by Jamie Carie
* * *
SAMUEL TRIED TO take advantage of the enemy’s momentary distraction. Thrusting his full weight into one of the warriors at his side, he knocked him to the ground, then quickly spun toward another one, deftly taking the knife that dangled from the man’s side and using the blunt side of it to cudgel the brave to the ground. It would only take moments of heart-pounding, breath-rasping running to escape, and this might have been the wiser choice, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t leave Isabelle and Julian at their mercy. Instead, he raced around the perimeter of the gauntlet toward her, watching as she pulled rein before them, the other loaded rifle leveled on the chief, clearly identifiable by his age and ceremonial dress.
Samuel took his stand beside her horse, facing their enemy together.
Isabelle’s hair settled around her like a great, dark cape, her eyes flashing fire. “Release my brother, Julian Renoir, or your chief will die.” She had the rifle trained on his chest, and they had seen what she could do with a rifle.
Sunukkuhkau whooped, a warlike cry, drawing some attention away from her, then translated. Samuel reached up and grasped the horse’s reins, ready to mount and flee with Isabelle should the need arise. Isabelle didn’t even glance at him, her focus steady and menacing on Sunukkuhkau, daring him to make her a fool.
The Indians’ voices rose in a cacophony of confused sound. They wanted to know who she was.
Sunukkuhkau walked over to Julian, lifted his lifeless body by the hair, and stared straight into Isabelle’s soul while saying in English and then in Shawnee. “She is nothing but his sister.”
Samuel recognized that this wasn’t exactly the best argument Sunukkuhkau could have made as the Shawnee, like most tribes, understood the deep rivers of family loyalty. He knew this was why he had been captured instead of killed outright at the cabin—he’d taken more than one of their brothers over the years; and his scalp was highly prized, his torture well planned. Just because he’d run the gauntlet successfully didn’t mean that they loved him now. No, their plans for him had only begun. Julian, though, appeared already dead, but Isabelle was clearly bent on saving him and wasn’t letting that thought enter her head.
My, but she was beautiful up there on her steed, a woman warrior. She was like something from history—Joan of Arc or Mary Queen of Scots going to her beheading. So regal and utterly righteous.
The chief stepped forward, his slow, arthritic joints making stiff progress of the walk to Isabelle. But his eyes bespoke long authority and the willingness to see justice done.
Sunukkuhkau dragged Julian’s body over to Isabelle, standing beside his chief as the tribe looked on in shock, wondering how this turn of events could have happened, still wondering what power this woman could possibly hold. For she must be an evil spirit, a charmer of some sort to have their honored men walk up to her.
Isabelle looked down into their faces with metered hatred, glancing only briefly at her brother’s face.
The chief began speaking. Sunukkuhkau translated. “Your brother lies in our hands this day, given to us by the gods to assuage our grief for the many brothers we have lost to the Glorious One. Many braves have died under his blade.” He gestured toward Samuel.
Samuel only stared back, eyes blank of anything save confidence. He had done only what he’d had to do to survive and help the frontier settlers survive. He wouldn’t regret it.
Isabelle flashed him a look, comprehension dawning across her face. In a loud voice she said, “My brother has nothing to do with your fallen brothers. We hardly know this man you call the Glorious One. Let me have him.” She kicked out at Samuel, rejecting him in front of the assembled tribe.
Sunukkuhkau smiled his feral smile, then translated, but the others looked upon her in confusion. Were these white ones not united?
The chief shook his head. “The Glorious One has passed the test in the manner of his name. He will be adopted into the tribe.” He glanced down at the unconscious Julian, and scorn filled the loose, tan folds of his flesh. “We will burn this man for our fallen ones.” He looked consideringly at Isabelle. “And you will become wife to Sunukkuhkau, and your offspring will live to burn the white man from our land. We will be stronger with you and Sunukkuhkau together, strong together.”
