by Sadie Conall
The stand of pines within the grove stood as they had all those years before, except for a few broken branches fallen during winter storms or the weight of snow. Madeleine moved towards the cave door and bent down to pull aside more logs. These had been placed against the door not to keep a predator out, but the deep snow that fell here over winter.
When she put these logs here in the winter of 1799, before leaving with Ryder for the Bannock, she’d had every intention of returning here with esa.
She pulled the cave door open, allowing it to swing back against the cave wall, its rawhide hinges also rotten after all these years. She stepped into the first chamber expecting it to smell damp and stale, along with the lingering scent of smoke from her fires. But it smelled fresh, with the faintest scent of herbs. Although, she knew why. The natural vent above the chimney had allowed fresh air to circulate over the years and the few herbs she had left behind in her willow baskets gave off a faint scent.
She stepped past the drying frames, made to stretch the hides taken from the small creatures she had caught in her snares and passed the pile of logs she had collected to keep her fire going. Then she stepped into the main chamber. It lay in shadows, for the only light now came from the door behind her. But she could see well enough.
She turned and saw the branch near the hearth where she had hung her fur hat and heavy fur coat, the same coat she had given to Deinde'-paggwe when she left the Bannock. Madeleine glanced up at the ragged rocks high in the walls where she had hung the curtain to keep out drafts, although in fact the curtain had been nothing more than two old woollen blankets sewn together. She had given the curtain to Paddake’e, who still used it as a floor covering.
She turned back to the hearth and the chimney she had built of mountain slate and stone. The iron pot still sat on the edge of the hearth. She had taken it from the madman she had met in the wild, but that pot had ensured her survival in these mountains and the broths she made in it had helped keep Ryder alive.
She reached out to touch it, aware of the pot’s weight, thinking it a cumbersome thing, yet it would be useful in the years ahead while living with the Bannock. So she would take it when they left, along with her willow baskets.
She turned as Ryder came up behind her, his hands on his hips as he looked about the chamber.
He had once thought it as welcoming as any room at Millbryne Park or Diccon House, for he had found a refuge in this cave with Madeleine. Yet now it seemed cold and dark. Although he knew well enough if Madeleine’s belongings were back here, if the floor was once again covered in sweet-smelling grasses and her furs, if more furs and hides hung from rocky nobs on the walls, if the smells of her cooking and her herbs filled the room along with the heat from the fire, it would be as comforting as he remembered it.
But Ryder felt as if he couldn’t breathe and the sense of claustrophobia hit him like a fist. Although it wasn’t from the cave. It came from his own feelings from those long ago days. When he lay injured in this cave, he had felt trapped and smothered by the Benedict empire, for it held him like a vice within its powerful grasp. He had seen no way out. His life had been mapped out for him as the 8th Earl Benedict since he arrived in England some twenty years before. There had been no escaping it, nor the continual battle between Jarryth and Thorne.
Yet meeting Madeleine had changed all of that for him. Along with meeting his Ugákhpa brothers. For the three of them had made him understand and recognize his Ugákhpa blood. He was proud of it. And thanks to Madeleine’s courage, he no longer faced the bitterness of Jarryth and Thorne in England, to undermine or damage every move he made.
Yet coming back here, even in this short space of time, made him remember with a violent shock just how empty and stressful his life had been in all the years since he left the Wazhazhe village as a child, to how it was now.
He turned to look at the place where he had lain on his pallet before the fire, helpless and in pain. They had been such desperate days, for the accident with esa had robbed him of weeks with his brothers and the Shoshone. He had been gone from England for more than two years by then and as he lay on the floor of this cave, struggling to survive, Thorne was only weeks away from producing a false death certificate, proclaiming Jarryth as the legal Benedict heir.
Ryder blamed himself for all that heartache. But nothing could be done about it now, nor could anything ever change what happened. It was done. It was firmly in the past.
