by Lori Benton
Stone Thrower raised a hand, beckoning. “Sit with me.”
They sat on the bench together, and he put his arms around her. She leaned into him, thankful for his broad chest, his familiar scent, all of it wrapping around her now.
“You were making the best choices you knew to make at a time I was no good to you.” His hand stroked down her long braid. “If I had been the husband you needed, it might be different for us. But what good is thinking these things? Creator allowed it.”
This was true. And if they believed that the God Kirkland preached, the Creator in whose name they had been baptized, desired their good, surely they could trust Him to work out these hopes of theirs for the best.
She felt the tug of fingers in her hair. Stone Thrower had worked loose the leather strip that tied her braid and was running his fingers through the sections, loosening them. But absently, she saw, when she leaned back enough to see his features, strong and brown in the fire’s light. There was more on her husband’s mind.
“Satahuhsíyost,” he said. “Listen carefully, my wife, for I want to try to tell you a thing.”
“I am listening.” She watched his face, seeing the struggle there to find the words he sought.
“It has been a thing hard to understand, though I have thought about it since the summer when I knelt bleeding in front of the man who stole our son, when I gave him my forgiveness.”
It was a sight that would never be wiped from Good Voice’s memory. The only other memory of her life as powerful was when she stood looking back at a fallen fort, knowing her firstborn was lost to her.
“I want to tell you what happened to me, in my heart, when I did that hard thing.” Stone Thrower had been watching the fire while he spoke. Now he met her gaze. “Did you know until that moment I had not decided which I would use, the white beads or the hatchet?”
She didn’t flinch from his steady, searching gaze. “I knew.”
“Yes. You and my son, going to that place without me.” One side of his mouth turned up as he spoke; he understood the choice she’d made to go to William without telling him and did not hold it against her. “Creator won that battle in me. And He gave me spoils. Not a scalp. Not a life.” There was wonder in her husband’s face as he spoke. “He took the chains of my hate and bitterness and in their place gave me compassion. Gave me a heart to pray for that man, who I believe is still bound by his own chains because of what he did against our son, against us.”
Good Voice felt the shudder in her husband’s breath, the beat of his heart so precious to her. He was a different man from the man she married. One who could grieve and yet be whole. Praise be to Creator. She took his face between her hands, catching a glimpse of his startled eyes before she kissed his mouth soundly.
She pulled back, smiling.
“What is this for?” he asked.
“For those good words you spoke. For your good heart.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “I could do better. I could…” He leaned back, his expression strangely shy. “Prayer is a thing we do alone. That is not a bad thing, but I would pray with you now, for the ones our hearts are aching for.”
They prayed first for Two Hawks and Anna Catherine, then for William. When they finished, Good Voice smiled and touched her husband’s face. “I have missed you, my Caleb.”
She didn’t often call him by the name he received at his baptism. The surprise on his face at her doing it now melted into a smile…one with mischief in it. His arm tightened around her, and he pulled her across his lap. When she would have exclaimed, he silenced her with a kiss.
She pulled back breathless from it. “What is this?”
“I am living up to that name you called me. Caleb was a warrior, as strong at eighty as he was at forty. He went into the land Creator gave him and fought the giants living there.”
Good Voice raised a brow. “Is this true?”
Stone Thrower matched her look, his long mouth smug at its corners. “It is written in Kirkland’s Bible. He read it to me.”
Before he could move to stop her, she slipped from his grasp and was on her feet, backing toward the fire as the hair he’d loosened swung across her shoulders in a golden shawl, falling in braid-waves to her waist.
“You are not yet eighty, my Caleb. And I am not a giant for you to conquer.”
Surprise at her playfulness passed swiftly into delight and hunger—but not for food. “I am forty-four summers. Though just now I feel like twenty-two.”
She could sense his body coiling to spring. She balanced on the balls of her feet, ready for flight. “I still am not a giant.”
“You are my wife, who has said she missed me. Did you mean it?” He waggled his eyebrows at her, suggestive of ways she might prove it to him.
