A Flight of Arrows

by Lori Benton

  The bench beneath her was solid, but Anna felt insubstantial, a feather that might float away on the merest breeze. “Oh, William…and Two Hawks wasn’t able to speak to him? How wrenching hard that must have been.” It wrenched her heart.

  “Yes,” Lydia said, though her smile blazed wide. “And there’s more. Two Hawks told Clear Day to tell you he hasn’t forgotten the words you spoke at your parting.” Lydia searched her face, as if those words might be readable there. “He said he’ll find the way to Reginald’s heart if he must fight through a hundred redcoats to do so. He’ll find William again.”

  Almost Anna felt joy. Two Hawks lived. He remembered. But he still wanted to please Papa. To make him happy. “I cannot now take you from him, only leave you to mend what is broken.” Those were some of the parting words Two Hawks professed to remember. Mend what is broken.

  Her face felt cold, stiff as clay. “I want to see Clear Day. Talk to him myself. Now.”

  Lydia’s smile faltered at her bitten-off tone. “I knew you would. That’s why I’ve been looking for you, so we can go to him together.”

  “No, Lydia. I’ll go alone. I’ve waited, you see. For a guide.” Anna rose, steadied herself with a grip on the table’s edge, and headed for the dining room. “Someone to take me to Kanowalohale. Clear Day can do it.”

  She needn’t pack much. Kanowalohale wasn’t too long a journey. A couple of days afoot was the impression she’d had from Two Hawks. But he was swift and could run for miles. Perhaps if she took William’s horse…

  She was halfway through the dining room when Lydia caught her up. “Anna, wait.”

  She whirled, fury spitting from her like sparks. “No! I’m beyond sick of waiting. I want William found, and I’m relieved he’s alive, but I don’t want him back at the cost of Two Hawks’s life. I must find him, tell him he doesn’t need to risk his neck finding William in order to have me. I’m giving myself away—without a by-your-leave from Papa or anyone else.”

  She made for the stairs. Lydia’s footsteps dogged her. “Anna, no. Don’t do that to your father. He—”

  Anna turned on her at the bottom stair. “I don’t care! Don’t you understand that?”

  Lydia flinched back. “Don’t care?”

  “I don’t care about pleasing Papa, or clearing the path to his heart, or whatever it is everyone thinks he needs.” She heard her voice, brittle, full of rage. From a distance, it seemed, she watched herself spew up the darkness that had long filled her. A spurting wound. “He doesn’t deserve to have it cleared. He’s the cause of it, all the grief and pain we’ve endured. Let him stew in it if that’s what he wants!”

  “Anna Catherine Doyle, do you even hear yourself?” Lydia’s face grew stern in a way Anna had never seen. A fire lit her eyes as she drew her small person up straight. “You need to forgive your father.”

  “Forgive him? He’s the one who stole a baby. He’s the one who lied and deceived and destroyed William. He’s the one who couldn’t bring himself to treat Two Hawks like the son he tried to force William to be. He’s the one who—”

  “Aubrey did not start you in the womb of your mother, but he gave you life, risking his own for yours.” Two Hawks’s words echoed like a crack of thunder in her bones. “Even if Creator did not bid us honor our parents, for that alone I would honor him in my heart.”

  Anna nearly choked as her voice broke. “He’s the one who didn’t let me die on that wilderness road!”

  Lydia had gone as pale as bleached linen. “Oh no,” she said, reaching for her. “No, no, no. Don’t ever say that.”

  But it was true. It would have been better had she died a baby. Never known such pain. Anna drew back, opening her mouth to say so, but all that came out was a wail. She covered her face with her hands, unable to bear the sight of Lydia’s devastated gaze. Still she could see another pair of eyes, dark and beautiful and piercing her with their disappointment. She groaned, stricken and convicted.

  “What will Two Hawks say to me? He bade me mend what was broken between us, me and Papa. Oh, what will he say?”

  “Life is blessing, but it is also testing. Take the one as you do the other and trust Him who allows all.” She’d promised to do so and utterly failed.