He left Madeleine alone with her own memories to go and get the horses and bring them up into the grove but as he wandered down the path towards them, he suddenly wondered if this was how a phoenix felt, rising from the ashes.
For his coming here, his sudden, shocking memories of that time had shown him that at last, he was a free man. He could do whatever the hell he wanted. And Madeleine and Harry would be with him every step of the way. He almost laughed aloud with the joy of it.
Two
It was a strange thing, but the cave seemed alive with memories. I knew Ryder felt it the moment he stepped inside, for I saw the look of stunned surprise on his face before he turned to leave. But if the memories swamped him, I was unprepared for how they would affect me.
I had grown up in Paris surrounded by wealth that equalled, if not surpassed, what the Benedict family enjoyed in England. And as a member of the French royal family I had known power and unrivalled privilege until the age of thirteen. And later, with Ryder, I had enjoyed every luxury his money could buy, for with him I wanted for nothing. With him, I had it all.
But this cave, isolated as it was and hidden high up in the mountains had given me something I had never known before, or ever expected to have. And that was a life of my own. In France, my life had been mapped out for me since the day of my birth. My marriage to my mother’s cousin by the time I was eighteen would have ensured the rest of my life was lived with similar wealth and privilege to what I had known as a child. And like my mother, I would also have been expected to serve our Queen, Marie Antoinette, in her royal appartements. I had expected nothing less of my future, nor did my parents, or anyone associated with us.
But this cave had given me so much more than that. Here, I had embraced independence and a freedom I had never known existed, especially to a female born in 1776. For not even the Bannock women knew freedom as I did in that high mountain country. The cave became my sanctuary and it was here that I finally laid my past to rest. Where I let all the hurt go and where I found peace. And this is where I raised esa, from the tiny ball of fluff I had found curled under some ferns in the forest, to the massive beast he was today.
It was also where I got to know Ryder. He had fallen in love with me here, in this very chamber, although my love for him had been a slow simmering thing that boiled and festered until it found release in a mountain pool on another mountain range many miles from this one.
I moved slowly around the hearth as the memories flooded back, until I came to the raised wall which I had used as my sleeping platform. I stared at it, thinking of the thick, well cured furs that had covered it and how safe I had always felt sleeping there.
I smiled as I looked back around the cave. I still loved it. And it would always hold a special place in my heart, but I knew my days of living here were over. Because that half wild, independent young girl who had once thrived here all alone in these high mountain ranges with just esa during the summer months, a girl who had become hard, who never dared feel or show emotion, was gone. And although I would always defend those I loved to the death, I was also a woman of almost thirty, a wife and a mother, who now knew what it was to be loved by a good man and small boy.
And I had my Bannock family. And with the few short years we had left here, I wanted to spend every moment with them. I turned back to my sleeping berth and reached up to run my fingers along a deep groove of rock. The small parcel of cured deerskin which contained my treasures was still there. I pulled it from its hiding place and gently opened it.
Everything was the
re. My father’s letters and diaries, the pages yellow and fragile now. I stifled a cry at seeing my Papa’s familiar handwriting and had a sudden memory of being in Paris four years ago when I was hunting Jarryth, when I came across the servants’ alleyway which ran behind our old home. I had stood looking at it for a long time, remembering how I fled down it to escape the mob and the burning inferno that had become Papa’s ancestral home. But in the end, I couldn’t bear to go near it and had walked away. For even after seventeen years, I hadn’t been able to face what had been built in the place of our razed home, nor see where my Mama had lost her life. Nor could I have borne it had the land remained an empty charred thing, where my Papa’s family had lived for centuries in a palace of treasures. Perhaps one day I might find the courage to return, perhaps I might even go there with Harry and Ryder. But that day would be well into the future.
