Candace McCarthy

by Fireheart

  Chapter 9

  With the return of the owner of her wigwam and the visiting guests within the village, Joanna vacated Red Dress’s lodge and moved in with Mary and Rising Bird.

  “I’m sorry,” Joanna apologized to her cousin as she moved her belongings inside.

  Mary appeared surprised. “For what? Have you forgotten that I wanted you here from the first?”

  Joanna grinned. “I must have.” Tears threatened as she stored her satchel of clothing beneath a sleeping platform. In her cousin’s wigwam, the beds were built of sturdy sticks about a foot and a half off the ground. Personal possessions, cooking utensils, and food items were stored beneath the sleeping platforms.

  As Joanna straightened, Mary tapped her arm. “Here,” she said. She held something out toward her.

  Joanna recognized the garment as a Lenape tunic, one similar but more beautiful than the one she’d taken with her to England. “What’s this?” she whispered.

  Her cousin’s expression was soft. “It’s something

  I made for you. You must be tired of wearing those English gowns by now.“

  Joanna was touched by Mary’s gift. “Thank you.” Still, she hesitated in taking it. “You shouldn’t have spent all that time on me.”

  Mary frowned. “You’re my cousin. I love you. Why shouldn’t I make you a gift?”

  “Wa-nee-shih.” Blinking back tears, Joanna accepted the garment and turned away. She set it carefully on the sleeping pallet that Mary had said was hers.

  “Why don’t you put it on?” Mary eyed her young cousin with concern. Since her return to the village, Joanna had slowly become more at ease, yet the girl was holding back her emotions. What had happened to the spirited young child who had lived among the Indians?

  I did that to her, Mary thought. I sent her to a life that tethered her happiness and spirit.

  “Perhaps I’ll wear it later,” Joanna said.

  Mary kept her concern hidden as she nodded before setting out to prepare dinner.

  The guests in the village were easily accommodated. The eight women and ten children had been taken into Lenape homes, many of them invited into the larger wigwams with a few settling into the small dome-shaped lodges like Mary’s. Watching Mary gather the implements needed to prepare the main meal, Joanna began to wonder about her cousin’s life.

  Why didn’t Mary have any children? There were too many years and too much that had happened between them for Joanna to ask.

  Mary would have made a good mother, Joanna thought. Hadn’t her cousin stepped into the role for her after her mother died?

  She began to realize that while life had been terribly unpleasant for her, perhaps it hadn’t been a cup filled with happiness for Mary either.

  “May I help?” Joanna asked as she bent to help Mary move a large sack of ground corn from under a sleeping platform.

  Their hands touched briefly as they dragged the sack to where they could reach it more easily. Mary glanced at her with such affection that Joanna felt the resurgence of tears.

  “I would like that. Thank you,” Mary said quietly.

  Joanna nodded and asked what she could do to assist.

  Fireheart entered the wigwam of Moon Dove’s clan and followed Moon Dove to where the maiden’s mother sat on a rush mat, shelling beans.

  “I have brought him, mother,” Moon Dove said.

  The old woman looked up from her bowl of beans. “Fireheart, I must speak with you about my son White Cat.”

  Surprised, the brave inclined his head and took a seat on the mat that Moon Dove, on her mother’s instructions, had set on the dirt floor for him.

  “You may leave us, daughter,” Berry Tree said.

  Moon Dove appeared relieved before she went away.

  Fireheart watched her leave before turning back to the girl’s mother. He found himself the object of Berry Tree’s intense scrutiny.

  “You like Moon Dove?” she asked.

  “Kihiila,” he said, surprised by the question.

  “Why have you not asked her to be your wife?” the woman demanded with a puzzled look.

  “I do not wish to take a wife now.”

  Berry Tree made a derisive sound. “You are a good warrior. Soon Wild Squirrel will die and you will be chief.”

  “Wild Squirrel has many years as our chief.”

  The woman shoved a pile of beans in Fireheart’s direction, and with a nod of her head instructed him to shell them.

