by Shirl Henke
The pair were following the path toward the village when three youths, around twelve or thirteen years of age, approached her. Poc growled softly, then decided they meant no harm and quieted. Joss was not so certain. "G-good day," she stammered, unable to remember the Muskogee words of greeting Barbara had been teaching her.
The boys were unsmiling, their dark eyes huge in their round bronzed faces. Solemnly they studied her with a thorough curiosity bordering on rudeness. She was uncertain about whether to ask what they wanted or simply to try to walk on and hope they would let her pass. She noted the sharp-looking knives attached to their breechclouts.
An exchange in their language ensued, after which one of the boys stepped forward, extending his hand toward her, an expression of awe on his face. What did he want?
Chapter Nineteen
The youth muttered something in his guttural dialect as he touched her spectacles with his fingertips, then jerked his hand back as if burned. Another exchange of words followed in which it seemed the boys were arguing among themselves. Every so often they would cast a wary glance her way before resuming the debate, which seemed to have something to do with her eyeglasses. She had no way of knowing that the sunlight reflecting off the heavy lenses gave her eyes what appeared to the Muskogees to be magical properties.
Poc watched the youths with his head cocked in curiosity, tail wagging. Apparently, he sensed no animosity. Taking off her spectacles, she offered them to the boy who had touched them. How did one pantomime "looking" to savages who had probably never seen a spyglass?
"These help me to see," she said slowly, hoping they understood a bit of English.
At first the boy jumped back as if the spectacles would bite him, but in a moment curiosity won out over fear and he took them gingerly in both hands. She held her hands up to her face, mimicking putting the eyeglasses on. "Like this. Try it," she urged.
The boy raised them with grave hesitation, squinting through the lenses from a foot away, then slowly brought them closer to his face as the other two watched spellbound. He finally perched the frames on his nose and attached the earpieces, holding out his hands in front of him. Then he blinked and let out a loud squawk of horror.
Because his vision was normal, he could see nothing but distortion and blurring through her lenses. He must have thought he'd been struck blind! As Joss stepped closer to remove the eyeglasses from the panic-stricken lad, a gnarled old man carrying a tall pole adorned with ceremonial paraphernalia came running down the path.
He raised the lance and shook the rattles on it menacingly at her, crying out something in Muskogee. Joss needed no translation to know his actions were decidedly hostile. Neither did Poc, who growled and stepped in front of his mistress as the boy tore the spectacles from his face and thew them to the ground, then took off pell-mell after his friends.
The old man remained behind, shaking the staff at her angrily. She squinted, desperate to retrieve her eyeglasses. Without them she'd never be able to find her way back to the village. Kneeling down, she groped myopically, trying her best to ignore the furious diatribe of the old man, whom Poc was holding at bay with a businesslike growl.
Just as she caught a glint of light reflecting off the lenses and reached out toward it, the old man bent down with amazing speed and dexterity, seizing the prize and scuttling off with it as Joss called out for him to stop.
Poc started to give chase, but upon hearing his mistress's frantic cries, returned to where she sat on the ground. He gave her several slurpy kisses of consolation as she calmed herself. Sighing, she held on to the dog and said, "Well, Poc, you shall just have to find the way back for me. Slowly now, so I don't break my neck in this barbarous wilderness."
While they made their way up the twisting woodland path with branches slapping her face and roots tripping her, Joss vowed to use her drops no matter how irritated her eyes. She would never again be at the mercy of these savages! That was if she lived to find the village, she thought in dismay, imagining every leaf a poisonous spider, every tree root a deadly snake.
By the time she stumbled into Charity's house, the commotion created by the influential Shawnee prophet who had come to live with them this past year still had not died down. Joss did not realize she was connected to his ranting.
"Thank heaven you've returned, Jocelyn," Barbara said. "We were just going to search for you."
"I lost my eyeglasses—no, they were stolen by some strange little man carrying a long staff with rattles on it."
