by Lori Benton
Two Hawks was abashed at his impatience—and for not thinking of his mother. He was thinking of her now, wishing she could share this moment. He reached across his brother’s chest and took Strikes-The-Water by the arm. “My father speaks true. You have done much for us.”
She nodded stiffly, accepting his words. He was withdrawing his hand when William’s shot up and grasped it.
Two Hawks stared into his brother’s eyes, startled at how like their mother’s they were, though he’d known this to be so. But these were not painted eyes, tiny soulless chips of blue, but living eyes looking at him, looking through pain and fear and seeing him.
“Brother,” Two Hawks said, glad to find his English hadn’t deserted him. “Do you know me?”
For a stretching moment, their gazes locked, then William’s flicked over Two Hawks’s features, showing his thoughts clear to read. Doubt. Uncertainty. Recognition. “You. Anna called you…Two Hawks?”
Two Hawks let his breath out in a rush, unaware he’d been holding it. “That is my name. I am also called Jonathan. Did she tell you so?”
His brother’s eyelids squeezed tight, but the strong chin with its scanty dark stubble—little more than Two Hawks’s own—moved gingerly in the faintest of nods. “She tried to.”
Was that regret in the strained and suffering voice? Did his brother want to know them now? Two Hawks wavered but a moment, then decided he didn’t care what his brother wanted. They wanted it, his family.
“And here is our father, Caleb, also called Stone Thrower. Open your eyes, Brother, and look at him.”
It came out a challenge. Perhaps his brother heard it so. His brows pulled tight as though he summoned courage, then he opened his eyes and looked at their father, who had tears running down his cheeks. William got his elbows under him and pushed himself up to sitting. He swayed as if he would fall back again.
Three sets of hands reached for him, but Stone Thrower’s found him first. William slumped against their father, who started to wrap him in strong arms, then stopped himself, took him by the shoulders, and held him steady. Their father wore a look of vulnerability such as Two Hawks had never seen.
“My heart is full with praise to Creator for this moment. I have waited long to say a thing to you…my son.” Stone Thrower’s strong throat worked as he swallowed. “I ask you to forgive me.”
William’s brows tightened again. Confusion and wariness marked his features. “Forgive you?”
“For not being strong enough to fight off those redcoats who took your mother,” Stone Thrower said, looking into the face of his firstborn, “and you and your brother unborn, into that fort and kept you there, so that I was not by to protect you when you needed me.”
Looking rattled and pale, William glanced aside at Two Hawks. He looked again at their father but didn’t give him the answer he sought. Instead he took in the lodge beyond their small circle. “You brought me out of the battle,” he said. “To where?”
“Oriska,” Stone Thrower said, voice still gruff with emotion. “Many wounded are here.”
“Herkimer’s men and our warriors,” Two Hawks added, trying to deny the hard knot of impatience rising up. He lowered his voice, though he spoke in English, which not all in that lodge could understand. “They do not know what side you fought for.”
William glanced at the turned coat lying in a grubby heap nearby. Distaste was in the look. “And my mother? Is she here?”
Two Hawks felt glad at this question, but before he could answer, Strikes-The-Water said in her broken English, “She at Kanowalohale. With others you know. That one, your sister. And other, black hair.”
William blinked, clearly confused by this. Then understanding, and alarm, cleared his gaze. “Anna…Lydia. Here in the west? How come they to be?”
“Woman not always stay home when danger comes to her people,” Strikes-The-Water replied and smiled again at his brother. She had captured William’s attention fully now. Two Hawks felt impatience brewing again. He looked to his father.
“Will you do a thing for me?” Stone Thrower said to Strikes-The-Water before the girl could say anything more to William. “Will you go to Kanowalohale and bring my wife and her guests to Oriska?”
The swift thundercloud that moved across Strikes-The-Water’s face portended a storm of protest.
“It is for my brother you would do this.” Two Hawks had spoken in Oneida, so William couldn’t know why Strikes-The-Water looked at him now as she did, but the softening in her face was telling. At least to Two Hawks.
“I will go for him.” Strikes-The-Water rose gracefully and went to the door, pausing to look back once at William, who was looking after her. She smiled again, then was gone.
