He touched her shoulder and she started, throwing up an arm to protect herself. “Do not,” he said, drawing back. “Do not fear my touch, wife of Simon Brandt.”
She swallowed her terror. “My name is Rebecca.”
He frowned. “That which a man and woman share is not a thing to be taken like a scalp. It would shame me to lie with you.”
“Shame you?” she cried in indignation. “I’d sooner sleep with a pig than an Indian.”
He smiled thinly. “If you share Simon Brandt’s bed, you do.”
“Simon is my husband.”
“For that, I pity you.”
“He is a good man—a respected man.”
“And brave when he faces unarmed women and children.”
“You dare to say that—after what you’ve done to me this day?”
He scoffed. “You are hardly helpless. You nearly killed me outside your cabin door, and again, when I fought the Huron with my knife. You would have shot me, if—”
“I should have shot you! I’d been better to take my chances with the Huron.”
He spread his hands, palms down, in a quick, dismissing gesture. “Woman, I have had enough of your evil tongue. If I was an Iroquois, I would have split it by now, or cut it out.”
“And if I was a man, I would have sent you to your maker.”
“Then it is lucky for us both that you are not.”
“Go to hell.”
“I don’t believe in your white man’s hell. The Creator who made the world and all in it would never have conceived of such—”
“Tell me none of your pagan beliefs. I am a Christian, and a Christian I shall be until I die.”
“Which may be sooner than you expect if you don’t be still.” He glared at her one last time, then put the fire between them. Settling down with legs folded under him, he laid his rifle across his lap. “Move from that spot and I will make moccasins from your skin,” he threatened.
She turned her back to him and lay there, pulse pounding, wrapped tightly in her wolfskin blanket. She closed her eyes, willing sleep, but now it would not come. Scenes from the day played over and over in her mind, but the most vivid and heart-wrenching was Colin’s face when they’d dragged him away.
“I’ll survive this,” she whispered. “I’ll survive it, and I’ll find you, Colin. I swear I will.”
But deep down inside, she fought back the fear that he was already dead—the victim of a Huron tomahawk or the dark-skinned warrior who’d captured him.
Chapter 5
Rebecca tossed and turned, crying out in her sleep and waking Talon from his light doze. He laid down his rifle and went to her side, but despite her obvious distress, she was not awake. He slipped a hand inside her wolfskin blanket to see if her clothing was damp, then, when he was satisfied that she wasn’t wrapped in wet garments, he pushed a gnarled maple limb into the glowing coals in the crude, stone-lined hearth.
Within minutes, the hot hardwood fire began to raise the temperature in the small cave. Talon fingered his captive’s moccasins and turned them inside out so that they’d receive the greatest amount of heat without harming the tanned leather. Then he hung her wool stockings over sticks so that they too would dry through and through. Her bare feet were streaked with dirt, but they had lost their pallor. He stroked first one slender, high-arched foot and then the other to make certain that she’d suffered no permanent injury from the icy water.
She groaned and he saw that tears left a wet path down her cheeks. Uttering a small sound of sympathy, he returned to his place on the far side of the fire, picked up his weapon once more, and settled down to wait out the long hours until morning.
Rebecca sighed. “No,” she whimpered. “No, don’t take him away. He’s my brother. I’ll tend him. . . I’ll tend him.” Her eyelids fluttered, and then the nightmare pulled her back eight years into her own clouded past.
Waves crashed against the side of the ship; ribs creaked, and water trickled down the stinking inner hull of the Dublin Princess. Rebecca, her face flushed with fever and stomach wracked with cramps, waved away the dour faces that surrounded her.
“Colin is my brother, I tell you,” she repeated. “I’d be grateful for a little tea and sugar, but I’ll care for him.” She dipped the rag in the bucket of cold sea water, wrung it out, and patted the toddler’s hot red face.
“Some folks think they’re too good for their own kind,” a pock-faced woman muttered. “When that boy is wound in his death shroud, you’ll be sorry.”
