“What, you mean she’s pregnant?”
“That is exactly what I mean, sir.”
“Well, so what, then?” Alan asked, unable to believe it. “You’re sure this isn’t a jape? She’s really ankled? I mean, do I have to marry her or something?”
“It would help if you did.” McGilliveray chuckled.
“Well, I’m blowed, damme if I ain’t,” Alan gasped. “I mean, what’s the difference, she’s just a slave, right?”
“She’s my uncle’s property, you see, so that makes her part of his clan, and of this huti, this lodge,” McGilliveray said, obviously enjoying every minute of it. “He would be insulted if you ran off and left your get. Marriage doesn’t mean much in these circumstances, but it does preserve honor. If you don’t, he can’t sell her off, and he might come looking for you.”
McGilliveray’s uncle, a side of beef with a round moon-face, and a famous chief warrior, gave Alan a look as menacing as any he ever did see.
“He’ll be stuck with a bastardly gullion, a bastard’s bastard.”
“But the boy’ll be some kind of Wind Clan Muskogee, so he’ll do alright. Or her,” McGilliveray insisted.
“But we’re leaving tomorrow, so …”
“Simple really. You shot that deer today? Go get a chunk of it.”
“Now look here, McGilliveray, this …”
“Did I tell you my uncle’s name is Man-Killer?” McGilliveray smiled sweetly.
“Oh, holy hell.” Alan looked to Cashman, who was as amused as any of the others around their fire, laughing behind his hand. And damn their black souls, but Andrews, Cony, and the other seamen from Shrike were nudging each other and grinning at him openly! “It doesn’t mean a damned thing, right? I mean, it doesn’t really count, does it?”
“Even if she was properly Muskogee, it isn’t official until the Green Corn Ceremony in late summer, and could be dissolved then. She’ll gain status. Especially if you buy her from Man-Killer, and he adopts her as a daughter afterward. No more slavery for her then.”
“Oh, alright, then,” Alan sulked, burning with embarrassment at how funny everyone else seemed to think his predicament was. But he rose and fetched a large chunk of the deer from the roasting spits and brought it back to the fire-circle.
“This shows you’re a man who can provide meat for her,” McGilliveray said. “She’ll present sofkee and corn to you to show she can provide grain from the fields, and cook it for her man. Now, before she can be married, you must buy her from Man-Killer.”
There was much palavering, with a rant about how Man-Killer had gotten Rabbit in the first place, how he had slaughtered with the best of them and taken her from a traveling party of Cherokee hunting too far south of their mountain fastness, even if he was a little too far north of his usual haunts, poaching on Upper Creek lands.
Alan’s bride cost him a dragoon pistol and saddle holster, with forty pre-made cartouches of round-shot and buck-shot, two of his deer hides Rabbit had already dressed, one of his shirts, and a leather cartouche pouch with George III’s ornate brass seal on the flap. Alan suspected that buying the mort wasn’t strictly necessary, since Man-Killer and McGilliveray/White Turtle both seemed to be enjoying it so much, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, so he went along sullenly.
Once the purchase was done, Man-Killer got to his feet and went on another high-pitched, formal rant, which McGilliveray translated into short, pithy phrases now and again, the upshot being that he didn’t know much about this young white man, but he would be considered “of Man-Killer’s fire,” which seemed a grudging sort of honor short of actually becoming Indian, more specifically of the Muskogee Wind Clan, since everyone Creek knew that they were the best people on the face of the earth, and they wouldn’t adopt just any upstart as a Real Person until he had proved himself a superior sort of being, perhaps on par with a Seminolee or Apalachee, who at least could speak something like Muskogean. Man-Killer also grudgingly allowed that since this strange white man had bought the girl Rabbit from him at such a damned good knockdown price, he would allow her to remain in the Wind Clan and in his lodge as “daughter” instead of slave after the white man went back where he came from, so the offspring would be raised Muskogee, which Man-Killer thought would be the best for all concerned. He didn’t like the way white men raised their children, anyway, with all that spanking and beating, which broke the spirit.
