Bold Breathless Love

by Valerie Sherwood

  None along the river ever guessed the meaning of that single word, “Tomorrow.” But to Verhulst van Rappard, who had slain his rival in anger, it was promise and regret. During her short tragic life he had not really known he loved Imogene, he had thought he desired her only for her beauty like some striking painted face smiling down from the wall. But now that she was gone, leaving him with an agony of grief, his proud nature regretted his rash actions. If he had it to do over, he told himself with scalding tears, he would let her go—with Stephen. And he hoped on those long cold nights when he stared sleepless out on to the North River’s frozen world and he saw like fireflies in the dark bushes the gleaming golden eyes of roving foxes, he hoped that like those foxes the spirits of the lovers ran free tonight, that they had locked hands and now ran laughing across the snow. He hoped with all his heart that they had found each other and were united in some special heaven.

  And at other times, when the visions claimed him, when he saw Imogene’s lovely face smiling at him from the fire, when the sighing winds spoke with her voice and beckoned him across the snow, that word “Tomorrow” took on another meaning for him, and he saw himself with Imogene, saw them happy, laughing, deeply in love, treading gaily the flower-strewn fields of some wondrous tomorrow, when they would be together again.

  She loved him.. .. His vision that night on the ice had been too real, more real than reality itself. It must be true. He bent his head and wept for her, this woman he had loved so dearly and treated so unkindly. In some far-off heaven he would make it up to her—if only God would let him.

  The Winds of Fate do not always bring tears that fall like rain; sometimes they are kindly winds, soft winds that blow from the south. To Verhulst they had brought calamity—and yet, they had brought him a vision too, a vision of true happiness.

  Imogene loved him. Now in his heart he was sure of it.

  And because he had not realized he was in love with her at all, because he had thought his gut-wrenching feeling for her was only carnal passion misdirected, hurt pride, possessiveness, and any number of other things—because the full glory of his love for her had not burst upon him until the moment he knew she was lost to him, Verhulst endured a hell of his own making.

  Ghosts, they say, leave no footprints. But Imogene had left her footprints indelibly etched across Verhulst van Rappard’s heart.

  As if attacked by some frenzy, he began brave new plans for the expansion of the manor house at Wey Gat into an even more impressive building. He let contracts and signed promissory notes and even added a codicil to his will that in the event of his death, the structure should be completed according to his plans. As the years passed, all who plied the river would be awed as they passed the multichimneyed stone fortress into which the patroon of Wey Gat had poured his vast wealth.

  Like the bereaved husband who had built the Taj Mahal, Verhulst van Rappard intended to build a mighty memorial to his lost love.

  And the river aristocrats, who considered him mad—as any man must be mad who buried his wife alongside the lover he had killed—kept away from the patroon of Wey Gat, and in time the great lonely house came to be considered a place of devils.

  But Verhulst did not live to see that.

  Alone and weighed down by his grief, in those early weeks Verhulst mourned Imogene. He mourned her as the wolf, who takes but one mate, mourns her loss: on the lonely trail, in silence and in grief. He took to wandering out alone in the night, for he could not sleep. Sometimes he slushed through the snow for miles, barely making it back to the house by morning.

  In January a blizzard struck. It shrieked down from Canada, driving ice pellets before it like ball and shot. It blasted the trees and tore limbs away and froze livestock in their stalls and before it was over it had dumped three feet of snow along the North River Valley. The morning after the blizzard struck the patroon was nowhere to be found. A search was instituted. Men with their heads bound up in stocking caps searched, red-nosed and with ice freezing on their lashes and matting their beards, throughout the nearby grounds. They were about to organize a search party to stumble into the woods and search there when someone gave a shout that could be heard even above the shriek of the icy northern winds. They followed the sound and came to the walled family plot containing the stones that Verhulst had erected to commemorate the passing of Imogene and her lover. Only the gray tops of the stones protruded now from the snow and beside them with his hands resting on a shovel as he stared down into the disturbed white mass was Groot, the kennelmaster. Around him the dogs were leaping, keening, and the men pushed through them to see what Groot was seeing.

