel was real and that he would have acted on it. You must ask Richard about these things if you want the whole truth—and I think that you should ask. I can only tell you about my daughter, who loved both of these men. I encouraged her to follow her heart.”

  “Follow her heart?” Elizabeth asked, almost bitterly. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “I think that you do. Is this the life your family wanted for you, or the one you took for yourself?”

  There was a small silence.

  “And did Sarah take your advice?”

  “Among our own people, it would not have been necessary for her to choose between these men. But they are neither of them true Kahnyen’kehàka, and they could neither of them bear the idea of the other, or believe that her heart was so large. So they made her choose. In the end she stayed with Nathaniel and bore him a daughter.”

  She bore him a daughter. Elizabeth wondered if she had misunderstood.

  “Hannah is Nathaniel’s child?”

  The older woman lifted her chin, her dark eyes suddenly severe. “Hen’en.” Yes.

  “You know that Richard claims Hannah as his own. Why have you never told Nathaniel the truth?”

  “My words cannot open his eyes. He must see this truth for himself.”

  Elizabeth sat back with a small gasp of surprise. “That is cruel.”

  Falling-Day spread her hands out in front of her. “Is it? Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

  “But you want me to encourage him to make peace with Richard.”

  “I think it is possible now, and it would be good. If we are to stay here.”

  “Perhaps we will not,” Elizabeth said slowly. “You know that Nathaniel has told me it is my decision to stay or go and find another place to make a life for ourselves. Will you tell me too to follow my heart?”

  “I will,” said Falling-Day. “As you will one day tell Hannah, and the daughter you carry now.”

  Elizabeth’s head snapped up, and Falling-Day laughed out loud.

  “You are thinking of Chingachgook’s dream of a great-grandson,” she said. “But he did not look hard enough. He also did not feel what I feel. Here.” She put the flat of her hand high on the left side of Elizabeth’s stomach. “And here.” She did the same on the other side, but lower. “Two heads, two heartbeats. A grandson for Hawkeye, and another granddaughter for Cora.”

  “Twins?” Elizabeth asked, staring at her own belly as if it might speak up. Then her expression of surprise faltered and was replaced by distress.

  “Nathaniel will be out of his head with worry.”

  “Then do not tell him yet,” Falling-Day said.

  Elizabeth lay back, her palms resting lightly where Falling-Day had touched her. “I don’t know if I should be overjoyed or just worried.”

  “The first will do for now,” Falling-Day said. “You’ll worry enough, in time. But listen now, for I will give you my best advice. Decide what kind of home you want for yourself, for your husband and your children, and if that means you must go away from here, then you must go.”

  “And take your granddaughter from your care?”

  Falling-Day picked up her sewing again. “I will cope, as my mother did when I took my family and left her fire.”

  “You trust me with her.” Elizabeth smiled, finally.

  “Hen’en,” said Falling-Day. “You have earned my trust.”

  Curled around the universe that was her children, Elizabeth wanted and needed to sleep, but found herself unable to calm her thoughts. She lay contemplating the view from the window: the shoulder of mountain crowded with fir and pine, somber
green dusted now with white. Above that, a wedge of sky the color of old pewter. Another storm was coming.

  What Falling-Day had told her of Richard and the raid on Barktown was almost more than she could reconcile with the tales she had heard from Nathaniel and Otter. The more she thought about it, the more confused she became: each of them told the story with complete conviction. In the end, she thought, perhaps they were all right. The stories of what had happened to each of them in those bloody days of the revolution were a web they wove together; the truth scuttled back and forth between the delicate strands of memory, and could not be pinned down. Where Richard fit into the whole was unclear; Elizabeth thought that she might never know, unless he himself told her. And it would be a long time before she was comfortable enough to have such a conversation with Richard Todd.

  They might not even be here a year from now. Elizabeth lay back, and tried to imagine another life, a new start. A year ago she had been alone; now she had a husband; in another year she would have Hannah and two infants to care for.

  Sarah had borne twins. Nathaniel had buried Hannah’s brother with his own hands. She had tried again, and he had buried his second son in Sarah’s arms.

  Not this time. Elizabeth whispered it aloud in the empty room: it was a promise, and a vow.

  LXI

  By the end of October, Lake in the Clouds was adrift in snow; Elizabeth, healed enough to be bored but still unable to read or write for long periods, began to chafe at the narrow boundaries of the cabin; and Richard Todd had begun to court Kitty Middleton in earnest.

  Nathaniel gave in gracefully on a clear afternoon and took her to the trading post. In the familiar cramped space filled with powerful smells of damp wool and burning tobacco and fermenting ale, Elizabeth heard the details of the courtship from Anna Hauptmann and Martha Southern as they measured great stacks of newly woven linen.

  “Every day this week he’s been up there in the parlor, driving Curiosity near out of her mind,” Anna told her.

  “She’ll take the broom to the doctor one of these days,” predicted Martha.