by Jamie Carie
But no. It was Hope, her mother, running toward her, with two men following close behind.
They ran to her while she just stood there, not believing her eyes. Adam, her mother’s friend from Vincennes. Her gaze swung to the other man, knowing him before she saw him.
Samuel.
He had come back for her.
She began to sob, a sudden and deep response as her mother’s arms wrapped around her.
“Thanks be to God,” Hope breathed, smoothing back Isabelle’s wild hair from her face.
Samuel then took her deep into his arms and laughed. “Only you would make this so easy. How did you manage it?”
Isabelle looked about, suddenly afraid that the Shawnee would hear and they would all be discovered.
“The stars woke me,” she said with a sob and then a laugh. “I didn’t know. I didn’t think you would come back for me.”
Samuel laughed low in his chest. “Then Clark was right. You don’t know me well enough yet. But I plan to remedy that, as soon as we can get away from here.”
They turned as one back toward Kaskaskia and freedom.
And so Isabelle simply walked away. Out of her slavery, her captivity, her restless running, and into the future of her glorious promised land.
27
They walked through the night, not saying much but not panicked either, the four of them feeling a sureness, a peace that they would not be pursued.
Years later Isabelle would hear that the Shawnee had all slept particularly long that morning, that when they rose and saw her gone, they had searched for tracks and found none, that her sleeping partners had not heard anything amiss. They had said that the night sky and the stars had been particularly bright that night and decided among themselves that Isabelle had been caught up, caught away by the God she worshipped, as He was jealous of their time with her and wanted her home. She was truly named, they felt. Something they could never imagine.
But she did not know that now, as dawn lit the sky and they came upon the Kaskaskia River. She only had a certain feeling that she would never see the Shawnee again.
Hope sat on the ground as the men went in search of the little canoe that the farmer owned. The farmer wasn’t up and about yet, but they were determined to use one of his boats for passage, Adam saying he would go later in the morning and paddle it back to him.
Isabelle sank down next to her mother and leaned on her shoulder. “You must be tired.”
Hope laughed. “Yes, tired but happy this moment.” She put her arm around Isabelle’s shoulders and squeezed.
“How did you find me?”
“I knew something was wrong, back in Vincennes, so I asked Adam to bring me here. When I arrived, I went to the commander’s office. George Rogers Clark. Vincennes has also pledged their allegiance to the Americans. This country is changing fast, Isabelle, and it’s a good thing. A great thing is happening here. I can feel it.”
She took a deep breath and continued. “Clark wouldn’t tell me anything. He would only say that there was a man I needed to meet. That scared me, I can tell you! But I never could have prepared myself for what I learned had happened to my children.” She paused, her throat working to control her emotions. “Clark took me to Samuel, and he explained how you had been taken captive by the Shawnee and all he was doing to try and free you.” She looked into Isabelle’s face. “Did you know he wanted to sell his land? The land he will receive as payment for fighting in Clark’s campaign? He was trying to raise money to buy you back.”
Isabelle shook her head. “I thought he had left me there.”
“He loves you.”
They were both silent a moment, leaning into each other’s shoulders.
Hope took a shaky breath. “Then Samuel told me about Julian, how he died. I–I didn’t know how I could go on, how to save you, but I kept thinking, I still have one child living. I wasn’t going to let the Shawnee have you, so I convinced Adam and Samuel to go with me and demand you back. We had no weapons—well, Samuel had a few, but we knew they wouldn’t do us any good. And we didn’t have any money to buy you or captives to trade you for.” She hugged Isabelle tight into her side, crying a little. “But we had prayer, and so we prayed, the three of us, the entire way, to get you back.” She let out a little sob. “He answered our plea. He must have known I couldn’t have borne losing you both.”
Isabelle looked up into her mother’s face, her voice low and choked. “I tried to save him. I did try.”
Hope shook her head. “This is not your fault, Isabelle. Don’t ever believe otherwise.”
“But it is. We went on this journey to satisfy something in me.”
“Yes, but I let you both go.” In a lower tone, gazing off into the distance, she added, almost to herself, “Your father will blame me.” She turned back to Isabelle. “And the priest, we could blame him; it was his mission.”
“He was only trying to help. As were you. The two of you didn’t know what to do with me anymore.”
“That is true. If you want to bear the burden of your brother’s death, I cannot take it from you. It is something you must decide to lay down and walk away from, never looking back or taking it on your shoulders again. Don’t believe the enemy’s lies, Isabelle. He would destroy you, and I think,” she gazed at Isabelle’s face, seeing so much change there, “that you have grown up since I saw you last. You are no longer that straining, unsatisfied girl.”
Isabelle’s eyes widened, tears pricking again. “How do you know?”
“It is in everything about you now. You have made your peace with God, I think.”
Isabelle blinked, two big tears rolling down her face. “Yes.”
Hope squeezed her shoulders, tears coursing down her cheeks. “Then there is another thing to be thankful for this day.”
“But Julian …”
Hope pressed her lips together for a moment and took a bracing breath. Her voice was shaky but firm as she said, “Shall be greatly missed. Every day. But I will grieve him later, when time allows it and I can bring it to my Father’s lap.” She took another deep breath and stood, brushing off her skirts. “Come, they have found a boat.”