Good Voice giggled—giggled, as she had not done since a girl. She backed away another step, holding up her hands. “I misspoke. I did not mean—”
He sprang for her, coming off the sleeping bench with astonishing speed. With a screech, Good Voice dodged around the fire as if she meant to make for the door.
She didn’t get that far. After only a step or two her foot caught—or seemed to catch—on the frayed edge of a mat and she stumbled—or seemed to stumble—so that Stone Thrower caught her easily around the waist, swept her up against his chest, and carried her back to their bench piled with furs. Only now she was too busy kissing him to remember to resist.
10
Late March 1777
Schenectady
Outside the tiny house tucked near the eastern stockade, all was cold and scattered snow. Inside its single bedroom a fire blazed, water steamed, and Charlotte Stuhler sweated to bring forth her second babe.
“ ’Tis well—you’re sure?” the laboring woman asked, abed still though a birthing stool awaited the babe’s arrival.
“As I can be,” Lydia said, examining Charlotte between pains. “The babe is positioned. ’Tis only a matter of time.”
Charlotte’s reply was strained with the next building pain. “This one’s…in no hurry…to join us.”
The birth had already lasted much longer than Charlotte’s first. Anna and Lydia had been called before midnight. Dawn was approaching, with possibly hours yet to wait.
Charlotte gripped Anna’s hand through the pain, as Lydia crossed the room to check the water on the hearth. Anna wiped Charlotte’s perspiring brow, then her own, and removed her cap. She caught Lydia’s amused gaze; as a girl she hadn’t been able to keep a cap on her head to save herself. How William had teased…
William. Worry for him harried her thoughts fleetingly before the sound of voices arose beyond the room, where Charlotte’s husband waited with their sleeping son. A knock sounded on the bedroom door. It pushed inward, revealing a stout middle-aged woman, face half-shrouded in a hood. She pushed it back. Still it took Anna a moment to place the woman in this setting—Mrs. Baird, housekeeper for the Kennedys, a wealthy merchant and his expectant wife who lived across town.
“ ’Tis my mistress,” the woman announced, no beating round bushes. “Brought to bed with the latest. Can one of ye come, or shall I see to it meself?”
“Would you?” Lydia asked, straightening at the hearth. Mrs. Baird’s mouth sagged, revealing several missing teeth. Lydia laughed. “I’m not in earnest—though it’s likely to be a quick birth.”
It was Mrs. Kennedy’s fifth.
Lydia beckoned Anna from Charlotte’s side. “Will you go? I should like to remain with Charlotte.” Her eyes conveyed more than her words. She wasn’t as sanguine about Charlotte’s long-progressing labor as she’d tried to appear.
Though they’d discussed her doing so in the near future, Anna had yet to be the sole attending midwife at a birth. “Are you sure? Sure you wouldn’t rather I stay with Charlotte?”
“I’m sure. You’ve your case, yes? Everything you need? I’ll come as soon as I may.” Lydia all but pushed Anna toward Mrs. Baird, hovering in the doorway. “Anna Doyle will attend y
our mistress.”
Anna donned her cloak, took up her medical case, and followed Mrs. Baird’s broad figure out into the cold, through the waking streets to the Kennedys’ large brick home, where the courage she’d gathered during the brisk walk crumbled at the back garden gate, met with the sound of Mrs. Kennedy’s screams.
Three hours later Anna left through that gate more stunned than when she’d entered. She hardly knew the direction her feet carried her from the Kennedy home until she’d arrived—not at her bed, where Lydia had sent her upon hastening from the Stuhlers’, where Charlotte had at last presented her husband with their first daughter. Anna’s brain abuzz with wonder and fatigue, her feet had taken her to the Binne Kill. To Two Hawks.