“At least the little bastard’s going to be spared tutors and algebra,” Alan sighed.
All through these preliminaries, the Indian women of the clan and the huti had gathered their sisters from the other hutis to witness the ceremony. Through it all they had yipped and whooped with delight, eager as harpies discovering a newly slain corpse to feed upon.
Finally, they brought Rabbit out. She had bathed and drawn her raven hair back into a single long braid, adorned with beads and a few feathers other than eagle. She wore a new, richly embroidered and beaded deerskin skirt, a little longer than her usual style, with a new upper garment much like a match-coat or bed-sitting coat, tied under the arms, which still left her right breast free.
“How much ritual does it take for her to get ready?” Alan asked as she was paraded before her new “sisters” of the Wind Clan. “I’d say this was arranged a long time before I heard about it. Well, damn their pleasures, I say!”
“More to the point, blessin’s on yours, Alan,” Cashman replied, sobered by how lovely the girl was, and by the solemnity of the moment, no matter how absurd it was. “If they were forcin’ me to wed her, I’d think myself lucky. Damn shame you can’t take her with you when you leave tomorrow.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Alan groaned. Still, she was tricked out right handsome, even he had to admit that, and had been fawn-pretty before.
A way was cleared, and she knelt down before him on her knees, her eyes swimming with tears even as she beamed at him with happiness so open and adoring it silenced even the most cynical of his crew.
Man-Killer read the rites, which were simple to the extreme. He offered her the platter of venison, and she took a bite to accept him. She offered him a bowl of sofkee and an ear of corn still in the shuck, which he tasted. Then she was allowed to come sit beside him and link arms with him, pressing her young body to his side and gazing up at him in shuddering reverence.
“Now what?” Alan asked, putting an arm around her shoulders in spite of himself.
“That’s it, you’re married,” McGilliveray said, and Man-Killer and the women said pretty much “amen” or “here, here,” which raised whoops and shouts from all present. “Give you joy of this day, Lieutenant Lewrie. Go, take your bride to your new home yonder. It’s only a summer chickee, but private enough. I helped built it yesterday.”
“Damn your eyes, McGilliveray!” Alan said, unable to do anything other than smile as people crowded around to congratulate the “happy couple.”
“Go forth, be fruitful, and multiply,” Cashman called with an exaggerated bow. “Though you’ve a fair start on that, hey?”
It was expected that the newly-weds would retire immediately, and Rabbit was almost dragging him, so he finally allowed himself to be led off to a new and fresh-smelling chickee back towards those fatal corn-cribs, near the rear of the family huti. They climbed up onto the mat-covered floor and pulled the split-cane wall mats down for privacy. Almost before the last mat had fallen in place, Rabbit was on him like a ferret, dragging him to the floor. Taking heed of her lessons in passionate deportment from Alan’s earlier teachings, she flung her arms about his neck and showered him with kisses, babbling away softly and rapidly in Cherokee/Creek/English, all the while tearing at his clothes.
“Ah-lan,” she crooned, besotted with love and trembling with happiness at her freedom from slavery, and at her marriage. “You me!”
“You are mine,” he corrected between kisses. She practically ripped his breeches open and rolled to sit astride of him. She took his left hand and rubbed it over h
er firm belly and purred like a very contented kitten, stirring her loins against him. “Baby,” he said.
“Bebby, you me,” she parroted. “You … ahr … mine.”
“Ours,” he said, tapping her stomach. “God help me.”
“Ahrs, go’hemmy,” she said, beaming, with tears of joy cascading down her smooth young cheeks and splashing on her upper garment and breast. Alan reached up and undid the knot that held the little match-coat together, and it fell away, revealing both of those delightfully springy young orbs. She slid further down his belly as his hands caressed her breasts and nipples, and in moments her vagina was slick and moist on his skin. She slid further down, reached and found his throbbing member. Press-ganged into marriage or not, she was still a damned attractive and nubile young piece, he decided. She steered him into her and rocked back to drive him deep inside, making them both gasp at the velvety pleasure of the first stroke of insertion, and it was as good as the first time they had coupled in the corn-crib, just as full of wonder and discovery. For her perhaps it was even better, for she was fulfilling her life’s role as wife and mother-to-be, and her inspired exertions communicated inspiration to him.
