The Frontiersman’s Daughter

by Laura Frantz

  Ma Horn snorted. “If you ain’t careful, she’ll be dancin’ with the fire tongs. As for me, I ain’t set for a full frolic but would cotton to a little music.”

  He left then, and after a time, when the damp logs sizzled in the hearth and the coals gleamed a brilliant crimson and gold, he reappeared. Sitting at one end of the trestle table, he took the promised instrument from its case. For once Lael had good reason to study him, hands idle in her lap while Ma Horn continued to pick at her cotton and rock.

  So he can fiddle. Why, he is full of surprises.

  Within moments the quiet cabin was turned on its ear with his rendering of Sir Roger de Coverley. Lael listened, both mortified and transfixed, as a tickled smile pulled at Ma Horn’s face. The doctor’s squeaks grew more pronounced—and painful— till they could stand it no longer. Ma Horn covered her ears as Lael wrapped her arms around her middle and choked down her laughter.

  Finally, all at once, the bow slid violently off the strings and there was only the sound of women’s laughter—Ma Horn’s high as a girl’s, and Lael’s own, as clear and pure and bubbling as the branch.

  “So what do you make of it?” he demanded from the shadows.

  Ma Horn gasped, “I think—you—should stick—with doctorin’!”

  Lael looked on, mouth wry. Something told her that this was a man who would not do anything he could not do well, fiddling or otherwise. “I think,” she followed quietly, “that you are just having a wee bit of fun.”

  He laughed and moved closer to them, into the firelight, and the gleam on the burnished maple instrument nearly made her gasp. Here was something fine and rare, held in a surgeon’s hands like a woman would cradle a newborn child.

  Without a word he began playing again, and this time the notes were clear and sweet as birdsong. Lael sat spellbound, cast back in time to Briar Hill, where she once sat in the still, warm conservatory amid a fluttering of painted fans in the heat of summer. And his music blended perfectly with the notes she remembered.

  When he had finished, she said quietly, “Haydn.”

  “Hy-who?” Ma Horn asked.

  “Haydn,” Lael whispered, as if it was a secret she and the doctor shared.

  He began again, playing a melody so sweet she wanted to weep. Never in all her life had she heard such music.

  “What was that?”

  “A slow air,” he said simply. “’Tis Scottish.” He played one more, this tune more lively, like a reel. “A strathspey,” he told her, but before he’d finished Ma Horn had nodded off in her chair.

  “You play very well.”

  “Tolerably well. I learned during the war, tae take my mind off battle.”

  She remembered he had been a field surgeon in the war. How old could he be? Older than she, truly, but it was nigh impossible to tell. Ian Justus possessed high-handed good looks untouched by time. Only his eyes seemed aged, with fine lines etched about them from too much sun. Or sorrow.

  He put the violin away in its case, and Lael felt a keen disappointment. She had sensed a restlessness in him ever since he’d come to take the evening meal. His thoughts, she gathered, were not on his music or anything else in the cramped cabin.

  He said very quietly, “Across the way there lies a wee lass, no’ yet five years old, suffering from a fever. Her name is Sadie Floyd. I want you tae go with me tae see her.”

  48

  They walked across the fort common, shoulder to shoulder in the bite of a bitter wind. The snow was deep, but paths had been worn to the various cabins, though none was so trammeled as the approach to Sadie Floyd’s.

  Inside, a candlelight vigil had begun as the girl’s parents took turns sitting by the bed. Three boys played quietly by the hearth and all looked up with wide, solemn eyes as they entered. The smell of boiled potatoes and turnips lingered, and despite their odor Lael recognized something else—the smell of death.

  Introductions were quietly made by the doctor. Lael looked into the faces of John and Isabel Floyd, and she wondered if they knew what was to become of their daughter, if they too felt what she felt. The presence of death was so palpable it seemed to stand with them in the shadows, a hideous, hidden figure emanating a fearful smell. Once it had come she had never known it to leave without finishing its ugly work.