She found him on the quay, where activity was afoot near the warehouse. Papa conversed nearby with several merchants while Captain Lang oversaw the unloading of three bateaux. The river had opened—barely. The bateaux and a few canoes had hazarded the passage from points upstream. Merchants and townsfolk and river men milled about, giving and receiving news from the western settlements and Fort Stanwix. It was all a blur to Anna. Figures, voices, the cold river. All except Two Hawks, leaving Papa’s side to return to the office.
“Two Hawks!” His name was out, flying ahead of her, before she remembered she ought to have addressed him as Jonathan. Just shy of the office he halted, turning to spot her. Other faces turned as she parted the crowd. At the last moment, she stumbled over a foot in her path and fell against Two Hawks, who caught her and held her upright, strong hands gripping her arms. For an instant she clung to him, then straightened hurriedly, but already she felt the narrowed stares of those nearest them. “I’ve something wonderful to tell you! I’d no idea it would be today, but—”
“We will talk inside, yes?” His voice was strained as, with a hand on her arm, he ushered her into the office, shutting the door behind them. In the silence her ears rang. They both peered through the front office window. Several of the men on the quay were still staring after them, some with distaste, one or two with indignation. She watched Papa catch their attention, drawing them back into conversation. Forcing a smile.
“I tripped. I didn’t mean to—”
“I know.”
“Do they?” she asked, nodding toward the merchants on the quay.
“It will be all right.” It wasn’t an answer, but Two Hawks’s shoulders eased and his gaze warmed, focusing on her. “Look at you, my Bear’s Heart. I cannot say whether you look more in want of sleep or dancing.”
She smiled, putting out of mind what had passed. She reached a hand to her head, realizing she’d left her cap at the Stuhlers’. “Both at once, could I manage it. I must tell you what’s happened.”
“So I left Lydia with Charlotte and went to Mrs. Kennedy and…Oh, she was in such difficulty, I thought I was going to lose them both, mother and babe. It wasn’t her first—her fifth! And never a complication before. But this time the babe was crosswise. I tried to turn it.”
Anna hadn’t stopped talking since they reached the green-paneled sitting room behind the office. Beside Two Hawks on the settee, her words were coming jumbled. She couldn’t stop them, even when Two Hawks, listening wide eyed, attempted to respond.
“Turn it?”
“I’ve helped Lydia do it. But it wouldn’t work. For hours I tried, with the poor woman screaming—”
“Screaming—”
“I wanted to scream. There was nothing more I could do. I’d sent Mrs. Baird for Lydia, but she hadn’t come. Mrs. Kennedy had swooned. I put my hands on her belly and prayed. I don’t know what I prayed. Maybe just God, help because He did! The babe inside her turned. Perfectly.”
“It turned when you prayed?” Two Hawks asked.
“Yes! I felt the baby shift. Then Mrs. Kennedy’s eyes popped open. She raised up and gave this horrible groan and pushed and there was the baby’s head.” Anna laughed, remembering the shout of relief she’d been unable to restrain. “Then it was out of her and crying, and Mrs. Kennedy was crying, and Lydia came in but it was done. It’s a girl—”
She choked suddenly and burst into tears. Then she felt at last what she’d been longing for—Two Hawks’s arms drawing her to his chest, to the strong beat of his heart—and everything was right and perfect as he stroked her back and said, “Bear’s Heart, you have done well.”
She sniffed, blotting tears against his shirt. “God did it. Not me.”
“Would He have done it if you had not called to Him?”
“I don’t know. I’m just so relieved.” She heaved a sigh and sat up, smiling through the tears. “And I’m no longer an apprentice, Lydia says. I’m a midwife.”
He touched her face, sharing her joy. But fresh memory was seeping back in, dimming its radiance.
“I hope I didn’t cause trouble on the quay—between you and Papa.” Nearly four weeks had passed since Two Hawks became Papa’s apprentice. Anna felt as if she’d held her breath the entire stretch, waiting to see how Two Hawks would fare. He was sleeping at the boatyard, doubling as guard, spending his days learning the boat-building craft. There had been no more destruction of Papa’s property. Papa thought the troubling incidents must have been the work of disgruntled Tories. His wasn’t the only Patriot property targeted.