Two Hawks noticed how his brother’s gaze lingered after her.
“My…” William put a hand to his eyes, pressing hard. “Reginald Aubrey. He was captured. Senecas, I think. Look you…was he saved? Is he here?”
Only the fire’s popping and the murmurs of other voices in the lodge broke the heavy silence that followed. Two Hawks saw the moment his brother understood. If it was possible, he grew even whiter.
“It was a hard thing,” Stone Thrower said, “choosing between. It was you he bid us save, not him.”
His brother looked as though he would be sick. “They will show him no mercy.”
Regret rippled over Stone Thrower’s face. “There may be time. Now that my sons are whole and safe, I will go to find him.”
William blinked at him, mouth agape. “Why?”
If their father was taken aback by the question, he hid it as he looked searchingly at William. “Is this not a thing you wish me to do?”
Two Hawks, who very much wished to find Aubrey, said, “We must try—”
Stone Thrower put a hand to his shoulder, silencing him, still addressing his brother. “I have forgiven Aubrey for taking you from us. He also has repented in his heart of this bad thing. He is making his peace with Creator over it—inside that fort he started on that good path. Since then we have fought side by side. I will not abandon him, though he bid me do so.”
William absorbed this in stunned silence, then seemed to come to some conclusion; resolution gripped his features. “Why then do we linger? The Senecas who took him may still be at their siege camp, at the fort.”
Two Hawks tensed, surprised by his brother’s eagerness for action, ready himself to more than match it. But William had taken that blow, was clearly still in pain and weakened. Was he able to leap up and rush from the lodge? Two Hawks looked to their father, who didn’t argue over whether William was fit for such a journey.
“I knew the face of one of those who took Aubrey captive,” Stone Thrower said. “It may be he will remember me. You,” he said to Two Hawks, “stay with your brother and wait for the women to come. I will go to the Senecas at the fort and find that one I—”
“I go with you!” Two Hawks said, and meant it. He would not be pushed aside again. Not this time.
“And I,” William added as emphatically, surprising them by lurching to his feet and staying on them. “I’ll not be left behind.”
38
August 6, 1777
Kanowalohale
Not until the violent rain that drove them inside the lodge, when Good Voice mentioned in passing that the girl’s mother was worried, had Anna owned to knowing where Strikes-The-Water had gone—after Clear Day. With intention, Anna thought, of joining the battle if there was one. Hearing this, Good Voice had sat quiet in thought, then said, “If armies come together at that fort, wounded may be brought to Oriska. If not, we will get news there. We need not wait for it to find us here any more than that one has done.”
With Lydia’s consent, they’d gathered belongings and medicines, waited for the rain to taper off, then saddled the horses. They set out on the trail to the town near the Mohawk River where they hoped to find Clear Day and Strikes-The-Water. Perhaps even Two Hawks and Stone Thrower.
Evening was coming
on when a rider on a lathered horse met them on the trail. Good Voice knew her: Two-Kettles-Together, wife of a warrior called Honyery. She brought word of ambuscade and battle, terrible and desperate. White men had killed one another. Red men had killed one another. Whether Two Hawks or Stone Thrower were among those killed she didn’t know, though she’d seen Two Hawks in the fighting early on. Streaked with grime and blood, she was riding out to spread the news: the British and Senecas had retreated to the fort with their wounded; Herkimer’s militia and Oneida warriors limped eastward, bringing off their wounded to Oriska. The fort was still besieged by St. Leger’s army.
Who had won the battle she couldn’t say. “Maybe no one. So many dead.” Two-Kettles-Together rode on to Kanowalohale, leaving them to press on toward Oriska with a mounting dread of what they would find there. Or fail to find.
Soon after, as fireflies were winking in thickets, Strikes-The-Water appeared around a bend in the trail, on foot and running. The moment she saw Good Voice, she called out in Oneida. Anna deciphered enough to grasp what was shouted: “He is safe! Your son—both your sons. They are together at Oriska with your husband and his uncle. They sent me to bring you to them!”
