by Lori Benton
“She was full with her joy. Creator did a wonder for her. For the mother and babe.”
“A wonder? Nothing she hasn’t done with Lydia for years now.”
“She did not tell you how Heavenly Father turned the babe in the belly of that mother, when it seemed they both would die?”
Anna hadn’t told him that. Granted he’d been distracted when she approached him, his attention demanded by work. Perhaps she’d meant to tell him over supper. “That’s what the pair of you were doing? Speaking of such things?” Doubt laced his tone.
“I will tell Anna Catherine she must take more care in front of others.”
The unexpected words, in answer to the question he hadn’t asked, lanced to the heart of what was troubling Reginald. He met the dark gaze fronting him across the bateau. There was no challenge in it. Neither was there flinching.
“Only for watching eyes?”
The lad set the sweep aside and stood. “I have made my promise to her, and to Creator, not to take what is not mine for taking. I make it now to you as well. But on that day I have your blessing, I wish to make Anna Catherine my wife.”
Reginald felt the blood leave his face. His next words ground out of him. “Is she worth it to you? Have you counted the cost?”
Two Hawks did not look away. “I have counted what we would face from the people of this place. Not all of them. But some. I have counted what I would leave behind—my place as a warrior and protector of the People. I have counted that my children will be of no clan down all the generations that come after me. These things I have counted, but still my heart is full with Anna Catherine.”
Reginald felt sick. “And has Anna made a like accounting?”
A flash in the dark eyes. If it was anger, the lad spoke with unshaken calm. “Should you accept me as her husband, still I would not take Anna Catherine as wife unless she had done this counting for herself. For us to have a life together will take much courage, for her as well as for me. This,” he made a motion of his hand at the bateau, the tools, the wood scattered about, “is the time of counting for her. And for you.”
The lad put Reginald in mind of Lydia, who often disconcerted him with her honesty. And he was right about one thing. Should Two Hawks do everything possible to live as Jonathan, a white man, he would never be accepted as such by some. Reginald had heard him called half-breed in the town. And worse. Fear and hatred of Indians ran deep in the valley. He once knew it himself, though he’d learned to see past it, at least in his dealings upriver with the Six Nations and those Indians who came through Schenectady to do their trading.
But this was Anna. Her life. Her heart. Was she prepared to live with the costs this young man envisioned?
He rounded the bateau, leaving no barrier between them. He halted a pace too close, but William’s twin didn’t step back.
“Enough of this,” he snapped. “There is work needing done.”
Jonathan’s jaw hardened, but he nodded and made to return to his work on the sweep.
Reginald didn’t think he could bear the sight of him just now. “Fetch Captain Lang for me. I need to speak with him.”
William’s twin brushed at the wood shavings on his borrowed shirt and went to do Reginald’s bidding, leaving him smarting at his own craven longing for the impossible. That it could be William working beside him, never knowing what manner of man he called father. He wished he’d never agreed to Stone Thrower’s demand of sharing the burden of finding William. The lad’s defection was a constant, condemning lash across his heart.
Reginald went back to setting planks for a time before realizing his apprentice hadn’t returned from the quay. He’d made up his mind to go in search of Lang himself when he heard the office door bang open and the captain’s voice shouting down the passage.
“Major, you had better get out here!”
11
Groggy from her nap, Anna halted in surprise at the pantry alcove at the back of the kitchen. Occupying half the space was an astonishing sight—a bathing tub, wood framed and copper lined. Occupying the tub, submerged to her neck, was Lydia, head lolling back against the tub’s curved head.
“Lydia? Where on earth did that come from?”
Cheeks flushed a rosy shade, Lydia peered through the steam rising from the water’s placid surface. “This, my girl, is all your doing.”
“What do you mean my doing?”
Though her hair was pinned high, steam had curled tendrils about Lydia’s face, making her look nearer Anna’s age than a woman in her early thirties. “A certain Mr. Kennedy insisted on showing his gratitude for the life of his newest daughter and his wife by passing along this glorious contraption. I suppose I should have let you try it first, but you slept through its delivery and I hadn’t the heart to wake you.” Grinning impishly she added, “So I told myself.”
