by Lori Benton
Praise for
The Wood’s Edge
“Meticulously researched. Alive and engaging. The Wood’s Edge is a journey through the footsteps of America’s formative years, with characters so wonderfully complex and a story of redemption so deep, only Lori Benton could tell it. I was transfixed from the first absorbing page to the last.”
—KRISTY CAMBRON, author of The Butterfly and the Violin and A Sparrow in Terezin
“From the opening scene to the last line of the book, I was captivated by The Wood’s Edge. Rich in history, with characters to weep for and to cheer for, this is a novel that will linger in my heart for a long time to come.”
—ROBIN LEE HATCHER, best-selling author of Love Without End and Whenever You Come Around
“Open The Wood’s Edge and see the secret. Then, hold it—page after page—breathless. Rich in history and lush in story, Lori Benton’s novel brings to life a cast of characters in a tale that spans two generations, two cultures, two worlds. In an era underrepresented in Christian historical fiction, Benton takes on the challenge of presenting the message of faith in its purest form. Love, grace, rebirth.”
—ALLISON PITTMAN, author of On Shifting Sand
Praise for
Lori Benton
“Seldom has a tale swept me away so powerfully I’m left both breathless and bereft at its end, reluctant to let go. Lori Benton’s The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn is such a book, a gentle masterpiece destined to be treasured and acclaimed.”
—JULIE LESSMAN, award-winning author of the Daughters of Boston and Winds of Change series
“Founded on a fascinating little-known moment in early American history, The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn is one of the most beautiful love stories I’ve ever read. In this tightly paced flight into fear, hope, and mystery, author Lori Benton emerges as the quintessential artist, able to pull her readers into the story through her well-drawn, multidimensional characters, their emotions, motivations, and dreams.”
—SUE HARRISON, international best-selling author of the Ivory Carver trilogy
“An authentic rendering of frontier life, full of heart and hope. Burning Sky takes the reader on a vivid journey into New York’s wilderness at a time when cultures collided and lives were forever changed. A memorable debut!”
—LAURA FRANTZ, author of The Colonel’s Lady and Love’s Reckoning
“Lori Benton gives us seasons in her debut novel Burning Sky. Seasons of planting corn, beans, and pumpkins as backdrops to the ripening and challenges of lives working through chaos after a war and a terrible personal tragedy. The author gives us seasons of the journey through loss, risk, family, and love. The author’s voice is mesmerizing with evocative phrases like ‘The air inside the cabin swirled with stale memories, echoes of once-familiar voices trapped within, awaiting her coming to free them.’ Set on a frontier homestead in New York in 1784, we meet distinctive characters I came quickly to care about. And the promises of the opening poetic question of Burning Sky / Willa, ‘Will the land remember?’ is answered with passion and grace and the satisfaction of a good harvest. Enjoy this wonderful novel.”
—JANE KIRKPATRICK, award-winning author of One Glorious Ambition
“By turns exciting and heart-wrenching, Burning Sky is a deeply engaging story with a tender, thoughtful heart.”
—DIANA GABALDON, author of the Outlander series
BOOKS BY LORI BENTON
Burning Sky
The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn
THE WOOD’S EDGE
PUBLISHED BY WATERBROOK PRESS
12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921
All Scripture quotations and paraphrases are taken from the King James Version.
This book is a work of historical fiction based on many recognizable persons, events, and locales. Content that cannot be historically verified is purely a product of the author’s imagination.
Trade Paperback ISBN 9781601427328
eBook ISBN 9781601427335
Copyright © 2015 by Lori Benton
Cover design by Kristopher K. Orr; cover image by Trevillion Images, Victoria Davies
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
WATERBROOK and its deer colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Benton, Lori.
The wood’s edge : a novel / Lori Benton.—First edition.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-1-60142-732-8 (softcover)—ISBN 978-1-60142-733-5 (ebook)
I. Title.
PS3602.E6974W66 2015
813′.6—dc23
2014040030
v4.1
a
Contents
Cover
Books by Lori Benton
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Map
1757: Fort William Henry—Lake George, New York
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
1759—1768: The Mohawk River Valley—New York
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
1770—1775: The Mohawk River Valley—New York
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
1776: The Mohawk River Valley—New York
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Author’s Notes and Acknowledgments
Readers Guide
Glossary
About the Author
This book turned out to have much to do with fathers.
It is dedicated to mine, who is loved and missed.
Larry George Johnson
August 24, 1943–December 22, 2013
Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.
—JEREMIAH 6:16
Thou wilt shew me the path of life…
—PSALM 16:11
1
August 9, 1757
A white flag flew over Fort William Henry. The guns were silent now, yet the echo of cannon-fire thumped and roared in the ears of Reginald Aubrey, officer of His Majesty’s Royal Americans.