  “Oh, my girl.” Lydia’s arms were around her, hot and pressing. “More importantly, what is God saying to you about it?”

  She stood stiff in Lydia’s embrace, gutted by the sudden absence of anger, the withering of the root within. Desolate without it. Its strength had kept her going, even as it devoured her from inside.

  “That I need to repent,” she got out at last, the barest whisper.

  Lydia held her tight. “Then do so. It’s never too late to be obedient to the Almighty, not while you still draw breath. You’re breathing, aren’t you?”

  Anna sucked in a shuddering lungful of air, then wilted onto the stairs, hands over her face. “I wanted Papa to be first. I’ve waited and waited. But it’s going to have to be me, isn’t it? I have to forgive him. I have to honor him.”

  Two Hawks had understood. Papa’s failings didn’t exempt her from doing what she knew was right. She lifted her head. Lydia was on the stair beside her, face streaked with tears, eyes alive again with hope. “There’s my girl…my beautiful, brave girl. Oh, how I’ve missed you!”

  It was too warm in the house to cling to one another in anything resembling comfort, but Anna needed a different sort of comfort, that of a mother, which Lydia had always been to her.

  She also needed her father. Needed to restore him to his rightful place in her heart, for him to know he was restored. She pulled herself up straight, knowing she had to act, and fast. “I still want to talk to Clear Day, but can we go and see Papa. Right now?”

  Lydia bit her lip, then gave her the unreserved smile Anna adored.

  “Clear Day doesn’t strike me as one to beat around bushes. We’d best hurry. Let’s wash our faces and go.”

  These things I have said are hard things to hear—but listen, I am going to say more. I am going to tell you another story about that warrior whose son was taken, which is the same story told from the other side. It is like a basket, these two stories that weave together to make a whole, seen and unseen. I am going to tell you the unseen story now.

  Through all the bad that came of what the redcoat did to that warrior and his wife, and the son not taken, Creator was not looking aside as though He did not see. He was busy in it, all the while weaving good things out of it. For when that warrior left his home and went away, he went to a People the missionary had known before—the Senecas—a few of whom had chosen to follow a Jesus path through life. Among them this warrior finally stopped running from his Father in Heaven. He let his heart be caught and broken by the crushing of sin. Not the sin of that redcoat. His own sin. That warrior cried out for forgiveness, and at last in his heart the Great Healing began.

  Had all these bad things not come to him, to wound and to rob, would he have softened his heart to the missionary’s God? Who can say? I am only telling you the story of what happened, how that warrior became a man again, one whose wife could without shame claim him as her husband. A man a son could respect and follow.

  Even so, while they waited for their lost son to return from that far land where he had gone for white man’s learning, the warrior struggled with a hard thing Creator asked of him—forgiving the redcoat for the thing he had done. But now the warrior had weapons to fight that battle, which he had come to see was not against the redcoat after all but against his own sinful nature, and against the one who is enemy to us all. Those weapons were these: truth like a girding sash; righteousness like leather across the chest; peace like moccasins for feet to walk in; faith like a shield to protect a family; eternal saving a covering for the head.

  Word came at last that the lost son had returned to the land of his birth. It was time to face the redcoat, to show everyone who worried about it whether that warrior had given his whole heart to Creator or had held som
e of it back. But he held nothing back. Though wounded and bleeding, he gave the white shell beads to the redcoat, along with his pledge of peace.

  Now here is a thing worth thinking on. That warrior believed he was setting the redcoat free in forgiving him the great wrong done his family, but it was himself he set free. Where once in him was hatred, leading him like a rope around the neck, now there was compassion, even though the lost son, when he learned the truth of who he was, ran from them all in despair and anger at this great betrayal. This has been a sorrow in many hearts, but Creator is still watching. Still working. He is still telling that warrior’s story, and the story of all of us.

  24

  July 27, 1777

  Schenectady

  From house to quay, Anna in tow, Lydia prayed. With the Indian in her kitchen, so earnest with purpose, she’d been certain his arrival and the news he carried to Reginald was of the Almighty’s orchestration. About to face its result, she was reaching for trust and hurrying her steps.