Seven children had died since the Dublin Princess had set sail from Ireland bound for the Maryland Colony in America . . . three in the last week. Sickness and bad weather had hounded the merchant vessel from the first hours of the voyage.
“Shhh, shhh,” Rebecca had said, soothing and rocking the fitful child against her chest. For five weeks, she had kept Colin well and happy when most babies were in misery. She’d done it by taking him on deck for most of every day—regardless of the weather—and by forcing him to eat a little sauerkraut every day. She’d not eaten meat herself, or allowed Colin to have any, and she’d only given him goat milk when she’d milked the goat herself, fresh from a herd that a German couple was taking with them to America. They’d lived on dry biscuit, moldy cheese, milk, and sauerkraut. She’d earned the last two items by caring for the German matron’s seven-year-old twins.
But now, in spite of all her precautions, Colin was ill, and she was frantic with worry. She was just shy of fourteen to his two years, and the stress of being her brother’s sole protector was almost too great to bear. Country girls might marry and have their own babes by thirteen, but she’d led a sheltered life until she’d been tragically orphaned and left penniless. “Let her be a child a while longer,” her dear father had repeatedly told her mother. Now, she and Colin were reaping the fruit of that harvest.
Had it been just six short months since she was playing with dolls and having her hair washed and combed by servants? She pushed back a stiff, sticky braid and concentrated on trying to lower her brother’s fever. Here, there was no French soap and no white linen towels, only cold salt water and an aching dampness that kept anything from drying properly.
The dream darkened, becoming more bizarre . . . losing all semblance of reality, no longer playing out what had happened, but what might have happened.
The swaying ship’s whale oil lanterns glowed with a hellish light, and the faces of her fellow travelers took on fiendish proportions.
Colin’s wailing became incessant. He screamed louder and louder, until his cries blocked out the relentless slap of waves and groaning of wood. She was weeping—weeping tears of salt, and she was so cold that her bones ached, but not so cold or pale as Colin. His dark eyes glowed with fever and his tiny heart fluttered like a caged bird.
“Make him a winding-sheet of ship’s sail,” the old woman intoned. “Close his eyes with copper pennies and wrap him tight against the sea.”
“No,” Rebecca protested. “No! You can’t. He’s not dead. He’s not dead!” But they wouldn’t listen; gnarled hands pulled Colin from her arms—other hands kept her from reaching him. “He’s alive!” she shouted. “Can’t you see he’s alive?”
Panic-stricken, the baby stretched out small fingers to her—one thumb pink and swollen from constant sucking—and called her name. “Bec’ca!”
She fought them tooth and nail, but there were too many and they were too strong. In horror, she watched as they wrapped the death cloth round Colin’s squirming body, pinning his sturdy arms and legs with the death shroud, muffling his baby cries until they faded to silence.
Rebecca stood on the deck of the ship watching as they carried the gray bundle to the rail. “You can’t!” she screamed again. “He’s not dead! He’s not dead!”
Then she was staring in horror as Colin’s body sank into the black water, swirling down and down, until—
Talon rocked her against his chest, cradling her as one would a feverish child. “
Shhh, shhh,” he soothed in Algonquian. “He is not dead.”
She opened her eyes, and he knew from her glazed expression that she wasn’t seeing his face, but the haunting shadows of the spirit world.
“Nuwi,” he coaxed. “Come back to me.” He dared not handle her roughly. Did not the shamans speak of dreaming souls that broke free from sleepers to drift away into the spirit world and never return? “Nuwi, Becca.”
She whimpered and slipped her arms around his neck. He felt the shudders rack her body as she clung to him. “He’s not dead,” she whispered hoarsely.
“No,” he repeated in English. “He is not dead.”
She took a deep breath and her eyes closed. Her trembling lessened and color flowed into her cheeks. This time when her lashes parted, she saw him.
She stiffened and gave a fearful cry, striking at him with her hands and trying to break free.