  Fireheart did so, without thought, even though the job was women’s work.

  “Wild Squirrel is doing well. He will recover and be the leader of our people,” the brave said.

  Her expression filled with compassion, Berry Tree shook her head. “Wild Squirrel has been ill for much longer than he has shown. He grows tired of this life. The Spirit World calls him.”

  Fireheart scowled as he opened a bean pod and separated bean from shell before throwing the bean in with the others in Berry Tree’s bowl. “Why do you say this?”

  “It is something I know. Something I feel.”

  “Must we speak of our chief?” Fireheart frowned. “You wish to talk about White Cat, your son.”

  Berry Tree gazed at him a long time without answering. Fireheart shifted uncomfortably under her gaze, but continued to shell beans while waiting for her to speak. “My son wishes to know when his sister will marry,” she said. “And he wishes the great warrior Fireheart to take him on a hunt.”

  Fireheart raised his eyebrows at the first, then smiled at the second statement. Despite the old age of Berry Tree, her son White Cat was a young boy who was anxious to become a man. Since Berry Tree’s husband had died last winter, the task of helping to raise the boy fell on the other male members of the Lenape tribe. “I will take White Cat on a hunt when the area is safe from our Iroquois enemy.”

  “And Moon Dove?”

  “Have the matrons decreed that Moon Dove and I must marry?” he asked. When the married women of the village made the decision, it would be announced at a gathering, and then it would be so.

  “I wish to know your thoughts first,” Berry Tree said.

  “I must think on this.”

  “There is someone else you might take as wife?”

  “There is no one else,” Fireheart said with an odd little catch in his chest. No one except Autumn Wind, and she would leave soon to return to the land called England.

  What did I tell you about that animal skin you’re wearing!” Uncle Roderick said.

  Joanna cringed as he raised his hand. “I’m not hurting anyone by wearing it. I’ll stay in my room—”

  She felt the crack of his hand as he slapped her across the face. “You are not a savage, do you hear me? You are my niece, and I will not tolerate your Indian ways!”

  He hit her again, knocking her to the floor. Seeing the direction of his gaze, Joanna scrambled to cover her legs, but the tunic was too short.

  “Come with me, young lady, ” he growled as he jerked her to her feet. “You will not listen to reason! I will make you listen in the one way you’ll remember!”

  “No!” Joanna cried as Uncle Roderick called for a servant.

  “Get me my riding crop, ” he said to the frightened young maid who answered his summons. “Then see that we are not disturbed!”

  The girl returned within minutes with the piece of leather, then with a look of sympathy toward Joanna, she hurriedly left.

  He turned to Joanna with anger in his gaze, and, Joanna thought, a sense of satisfaction.

  I hate you, she thought as he shut the door to her room. I hate you!

  But she didn’t utter the words nor did she cry out loud when the first slash of the leather strap hit her arms as she raised them in defense. She gasped as it found its target with the back of her legs.

  He left her when her legs were a mass of red welts, and she lay facedown on the bed, vowing to be free of him.

  She rolled over and gasped with pain. Wincing, she got up from the bed a
nd her bedchamber door opened.

  “No!” she cried as Roderick Neville reentered the room.

  Joanna shot up in bed, gasping, her eyes wide but unseeing.

  “Joanna!” Mary sat on the edge of the sleeping platform, gently shaking her younger cousin awake. “Joanna, ’tis just a dream. A terrible dream by the looks of you.”

  She nodded, still dazed by the horror of her nightmare. Her gaze fell on the lovely doeskin gown that Mary had made for her. It was that beautiful gift which had triggered the dream . . . terror from a childhood spent alone and afraid of a cruel man.

  “Is she all right?” Rising Bird appeared by Mary’s side, his concerned expression lit by the glowing embers in the fire-pit. Joanna gazed at him, unable to speak.

  “She will be,” Mary said, hugging her. “Would you like to tell me about it?”