  A breeze wafted off the river to meet them. On the quay the usual figures milled—bateau pilots and crew, merchants’ apprentices shifting cargo into storehouses or away into town. There was the usual barrels, goods, and coiled rope to navigate. She and Anna wove a path through it all, and there at last was Reginald’s office…and Reginald, shutting the door. He took up a knapsack lying at his feet and made for a canoe moored nearby.

  Of Clear Day there was no sign.

  With a steadiness she didn’t feel, Lydia raised her voice. “Reginald? Where are you going?”

  He’d dropped the knapsack into the canoe but pivoted at his name to see them coming.

  “Papa!” Anna ran the last few yards and threw herself into her father’s arms. The impact rocked him backward, nearly sending both off the quay into the river before they caught their balance. Lydia could hear the girl’s words muffled against the shoulder of Reginald’s summer coat. “Papa, I’m sorry. I’ve been so—”

  “There, my girl. I was going to come find you—”

  Anna pulled back, slender waist encircled by her father’s arms, gazing tearfully into his face. “You were?”

  Reginald tucked his chin to smile at her even as emotions contrary to joy played over his face. Sorrow. Regret. Contrition. Lydia’s heart leapt with renewed hope. Perhaps he was only headed to the farm…

  “I was coming to tell you,” Reginald said. “I must leave the pair of you to one another’s care.”

  “What?” Hope dashed, Lydia drew near.

  Anna stepped back from her father’s grasp, tear-stained face bewildered. “Where are you going? After William?”

  “You’ve had the news then?” he asked, fixing Lydia with blue-gray eyes that burned with purpose. With need.

  “Two Hawks saw him at Oswego. Clear Day told me, and I’ve told Anna, but Reginald—”

  He held up a hand to stop her. “Lydia, you and the others dissuaded me from seeking William last autumn, but not again. Not this time. I’m going upriver, see, and there is nothing you can say to prevent me.”

  The words, though spoken without rancor, struck Lydia silent.

  Not so Anna. “Alone, Papa? But you promised Stone Thrower you wouldn’t.”

  “I did, and I’ll make good on my promise if I can. Stone Thrower is scouting out of Fort Stanwix, so that is where I’m bound, in hope of finding him there. But with you, Anna, I must make peace ere I go. For I mean also to look for Two Hawks, should you wish me to do so.”

  At the mention of her beloved’s name, light infused Anna’s countenance. “Papa, yes. Please! But what will you say if you find him?”

  Reginald raised his hand to her face, brushing away a tear with his thumb. “That I judged him too harshly. That he is welcome back as my apprentice. Will you forgive me, my girl, for the way I treated him, and you, these past months?”

  With a wondering glance at Lydia, Anna said, “I was coming to tell you that very thing. That I forgive you. And to ask the same of you. When Two Hawks left, he bid me mend what was broken between us, and I didn’t do it. I didn’t even try. I’m sorry.”

  “There, ’tis all right now. But…it is a grave disservice I’ve done that young man.” Reginald drew Anna to him, kissed her brow, murmured words too soft for Lydia to hear. Against his shoulder Anna’s capped head nodded.

  They stood thus—her loves—reconciled at last as she had so long prayed, and a warmth of relief encompassed the ache of confusion forming round this precipitous departure. Confusion and…something darker. That shadow again.

  Then Reginald put Anna from him and looked at Lydia.

  Which of them took the final steps, Lydia would never remember, only that suddenly they stood touching, hands to arms, and there was none in the world but they two. No voices on the quay. No crew unloading that solitary bateau. Not even Anna.

  “There is…I mean to say…Lydia—” An expression of almost comical helplessness overcame him, then a longing as raw as it was old. Abandoning words, Reginald kissed her.

  Lydia was left dazed, flushed from more than heat. Their gazes held, his tender and questioning.

  “Reginald,” she finally managed, voice coming breathless. “What, exactly, did Clear Day say to you?”

  Indecision warred with the tenderness in Reginald’s gaze. “He told me about William.”

  “That is all?”

