Shiloh

by Lori Benton

  Mister Robert’s voice gentled, as if he had expected the proposition to rattle her. “I’ve written to Ian of the matter. I havena sent the letter, mind. I wanted first to ken your wishes. Aye, legally ye’d be Gabriel’s sister but we would consider ye his mother first. Or if ye’d rather, we could adopt just Gabriel—and nothing about your relationship with him need change if we did. Whatever ye decide, ye and Lily are welcome under our roof for as long as ye wish. But as to Gabriel . . . one day he’ll need to make his way in the world, as a man must. I’d see him given every advantage in my power to provide. As my legal son.”

  Astonishing how relief and fear could tangle. Seona had grown up without a father to claim her, had thought Gabriel’s fate would be the same. Now here was a man willing not only to shelter them but to become that covering they lacked.

  Ian’s parents had never cast shame upon her or Gabriel for his being born out of wedlock, but Mister Robert was right. There was a wide world beyond the haven of Beachum Lane. A world Gabriel would need to contend with. To have a man like Robert Cameron giving him a name and place—maybe even a trade—was no small thing.

  “I would, of course, entitle him to a portion of my estate,” Mister Robert added as if she needed the enticement. “Upon my death.”

  Seona cast an appraising glance over the man, sitting straight in his tradesman’s coat, robust of health despite the silver twined in his hair. He was of similar coloring as Hugh Cameron had been, but she saw none of the sickliness that had marked his older half brother in his last years of life.

  “Does Mama know about this?”

  “Margaret spoke to Lily while ye were at the shops with Catriona. She’s of a mind to leave the decision to ye—and to Ian.”

  Seona wrenched her gaze to the fire as a log shifted, spraying sparks across the bricks. She should write to Ian. Oughtn’t she to be the one to discuss this with him?

  “Can I think about it?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Robert Cameron said. “There’s no rush. But we think it for the best, Margaret and I . . . given how things stand.”

  Given that Ian was married to Judith, raising up their little girl. Maybe more children besides, by now.

  Seona did her best to shut out that thought, to think about what was, not what couldn’t be. To shove aside all feelings but the ones that had to do with here, now, and what was best for Gabriel.

  Going on those feelings alone, what Ian’s daddy had proposed seemed an answer to her prayers.

  3

  MOUNTAIN LAUREL, NORTH CAROLINA

  April 1796

  For the third night since the letter came, Ian dreamt of Seona, waking in the dark to lie immobile, afraid his tossing had disturbed Judith. Hearing nothing but even breathing, he eased out of bed, wincing at every rustle.

  In the cabin’s front room he stripped off his sweaty shirt, doused it in the water bucket by the door, then used it to cool his heated flesh. Naked in the dark, he stirred the banked hearth, laid on wood, then spread the wrung shirt before it. As the fire took hold, he sat, head bowed, trembling at the visceral memory of the forbidden. “For mercy’s sake,” he whispered. “Free me of this.”

  Behind him a floorboard creaked.

  “Ian?” Judith knelt behind him, the roundness of her belly pressed against his back as her hands cupped his shoulders. “You said her name.”

  His breath released in a shudder of resignation. “Judith . . . I’m sorry.”

  “I know.” She turned her face into the curve of his neck. He felt her tears on his skin. “The letter . . . was it from her?”

  He started. “From Da. I wanted to tell ye. I just . . .” He hadn’t wanted to hurt her. “There’s a drawing too. Of Gabriel. In my satchel.”

  “I’ll get them. Here, you’re chilled.”

  Her shawl fell across his shoulders, warm from her body. While he clutched it, staring into the flames, Judith’s feet padded across floorboards. Paper crinkled. She settled in one of the chairs he had made after the house fire, the letter held close in the dim light. He reached for more wood, added it to the flames, piece by piece, while Judith read the words in his father’s hand, emblazoned on his soul.

  It happened just after Epiphany. Forgive my delay in relating the News. Frankly, I have not had the Heart to do so. Ned soldiers on but Penny will receive no one, so deep is her melancholy. Gabriel cannot be made to understand why his Cousins no longer visit . . .

  As if that wasn’t bruising enough, his father had delivered a second blow: Your mother and I wish to make known to you the Proposal we have made to Seona, to formally adopt both her and Gabriel . . .

  “Ian?”

  He looked aside, knowing by the shape of the paper Judith now held that it was the sketch of his son, tucked in with his father’s letter: rounded face surrounded by curls he thought must still be fair, long lashes downswept in a state of near slumber. A portrait formed of simple lines, conveying a mother’s loving scrutiny of her offspring. Beneath it, in careful letters, the briefest note had been penned, thrilling him to see, breaking his heart with its unspoken distress: What do you want me to do?