Emerging from the hospital casemate with a bundle in his arms, Reginald squinted at the splintered bastion where the white flag hung, wilted and still in the humid air. Lieutenant Colonel Monro, the fort’s commanding officer, had ordered it raised at dawn—to the mingled relief and dread of the dazed British regulars and colon
ials trapped within the fort.
Though he’d come through six days of siege bearing no worse than a scratch—and the new field rank of major—beneath Reginald’s scuffed red coat, his shirt clung sweat-soaked to his skin. Straggles of hair lay plastered to his temples in the midday heat. Yet his bones ached as though it was winter, and he a man three times his five-and-twenty years.
Earlier an officer had gone forth to hash out the particulars of the fort’s surrender with the French general, the Marquis de Montcalm. Standing outside the hospital with his bundle, Reginald had the news of Montcalm’s terms from Lieutenant Jones, one of the few fellow Welshmen in his battalion.
“No prisoners, sir. That’s the word come down.” Jones’s eyes were bloodshot, his haggard face soot-blackened. “Every soul what can walk will be escorted safe under guard to Fort Edward, under parole…”
Jones went on detailing the articles of capitulation, but Reginald’s mind latched on to the mention of Fort Edward, letting the rest stream past. Fort Edward, some fifteen miles by wilderness road, where General Webb commanded a garrison two thousand strong, troops he’d not seen fit to send to their defense, despite Colonel Monro’s repeated pleas for aid—as it seemed the Almighty Himself had turned His back these past six days on the entreaties of the English. And those of Reginald Aubrey.
Why standest thou afar off, O LORD?
Ringing silence lengthened before Reginald realized Jones had ceased speaking. The lieutenant eyed the bundle Reginald cradled, speculation in his gaze. Hoarse from bellowing commands through the din of mortar and musket fire, Reginald’s voice rasped like a saw through wood. “It might have gone worse for us, Lieutenant. Worse by far.”
“He’s letting us walk out of here with our heads high,” Jones agreed, grudgingly. “I’ll say that for Montcalm.”
Overhead the white flag stirred in a sudden fit of breeze that threatened to clear the battle smoke but brought no relief from the heat.
I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart—
Reginald said, “Do you go and form up your men, Jones. Make ready to march.”
“Aye, sir.” Jones saluted, gaze still fixed on Reginald’s cradling arms. “Am I to be congratulating you, Capt—Major, sir? Is it a son?”
Reginald looked down at what he carried. A corner of its wrappings had shifted. He freed a hand to settle it back in place. “That it is.”
All my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee—
“Ah, that’s good then. And your wife? She’s well?”
“She is alive, God be thanked.” The words all but choked him.
The lieutenant’s mouth flattened. “For myself, I’d be more inclined toward thanking Providence had it seen fit to prod Webb off his backside.”
It occurred to Reginald he ought to have reprimanded Jones for that remark, but not before the lieutenant had trudged off through the mill of bloodied, filthy soldier-flesh to gather the men of his company in preparation for surrender.
Aye. It might have gone much worse. At least his men weren’t fated to rot in some fetid French prison, awaiting ransom or exchange. Or, worst of terrors, given over to their Indians.
My heart panteth, my strength faileth me—
As for Major Reginald Aubrey of His Majesty’s Royal Americans…he and his wife were condemned to live, and to grieve. Turning to carry out the sentence, he descended back into the casemate, in his arms the body of his infant son, born as the last French cannon thundered, dead but half an hour past.
The resounding silence brought on by the cease-fire gave way to a tide of lesser noise as soldiers and civilians made ready to remove to the entrenched encampment outside the fort, hard by the road to Fort Edward. There the surviving garrison would wait out the night. Morning promised a French escort and the chance to put the horrors of William Henry behind them.
All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me—
Reginald Aubrey ducked inside the subterranean hospital, forced to step aside from the path of a surgeon spattered in gore. The balding, sweating man drew up, recognizing him. “Your wife, sir. Best wake her and judge of her condition. If she cannot be moved…well, pray God she can be. Those who cannot will be left under French care, but I’d not want a wife of mine so left—not with the savages sure to rush in with the officers.”
“We neither of us shall stay behind.” Reginald turned a shoulder when the surgeon’s gaze dropped to the still bundle.
He’d been alone with his son when it happened. Spent after twenty hours of wrenching labor, Heledd had barely glimpsed the child before succumbing to exhaustion. She’d slept since on the narrow cot, the babe she’d fought so long to birth nested in the curve of her arm. Craving the light his son had shed in that dark place, Reginald had returned to them, had come in softly, had bent to admire his offspring’s tiny pinched face, only to find the precious light had flickered and gone out.