There was a great shout of victory from the Shawnee. Up it went, like the smoke from their fires, like the beating of their drums, declaring victory over their oppressors.
Isabelle pointed the rifle once more at the old man. “I only want one man here. My brother. I will not leave without him.”
The chief did not look afraid. His eyes turned cold and not a little admiring. “All the stars here will fade,” he predicted quietly, the people straining to hear, “but yours will live on. Yes, I can see it.” He closed his eyes, a smile playing across his thin, wrinkled lips. Then abruptly he opened his eyes and stared hard at her. “Put away your gun, child. You will not kill this day.”
Clapping his hands once, he gathered everyone’s attention. “I would keep this woman among our people so that we will live forever. Julian, the weak one, will burn.”
The Indians rose and cheered, their fists to the sky.
Isabelle held tightly to her gun and looked into Samuel’s face for the first time.
“What have you done?” she whispered.
15
The sun was going down. Aquamarine streaked the western sky between swaths of red and orange, a fiery sunset that lit the edges of the hills and the creeping darkness of leafy forest shadows.
Shawnee warriors took hold of Julian, rousing him to consciousness. Wild-eyed with fear, he was dragged toward a spot where wood was being heaped upon a fire. Julian was quickly lashed to a stake and raised up among the rising flames.
Isabelle lifted her rifle, aiming at the chief’s back.
She was jerked from her horse by Samuel and held tight to his chest, her gun, now wrested from her, in his hands.
“Let me have it!” she screeched, wildly trying to disengage herself from his hold.
“You’ll only assure all our deaths by killing the chief.”
Sunukkuhkau pulled Isabelle from Samuel’s arms, and Samuel quickly backed away, the rifle ready in his hands.
Isabelle looked back at him with horror, with hatred, as they laid their hands on her and dragged her toward the scene. Her eyes told him she would never forgive him for this betrayal.
The spark and crackle of the fire brought her head around as she turned toward the scene and gazed, shock and fear, shock and despair, shock and sick dread rising to her throat at the sight. The fire was catching, rising, hungry for food. Julian’s eyes were open, searching for her.
She held his gaze as they hauled her to the front of the intent throng, barely aware that ropes were being twined around her wrists, binding her hands behind her back, binding her in a slower death than Julian’s.
All she could feel, all she could see, was her brother’s terror-filled gaze.
A chant grew among them, their throated grunts rising up and up into the fading light. Isabelle’s head fell back, her throat exposed, working in a silent scream. She opened her eyes, her head dropping to one side, her dark, heavy hair swaying and pulling. Screams, her brother’s and her own, filled the air. But his eyes stayed wide on hers.
Isabelle would not look away and deprive him her meager comfort. She would look upon his horror, feeling that life had ended, that she had been consigned to a hellish place where people did this to other people.
“Julian,” her voice croaked. “Julian!” A bereft soloist sounding loud against their cheering gong, she wailed, panting, flinging herself away from her captor’s grasp and onto her knees as the flames caught his shirt, covering his face in a red, merciless blaze. Wild hate and fear now penetrated her every fiber. She collapsed, her captors on either side of her hauling her up by the elbows like the arms of a cross.
Then a shot rang out, exploding against the noise, its verdict loud and final. Julian now lay limp upon th
e stake, a trickle of life oozing from the middle of his forehead.
Isabelle’s head jerked back, saw Samuel standing a short distance away with her smoking rifle, saw him throw it to the ground and hang his head.
She fell to the ground.
* * *
THE WOMEN OF the tribe took her then. Their thirst for vengeance unquenched, enraged that Samuel had stolen their victory, they came at her, a mob of hate, women her age and younger and older, their tanned faces totem masks of fury, tearing at her clothes, scratching and hitting and kicking.
She fell to the dusty earth. Felt its grains in her mouth and eyes, felt the blood flow where their aim was true, felt her clothes being torn from her, heard the ripping and knew the exposure, sudden wind against a cold sweat.