"Turtle Snake," Charity said with distaste. "He's a shaman among the Lake People, a real troublemaker."
"Why would he take your spectacles?" Barbara asked, baffled.
Joss quickly outlined what had transpired. "So, if not for Poc, I'd still be wandering around in the woods."
"Oh, dear. This is going to cause trouble, I fear, just the sort of display Turtle Snake loves to put on," Charity said. "He will tell everyone the white man's magic has placed a curse on the boy's eyesight through those spectacles and it must be cast out before everyone in the idalwa is struck blind."
"That's absurd! All he need do is give me back my eyeglasses," Joss replied indignantly.
Barbara patted her arm sympathetically. "I think it wise to let Grandma Charity handle this, Jocelyn."
While waiting for Charity to return, Joss dug out her spare pair of spectacles and as an extra precaution, put drops in her eyes so she could see.
* * * *
About half the town turned out the following afternoon to watch Turtle Snake cast out the curse in Joss's spectacles, which were sitting atop a huge drum placed in the center of the public square. The performance took several hours and involved a great deal of chanting, incantation and dancing before the cursed object could safely be returned to its owner.
She was torn between acute embarrassment and righteous anger when Turtle Snake brought the eyeglasses, suspended on top of that long decorated pole of his. He poked it in her direction and she snatched the spectacles from it, feeling like a fool with so many people watching her.
"What should I say?" she whispered to Barbara.
"A simple thank-you would suffice," Alex replied, moving through the crowd toward her.
"Alex," she squealed in surprise. He took her arm pro- prietarily as he exchanged a few words with Turtle Snake and the other religious leaders, then led her back into Charity's house. Devon and Barbara faced each other outside the doorway.
Alex could hear his father saying, "I should have known you'd not remain behind like a sensible, obedient wife." The rueful resignation in Devon's voice did not match Alex's mood. His parents were always overjoyed to see each other. At that moment he was not certain if he wanted to hug Joss or throttle her.
Recovering herself a bit, Joss turned to Alex as he moved into the shadows of the interior. He still had a firm hold on her arm. "When did you return?" was all she could think to say. Idiot.
"Not soon enough to prevent you from getting into all sorts of trouble, apparently," he responded, going on the offensive. "I told you to remain in Savannah."
"You did no such thing. You merely assumed that I would," she retorted, stung by his cool greeting. He did not want her to be here. Well, fine. She didn't want to be here either now that it was too late to do anything about the regrettable fact.
"I also assumed you'd have enough sense not to meddle in Muskogee religious taboos."
"I wasn't meddling—that horrid man stole my glasses, preaching some sort of twaddle about their being cursed."
"Only after you let a boy look through them and get frightened half to death."
"I was only trying to be helpful," she said as her anger built. This was so unjust.
"Helpful?" He harrumphed. "And were you being helpful to my uncle when you gave him a lecture on the evil of liquor after observing his morning Black Drink ritual."
Someone must have told Alex. Her cheeks flamed as she recalled the humiliating blunder. Early this morning she and Poc had been
taking a leisurely walk about the perimeter of the village, when she had chanced to see a tall, reed-thin man swilling something from a gourd. The fellow had given a loud belch, doubled over and retched. He was still at it when an incensed Joss had reached his side. She had witnessed the scene far too often about the streets in London—poor wretches suffering the effects of overindulgence.
As the man straightened, wiping his mouth, Joss launched into an impassioned sermon on the evil of strong spirits and drunkenness. She earnestly urged the offender to follow the path of sobriety.
The elderly man had stared at her curiously. He obviously did not understand English. Joss silently cursed her limited Muskogee vocabulary. But she refused to give over this poor benighted creature to the demons of drink. She thought for a moment and then began to pantomime. She swilled from an imaginary cup, staggered about, pretended to vomit, and then collapsed on the ground. She arose, then gazed into the man's eyes, which oddly enough reminded her of Grandmother Charity's.