Water sloshed as Lydia made to rise. Anna snatched up a waiting towel and held it wide, doubling as a curtain.
“I suppose we’ll need to hang a drape.” Lydia wrapped herself as she exited the tub.
Anna busied herself scanning pantry shelves, debating what to fix for supper. When she turned, Lydia had donned a wrapper. “Perhaps a rug would be a welcome addition,” she said, as Lydia’s feet did a little dance on the chilly stones.
“That’s the spirit.” Still damp around the edges and warm from the bath, Lydia reached to embrace Anna. “Congratulations—and thank you for this,” she added, with a rap of knuckles on the tub’s edge. “Though it did take a prodigious lot of hauling and heating water to fill it.”
“Then it shan’t be a daily affair,” Anna said.
“Lovely for a treat, though. If you’d like, I’ll see to supper while you—” A banging on the front door silenced Lydia, who gestured at the shift, stays, and petticoat draped over the bench, brows arching in half-apologetic amusement.
“I’ll see who it is.” Anna hurried through the house to the front door, which banged open as she reached it, causing her to leap back in surprise, even as she saw that it was Papa and Captain Lang, supporting a sagging figure between them. A man, dark haired and lean, drenched and reeking of mud as though he’d been in the river. His head drooped, presenting her only its sodden, muddy crown.
Papa’s voice was strained. “Where is Lydia?”
“I…She…Bring him in, Papa. Who is it? What happened?”
Rousing to her voice, the man Papa and Captain Lang supported lifted his head, showing her a face so bruised and swollen, it took her a span of clutching heartbeats to recognize Two Hawks.
A fire warmed the room at the foot of the stairs where years ago Reginald Aubrey had convalesced in the McClarens’ spare bed. In that bed Two Hawks now lay, drifting in and out of awareness. Anna occupied a chair at his bedside, clearly with no intention of budging from the spot should the rest of Schenectady come pounding on the door in need.
With a basin to empty, Lydia left the door ajar and stepped into the passage. She found Reginald sitting alone in the kitchen. Lydia set the basin with its red-stained contents on the table. “He’s patched as well as can be,” she said in answer to Reginald’s querying look. “Anna’s with him. Now—what on earth happened to your apprentice?”
Reginald winced at her words. “That is a story only he can tell.”
“Obviously someone—several someones—gave him a thrashing and tossed him into the river like a sack of kittens. What I want to know is why?”
Lydia was nearly as angry as Anna had been since her first sight of Two Hawks being dragged, battered and dripping, into the house. With lips clenched and bloodless, Anna had ministered to her beloved’s abused flesh, jealous for the task of stripping off the sopping clothes, washing away the blood and mud, while Lydia had assessed his injuries.
His beautiful face. Though a shocking sight presently, Lydia had assured Anna he’d probably heal without disfigurement. There were no deep lacerations. No broken teeth or facial bones. Perhaps a cracked rib beneath the welter of bruisi
ng on his torso. Fists had done the work, not weapons, except for the nasty scalp wound that had required stitches to close.
Now she’d time to think beyond the immediate crisis, the implication of that wound sent a chill down Lydia’s spine. “Did someone mean to scalp him?”
“No. Surely…” Reginald rubbed a hand over his face. “Honestly, Lydia, I don’t know. We’d had words over Anna, see, and I wanted him out of my sight. I sent him to the quay to fetch Ephraim. He was overlong at it. I was about to go looking when Ephraim came shouting for me. He’d found Jonathan lying half in the Binne Kill—beaten as you’ve seen. And that is all I know.”
Reginald shuddered; despite his words there was more. Lydia sat across from him, the languor of that glorious bath long vanished.
“What is it?”
“Something happened on the quay outside my office. Anna came to us after that birthing this morn. She called him by his Oneida name, in front of listening ears.”
“Well? ’Tis no secret he’s Oneida.”