The water was still as they crossed the river, the sun of a new day glinting off the surface. They returned to Kaskaskia silently, Samuel grasping Isabelle’s hand.
* * *
AS WORD SPREAD of Isabelle’s rescue and how they had simply walked away from the enemy, unscathed and untouched, the town began to turn out in spontaneous celebration. Food appeared as if from nowhere—ham, goose, stew with potatoes and cream, carrots smeared with butter, bowls of freshly picked peas, round and green, baked beans, and hot, fluffy yeast rolls with pie upon pie. Isabelle stuffed herself until, finally, Samuel had to laughingly help her from the table.
Then began the music and the dancing. Unlike the Shawnee drums that had taken hold of her in a strange and disturbing way, this was fiddle music, light and happy, the bow skipping over the strings in tandem with the trilling notes of a flute. Samuel pulled a harmonica from his pocket and joined in.
Isabelle laughed out loud.
“I didn’t know you could play that.”
Samuel grinned around the instrument and nodded. “There is a lot you don’t know about me, sweetheart.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she challenged, her chin coming up, a smile in her eyes and on her lips.
He shrugged a shoulder. “Wait and see.” He smiled back, still playing. When the song ended, he shoved the harmonica into his pocket and took Isabelle’s hand, leading her away from the crowd, over to a small stand of trees. They sat down on a spindly bench, looking out over the party, quiet together, enjoying the scene.
Isabelle saw her mother dancing with Adam and was startled by how happy she looked, her face fairly glowing as she looked up into Adam’s face. Different emotions assailed her as Isabelle suddenly realized she’d only seen Hope as her mother and not as a woman. Hope giggled like a schoolgirl as Adam twirl
ed her about. And Adam’s face, as he laughed too, was filled with love.
What if the marriage she had watched from a little girl’s view wasn’t what she had thought? Her parents’ relationship had seemed normal enough. But now it hit her like a bucket of cold water thrown in her face that, in fact, it was distant, forbearing. What if her mother should have married a different man?
* * *
“IS IT HARD?” Samuel asked.
Isabelle’s head jerked in his direction. “Is what hard?”
Samuel nodded toward her mother and Adam.
“It’s hard that I didn’t know,” she said. “Maybe I could have done something. Helped somehow.”
Samuel shook his head. “My parents’ marriage isn’t very happy either. I grew up in Virginia, on a plantation. Holt Plantation.” Samuel paused to laugh. “My father wasn’t very creative when he came up with that one. My mother, she harps on him all of the time, and my father escapes by going to Williamsburg or riding all day to oversee the land.”
Isabelle looked up into his eyes. “Is that why you left and joined the Americans?”
Samuel looked away. “One of the reasons, I guess.”
“What were the other reasons?”
Samuel shook his head, as if he didn’t know the answer himself. “A young man feels a need to strike out on his own, I suppose. I wanted to prove myself … prove something to myself.”
Isabelle spoke her thoughts out loud. “They were rich, weren’t they? Handing it to you without any effort of your own? Do you plan to return someday?”
“No, I don’t think I will ever go back.”
“But why? Are you not your father’s heir? Do you have brothers?”
Samuel shook his head. “I’m his only son. His eldest. I guess my sisters’ husbands will run the place after he is gone.”
“You turned your back on all that? Your family must have been devastated.” She turned toward him. “Samuel, tell me about your life … before all this. Before Clark and his army.”
“There is nothing more to tell.” Samuel leaned back against the giant oak tree at his back and twirled a weed between his finger and thumb. He wondered why he didn’t tell her about Sara. Why he couldn’t voice any of it out loud. But he found he couldn’t get it past the lump in his throat.
Instead he rose and grasped Isabelle’s hand. “Come. We are missing the party. And I know how much you love to dance.”
Isabelle looked long into his eyes, trying to read something there. Suddenly her hand reached out and touched the cord around his neck. He allowed her to drag it from his shirt, hold the delicate silver crescent moon in her hand.
“Tell me what this is, first. It must mean something.”
Samuel looked down at the necklace, too delicate for a man to be wearing but a constant reminder of Sara. He remembered when he had given it to her, the quiet joy on her face as she clasped it behind her neck. He had thought to bury it with her but at the last minute had decided to keep it instead. He’d worn it every day since, thinking of her and their daughter. She must be four years old now. Although he didn’t know her, his chest sometimes ached with the feeling of missing her.
Would Sara have been proud if she could see him now? He would never know, but the feel of the metal against his skin made it seem possible.
“Just an old thing I picked up,” he said, trying to shrug off the probing. Isabelle would never understand his need of it.
She looked up into his eyes, her lips flattened, her eyes knowing that he wasn’t telling the truth. “Can I have it? I think it’s pretty.”
She was calling his bluff, and he didn’t like it. He could either tell her that it meant something to him or hand it over. He reached for it, held its crescent form between his fingers.
“I guess I know how your father felt when you decided to leave,” Isabelle said softly, then turned away and walked back toward the party without him.