A hatchet to his chest could not have struck a deeper blow. He’d clapped a hand to his mouth, expecting his life’s blood to gush forth from the wound. When it hadn’t, he’d taken up the tiny body, still pliable in its wrappings, and left his sleeping wife to wander the shadowed casemate, gutted behind a mask of pleasantry as those he passed offered weary felicitations, until he’d met Lieutenant Jones outside.
How was he to tell Heledd? To speak words that would surely crush what remained of her will to go on? These last days, trapped inside a smoking, burning hell, had all but undone her. And it was his fault. He’d known…God forgive him, he’d known it the day they wed. She wasn’t suited for a soldier’s wife. He ought to have left her in Wales. Insisted upon it. But thought of being an ocean away from her, likely for years…
Born an only child on a prosperous Breconshire estate not far from his own, Heledd had been raised sheltered, privileged. Reginald had admired her from afar since he was a lad. She’d taken notice of him by the time she was seventeen. Six months later Reginald, twenty-three and newly possessed of a captain’s commission, had proposed.
When it came time for them to part, Heledd had begged. She’d pleaded. She’d made all manner of promises. She would follow the drum as a soldier’s wife. He would see how brave she could be.
She’d barely weathered the sea voyage. The sickness, the filth, the myriad indignities of cramped quarters had eaten away at her fragile soul, leaving behind a darkness that spread like a stain, until he barely recognized the suspicious, defensive, unreasoning creature that on occasion burst from beneath her delicate surface. Nor the weeping, broken one.
But always she would rally, come back to herself, beg him not to leave her somewhere billeted apart from him, love him passionately, sweetly, until he lost all reason and caved to her pleas.
Then had come the stresses of the campaign, the journey from Albany to Fort Edward, then to Fort William Henry, Heledd scrubbing laundry for the regiment, ruining her lovely hands to earn her ration. Brittle smiles. Assurances. Clinging to stability by her broken fingernails while his dread for her deepened, a slow poison taking hold.
Then she’d told him: she was again with child. After an early loss in the first months of their marriage, she’d waited long before informing him. By then they were out of Albany, heading into wilderness, she once more refusing to be left behind. Would that the babe had waited for this promised safe passage to Fort Edward. Maybe then…
How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart?
Why standest thou afar off, O LORD?
Providence had abandoned him. He alone must find the words to land what might be the final blow for Heledd, and he’d rather have stripped himself naked to face a gauntlet of Montcalm’s Indians.
Shaking now, Reginald started for the stuffy timbered room where his wife had given birth—but was soon again halted, this time by sight of a woman. She lay in an alcove off the casemate’s main passage. He might have overlooked her had not two ensigns been coming from then
ce supporting a third between them, dressed in bloodied linen. They muttered their sirs and shuffled toward the sunlit parade ground, leaving Reginald to peer within.
The alcove was dimly lantern-lit. Disheveled, malodorous pallets lined the walls, all vacated except for the one upon which the woman lay. A trade-cloth tunic and deerskin skirt edged with tattered fringe covered her slender frame. Her fair sleeping face was young, the thick braid fallen across her shoulder blond. No bandages or blood marked any injury. Reginald wondered at her presence until he saw beside her on the pallet a bundle much like the one he carried, save that it emitted soft kittenish mewls. Sounds his son would never make again.
He remembered the woman then. She’d been brought in by scouts just before Montcalm’s forces descended and the siege began, liberated from a band of Indians a mile from the fort. For weeks such bands had streamed in from the west, tribes from the mountains and the lake country beyond, joining Montcalm’s forces at Fort Carillon.
How long this white woman had been a captive of the savages there was no telling. She’d no civilized speech according to a scout who had claimed to understand the few words she’d uttered. One of the Iroquois dialects. She’d been big with child when they brought her in. Reginald vaguely recalled one of the women assisting Heledd telling him she’d gone into labor shortly before his wife.
Heledd’s travail had been voluble, even with the pound and crash of mortars above their heads. But he hadn’t heard this woman cry out. Had she survived it?
He looked along the corridor. Voices rose from deeper in the casemate, distracted with evacuating the wounded. Holding his dead son, Reginald Aubrey stepped into the alcove and bent a knee.
The woman’s chest rose with breath, though her skin was ashen. A heap of blood-soaked linen shoved against the log wall attested to the cause. He started to wake her, thinking to see if she knew the fort had fallen—could he make himself understood. That was when he realized. The bundle beside her contained not a baby, but babies. One had just kicked aside the covering to bare two small faces, two pairs of shoulders.