There was no fire for her to tend that night, no more errands to run for others now she was a freedwoman, so they could exhaust themselves totally and fall asleep together. She cuddled to him in the crook of his arm, her head on his shoulder and one downy thigh flung across his belly, her breath stirring soft against his cheek and neck. Every movement he made was responded to with an unconscious hug, some little whimper of joy. She woke once briefly, sated beyond measure, and only kissed him, repeated his name and her few words of endearment in English, and sank back into sleep in his arms.
Alan woke just before dawn as it got a little chilly, and drew a red trade blanket over them. He looked down at her and snuggled to her cozy warmth, worn down to a nubbin and barely awake, savoring the last few minutes of closeness.
“Damme for a fool, but this marriage nonsense don’t feel half-bad right now,” he muttered. Long as it’s over today, he thought. Being a daddy, though. That cuts a bit rough. Not that I’ll be around to listen to the little bastard bawl, so that’s not so bad. Feels good, this.
In his entire experience with women, he had rogered mop-squeezers and country girls, tumbling with them in the dark at the top of the stairs, across un-made beds, or rolling behind a hedge in the summers at the edge of a field, all quick and furious. He had lain at ease with whores between bouts of “the blanket horn-pipe,” but for the life of him, as he lay there gradually coming awake, he could not actually remember sleeping with a girl. Usually his time was governed by being furtive, or the commercial nature of the transaction; on, off, and just where the hell’s my hat?
This, though, this closeness and peacefulness of being in bed with a woman who wanted you as much as you wanted her, who smelled so good and intimate under the blanket, who snoozed away so trusting in his arms, and who would respond with affection to any sign of affection on his part—well, this was something else again.
Pity I can’t take her with me, he decided silently, though it was a forlorn wish. She would not fit in anywhere he went, most especially aboard Shrike. It isn’t that I really love her that much, he thought, but for now, she’s a sweet thing, a girl with a good little heart.
As he came more awake, and listened to the sounds of the Creek town beginning to stir around their chickee, he was filled with an out-of-character sadness, not just because he had to leave her behind and probably never see her again. There was sadness regarding the whole Indian way of life, too. From all that McGilliveray and Cowell had said, there was little hope that the Creeks could retain their ancient traditions. The Rebels, who styled themselves Americans now, would press against the borders, the rum and whiskey and trade goods would contaminate the old ways. If there was unity of purpose for now between the Creeks and Seminolee and the fragments of other tribes, then it would not last long, and they would face their future uncoordinated, prey to any outside aggression. Even if Cowell and McGilliveray could convince the Shelburne government to commit troops and money to retake Florida with Indian help, the Indians would still wither away in the face of white civilization, nibbled to death instead of going out in one brave battle. There was no place for them to run, no lands further west that did not already have owners. They could survive by imitating white ways of living, but at what a price, and how much suffering and degradation?
And this dear little girl sleeping so soundly beside him would be doomed to be a part of it, one of the losing side, and, God help him, so would the child she carried—his child. Nobody had ever come back on him with a bastard and a belly-plea for support (so far, anyway), and he began to worry about what he might do, what he might be able to leave behind, some legacy or something of value to improve Rabbit’s life, and the child’s life, against the bad times to come.
God, what a bloody mess I’ve made of things, he thought, railing against his nature. If she wasn’t pregnant, I could ride out of here without a backward glance, I think. Knowing our politicians, they’ll not want to put out a penny more than needed, which means nothing Cowell dreamed up will ever be put into action. Rabbit’ll be just another victim we’ve lied to. Oh shit, if this is growing up and acting like an adult, then I don’t care for it, thank you very much.
He clasped his arms tighter about her and she nuzzled to him deep in sleep, her soft, satiny-smooth flesh warm against his, maddeningly sensuous and comforting. He breathed deep of her aromas of hair and flesh, clean woman-smell and hint of sweat, the faint scent of their love-making, her exotic muskiness of burned pine and loamy earth, of deer hide and cooking, native greases or oils with which she had been anointed for the marriage ceremony, and the foresty smell of the chickee and the green wood and mats around them.