  It was a black velvet-clad arm and a frozen stiff gauntlet-gloved hand, both powdered white from the fast-blowing snow that was piling up in great drifts.

  They had found their patroon. Silently, beneath a cold gray sky, the men gathered around and removed their stocking caps, letting the blowing ice particles whiten their bent heads.

  Verhulst van Rappard, patroon of vast Wey Gat, had found his heaven and his hell and now—they looked into each other’s eyes before they dug him out and in several faces there was a wild surmise. Had he found Imogene at last? On some far shore were they laughing now, all their terrible clashing forgotten?

  In silence the men he had dominated and bullied dug the patroon from the snow and bore him back to his manor.

  When the snow stopped falling and a cold gray sky looked down on a glistening white world of crystal, the servants milled about and the tenants came in and they tried to decide what to do. They did not ask the neighbors. The neighbors, they were all aware, had not liked Wey Gat’s unhappy young patroon. And his only relatives—if indeed any still existed—were far away in Holland.

  So they buried him themselves—unceremoniously, in a shallow grave, for they could dig no deeper in the frozen earth. His coffin lay beside three empty ones and because they sensed some deeper meaning in the word he had chiseled into the stone that marked the passing of Imogene’s lover, without comprehension they chiseled on Verhulst’s stone, along with his name and the dates, the single Dutch word for “Tomorrow.”

  BOOK IV

  The Buccaneer’s Lady

  A toast to the wild sweet laughter

  From the Indies claimed by Spain,

  From the warm sweet lips on buccaneer ships

  That prowl the Spanish Main!

  PART ONE

  The Lost

  A toast to her charms, held close in his arms.

  Because he loves her so....

  Ah, he would be more than human

  If he were to let her go!

  New Amsterdam,

  New Netherland, 1658

  CHAPTER 26

  Downriver the charging iceboat carrying Imogene and Stephen had fled, downriver and out of sight. For hardly had Imogene been hauled aboard by a wailing Elise before Willem let the wind take them and they skimmed south. Past the men, past the dogs, they flew downriver as the swallow flies, driven by the wild Canadian winds.

  “My God,” screamed Willem, who spoke English. “That was the patroon of Wey Gat out there! Who is this woman?” Elise, who was cradling Imogene’s limp body in her arms, called over the crunching and grinding as the iceboat shot forward, “She is his wife.”

  “ ‘His wife'!” howled Willem. “In my iceboat? I am a dead man if he finds me! You damned Englishman!” He turned to glare at Stephen’s inert form. “You deserve to die! You lied to me—you told me the woman we would pick up was a servant who had borne a child and whose father would not permit her to marry until she had first repaid him for bringing her up. You told me this one—” he jerked his head vengefully at Elise—“was her aunt who had a house in New Amsterdam and would take care of her. I suppose that is not true either?”

  Sorrowfully, Elise shook her head. “I am her maidservant—and her friend.” As she spoke she was gently sweeping back the cascade of golden hair from Imogene’s closed eyes, being careful not to disturb the wound at the side of
her head where a little blood trickled down—that spot where the iceboat had struck her.

  Willem cast a wild look back at the little clump of men fast disappearing in the distance as the iceboat gathered speed, spurred by the driving northern winds. “Thank God the ice is smooth! His wife!” He looked anxiously around at lmogene. “Is the woman dead? Have we killed the patroon’s wife?”

  “No! Of course she is not dead!”

  “Wrap her well in blankets,” advised Willem. “And this one, too.” He indicated Stephen with a toe of his boot. “He is bleeding like a stuck pig.”

  “I will try to stanch the wound.” Elise finished wrapping lmogene carefully in blankets against the awesome cold, giving her only a little space to breathe. Leaving her beside the well-wrapped baby, she staggered in the rocking iceboat to Stephen’s side. He lay sprawled on his back and she muttered to herself as she saw the ugly wound that stained his doublet. She tore off strips of her underpetticoat and managed to stop the flow of blood.

  “Wrap him well,” called Willem, “or he will freeze.” He began to curse. “Damme, I can feel my whiskers freezing to my face!”