  She started as the doctor removed the buffalo robe from her shoulders and hung it from a peg alongside his own. Feeling empty-handed without her herb bundle, she followed him to a corner bed. The tired rope springs that supported the thin mattress sagged nearly to the floor, they were so worn, and the girl he had spoken of seemed lost in the middle of the bed. Sadie Floyd was a tiny thing with an otherworldly flush staining her features and dampening her dark, unkempt hair.

  “She ain’t no better,” her mother said wearily. “And no worse.”

  Lael reached out and touched the girl’s small hand. It was cool and still, belying the fever that ravaged the rest of her.

  “She was real fitful till the doctor give her that powder,” said Isabel. “That seemed to ease her a mite.”

  “Calomel powder,” Ian Justus explained to Lael, taking a tin cup from his bag and asking for water. Carefully, he lowered the thin blanket and drew the child’s shift up, revealing a swollen, bloated stomach. Lael struggled to remain stoic at the shocking sight.

  “The infection is spreading,” the doctor said, speaking so quietly she had to bend to hear him. “At first the swelling was confined tae the bowel . . . now it has reached the upper abdomen. ’Tis likely the organs are slowly shutting down and the blood is being poisoned as weel.”

  “Can you not operate?” Lael asked.

  “Nae, surgery would be deadly on a child so small.”

  “Perhaps a poultice then to draw out the poison. There’s snakeroot and boneset—”

  “I done both.” Isabel came behind them with some water. “We even packed her in snow,” she told them, eyes wet.

  “You must rest,” Lael told her, touching her arm. “If the doctor allows, I’ll set up with Sadie tonight and spell you—”

  “It ain’t me that’s set up with Sadie but the doctor here.”

  “Then I’ll stay with her tonight.”

  But Ian Justus was not listening. He studied the tin of powders in his hand as if looking for answers. The gleam of candlelight cast a dull glow on the open bag at his feet, reflecting off an assortment of surgical tools. “There’s nothing more tae be done for Sadie,” he said. “Nothing outside of prayer.”

  There was resignation in his voice—and raw sorrow. All at once long shadows were cast over the girl on the bed as the other children came forward and gathered around them. Save their combined breaths, there was no other sound in the room.

  Ian Justus turned and looked at them squarely. “Scripture says the prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise them up. If Jesus Christ is Lord over both body and spirit—and I believe He is—then prayer is all that can save your daughter.”

  Lael simply stared at him. How could he preach to them at such a time?

  The ensuing silence was excruciating, but Isabel Floyd finally spoke out. “I believe, Doctor. My husband here, he ain’t a believer, but I am.”

  Bewildered, Lael looked from the gaunt woman to the doctor. It was John Floyd who spoke next, a trifle shame-faced, eyes on the dirt floor. “I ain’t one to stand in the way of a prayin’ man, Doctor, not when it comes to my Sadie.”

  My Sadie.

  All eyes were fastened on the tiny girl, their faces blank as slates. The doctor ran an agitated hand through his hair and took a chair by the bed. From behind him, Lael could see the cords in his neck tense taut as rope. He seemed to be struggling for words . . . for sound.

  She hardly heard his prayer. Her mind was still fixed on Isabel Floyd’s strong, convicting words. I believe, Doctor.

  The prayer soon ended, and Lael mumbled an amen. Sadie Floyd lay on the bed, visibly unchanged, still lost in the shadows of suffering.

  But
the shadow of death had left the room.

  49

  Sadie continued to improve in the days to come, impressing Lael with her progress. Though she disliked the fort’s confines, the evenings were blessedly full. Twice Susanna and Will came over from their cabin, two doors down, and brought the children. They roasted chestnuts with Lael and Ma Horn, then cracked them and washed them down with sweet cider.

  Often the doctor would bring his violin or a book or newspaper to help pass the time. They talked of many things—of the war’s end and newfound independence; the sea and Scotland and the purple heather on the moors; the price of cotton and the changing currency; and medicines, wild and patented, debating the merits of each.

  But Ma Horn was not fit company these days. Soon after supper, she was fast asleep in her chair, head lolling above her bosom. Yet she was there in body, and though the fort’s wags might gossip, there would be no salaciousness with Ma Horn present.