“Ah-lan,” she cooed, coming awake as he held her too tight.
“Dear little Soft Rabbit,” he whispered back, brushing her cheek with his lips, feeling an almost fierce desire to protect her from all that would come.
“Ah-lan … mine,” she said, drawing his face down to her hot round breasts inside the blanket, stroking his head and hair and making pleased noises as he sprang into sudden, overful arousal, willing as any bride for another proof of love before dawn. She rolled onto her back and stroked his back, drawing him between her open thighs.
“In for the penny, in for the bloody pound,” he told her with a shaky laugh. “One for the road, old girl?”
“Ah-lan mine!” she giggled.
Chapter 7
There had been a lot more room in the boats on the journey back down-river. The man Tom/Red Coat had come along, just to see the coast region once more, and get a share of rum, most likely. While the Creeks and Seminolee went overland with pack-horses and mules, the men from Shrike were alone with their own kind for the first time in over two weeks, and it felt odd.
Not totally alone, even so. McGilliveray, still dressed Indian fashion, was with them, and Cowell in his new deerskin clothing, and three of McGilliveray/White Turtle’s younger male kin and their traveling girls. And Rabbit.
At the last, Alan could not bear to leave her, and she could not bear to let him ride away on a spotted Seminolee horse and never be with her new husband again, and against his better judgement, he had let her accompany him. She rode as well as he did, it turned out, and she and the traveling girls did all the cooking for their party, delaying the day the soldiers and sailors had to fend for themselves again.
Not that he had minded the night on the trail, or the night in a Seminolee chickee at the lake where they had left their boats, for she had left him wheezing after their passion. She had never been in a real boat before, but adjusted quickly, and sat aft with him at the tiller of the twenty-five-foot launch, treating the whole trip like a honeymoon jaunt, and full of wonder at the life in the swamps, which she had never seen. And when Cony or Andrews fetched her an egret plume or some flamingo feathers she was as delighted
as any miss just given a ruby bracelet. The hands treated her as deferentially as they would have a proper officer’s wife, and she had begun to feel like a queen, or a chief’s bride.
“You talwa!” she exclaimed, after McGilliveray had talked to her about what Alan did in the Royal Navy.
“Not a chief, dear,” Alan laughed. “My captain is chief. I am his mikko. Tell her, McGilliveray.”
With Soft Rabbit by his side, he felt charitable enough to accept the whole world, even McGilliveray and his ponderous lecturing.
“And an imathla lubotskulgi,” McGilliveray informed her to her great delight. “A little warrior, too young to be an imathla thlukulgi, a big warrior chief. But he has killed many foes, haven’t you, Lewrie? How many, do you think, so that I may praise you to the skies to her?”
“Well, I’ve fought two duels, cut one and killed the other. With swords, mind, not pistols at twenty paces,” Alan bragged. “Damme, maybe a dozen more in boarding melees.”
“Most impressive.”
“And God knows how many with artillery,” Alan concluded.
Soft Rabbit was thrilled that her man was such a bloody-handed warrior, and her awe of him, which was already considerable, went to new heights of reverence after McGilliveray translated that to her.
“She says she is honored to be the wife of such a brave young man, and is sure that your son shall be a man-slaughtering Hector as well, she’ll make sure of it. Man-Killer will be his father and will teach him to be a warrior.”
“Man-Killer? He’ll be her husband when I’m gone?”
“No, you misunderstand. It’s more important to Muskogee who your mother’s relatives are,” McGilliveray went on, happy to find an opportunity to preach. “The husband and father is not of the mother’s clan, where she shall live. She’s Wind Clan now, a very important clan in our way of life, and Man-Killer and all the males are her uncles, so to speak, and they fill the role of the father when it comes to rearing the child. You are only of their fire, anhissi, which means friend. What clan you are doesn’t matter, as long as you weren’t Wind Clan. Marrying into your own clan is a sin.”
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