  Joanna vigorously shook her head. “No,” she rasped. “Someday maybe, but not now.”

  Mary stood. “I understand.”

  And Joanna realized that she did. Something passed between them, a feeling of affection . . . of love.

  “Will you be able to go back to sleep?”

  Joanna shook her head. “I think I’ll get up and go to the lake.”

  “I’ll come with you—”

  “No.” She smiled at Mary to take the sting out of the rejection. “I need to be alone.”

  “But it’s dangerous—”

  “She will be fine, wife,” Rising Bird said from his sleeping platform, surprisingly taking Joanna’s side.

  A look passed between the couple. Mary saw the tunic she’d made carefully draped over the end of Joanna’s sleeping pallet. “Wear the doeskin,” she urged her cousin. “You’ll be an easy target in that gown.”

  The gown she was referring to was the yellow print that Joanna had worn the previous day.

  Joanna felt a momentary qualm about donning the tunic. The memory of her dream still haunted her, making her heart race.

  He is dead. He can’t hurt you anymore.

  She agreed and reached for the gown. She waited for Mary and Rising Bird to go back to bed before she took off her shift and put on the soft doeskin.

  The tunic felt wonderful to her. Soft and supple, it fit her perfectly. Ignoring her leather shoes, she decided to go barefoot.

  She slipped from the wigwam into the clear warm night. The sliver of moon was larger than it had been before Fireheart and the others had left. Joanna paused a moment to study it and the starry sky before venturing from the wigwam.

  As she crossed the yard, it occurred to her that there might be guards now, with the threat of Iroquois. She saw a brave as she headed toward the path to the water. Waving, she hoped he recognized her and wouldn’t stop her from leaving.

  The warrior stared at her hard, and then he must have realized who it was, despite her Lenape garb. When she came abreast of him, he nodded and softly asked her where she was going. When she told him her destination, he signaled her to go, but with a warning to be careful of the enemy in the night.

  Joanna felt a tingling at her nape as she followed the path up the rise in the land and down again toward the water. When she’d decided to come, she hadn’t given a moment’s thought to encountering Iroquois. Her mind had been filled with images of her past and her uncle . . . a nightmare that had seemed more real than her present situation.

  The forest was filled with the night sounds. The hum of summer insects, a rustle in the leaves as some frightened animal sensed her and took flight.

  The ground felt hard to her feet, but she ignored the pain, recalling a time when she’d spend much of her days either barefoot, or wearing the soft leather soles of her moccasins.

  She would ask Little Blossom or Mary to teach her how to make moccasins again. She must have known at one time she decided, for there was always someone about tanning hides or making clothing . . . sharpening arrowheads . . . or making tools for gardening or preparing food.

  As she continued toward the lake without mishap or the sound of anything other than a small animal in the brush, Joanna felt the tension within her start to unwind. The image of her uncle’s face began to fade as did the strange throbbing at the scars on the back of her legs, pain brought on by the memory of her punishment.

  The path opened up onto a clearing at the lakeshore. Joanna gazed out over the calm water, and the painful past faded away.

  I could have belonged here, she thought. If she hadn’t gone to England, she would have been free to live out her remaining years with the peace and harmony of the Lenni Lenape Indians.

  But she had gone to England and inherited her uncle’s estate, and now there were people who depended on her, people she’d forced from her mind for a time.

  She didn’t have to worry about them at present, did she? There was her good friend John Burton to take care of things . . . although she feared that he might be anxious to get back to his own home, which he shared with his fraternal twin brother.

  Joanna went to the rock she’d discovered on her first day at the lake and sat down. Swinging her legs over the edge, she dipped her feet in the cool water, sighing with pleasure as it soothed the soreness from her soles and lapped gently at her ankles.

  There she sat for a long while, studying the water, the sky, and the stars . . . and longing for things beyond reach.

  As soon as Joanna left the wigwam, Rising Bird kissed his wife and left their bed to trail his wife’s cousin. He would keep his distance so that she wouldn’t know he had come. The night in the forest was a dangerous time and place. He would guard her, then return before she knew he’d followed.