Naked, her torso bathed in blood, she lay beneath them as they spent their anger, until finally they drew back, panting from their efforts. But their eyes promised something more to come.
Isabelle pushed herself up with her bound arms to sit among them, her long black hair a dusty curtain around her, a veil against the nakedness. She looked up and saw Sunukkuhkau approach. His eyes took her in, all of her, even those parts covered by her thick hair, showing satisfaction that she sat in the dirt, wearing a film of it, that she cowered before them.
At that, Isabelle, her hands still bound, gracefully rose upon strong muscular legs. She stood tall and proud, her legs braced apart. She shook her hair back, not caring that she relinquished her covering. She stood strong and tall and glared back at him. Only blood would cover her body. Her blood. Their sin on her. Nothing else. She glared in challenge at him.
The warrior broke into a smile, looking her up and down, admiration in his eyes. “You will be mine,” he said with a broad smile.
It was a stupid man’s smile.
Isabelle tilted her head, her hair hanging to her hips at one side and narrowed her eyes. “If you think so, then you shall prove yourself a fool.”
At her words there was a scuffle to her right, and she turned toward the sound. It was Samuel, bound now and straining against it. He was pushed toward her, knocking him into her. He sought her gaze. “I am sorry.”
“Wake me up,” she breathed. “I can’t wake up.” Tears sprang to her eyes, the blindness a blessing.
Samuel closed his eyes. Then he took a deep breath and leaned close to Isabelle’s face as they dragged him away. “Stay alive. Do what you must to stay alive.” He heaved the words through the air between them. “Have faith.”
Isabelle blinked out the blur, her shattered gaze roaming his face and then his bindings, pointing out the obvious without saying it. She turned away and looked down at her trembling thighs.
A sob tore from her throat as she fell forward. Her brother. Her childhood friend. Gone. And for what? Her throat, raw from wailing, worked in silence, the tears dried with the blood on her face, empty of more.
Where is my Savior? Where is my Savior now?
16
They hauled her up, two women, one stocky and regal, wearing a dark-yellow deerskin dress decorated with turquoise beads, the other tall and slender, wearing a lighter dress of skin, almost white, with a beautiful broad face and straight, white teeth. As they dragged her away, Isabelle craned her neck to catch a last glimpse of Samuel’s receding back, thinking this was the end for both of them. She screamed to go to him, her bound arms reaching toward his body, but they hauled her up and toward the river.
They stumbled, the three of them, in their haste through the forest bramble toward the sound of water. It was a sound Isabelle had always cherished, the music to her dance, but she was sure that this time they meant to hold her under that sound until the life was gone from her. So she fought them, they being women and she being unusually strong.
She got away briefly, ran at full strength, though out of balance because of her bound arms. She stumbled, fell. And they were on her, hushing her with words she didn’t understand. Guttural sounds, nothing like the flowing French she adored from her father’s lips. Nothing still compared to the clipped English of her mother’s tongue.
These sounds came from the throat and sounded much like the strangulation of the water she imagined was her grave. She swatted at them with her shoulders and knees, her strikes as innocent as a fly’s she realized, dazed. Please God, if they would only untie my hands, I could do so much more!
Arriving at the narrow bank, they shoved her into the cold water. Deeper and deeper the three moved, like a small school of fish connected by unseen forces of moonlight. When her breasts were covered they stopped, taking up a rag and some soap that seemed to come from nowhere. They dunked her, and she shook her head back and forth under the water, feeling clumps of hair floating around her, wondering how long the pressure of their palms would remain on the top of her head. Suddenly she was up again, being soaped from head to toe. They carefully worked the lather through her hair against the last of the sun.
Then her face. The rag was gentle as it washed away the blood from her eyebrows, cheeks and jaw line, her lips, the crevices of her ears and down the long column of her neck. Isabelle just breathed. Like a stallion in the thrall of the corral for the first time, her nostrils flared in rebellion. It was a raspy breath, out of her nose, then her mouth, through her teeth, making a defiant noise that rasped with anger and hate and fear at not knowing what to expect next.