He just stood there, a part of him wanting to go after her and tell her about Sara, and a part of him not wanting to let go of it. Letting go might make room for something else to get in. And as much as he wanted Isabelle, as rare and glorious as he knew her to be, he didn’t seem to have the strength to reach up and rip the leather cord from around his neck.
28
Samuel crouched low over his fire pit, taking in the last embers of warmth before dawn arrived and commanded that he move. He hadn’t really needed the fire on this warm summer’s night, but he had needed reassurance of his self-sufficiency.
A doe was stretched by his right hand, like the last time, except that this doe lay in green grass instead of the brown leaves of autumn. And this time he didn’t wake to shrill war cries; there would be no running for a fort with the will and the way to bring them sustenance. No, the good citizens of Kaskaskia would hardly notice his addition to their stores. And the biggest difference was that this time he was running from something far more daunting than an Indian scalping: the memory of a wife he never really knew.
He sat back on the ground, his arms loosely crossed over his knees, laughing at his paltry attempts to be somebody, to recreate a moment in time when he thought he was special. He pulled the necklace out of his shirt and stared at it, hating it but knowing that something in him wanted to keep it close against the warmth of his bare chest.
He studied the trinket, the little indented outline that some silversmith had labored over to effect its particular sparkle. It was a pretty little piece, or so he’d thought when he had seen it in a jewelry shop and bought it as a wedding gift for Sara. He turned it over and saw that it had become tarnished. Probably from all the moisture he’d exposed it to. He huffed with a laugh at that thought. The piece certainly hadn’t been created with thought of a soldier’s wearing it.
He growled, then looked up. “What do you want from me?” He posed the question to God, to the sky, to the trees and the forest animals. Then he said it again, lower and fierce, this time to his father and his family and his dead wife. “What do you want from me?” He leaned his forehead against his crossed arms and just breathed.
“Nothing feels right anymore,” he whispered. “Not going home, not staying here with Clark, not homesteading in Kentucky …”
He thought of Isabelle, saw her as she’d been when he first met her, her rifle trained at his chest, her dark eyes flashing fire at him. He smiled, then laughed aloud, throwing his head back. He’d never met a woman more sure of who she was.
He closed his eyes and saw the wolf charging her, saw her dancing under the moonlight, and the heaving dance-like movement when she’d thrust the dagger in the wolf’s belly. He gasped, finding tears in his eyes.
Here was one who didn’t need him.
Then he saw her broken at the Shawnee camp, collapsed at her brother’s stake, rubbing ashes in that foreign but lovely dress, turning it gray and not caring, daring them to do something about it, do something with her. And they had. Not immediately. No, they had staged a long campaign, longing to rein in that spirit inside her. The Shawnee had been patient conquerors.
He remembered the time in camp when he’d called out to her and she hadn’t seemed, at first, to remember her name, as if she had begun to forget who she was.
Samuel’s face stilled as a single tear slid down his cheek. He hadn’t been able to save her then either. Why? God, why? He was Samuel Holt, frontiersmen, sharpshooter, soldier, as strong and capable as men came. He was one of the famed Long Knives. God, why couldn’t I save her from that?
He grasped hold of the necklace and, with a mighty jerk, tore it from his neck. He held it out, looking at the dangling sliver of moon, as thin as Sara’s life had been.
“Why did she have to die?” He dropped his head to his knees, weeping as he never had. “I should have been able to do something. Why didn’t You do something?”
And there it was: blame. He looked up, his heart pausing at the realization that he had been blaming God. He had spent his entire adult life making himself strong bec
ause he no longer believed God was capable.
He exhaled sharply with the knowledge of it. A Scripture came to mind, from his church days, something that hadn’t meant anything to him at the time.
Where You are weak, I am strong.
The words reverberated through his mind and his heart.
“I am weak,” he cried out, his face lifted toward heaven.
“I am so weak.”
Then I am so strong. I AM.
The words breathed over him like a bath, like a baptism, seeping into every pore.
Samuel shook and sank to his knees before his paltry fire pit. “I’m sorry I blamed you.”
I’m not.
He heard it again! As plain and as loud as the approaching daylight. He felt completely engulfed in a feeling of love and acceptance.
Looking down at the necklace in his hand, he raised it up to heaven in offering. The pendant swung in the misty light of dawn, the silver glinting, the cord broken. He stood. Braced his legs. Pulled back his arm. The air swooshed around him as he heaved it into the sky. The necklace twisted and turned, the moon flat and glinting in a single shaft of light. Then it fell, far away and into its own grave, a leftover crumb of a funeral supper.
“It is finished,” Samuel breathed, watching it disappear, and knowing it was so.
* * *
IT WAS NIGHT. The night before they were to go back to Vincennes with Isabelle and the books. Such costly books. Some small part of Hope held a bitterness that said she hoped the books were worth it. She hoped they lasted the priest until the end of his days, bringing him as much joy as her son would have brought her.
* * *
ADAM WATCHED FROM just inside the front door as Hope sank down onto a chair on the front porch of the hotel where they each had a room. Her shoulders began to shake with silent sobs, and he wrestled with going to her or leaving her alone. He reached for the doorknob. She turned as the door opened and creaked.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.” Adam made to go back inside.