“Let me finish,” Reginald said. “She called to him and then…it seemed she stumbled, tripped I suppose, but she landed square in his arms—with all the quayside looking on. If only she had taken more care.”
Lydia felt a sinking of heart, a stirring of unease. “She loves him, Reginald. She wanted to share her happiness. And no doubt she was exhausted. It was an accident.”
Reginald’s fists clenched on the table. “Accident or no, it will not do. Can you not see? She is blind to the shade of his skin, but I cannot be. Not when there are those around us who will never be so blind.”
Lydia pressed her fingertips to her throbbing temples, hating this.
“The lad had the sense to put her from him,” Reginald went on. “Or perhaps it was Anna’s doing. ’Twas over in an instant, and I hoped nothing would come of it. But what else could have provoked such an attack? The lad has kept to himself, done his work, made no enemies in this—”
Reginald’s gaze shot past Lydia, sharpening before Anna’s voice cut in, as hard and cold as Lydia had ever heard it.
“They weren’t his enemies, Papa. They were yours!”
Turning to see her—tall and slender in the doorway, hair mussed, face white and set—Lydia rose to her feet, placing herself between the two. “Reginald’s enemies? What do you mean?”
“I mean that what happened to Two Hawks had nothing to do with us. He’s told me.” Anna didn’t take her gaze from Reginald, an accusing look Lydia knew must be breaking his heart. It was breaking hers. “He went as you sent him, Papa, to fetch Captain Lang. As he was passing your bateau on the stocks outside, he heard noises. He found three men setting fire to your boats. More Tory sympathizers, no doubt, trying to stop you building bateaux for the Continentals. Two Hawks stopped the fire’s catching, but instead of fleeing, they caught him—and beat him!” Tears flowed, choking her voice. “Why did no one stop them? Didn’t anyone see?”
Reginald was on his feet, expression pained. “Someone may have seen.”
“And gave no aid? Why?”
Reginald took a step toward his daughter and stopped. Lydia hadn’t seen such vulnerability on his face since the summer past, when he knelt before Stone Thrower in a clearing at sunset, expecting to die. “You know full well it is because he is an Indian.”
Anna’s nostrils flared. “He’s William’s twin. Hasn’t anyone eyes to see that? They’d never have done such a thing to William.”
“They thought William my son. There is no knowing what would happen now the truth—”
“Then never mind William. If you would just accept Jonathan, accept us, others would follow your lead. Your resentment is making it harder. You make it harder.”
Reginald’s mouth firmed. “No one said this arrangement would be easy, or safe. Anna, look you…” He started toward her again, but her rigid stance held him off.
Reginald, Lydia silently pleaded, tell her what she needs to hear. Even if you cannot promise to soften your heart, at least be sorry for it.
Reginald stood there unbending, inscrutable, and so Lydia did what was probably the worst thing she could have done—blindly wielded the scalpel of her own words, hoping nothing vital would be nicked. “Anna, ’tis more complicated than that. That’s what your father is trying to say. Choosing Two Hawks, marrying him…It won’t be an easy path for either of you.”
Anna turned wounded eyes to her. Her slender throat convulsed as she raised her chin. “I wanted to tell you both what happened. I’m going back to him now.”
She pivoted on her heel and left them without another word.
Reginald didn’t go after her.
Lydia hugged her arms to her chest, as if to hold together the pieces breaking inside her. Disappointment wrapped her tighter—disappointment in Anna, in Reginald, in the whole of mankind. Most of all in herself. How often in the past had she found a path through tangled hurts with her words? Blunt, honest, brave words. They had deserted her.
Reginald stood there in his misery, cut off from his daughter, from her. As he’d always been in the deep places of his heart. She’d never seen that as clearly as she did now.
“Reginald, there will be no supper tonight, and it will be some days before your apprentice can resume work. I suggest you go back to the shop or home. Leave us—him—to heal.”