I folded the letter away, aware of its fragility, understanding in that moment that when Papa and I sailed from Spain with our aristocratic friends in the hope of starting a new life in the New World, my father had already been dying. For now I remembered vividly as I held these letters, the small glass bottle he had often sipped from while we lived in Spain. And I knew then that it had been laudanum for pain. He had pushed himself to get me settled in a new life before death claimed him. It was why I recognized the smell of laudanum around Thorne, because I knew it well enough from my father.
I don’t know where my Papa’s grave is and even if I were to spend the rest of my life searching for it, I know I would never find it. But I have little desire to return anyway, to that place where I met a monster.
I looked at the other pieces in my hand. Old trinkets, nothing more, certainly nothing of value, yet priceless memories of another time, of a life lost to me forever. I touched a scrappy piece of material. It had once been part of a dress my mother had ordered especially for my thirteenth birthday, a dress of bows and blue satin. Even now I can remember how excited I was as my maid helped me dress, ready for my party. But by the end of that day, the dress lay in ruins upon my body, along with the life I had known.
A broken necklace lay next to it, its metal twisted, the precious stones long gone. Beneath them was the remains of a diamond clip I had worn in my hair that day of my birthday. The diamonds had long ago been sold off by my father, yet for some reason I could never bear to part with what was left of it.
And then I found a smaller piece of hide. I opened it gently, careful of the treasure within and almost cried aloud when I saw the ring. This is what I had come here for. La Chevalière, my father’s precious ring which bore our family’s coat of arms and by rights, as my father’s heir, I could claim the ring as my own, although as a French noblewoman I could only wear the ring on my little finger. But I had no intention of wearing it. My life now was as a hunter and gatherer. I would lose the ring within days were I to put it on my little finger, so I would keep it for Harry. It was all I had to bequeath him. And if I closed my eyes, I could see my father wearing it on the small finger of his left hand, where all noblemen wore their rings, as he strode through our glorious home in Paris, or as he sat and entertained our family around a dining table heavy with food.
I opened my eyes and looked around the cave. We had sat at a table laden with food, wearing satins and silks and diamonds, while the people of France were dying of starvation, dressed in rags. And I now knew what it was to go hungry, to go barefoot with no warm clothing on a cold night, to be alone and afraid with no-where to go or no-one to turn to. So even though this ring signified who I was and where I came from and what I had lost, it also symbolized everything that had been wrong in France. I thought suddenly of Napoleon Bonaparte and my brief meeting with him in Paris and knew he had the strength of character to lead France into a new age, yet would the power corrupt him? I couldn’t know. Let history be the judge of him.
I touched all those other worthless belongings and as my fingers ran gently over the old bits of metal, I knew I wouldn’t keep them. I wanted only the ring and my father’s diaries. One day I would tell Harry of his French heritage, that his grandpapa shared bloodlines to the royal house of the Bourbon Kings. That my brave beautiful mother owned links to the ancient line d’Orléans. And that both my parents could trace their ancestors back to the 9th century. I thought that was something special, even if it no longer amounted to much of anything at all.
Three
Ryder lay with his chin on the back of his hands, looking out across the valley to the mountains which soared away to the horizon in every direction. Madeleine smiled as she watched him, thinking him exquisite in that moment, his jaw freshly shaven, his long dark hair wet about his shoulders and those curls which always hung about his forehead now framing his handsome face. She allowed her fingers to trace the scars he carried on his body, but didn’t dare reach out and touch those pale thin lines around his wrists where once a set of manacles had bitten deep.
It was almost dusk, the brilliant crimson of sunset streaking across the sky to other worlds, causing the virgin snow on nearby mountain peaks to look pink in that soft light. Madeleine gathered more herbs from the bundle she had gathered and rubbed them over his back and shoulders and arms, washing him gently, for they had come here to bathe in a pool of water not far from the cave. It sat on a ledge, hundreds of feet above a ravine, the water in the pool fed from streams higher up the mountain. When Madeleine lived in these mountains with esa, she had come here to bathe once a month around dawn, for the wall of boulders behind them and off to their right offered some protection from predators.