Joss had pleaded, "Spirits will kill you! Make you sick!" The man nodded. Joss waited.
"You are absolutely correct, wife of Sun Fox. The white man's rum and gin are a potent poison," the tall man agreed in perfectly precise, unaccented English. "That is why my nephew Golden Eagle refuses to allow any of it into Muskogee lands."
"But—but you just finished drinking whiskey," she sputtered.
The old man smiled gently and explained, "What you just witnessed was a cleansing ritual. The drink is a powerful purgative, and taking a morning draught of it is a common custom among the Muskogee—although I must confess that my nephew and grandnephew seldom embrace this particular custom of their people."
Joss's face burned, "Oh, my...you must be Mr. Mc-Kinny...."
"Yes, my niece, I am Tall Crane, Charity's brother. I've only recently returned from Cusseta."
Joss blurted out, "Please, sir, forgive my impudence and accept my apology." With that, she had turned and run.
Her unpleasant reverie was broken by Alex's caustic comment.
"You naturally assumed an ignorant savage knew no better than to swill down whiskey until he vomited."
"I admit that I made a foolish mistake. But why are you being so hateful?"
"Why are you here? It's obvious you don't want to be."
"I was invited by your grandmother—she wanted to meet me."
Alex sighed in defeat. "And of course my mother leaped at the chance to come and—"
"Have a proper celebration of your wedding," Barbara said as she, Devon and Charity entered the house. Seeing the tense confrontational stance of both Alex and Joss, she continued, "Your father and I were unable to be present at your nuptials in London. The least you can do is to allow us to have a feast in your honor with our family here."
Groaning inwardly, Alex knew he was trapped.
* * * *
The ceremony was even more elaborate than Turtle Snake's casting out of the curse and much better attended. Everyone in Coweta and many people from surrounding towns came to join in the feasting in honor of Golden Eagle's son and his English wife, who was now being called Magic Eyes.
Alex sat beside Joss at the head of a long low table, dressed in his Muskogee finery. The leaping flames from the big fire in the square bathed his face with glowing bronze highlights and shadows. To Joss, seated on the cool earth beside him, he looked like a savage stranger, not the laughing, charming Alex she knew so well. Or thought she had known.
Now he was dressed in a beaded buckskin jacket, open to the waist and sleeveless. A breechclout and fringed leggings revealed an alarming amount of his dark skin, made even more coppery by the firelight. On his chest a heavy silver gorget gleamed and he wore barbarous-looking armbands over his rippling biceps and heavy silver loops in his ears. His ears had been pierced all this time and she'd never even noticed it! A massive turban decorated with gemstones and feathers covered his head.
The only evidence of his predominantly white blood was the gleam of golden hair on his forearms and chest. He sat talking in that infernal unintelligible language with his uncle and various other of the Indians, occasionally making a comment to his parents or grandmother. To his wife he said almost nothing.
Nor was Joss at all inclined to speak to him, especially when a tall sultry-looking Muskogee woman walked sensuously up to him and sat down. Alex greeted her affectionately and they chatted in her language for several moments, laughing with great familiarity. They were lovers. Joss could sense it at once, remembering Alex's sanitized descriptions of the wild debauchery of his Georgia backwoods days, which had led to his English exile.
The woman was striking, with gleaming ebony hair plaited in two fat braids that were intricately coiled at the sides of her head and decorated with feathers and beads. She wore an emerald green tunic and a short skirt that revealed a shocking amount of her long, shapely legs. A pang sliced through Joss's heart. She belongs here with him. I do not.
Charity and Barbara had outfitted Joss in Muskogee finery, too. She wore a bright red skirt of soft cotton, trimmed with tiny shells, and a tunic of deep rich indigo. An elaborate belt of engraved silver cinched it about her waist. Her moccasins were beaded, and displayed—to her way of thinking—too much of her ankles and calves to be decent, but Barbara had insisted she looked lovely. Since Charity had made them especially for her, she could not refuse to wear them, or the heavy copper and silver jewelry on her arms and at her throat. Her elaborate ear bobs were so heavy she feared they would pull her ears off! In her heart of hearts Joss knew she was not as attractive to Alex as the girl he addressed in English now as Water Lily.