Their hearts lifted as if on eagles’ wings, but they arrived at the village only to have those same hearts dashed to the ground. Stone Thrower, Two Hawks, and William were gone. As Clear Day explained why, Anna feared she would follow her heart to the ground with the shock and dismay.
“Reginald…?” Hearing her father’s name uttered on a devastated gasp, she turned to see that Lydia had beaten her to it.
Private William Aubrey brushed at his grubby regimental coat, turned green side out now. Realizing the pointlessness of such action given the general state of things, he desisted and stepped from the shadowed forest into what remained of Sir John Johnson’s camp. A sea of ravaged tents lay in crumpled heaps, torn and burned. Battle-weary Yorkers sifted the wreckage. A few fires were lit despite the lack of provisions; much of the regimental baggage had been stolen. Around the fires clustered men nursing wounds and grievances, spent from battle, dispirited and brooding. Some wept openly while others stared with blank and haunted eyes. Few looked up to note William’s passing. Making no attempt at concealment, he strode through camp catching snatches of complaints as he passed, confirming what his father and brother had told him as they made their way in dusk-fall from Oriska. Stanwix’s second-in-command had led a sortie from the fort on the heels of that torrential rain. Lieutenant Singleton and the other wounded were now prisoners within its walls. The brigade’s stolen flag and regimental colors hung beneath the fort’s flag. An open taunt.
William dismissed a wrench of indignation at the disgrace. He was in the camp for two reasons, one of which lay before him now—his own mess tent, plundered and empty. He’d come for the Welsh bow, but other hands had been before him.
As he stood reconciling himself to the loss, the night erupted with a sound he hadn’t heard since the blow that knocked him senseless. From the southwest, where their camp lay, the howls of enraged Indians lifted the hairs at his nape.
“Is that ye, Aubrey?”
He spun round. Robbie MacKay stood behind him, bundled canvas in his arms. In the flickered glow of the nearest fire, Robbie’s face was haggard. He’d a gash across one cheek that would scar badly, but seemed otherwise whole.
“I’m glad to see ye made it, Aubrey. I lost sight o’ ye and feared the worst.”
“As did I, for a time.” William gave the story they’d agreed upon should he be asked; left wounded on the field, he’d escaped the ravine and made his way back on his own—a reality doubtless unfolding a hundred times over as they spoke. “I’ve lost my musket, everything else it seems.” He gestured at the tent’s remains. He wouldn’t speak of his second errand. Not to Robbie, whose gaze went to William’s bared head, hair still crusted with blood.
“Come awa’ then, we’ll get ye looked after. I’m helping wi’ the wounded.”
Wounded William was, though he’d made light of it. They’d tried to leave him at Oriska with the old man, his father’s uncle, but he’d refused. He heaved a breath through his nose. “I don’t need tending, see. I’ll be fine.”
Robbie raised an appeasing hand, mistaking the exasperation as aimed at him. “Oh, aye. As ye wish. I’m just glad to see ye living.”
It would likely be the last time, if William left that camp again. And he would leave it, whether or not he found Reginald Aubrey among Johnson’s prisoners. Somewhere in the dark between Oriska and this moment he’d made his choice—never mind which side of his coat was facing out. Father, brother, uncle. Mother. And Anna nearby as well. He didn’t know where he belonged as yet, but it wasn’t in an army coming to annihilate them all.
“Robbie, bide a moment.” The youngest MacKay turned back, swaying a little. “Did Captain Watts make it out of that ravine?”
Grief shadowed Robbie’s beardless face. “They think he’s dead. Maybe captured. We dinna ken.”
William felt a churning in his gut. Watts was a good man. “Campbell?”
“Him? Dead sure. Saw wi’ me own eyes.” There was no sorrow for Campbell in his expression, but Robbie went a whiter shade of pale as he spoke; the shouting from the Indian camp had reached a crescendo. A furious sound, mixed with grief. “Whatever ye do, Aubrey, keep awa’ from that lot. Pray they dinna turn on us next.”
William’s confusion must have shown.
“Right. Ye wouldna ken. Their camp was looted worse than ours—clothes, silver, wampum bundles, blankets. Their shelters are burned, their women and children chased awa’.” Robbie’s gaze went over him. “Find yourself a firearm if ye can, and mind it weel tonight.”