  He had reached the edge of the village when he saw Fireheart talking to the night guard. Fireheart signaled to Rising Bird to wait before leaving, and he halted, although he was anxious to get down to the lake.

  Fireheart approached him with a curious expression. “Why do you leave your bed so late, Rising Bird?”

  Rising Bird gestured toward the trail. “Autumn Wind has decided to take a walk. Although I don’t want her to know it, I would not want her to leave unguarded.”

  “I will guard Autumn Wind,” Fireheart said, unable to believe that the woman would be foolish enough to leave the safety of the village. “I was on my way to the lake when I saw Rain Cloud.” Rain Cloud was the guard.

  “You?” Rising Bird asked, his gaze narrowing.

  Fireheart nodded. “I will protect her from the enemy with my life.”

  Something in the younger man’s tone gave Rising Bird food for thought. “You will not let her know that my wife and I are concerned for her.”

  “She will not hear it from me.” Fireheart held up his bow and arrow. “I have a weapon to protect her.” He eyed his friend with amusement. “What would you have used to defend against the enemy?” he asked.

  Rising Bird realized with a sheepish grin that he had forgotten to bring a weapon. He’d been so concerned with leaving to follow her quickly. “My hands and feet are weapons.”

  Fireheart chuckled softly. “My arrow will fell a Cayuga more quickly.”

  The older man conceded the younger man’s point. “Go then, Fireheart, and know this man is grateful for your protection of the one he considers daughter.”

  “I will guard her with my life,” Fireheart repeated, meaning it.

  Because he trusted that Fireheart could protect Joanna, Rising Bird thanked the brave and headed back to the wigwam and his waiting wife.

  After ensuring that the area was safe, Fireheart paused in the forest and hid behind a stand of trees. He saw her immediately. Joanna was seated on a rock with her legs dangling in the water.

  He crept closer for a better look. His breath slammed in his throat as he studied her. She was beautiful. Her blonde hair flowed, unbound, about her shoulders and back. She turned and there was enough light to see her features. Lovely. Tempting him . . . luring him nearer.

  Fascinated, drawn, Fireheart slipped from one tree to another without making a sound. He was surpr
ised to see her in Lenape clothing. She had been in the village for over a month and had never discarded her English gown. In the doeskin tunic, she seemed more like the young girl who had lived among his people.

  Unable to help himself, he left the cover for the open and moved toward the lake. He wanted to touch her, kiss her.

  He halted, unsure of his welcome.

  The water felt good against Joanna’s skin. She stood and waded out into the lake, raising the hem of her tunic as she moved into deeper water. A light breeze began to stir in the air, caressing her face and lifting the loose tendrils of her hair. She had not gone very far when she heard a noise behind her.

  With the hair rising up the back of her neck, Joanna spun to see who was there. Visions of Iroquois Indians on the warpath invaded her mind, chilling her to the bone.

  At first, she could see nothing. Then a shadow moved, and her heart began to pound as she focused her gaze near the edge of the woods where she thought she saw movement.

  Joanna waited for what seemed like forever before she began to relax, certain that she had imagined things. She had started to turn when out of the corner of her eye she saw a figure step from the forest.

  She gasped. Her body taut with fear, she carefully searched with her eyes for something to use as a weapon. The only thing she could see to defend herself with was a rock, but she would need to pick it up with two hands.

  How would she do so without drawing the man’s attention?

  She moved casually back to her seat and found a smaller stone, one that would be less effective in the fight to defend, but less easily detected by the enemy.

  Without turning to look again, she could tell he was a warrior. Iroquois?

  Her chest tightening with terror, Joanna moved slowly to face him.

  The thunder of her heart nearly drowned out the sound of her breathing. The man was indeed a warrior. He held a weapon of some sort in his right hand. She peered into the darkness and was able to see that he had a bow and arrow.