  Elise nodded. Panting from the effort, she managed to wrap Stephen up warmly in the heavy blankets he and Willem had brought along for the long cold journey down the frozen river. Then she made her way back to lmogene. With cold-stiffened fingers she pulled a heavy Indian blanket over all their heads and prayed the iceboat would not be wrecked when it hit stretches of rough ice that bounced them unmercifully about and that might well break open Stephen’s wound. Once or twice she checked on his condition, for now he had come to and was groaning.

  “lmogene?” he asked hoarsely.

  “She is all right,” Elise told him in a firm voice, knowing it was not so because lmogene had not yet waked, but remained still and white as death beneath her blankets. “She tells you to be still, for you are hurt and if you move you will open your wound. Edge close against us, so that we may not all freeze.”

  Stephen’s head sagged back in relief. lmogene was safe!

  Willem, steering the iceboat, rubbed a woolen-mittened hand across his eyes in an attempt to keep his lashes from freezing to his cheeks. His breath sobbed painfully in his throat, but he kept them grimly on course, no matter how dizzying the pace. The Hudson Highlands were flying by. He wondered if the men at Wey Gat had recognized his iceboat. No, that was unlikely. The iceboat was featureless and Willem was from Beverwyck—he had never met anyone from Wey Gat. Indeed, he would not have recognized its patroon just now had not someone once pointed out that dark, slender, richly clad figure on Perel Straat in New Amsterdam and said, “Look at that strutting peacock, will you? That stripling can buy and sell us all!”

  Thinking of the patroon’s wealth that gave him powerful outreaching arms that could snatch a man from the ends of the colony and bring him to justice made Willem’s heart beat faster—in some ways a blessing, for it kept him warm against the bitter cold. He speculated wildly about the woman in the velvet cloak who lay so still beneath the blankets in the bottom of his boat, and about the copper-haired English adventurer the patroon had shot. Fear crawled over Willem as he considered his dangerous cargo, and that fear made him reckless, running the iceboat full out, letting the wind sweep them forward in all its violence. If he reached New Amsterdam at this pace, he would doubtless have set a record for river travel—a record he would not boast of, for he little doubted the patroon of Wey Gat would shoot him down without mercy for his part in this affair. Helping the patroon’s wife to escape with a lover! Willem shuddered and his mind darted around like a rat, seeking a way out. He tried to bolster his sagging courage by telling himself that any man who set dogs on his wife deserved to lose her, but that did not help his own situation—the patroon would shoot him anyway. Or have him hanged. Or perhaps tie him up and toss him in the river. Willem shook with fright at these imaginings and almost lost control of the tiller. He had expected his passengers to disembark well north of New Amsterdam, while he himself would go on to visit his sister, who lived on a small farm in the vicinity. Now he was saddled with two injured persons and a helpless maidservant and baby—what was he to do with them? They would be very conspicuous in New Amsterdam and as soon as the word got around of their escape, people would be watching for them and he would be unable to transport them anywhere! The money Stephen Linnington had offered him had looked so good at the time but now it had proved to be a trap and Willem wished fervently that he could give it back and erase all of this night’s events. He glanced sourly at the shapeless humps of blankets that concealed his passengers. What to do?

  Suddenly an arrow whizzed past his eyes, narrowly missing his half-frozen face. Willem gave a hoarse howl and almost lost the tiller. He cast a wild-eyed look at the western shore and saw his attackers—a band of half a dozen Indians, clad in deerskins, all of them calmly fitting arrows to their bows.

  Willem bent over the tiller and sent the iceboat careening to the left just in time to miss the shower of arrows loosed from the shore. There was a muffled scream from Elise, for the iceboat had almost overturned and she had been thrown heavily to the side, bruising her arm as she bravely steadied Imogene’s inert body and the baby’s swaddled form. Elise’s head came out of the blankets and she gave another scream as she saw the Indians, again fitting arrows to their bows.