“Ku,” he said. “No—do not be afraid. I will not harm you.” He released her and she tore loose from his arms and scrambled away until she reached the walls of the cave. “Do not be afraid,” he said impatiently.
“You . . . you . . .” She gasped, clutching her arms against her body.
“You cried out,” he explained, feeling foolish. “You had a dream.”
“Yes.” Her voice was dry and rasping, her eyes wide with alarm.
“You were very loud,” he chided. “I thought your screeching would bring the Huron.”
“You . . . you touched me,” she said accusingly.
“I touched you—as I would a terrified child or a startled horse.”
“A horse?”
He noticed spots of high color in her fair-skinned, oval face, a startling contrast to her vivid blue eyes and dark arching brows. Her fear was quickly turning to indignation. He gazed intensely at her delicate English features. Her nose was thin, sprinkled with freckles and slightly tilted at the tip.
Without realizing that he was doing so, he smiled. Such a foolish nose for a woman—he didn’t think he had ever seen one quite like it. Her mouth was full, her lips plump and red as the first wild strawberries in May.
“How dare you compare me to a horse?” she demanded hotly.
“A horse?” He chuckled, remembering his words. “A horse was not the best comparison,” he conceded.
“I may be your prisoner, but I have rights.”
His mood shifted. “No,” he said sharply, remembering too how she had fitted neatly into his arms. “No. A prisoner has no rights—none but those her captor gives her. You are the wife of my enemy. Expect nothing from me, and be grateful for what I give.”
“Barbarian!”
“An Englishwoman has little reason to call—”
“I am not English,” she flared. “I’m Irish. Irish born and bred.”
He shrugged. “To me, English and Irish are the same. I—”
“They are not the same, and you are a fool if you think so!”
Hot blood infused his cheeks and his belly grew tight. Did this woman believe his English was so poor that he didn’t know the insult she offered him? He had seen a man touched by the spirits in the town the whites called Philadelphia. A twisted creature with misshapen limbs and drooling mouth, he had been chained to a post at a fair and taunted by cruel children who threw rotten eggs and spoiled vegetables at him while their mothers laughed. Even the most primitive tribes of Indians knew that those with injured minds were not to be harmed; they were in the care of Inu-msi-ila-fe-wanu—the Great Spirit who is a grandmother—and any who dared her wrath did so at their own peril.
Among the Shawnee and Delaware, such a person was called blessed. Men and women vied for the honor of showing kindness to the afflicted, and children were taught the proper respect for the weak and helpless. An act of mercy performed for a blessed one was the same as if the service had been done for Inu-msi-ila-fe-wanu and counted heavily in the donor’s favor when his soul was judged at the time of death.
The whites did not understand these simple truths. Instead, they mocked the deformed and the mindless. It was further proof of the European lack of values in their daily lives.
Talon stared at Rebecca in shock, unable to believe she would use the English word fool in such a thoughtless manner. He had believed that she might be different from her husband . . . that she might have more wisdom and heart. It was clear she didn’t.
He had shown poor judgment in treating her differently from any other captive. Shame flooded over him as he remembered how he had held her in his arms. She was his enemy, and he would do well not to forget it just because she was pleasing to look upon.
“You are ignorant,” he said. “Ignorant and dirty. When is the last time you bathed?”
“What?” She looked at him as though he had suddenly sprouted wings and begun to fly.
“Swim. Bathe. Wash your hair and body? Surely, you know what I’m talking about.”
The insult stung and he was glad. She trembled with anger and balled her fists into tight knots. “How dare you say I’m dirty, you filthy Indian?”
He smiled. “You do not answer my question, woman. When did you bathe last?”
“Saturday night. Not a week ago,” she flared. “And you—your hands are covered with blood.”
Talon looked down and nodded. “You are right. When the danger is past, we shall both wash away the stink of our bodies.”
“I don’t stink,” she protested. Her voice wavered, and he thought she might burst into tears at any second.