  And so it was just Lael and Ian Justus truly, evening after evening, a trestle table apart, talking quietly or not talking at all. The flicker of the fire, the candle flame a-dance in the icy draft, the sight of his dark head bent over a book, or his hands, square and clean and callused, making music on his violin, worked to keep her there. She both willed and hated for their strange intimacy to end. He was becoming a friend to her, and she sorely needed one. Not once did he raise the subject of the McClarys or Captain Jack.

  By week’s end, Sadie Floyd was playing on the snowy common with Tuck and throwing snowballs with her brothers. There was a sense of the miraculous in those first days of November. Lael liked to stand at the shutter and watch her at play and recall how she’d escaped the shadow of death.

  Slowly the snow began to melt. Lael had been at the fort nearly a week when on a whim she crossed the common and rapped sharply on Colonel Barr’s cabin door. He scarcely looked up from penning a letter, his quill pushing furiously across the paper before him. The room reeked of stale tobacco and damp dogs. She could feel the error of her timing. The captain was in a foul mood, and she was immediately sorry she’d come.

  She got straight to the point. “I am in danger of wearing out my welcome here.”

  Philo Barr paused, gray eyes flashing in irritation. “The census is nearly done. Tomorrow, Miss Click, you may leave at sunrise.”

  She nodded solemnly and let herself out. But on the doorstep, in the harsh early light, she smiled.

  “I saw you leave Colonel Barr’s cabin,” said the doctor. “I dinna think tae keep you here this long.”

  Lael smiled and ladled stew into a wooden bowl. “Colonel Barr is nearly done with his counting and has finally agreed to open the gates.”

  Her voice was so light, so airy, both he and Ma Horn looked at her. Truly, the cares of the world seemed far away when she would be free of the fort at first light.

  Tonight, their last together, she looked about with new appreciation. The light in the cabin was fetchingly dim and the hearth smells beckoning. At home, her lonely supper was little more than a chore. Here it had come to be a small celebration. Was this why he came? Ma Horn said they often shared the noon meal together but hadn’t mentioned the evening meal as well. Yet here he was, day after day, at both.

  Earlier that morning she’d ventured to the river and picked a handful of cattails and a bouquet of bittersweet, untouched by the snow. Ma Horn had cackled as she arranged them and set them in a cracked pitcher on the table, admiring their winter beauty.

  Ian Justus noticed as well, saying nothing but picking out a cattail and examining it with a surgeon’s eye. And now as they took their places, she and Ma Horn side by side and the doctor across from them at the table, they readied to say grace.

  But she couldn’t close her eyes. Her eyes lingered on him instead, touched by his bowed head and humble tone. Truly, his prayers were the most heartfelt she’d ever heard. He prayed as if God were there at their very table. Her own prayers were rote, like reciting one’s sums or letters; his varied with the day’s needs though the ending was always the same: “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”

  Before Lael had washed and put away the supper dishes a final time, Ma Horn was asleep in her chair, her discarded pipe still smoking on the hearth. Lael drew in a deep breath, remembering that Pa once said it was nearly identical to the Shawnee’s kinnikkinnik—shredded dried leaves of tobacco, sumac, willow, and dogwood. She’d sometimes wondered if Captain Jack liked a pipe.

  She dried her hands on her apron and glanced the doctor’s way. He was at work with quill and paper—perhaps a letter to Olivia? He looked a bit weary, she thought, and lost in thought. But the moment she sat down in the rocker nearest the fire, he pushed his papers aside.

  “Why are you so anxious tae leave here, Lael?”

  Lael. Miss Click. The way he alternated between the two was plumb unnerving. She didn’t know who she was from one minute to the next. Surprised by his question, she met his eyes and answered as carefully and truthfully as she dared. “I miss the wide open spaces outside these walls. And my own cozy cabin.”

  “I’ve never seen you so heartsome as you are tonight,” he said thoughtfully. “You are downright douce.”

  Heartsome? Douce? “I dinna ken Scottish,” she reminded him with a smile.