Finished with head and hair, the women pulled her up the bank to wash her body, the soft squishy mud registering for the first time on the outer consciousness of Isabelle’s mind. Were there snakes in this water? She had never willingly taken a bath in the river. Hot kettle water and an iron tub was the only bathing she had known, and she hadn’t taken them very often, a fact her mother despaired of. But these women seemed determined to scrub her completely clean. What was it they wished to wash away?
She drifted in and out of shock and semiconsciousness.
Without comment they led her, dripping, naked, and clean beyond anything she’d ever known, back to the shore. There they cut her bindings and dried her, clucking now, like mothers, the two of them sharing some precious daughter. They patted her with soft blankets, careful to dry every pore, rubbing every strand of hair till the life was flowing back into it.
Then they held out a beautiful dress, made of deerskin like theirs, but covered with multicolored beads in sparkling, sweeping patterns of delight against a pale blue-dyed background. They slipped it over her head, helping her place her arms through the long, fringed sleeves, then standing back and admiring her, cooing over her dignified beauty. They put moccasins on her feet, matching the dress in color and adornment.
Then they brought out a comb. It must have been a European comb, for it was of finest ivory and had perfectly set teeth. Directing her to sit, they slowly, carefully combed out her dark glory, exclaiming over it, their smiling faces hovering like benevolent gods saying, “It is good.” As it dried, her hair became a silken curtain draping her to the waist in a tumult of dark waves.
Isabelle sat mute under these astonishing ministrations, no longer knowing what to think, what to feel. Her brother was dead, and they, these sudden mothers, were making an Indian maiden out of her. It no longer registered with her that her ropes had been cut, that her hands hung free, that she might fight and run. She could only sit silent as the stone on which they had placed her.
The women led her back to the village, displaying her like a conquering princess, as if they had bathed away the English, the French, the American even. As if she were one of them, their daughter, and a prized one at that.
Isabelle found herself holding her chin high, wondering in some small part of her mind where they had taken Julian’s body.
Would there be a grave to visit? Would they allow her the freedom of gathering woodland flowers to adorn his grave? Would she really be alive long enough to do such things?
They gently pushed her into a wigwam filled with women and children, where the smoke tried in vain to escape through the
small hole at the pinnacle of the structure. Would that she could become a vapor of smoke and lift up and away into the freedom of the night sky, turning into a wisp … and then nothing at all. She turned her head away, her only rebellion left this day, then collapsed on the appointed pallet. And blessed sleep rushed over her.
* * *
SAMUEL STOOD WATCHING her being led away, seeing the flash of her bare thighs in the pale, lingering light, seeing her hair sway back and forth, black as the panther and as ready to strike. His heart sank.
Never in all his days had such regret filled him. What had he done that they had come to such unimaginable fate? How had he not saved them?
His Isabelle.
Now more than ever, he knew it to be so. She had been taken from him, but she was his. And he would fight, regain her in some way. Whether the next days proved it or not, she belonged to him, no matter the past and his previous commitments.
The warriors led him to a longhouse and gave him food in a wooden bowl which he wolfed down, knowing better than to turn up his nose at it. He was then directed to a pallet. He lay down, turning away from them on a soft fur, looking up through the smoke hole and seeing a single star shining a cold and unreachable light, like himself unable to sleep.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING Samuel awakened suddenly and rolled, unbound and with a freedom of sorts—an adopted son’s freedom—from his sleepless night, and stood straight and tall, braced for whatever was to happen next.
They took him out into the center of the village where he saw Isabelle being similarly led from a different lodge. She was dressed in a long, light-blue dress, the hem mid calf, showing an expanse of skin between the hem and the top of her moccasins, looking like an Indian maiden. He inhaled as their eyes met, willing her strength for what was to come.