Joss stared down at the strange food on her plate. She'd been living on fresh fruits and nuts and the vegetables grown in Charity's garden. The feast introduced her to a plethora of peculiar things she was loathe to try such as the ash cake on her plate, a pallid-looking conglomerate of pulverized corn shaped into patties and cooked in the ashes of the hearth. A bowl of purified bear fat mixed with honey sat beside them for dipping. Eggs that she knew were not from chickens and various kinds of fish and wild meats were offered her. She ate sparingly of the fish while declining the bear meat, turtle and other exotic game, all the while grateful for the bowls of fresh plums and peaches.
What I would not give for a plain lamb chop, she though twistfully, but in truth Water Lily had caused what little appetite she had to depart.
"You've scarcely touched a thing," Alex chided. 'Try the sturgeon if you won't eat buffalo or bear," he commanded, offering her a flaky slab of baked fish wrapped in some sort of leaf.
It did smell agreeable but Joss was not inclined to feel that way. "No, thank you. I'm quite content," she replied primly.
He scowled. "You look anything but content, dear wife."
His cold clipped tone made her want to shout and ask what had happened to her merry rogue from those halcyon London days. Instead she stiffened her spine and shifted uncomfortably on the ground as several dancers began to perform for the assembly.
The festivities dragged on interminably with rounds of speeches, and drinks to the health and good fortune of Sun Fox and Magic Eyes. After one long speech regarding Joss's fertility and the hope she would give him many fine sons, Alex had had enough. He would certainly not translate that message for her! Heartily sick of the charade, he did not wish to offend his Muskogee friends or hurt his parents and grandmother. So he did the only thing he could think of to escape.
He picked up Joss and carried her back to Grandma Charity's guesthouse, thinking to deposit her there and slip away to brood in peace. But he had forgotten the custom about wedding nights...perhaps because he'd hoped never to have one.
The entire assembly let out congratulatory cheers, then rose to file after him, surrounding the house. He was left with no choice but to climb the ladder with Joss, who had been struggling and protesting ineffectually ever since he'd picked her up. Out of patience, he gave her rump a good hard swat which was received with general laughter
from the men.
"Hold still or I'll drop you from the ladder on that hard English head of yours," he gritted out as he climbed to the upper floor. At least they would be away from the crowd, which he devoutly hoped would disperse in short order.
Joss stilled, mortified to be the subject of such public humiliation. When he set her on her feet in front of him she stepped back, rubbing her derriere, which she was certain bore a red imprint from his hand. "My father never in my life spanked me!"
"He bloody well should have. You're acting like a petulant twit!"
"You have no right—"
"I have every right. I'm your husband," he said furiously, looking around their bridal bower, which his mother and grandmother and probably half the women in Coweta had decorated for this special night.
"So you keep reminding me—when it suits you to belittle me or demand my blind, unflinching obedience."
He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her. "What would you have me demand. Joss ... ?" The insinuation hung between them as his eyes traveled down her tall, slender body with insulting thoroughness. When they reached her curved calves and incredibly slim, delicate ankles, she blushed and took a step backward.
"This marriage has been a mistake, Alex," she said, tears and anger churning in her belly, thickening her voice.
"This marriage has been no marriage at all," he snapped.
" 'Tis as you proposed it be," she replied.
"And you now propose something else?" His tone was low, lethal. Long months of acute sexual frustration had built into a crescendo of lust when he'd first caught sight of her tall, slender body and wild mane of tawny hair this afternoon. She'd seemed appalled with everyone and everything around her, an English noblewoman looking down her blue-blooded nose at ignorant, superstitious savages ...at him.