  He rolled his eyes. “Merry. Happy. Tonight you are both.”

  She looked down at her apron. “And that nettles you?”

  He nearly grinned. “Nae, but you are usually so quiet . . . so reserved.”

  Unnerved by his scrutiny, she got up and stepped onto a bench to fetch a sack of chestnuts. She must do something— anything—to occupy her hands and still her hammering heart. Sometimes his candor almost cut her. The silence in the room deepened. She began to shell the nuts, aware that he was still studying her from where he sat. Did he think she didn’t notice? If Ma Horn were awake, he wouldn’t stare so. If Miss Olivia were here . . .

  “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

  The bold question left her breathless. Slowly she looked up at him. His eyes, such a startling, intense blue even by candlelight, held hers and dared her to deny it. Before she could steel herself, her own eyes flooded with tears.

  “So that is your answer, then,” he said quietly.

  She couldn’t speak. She didn’t need to.

  He looked away. “Why do I get the feeling you’re aboot tae do something rash?”

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. He knew too much. He’d seen her walk hand in hand with Captain Jack across the meadow. By now he’d surely heard about their meeting during the siege, outside these very walls. And he suspected Captain Jack of killing the McClarys. Did he guess she was willing to run away with him as well?

  Her voice was nearly a whisper. “Am I such an open book?”

  He ran a hand through the hair at the nape of his neck as if agitated. “It stands tae reason that, feeling as you do, you may marry.”

  “We’ve never spoken of it.”

  Still, he did not look at her. “Does he no’ love you in return?”

  Her hands rifled through the chestnut hulls in her lap. Not once had they spoken of love. Perhaps voicing such things wasn’t the Shawnee way. “I think he does,” she finally said.

  His expression was incredulous. “You dinna ken if he loves you or no’?”

  She lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug.

  “You play a dangerous game, Lael Click.”

  “So?” she retorted.

  “So? If this goes forward and you wed this mon, you wed his whole way of life.”

  “I would welcome it. Perhaps our union would help smooth relations between the Shawnee and the settlers.”

  His eyes flashed. “You canna be naive enough tae think your marriage tae a minor chief will bring aboot peace.”

  “It has been done,” she told him. “Chief Powhatan’s daughter married an Englishman in Virginia, an
d relations between the colonists and Indians improved—”

  “Their marriage lasted but three years until her death, and then the fighting began all over again.” Intensity lit his every feature. “I’m no’ talking aboot John Rolfe’s antics but your own. Do you no’ ken what you do? The Shawnee practice polygamy like many other tribes. Will you share your husband? Are you willing tae worship their gods? Your children will be half-breeds—”

  She glanced at Ma Horn. Would they wake her? Her whisper fell flat and held a warning. “Captain Jack’s as white as you are. He was taken captive as a boy in North Carolina. But even if he was pure Shawnee, that wouldn’t matter to me.”

  His answering glance told her he believed none of it. Truly, he was as riled as she’d ever seen him.

  “Why do you care what becomes of me?” she asked in bewilderment. “What does it matter to you?”

  He looked like he wanted to shake her. “Your faither is gone. Your uncle is dead. There is nae one tae speak reason tae you, tae save you from yourself.”

  Anger stiffened her spine. “You forget my father lived with the Shawnee and was well versed in their ways. He cared for Captain Jack like a son. I doubt he’d take offense if I were to run off with him.”

  “I canna argue with a dead mon. But if he were here, your faither would surely tell you the invasion of Shawnee territory has begun. There will be nae peace between them and the whites— no’ now, no’ ever. A hundred years of history has proven it. If you marry this mon, you will be caught in the growing conflict and likely killed, or removed far from here. If you dinna care aboot yourself, at least think of your children.”

  She stood up and tossed the chestnut hulls into the fire, shaking out her apron as if to shoo him away as well. “A pretty speech, truly, but a bit belated. I misdoubt the Almighty sent you all the way from Scotland to straighten out my future affairs. You’d best stick with your fancy doctorin’.”

  She nearly wilted from the answering heat of his gaze. Without another word, he got up and walked out, slamming the door behind him.