They’d stripped him to his chilled skin while he lay unconscious, needing to assess his injuries as quickly as they could. Anna grieved over the sight of him. She had wanted Two Hawks in her world. She had pressed for the apprenticeship. She had drawn unwanted attention on the quay. What if Papa was right? What if her carelessness had caused some of those men to devise this hurt? How could God, in the span of a few hours, answer a desperate prayer with a miracle, then allow her to do something so unforgivably stupid?
Two Hawks had refused more than a bark tea for his ease, still he slept again, brows pinched, pain etched on his battered face. The quilt was pulled to his waist now. Sitting in a chair drawn close, Anna studied every uncovered inch of him, imagining the fists that had struck him—eyes, mouth, arms, belly. Then, as he’d fought back with strength and skill, someone had produced a knife…
She winced at the gash across the front of his scalp, running from just below the crown of his head nearly to his left ear. The hair surrounding it was shaved away, the red line of the wound bisected by Lydia’s neat stitches.
They hadn’t thrown him in the Binne Kill. He’d gone in to escape his attackers, swimming underwater and hiding in thick cattail growth until the men left him for drowned. Shivering and bleeding, he’d tried to get ashore. It was all he remembered until looking up into her horrified face.
He’d taken long to warm. The room was verging on hot now, but she would keep that fire going. Whatever it took for him to heal. She started to touch his face, but there was no place that didn’t look too tender. Instead she slipped her fingers beneath his hand, resting at his side. His knuckles were badly scored.
The touch awakened him. His eyes opened, mere slits in swollen, discolored flesh, yet the pain in them went so deep, she felt she was falling down a well into his soul. Afraid to cause him more harm by raising his hand, she bent and pressed her lips to the back of it, tasting tears. “I’m sorry. So sorry.” Besides the snap of the fire, silence was the only reply. She raised her head, wondering if he’d fallen unconscious again. He was looking at her.
“Anna Catherine.” His cut, swollen lips barely moved over her name. “Do you still want me?”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Are you certain this is the life you want?”
Her stomach gave a lurch of dismay. “Two Hawks…what happened today, surely it won’t happen again. Maybe Papa’s right. Maybe this was my fault. I’ll be more careful. I promise I will. I’m so sorry.”
That steady gaze was hard to bear, harder still to read.
“It is bad…how I look?”
“Yes.” She wouldn’t lie to him. “But
nothing that won’t heal in time. Lydia’s sure of it, and so am I. You’ve some broken ribs. You’ll be in this bed for a time. But I’ll be right here all the while.”
He shifted on the bed, sucked in a breath, and went still. “Aubrey will let you care for me?”
“He hasn’t a say in it!”
“Anna,” Two Hawks began. She could see he was growing weary, expending precious energy in speaking. “He is finding his way. Be patient. It is you and me…”
Her throat ached. “What about us?”
“No clothes, or work, or name will change my skin.”
Anna let go his hand and sat back. She didn’t want to hear these words of Papa’s coming out of Two Hawks’s mouth, giving them the weight of validity. She leaned close again, fingers spread across his chest where the bruising was lightest. “If it’s going to be this hard for us here, then take me to your people. Where and how we live doesn’t matter. Only that we’re together.”
Her heart beat wildly at what she’d heard herself offer.
Two Hawks reached for her hand but only brushed it with his. Instead of the pleasure she’d hoped to see, a distance came into his eyes. “A man goes to live with his wife’s people. That is part of being Onyota’a:ka. I will need to change much, and I am willing. But not everything. Not that.”
“All right.” She thought desperately, seeking a way. The image of his mother, Good Voice, sprang to mind. “Then help me get a new family. Is there someone who would adopt me, someone of a different clan, so we can marry? Clear Day—he’s not Turtle Clan, is he?”
“He is Bear Clan.” Two Hawks’s eyebrows twitched. “You would do this?”
“To be with you? Yes.” She laughed through her tears, but Two Hawks didn’t even smile. He only looked at her, dark eyes searching her face. “Did you hear me? I said I would.”
Still he didn’t answer. He closed his slitted eyes and turned his battered face away, as if sleep had claimed him. But she was almost certain it hadn’t.