  “He…No, that is not all. But there is no time to tell you of it now. Only, Lydia, I could not leave things between us as they have been.” His gaze found Anna again. “With either of you. But now we’ve spoken and I must go. I intend to overtake the bateaux brigade that left yesterday, so I’ll not travel the river alone.”

  Lydia’s mind felt sluggish in the heat, her heart beating hard with…dread. “Reginald, if you find Stone Thrower, what then? Do you plan to take on the British army, the two of you, to get to William?”

  This was what she’d feared to find when she reached the Binne Kill. But could this driving need to find Stone Thrower be of the Almighty’s leading? Or was it born of that same stubborn need to set right twenty years of wrong? What had the old Indian said to Reginald, apart from the news about William?

  “Reginald, where is Clear Day?”

  “On his way to the farm. I asked him to travel with me on the river. He said he didn’t come alone.”

  “He told me he did—come alone, I mean.”

  “Into Schenectady, yes. Someone awaits him in the woods near the farm.”

  “Two Hawks?” Anna broke in eagerly.

  Reginald shook his head. “He didn’t say it was Two Hawks. I sent Clear Day with a letter for Rowan to provision him with anything needed for the journey home, including another horse.”

  Anna stepped closer, her hand to her father’s sleeve. “Papa…what about us, Two Hawks and me? He’s set on risking his life to find William so he—so you…”

  Reginald covered her hand with his. “Let it be enough to know that if he will give our former arrangement—and me—another chance, then he has my blessing to court you. Only be sure, my heart. Is this what you truly want?”

  “It is. But Two Hawks needs to know we’ve your blessing.” Anna clasped his arm. “Let me come with you.”

  Lydia nearly heeded the unbidden need to grab his other arm and underscore the plea but saw it would be useless.

  Reginald firmed his mouth. “No, Anna. I cannot go without knowing you are safe out of whatever trouble is building in the west.” He turned to Lydia, his gaze direct, tender still, beseeching. “You will keep her with you?”

  She could no more deny him than deny the sun its right to rise; even so the words came dry as husks. “She’ll not leave my side.”

  Anna’s eyes were eloquent with dismay. “Papa, please.”

  “Hush, my girl,” Reginald said, his hand rising to cup Anna’s cheek. “You shall stay, and I shall go, and that is settled.”

  Anna nodded, but in her eyes Lydia saw her own thoughts reflected. Nothing about this situati
on was settled.

  Reginald didn’t see what Lydia saw, or else he chose not to see it. “Now I must away. Watch over each other. Send to Rowan if you’ve need.”

  They stood and watched him climb into the canoe. With a paddle he pushed off from the quay and began the journey upriver against the sluggish summer current. Lydia didn’t look away, unable to quell the thought that it might be the last sight of him she’d ever—

  No. A chill was creeping up from her hands, spreading inward toward her heart. Beside her Anna cried—she could hear her sniffling—but not until Reginald was no longer in view did Lydia turn.

  When Anna glimpsed her face, her expression sharpened in fresh concern. “Lydia? What is it?”

  “I don’t know.” Lydia gave her head a shake but failed to dislodge that sense of foreboding. “Honestly, I don’t. A feeling, is all.”

  “Not a good one.” Anna clasped her wrist. “And I see you want to go after Papa. Well, let’s do so.”

  “Go after him?” Lydia replied.

  “Not after him, exactly. Clear Day cannot be far ahead of us. Let’s catch him up, go with him to Kanowalohale. What if Two Hawks is there with Good Voice, not at the fort? Papa won’t be going to their town. We can.”

  Urgency vibrated from Anna’s slender frame, catching like contagion. A giddy sense of hurry stirred beneath Lydia’s ribs. They wouldn’t be venturing alone, not if they found Clear Day in time, and she could see that Anna was determined to try, with or without her.

  She drew a steadying breath beneath her stays. “I just promised Reginald to keep you safe.”

  “You promised to keep me by your side,” Anna countered. “If we do this together, then I’ll be beside you. The whole way.”

  “Anna…the British aren’t gathered at Oswego to enjoy a summer by the lake. We’d be headed straight for them.”