“I could find you in the darkest night in the forest by your scent alone,” he insisted. “All Englishmen stink—and Irish,” he added. “Your husband’s stench would sicken a badger.”
“That’s not so. Simon bathes, maybe not as often as I do, but he washes. And our clothes—”
“White men wear their sheep’s wool garments until they rot off their backs.”
“Leave me alone,” she said. “I’m not talking to you any more. Kill me if you want to, but I won’t listen to your lies about my husband. He’s a decent Christian man and—”
Talon leaped to his feet and she shrank back. “Simon Brandt is a heartless murderer of women and children. He will go to his Christian God soon enough, I promise you that. For I, Fire Talon, will send him there.”
Her lower lip trembled. “You mean to kill him . . . kill my Simon.”
“His scalp will hang at my belt.”
“You’re nothing more than a cold-blooded murderer.”
“And you, Becca Brandt? What are you? Did you not shoot down two of my warriors? Did you not try to shoot me under a flag of truce?”
“That was different,” she argued. “I was under attack. I wouldn’t deliberately hunt someone down to kill them.”
“No? Then it is too bad your husband doesn’t share your feelings. He has spent a lifetime murdering my people.”
“He has reason. You killed his first wife, scalped his brother and sister-in-law, carried off their children.”
“Not my people, but the Susquehanna did this thing.”
“They were Indians,” she cried. “Indians are Indians.”
“As French and Irish and Dutch are English?”
“Damn you.” She turned her face away.
He clenched his teeth and tried to control his anger. This woman was nothing but trouble. He should have let her go on dreaming her bad visions. He flexed his arm and was rewarded with a fresh trickle of blood seeping from the gunshot wound in his upper arm. The injury had been throbbing most of the night, but he had ignored it. Now, the woman’s accusation that he was dirty made him think of possible infection.
The cave was without water, so he bade her remain where she was, took his rifle, and crawled back outside to scoop up some snow. It was still dark; he judged dawn to be a good two hours off. He listened hard, but could hear nothing but the howl of wind through the empty branches and the far off hoot of a hunting owl.
When he returned, the woman was huddled at the far side of the fire,
head down. Her eyes were nearly shut, but he could feel her watching him and he sensed her fear. “Sleep,” he said. “I will keep watch.” She didn’t give any indication that she’d heard him. “You will need your rest,” he added. “We have far to go.”
Leaning his rifle against the wall, he squatted by the fire and proceeded to pack his wound with snow. The musket ball hadn’t lodged in his flesh, but it had torn a jagged furrow through skin and muscle. Certain kinds of moss were good to pack in a cut, but he didn’t care to go out stumbling around in the dark searching for a fresh supply.
His friend, Fox, carried medicine in his war bag, but Fox wasn’t here. There was nothing to do but purify the gunshot with flame, Talon decided reluctantly.
He hated the thought. A good hunting knife would take only so much fire. With a sigh, he slipped his weapon from his sheath and heard a faint gasp escape from the woman’s lips. Without speaking, he laid his knife blade in the hottest part of the coals and waited until the steel glowed red-orange. Then he held his breath, picked up the bone handle, and placed the hot steel against his wound.
Blood and skin sizzled; the flesh burned and darkened, and tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. The woman scrambled up and covered her mouth with her hands. Talon waited, mentally counting, as sweat beaded on his forehead. By sheer force of will, he kept his features immobile. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he removed the knife.
She was looking at him.
He averted his eyes and pushed the weapon back into his sheath. He felt sick to his stomach and his head was full of swirling mist. He swallowed, wishing he could wash his face with cold snow.
“Was the fire hot?” she asked.
“What?” He blinked, still not free of the blinding waves of pain.
“Perhaps it will give you a taste of what’s to come in hell,” she said, “or of what you meant to do to us when you set our cabin afire.”
“I do not burn women and children.”
“You tried hard enough.”
“I ordered the fire arrows to drive you out. We knew of the tunnel.”
“Liar. You couldn’t have,” she accused.
This Fierce Loving Page 5