Two Hawks flicked a glance at the doorway. “Maybe not just with him.”
Anna’s bubble of peace burst, leaving her with a dizzying, sinking feeling. She closed her eyes, trying to order her thoughts, but her mind swirled with exhaustion. “You’re William’s twin. And you’re Oneida. Your people are friends to…” When she opened her eyes, Two Hawks was shaking his head, what looked like amusement tugging at his mouth. “You laugh at me? Why?”
He put a hand over her lips to silence her. “I am not laughing. I am pleased because that is your heart for me talking and I like what it says. But listen. What do you think most whites see when they look at me? An Oneida? A friend? No, the first thing they see is Indian. Even with these clothes that is what they see. And they are afraid or angry. Bear’s Heart, this is a thing we will face for the rest of our days.”
For the rest of our days. His words sent her thoughts spiraling in too many directions to grasp them all. She caught the trailing edge of the one that held her hope. “Does that mean Papa’s pleased with your work? That you’ll be staying?”
“He has not said, but I think so. And there is something I did not expect.”
“What is that?”
“I did not know how much I would like this work with wood.” He hesitated, his expression awash in a shy pride. “I am good at it.”
Was he telling her the truth or only what she wanted to hear? But Two Hawks had never done that. He was honest, even when it hurt to be.
“Mmm,” Anna replied, too happy now for words. Too tired for them. She lay her head against the settee’s back and was startled when her chin jerked upright. She opened her eyes to find Two Hawks sitting quietly, watching her with a look so tender she longed for him to take her in his arms.
“Even asleep you glow like a flame,” he said. “It is good to see you happy.”
Two Hawks brushed his fingertips against her cheek, then grasped her hand and pulled her to her feet. “You should go to your bed.” He drew her close, though their bodies didn’t touch, and kissed her forehead gently.
“All right,” she said. “But will you come for supper this evening? I’ll ask Papa too.”
“I will come if your father allows. Now go. I must work, and you sleep.”
Neither had so much as uttered Anna’s name the past few hours, yet the tension in the workshop was as thick as if she stood between them. Reginald couldn’t banish the sight of his daughter embracing the young man now planing a steering sweep on the other side of the half-planked bateau set up on the stocks. She’d stumbled and fallen against him, but not everyone had seen that. Nor could he forget the cold blade that sliced through his vitals at the looks cast at the pair on the quay.
At least the lad had possessed the sense to lead her indoors. While that had served to help Reginald distract the attention of the men to whom he’d been speaking, he was finding no comfort in the memory now. How long had it been, those moments between their vanishing into the office together and Anna emerging alone? Ten minutes? Fifteen? When she’d appeared at his side, he’d broken off a conversation to hear her happy news and supper invitation. Pride in her still suffused him, though it was tainted with suspicion. Dread. Did she know what she was doing to her reputation? Not with the midwifery, but with her patent attachment to William’s brother, who looked too Indian for anyone’s good.
Reginald stood back from the plank he’d been shaping, bringing that dark head into view between the curving frames of the bateau’s sides. The young man’s aptitude for the work had surprised Reginald. Already he was moving beyond basic carpentry skills, grasping the finer aspects of the craft with a readiness that betrayed the spark of passion Reginald had hoped to strike in William.
He is the same blood as William.
Reginald clenched his teeth against the conviction that he’d no right to tell the lad what he should or shouldn’t hope for, with Anna or anything else. He’d come to Reginald, placed himself under his authority of his own free will. That gave him some right, did it not? Besides, whatever else Reginald had forfeited, he was still the only father Anna had. He had every right to concern himself with her well-being. Her behavior. Her attachments.
He broke the silence. “So Anna is a midwife proper now, and we are celebrating this evening. I suppose she told you?”
The scraping ceased. Jonathan turned, regarding him through the bateau’s frame. No defiance marked him—unlike Reginald’s last sight of features so eerily similar.