  “Quiet, woman!” bawled Willem, almost as much unnerved by Elise’s shrieks as by the Indians, who were now running along the shore, loosing their arrows at will. He ran the iceboat through a violent series of convolutions that made it shudder from stern to stern but kept the arrows away from them. These maneuvers brought him into the center of the river where a new terror assailed him. Willem felt his flesh crawl as he heard beneath him a cracking of the river ice. Quickly he veered away from the main current that flowed here beneath the ice, for he knew the ice would be thinner in the center. Now he hewed to the eastern shore where the ice was strong and thick and the distance to the arrow-shooting Indians greater, skittering along at breakneck speed while the disappointed Indians ran out onto the ice loosing arrows at his departing boat.

  It was into this melee that the unfortunate Schroon was catapulted as he piloted his small delicate iceboat, his frail “toy,” downriver at breakneck speed in an effort to overtake Willem. Schroon saw the Indians spread out on the ice near the west bank shooting at some object that had disappeared. He tried to brake his iceboat too abruptly, overturned it, and sent it into a wild careen into the very center of the river where the ice was already cracked by Willem’s passing. Schroon leaped out, landing half-stunned on his hands and knees and sliding along for what seemed miles. Behind him he heard a horrendous crack as the ice split beneath the weight of his iceboat and big chunks of river ice gave way beneath it. In horror he watched it upend, a jagged form silhouetted against the snowy bank, and sink beneath the black water. But only for a moment was he paralyzed, watching. Then he picked himself up and tried to run. His breath sobbed in his throat as he dodged the arrows that flashed about him.

  Schroon thought he had outrun them when the arrow brought him down. The stone arrowhead pierced deep in his back with a long lancing pain and he sprawled awkwardly on his face on the hard ice. He tried to claw his way up, to elude the Indians whose triumphant shouting seemed almost upon him. Across the long break in the river ice that lay between them and him, Schroon could see them running upriver. They would find a place where it was safe to cross and then they would come for him, to torture and scalp him. Schroon, who had always treated the Indians with kindness, knew that would not save him now. He panted with exertion, trying to drag himself along but the pain was too great and he slumped down, knowing that soon it would not matter whether he struggled on a few feet farther. Quiet descended suddenly over the river as the Indians stilled their wild yells.

  Schroon did not know that the Indians, padding upriver to make sure the center ice was safe for crossing, had heard in the distance a faint ring of skates. On
e of them had pressed his ear to the ice and stood up, pointing to the north. All had understood: white men were coming. In silent accord, the Indians found the bank and melted into the trees. Bent over against the shrieking winds, they disappeared down one of the narrow Indian trails worn smooth by thousands of moccasined feet that would lead them back to their encampment. They were content—they had made their kill. They might have risked staying long enough to scalp the solitary stranger but after all, their leader muttered, it was only a squaw who had been hurt by the white man—and even that could have been an accident—had she not been a chiefs daughter they might have chosen not to believe her. But one crumpled form on the ice was enough revenge; the incident was over.

  And so it was that the patroon and his grim skating party found Schroon dying on the ice.

  Schroon lied to his patroon—and by lying gave lmogene her destiny.

  Willem, of course, was not to know any of this. He careened on downriver on greased iron runners, pursued and driven on less by the screaming winds than by his own bright terror of the patroon’s vengeance.

  Unable to think of a better course, Willem brought his iceboat to a halt as dawn was breaking before his older sister's riverside farmhouse outside New Amsterdam. She was astonished to see his battered, half-frozen crew. lmogene was easily carried in. Elise stumbled in with the baby, under her own power, to thaw her chilled bones at the blazing fire, but Stephen tried to rise and fell back. Willem slung him over his big bearlike shoulders and carried him inside and then retreated to the kitchen to have a hurried conversation in Dutch with his sister. He told her the truth and it left her speechless. When she recovered she berated him without pausing to draw breath. The gist of her comments was that Willem had really done it this time! She would offer them all oleykoeks and raisin wine and they were welcome to warm themselves at her hearth. But shelter a man who'd been shot running away with another man’s wife? Shelter a patroon’s runaway vrouw? Was Willem mad? Indeed, he must have these people out of her house this very day. He was just lucky that her husband had been gone overnight, but he would return tonight and if he found them here he would turn them all over to the schout and Willem would undoubtedly hang, as her husband had always said he would!