William had a firearm. On the long trek back they’d stumbled upon corpses fallen in the wood. One had had a rifle by, half buried in leaves. It was in his brother’s keeping, back in the thicket where his twin and their father awaited him. Likely with thinning patience. He must do the other thing for which he’d ventured back into this ravaged camp. Find where Johnson had put his prisoners and see whether, by some miracle, Reginald Aubrey was among them.
“I’ll do that, Robbie,” he said, and turned away.
Their father had waited until his brother headed for the Royal Yorker camp before revealing the rest of his plan—to go alone into the Seneca camp to look for Reginald Aubrey while William searched among Johnson’s prisoners. Alarmed by the tumult issuing from that camp, Two Hawks had argued against it, but Stone Thrower was as stubbornly set as William had been at Oriska. Now they were each alone, Stone Thrower off to the howling Senecas, William to his regiment, Two Hawks awaiting their return, uncertain if his father would make it back alive or if his brother would choose to return.
Two Hawks recalled his brother lurching to his feet, determined they not leave him behind, his father’s usually stoic face cracking like an eggshell, all his heart for his firstborn—pride, fear, hope—leaking through. He’d agreed to William’s coming, though Two Hawks suspected he had a plan in mind should William prove too weakened by his injury to continue—sending him back to Oriska with Two Hawks’s help. But his brother had seemed to gain in strength as they made their way back along forest trails in the falling night, skirting the terrible ravine.
Two Hawks would never forget those hours in the wood, knowing it was his twin moving near him in the dark, moving into danger with their hearts as one—for finding Aubrey, at least. They had him back. He-Is-Taken. William Aubrey. If he returned to them.
Stone Thrower hadn’t shared his doubt but had gone into that uproar coming from the Senecas’ camp as though all would be well, that he would bring back Reginald Aubrey and they would return to Oriska to find their women waiting to welcome them.
“They may be killing their prisoners, those warriors,” Stone Thrower had said when the shouting escalated. “It may be the British cannot stop them. I must go now.”
He’d taken bear grease and black powder from his bag and
painted his face to help conceal him from familiar gazes. He had made Two Hawks wait for his brother, telling him that if he, Stone Thrower, hadn’t returned by the time William found him again, to come close to the other camp but not into it.
“No matter what you hear or see. The two of you stay alive and return to your mother.”
So Two Hawks was left to crouch in the dark, worrying, praying. He thought of Anna Catherine. She did indeed have a bear’s heart, coming deep into Oneida lands to find him. It filled his heart with courage. Yet this meant the time of facing her would come sooner. Would it be with joy, restoring her father to her? Or in grief, telling her of his death?
He heard his brother coming, English boots tramping the brush like a buck in rutting season, heedless. You have much to learn, Brother, he thought, then remembered his brother was exhausted and wounded besides. The fatigue of the day was a weight in his own bones. William’s footfalls halted.
“Brother.” Two Hawks stood from the thicket several strides away. “I must teach you some bird call signals.”
William’s face emerged from the darkness. He ignored the jibe about bird calls. “Aubrey isn’t in Johnson’s camp.” He paused, as if searching the darkness. “Where is…he?”
Suddenly angry, Two Hawks wanted to grasp his brother and tell him to call that man who had spent their lives suffering for his loss Father, but he restrained himself. None of this was his brother’s fault. They were still strangers to him. He must be patient.
“Our father is gone to see if Aubrey is among the Seneca prisoners.”
“He’s there—in their camp?” Two Hawks heard William’s alarm and hoped concern for their father was part of it. “Is he mad? Some of those warriors will have faced him in battle today.”
“You think he does not know it? Our father will take care.”
William fell silent, maybe feeling himself rebuked. Two Hawks started to say something softer but found he couldn’t speak for the knot of worry in his throat. Silence grew, thick and tense, full of the voices of outraged Indians, the whine of mosquitoes, a hundred unasked questions. And the faces of the dead, foremost among them Ahnyero’s. Other faces he’d seen in Oriska, living. Honyery and Louis Cook.