Yet they felt confident of their privacy as they bathed, for even though they were perched high up on that ledge, there was no-one around for miles. Other than a large flock of mountain chickadees flying far below them in the ravine, seeking their nests for the night.
“How does one describe this view? An impossibility, I think,” Ryder murmured as Madeleine smiled, moving to lie against him, her naked body warm in the cool water, her chin resting on his shoulder, her legs entwined within his own as he lay beneath her, his arms on the pool’s rocky edge.
“I don’t know,” she said and laughed softly before bending to kiss him, her lips warm and wet on his back. Ryder moved, rolling over so she was now facing him and reached up to caress her. Madeleine closed her eyes in pleasure at his touch.
“Your skin feels like silk,” he said, his voice low with desire. “Indeed, there are times I must think I bruise you, for my hands are so rough and callused compared to such softness.”
She opened her eyes to look at him, holding his gaze, seeing the lust in those blue eyes along with the strength in his face. His mouth was fierce and determined, yet his lips could be so gentle. She moved to straddle him, feeling the bulge of his sex beneath her but she teased him, taking his hands in her own to kiss them.
“I would have it no other way, halfbreed,” she whispered as Ryder moved to spread her legs with his own, putting his right leg over her left to hold her close. But Madeleine had no intention of going anywhere.
She moved to kiss him lightly on the mouth, teasing him again before kissing his cheeks, his eyes, his throat, his chest. He tasted of lavender and sage from her herbs, no longer of dust and cobwebs from the cave, for they had swept it clean before setting a great fire in the hearth to air it, laying down their furs on fresh spring grasses cut in the lower woods. When they came across a large nest of dusky grouse they managed to kill two young birds, roasting them in the cave’s hearth above the flames on the old ironwood frame, left there from Madeleine’s last meal all those years before.
With their bellies full they left the horses behind in the grove feasting on new spring grass, securing the gate behind them from predators, then walked to the pool, taking two blankets with them. There they had scrubbed their buckskin clothing with herbs, before lying them on the boulders to dry.
“Perhaps before we leave tomorrow we could break the cave door, along with the gate into the grove,” Madeleine said
, lifting her head to look at him, her lovely gold brown eyes dark with love. “I think we both know we won’t ever come back this way, so perhaps it’s time for some other creature to claim it as their own.”
Ryder nodded in agreement, his hands moving slowly over her. “Are you happy?” he asked, the question taking Madeleine by surprise.
She nodded. “Haa. I am happy. And I’m glad you came here with me. It feels right somehow that you finished this journey with me. And now I have said my goodbyes and look to the future with you and Harry.”
“I love you,” he said, as Madeleine reached out to gently push away the curls from his forehead.
“And I you, halfbreed,” she whispered and under that glorious sunset she kissed him again, but this time it wasn’t a tease, it was a deep sensuous kiss that left him reeling. He looked at her, his eyes moving slowly over her face as though it were impossible for him to take it in, as though it were something he endeavoured to conquer, to devour, to make his own. He raised his head to kiss her, moving now with a sense of urgency, his big hands lifting her as though she weighed no more than a child, swinging her up so she sat on the edge of the pool. Madeleine moved willingly, matching his lust, letting him do as he bid and as she lay back, taking pleasure in the man, as the sun slowly set on that cool spring night high in that mountain country, Madeleine knew no matter where she spent the rest of her days, this man and this territory would be two of the great loves of her life.
Four
We sat on the flat rock out on the plateau smoking our pipes, wrapped in warm blankets, for our buckskin lay drying near the fire in the cave.
I curled my legs beneath me and leaned into Ryder. Like him I was looking forward to heading back to the Bannock in the morning, for we not only missed our son, but our family and friends there.
He reached out to put his arm about my shoulders, but as I once again put the pipe to my mouth, I suddenly felt nauseous. It lasted only a moment, along with the dizziness that came with it, but long enough to make me put aside my pipe, for I no longer had a taste for it.