  For the past three days he had carried the portrait through the tobacco’s seeding, at every chance taking it from the satchel slung at his side to scrutinize the image as Seona had done their living boy.

  Boy he was now. No longer the tiny bairn Ian last cradled to his chest. A little boy on his feet with words to say—mostly of his own devising, his father had related. A boy in whose face Ian caught an echo of his blood and bone. A boy who didn’t know him.

  “Judith,” he tried, knowing how this reminder of his divided heart must wound.

  “He’s beautiful, Ian. How you must ache for him.”

  Judith laid aside the portrait and rose. He felt the brush of her shift as she knelt, took him in her arms, stroked his hair like a hurting child. He lowered his head to rest against her belly. She was past six months along now.

  “A boy this time, I think,” she said. “Perhaps . . . perhaps he will bring comfort.”

  “Aye. Or she will.”

  Judith had carried this one longer than the last. She was rounder with this babe, fuller, having put on weight once the sickness passed.

  “Do you want to talk about the letter, what your daddy is proposing?” she asked, endearingly brave.

  She deserved to know his mind, but he couldn’t speak. Not with that dream still haunting his thoughts. “We’ll talk in the morning, aye?”

  “All right.” Her fingers smoothed his hair before she rose. “Come back to bed?”

  “Soon.”

  When he heard the rustle of the tick, he rose and shook out his wet shirt, draped it over the chair back, then went out to empty the water bucket into the garden. With Judith’s shawl kilted around his waist, he trudged through starlit dark to the well near the old house site and refilled the bucket. Resting it on the well’s edge, he listened to the furtive night stirrings in the nearby wood—hooting owls, the snort of a deer, a nighthawk’s cry. A breeze raised gooseflesh on his chest.

  He could see the advantages of his da giving Gabriel the security of a formal connection, but what did Seona think of it? And Lily? Seona was her daughter. Gabriel her grandson. What counsel had she given?

  Ian wrenched the heavy bucket from the stones and started back to the cabin, barefoot in the cool dark. Ned and Penny’s loss mingled with thoughts of relinquishing a father’s rights to Gabriel, grief washing over him like waves crashing and receding. Seona’s question tumbled like flotsam in their pull.

  What do you want me to do?

  He ached to look into her eyes, to tell her, “I want ye to say no. A thousand times—no.”

  Or that had been his answer. He questioned it now. If his da adopted Gabriel and Seona, Ian would cease to be the man who must concern himself most intimately with their well-being. The man who said aye and nay. That duty—and privilege—would be Robert Cameron’s. Was it for the best? Was it the deliveran
ce for which he had prayed? It felt like penance.

  Whatever it was, he had sown its seeds. Dare he flinch from the crop springing from them?

  “Not my will,” he whispered on the cabin doorstep. “But please . . .”

  At a loss for how to pray, he set the bucket in its place and shut the door on what remained of the night.

  24 April 1796

  To Robert Cameron

  Beachum Lane, Boston

  Dear Da—

  Your News of Ned and Penny’s loss is grievous. Indeed I find myself thinking much of my Brother, praying earnestly for his Comfort and that of you all. I am so sorry, Da, but thankful Gabriel was spared.

  Speaking of my Son, I have bided my Soul in Patience these four Days since receiving your Letter, torn between the haste my Heart bade me reply and the need to deliberate most carefully upon such a weighty Matter as the lifelong Disposition of my Firstborn. There is much I could say to your desire to adopt Gabriel, cases to be made for and against. Instead I put to you the Question which must be answered before another word is exchanged. Is this what Seona wants? Can you say to me in Truth there has been put upon her no degree of Pressure, no constraint of Obligation? Unless I can rest assured this is Seona’s choice, I cannot seal it with my Agreement.

  She may, if willing, write to me herself and let me know her mind, as I see Catriona has proven a commendable Tutor in the Art of Penmanship. I will expect to hear from her, or you on her behalf, concerning this Matter soon. Until then I remain your devoted Son &c.

  Ian Cameron

  Mountain Laurel

  Randolph Co., North Carolina

  May 1796

  The tobacco seedlings rested snug in their mounds. The sweet corn was sown. Ian had taken the afternoon to climb with John Reynold to the creek bank Charlie Spencer had resumed digging after Ian constructed a support beneath that worrisome stone. It was his first chance to check the structure for any weakening that might endanger Charlie in his periodic mining.

  The frame proved sound. Since Charlie wasn’t present, he and John concealed the dig with a brush-screen and started back down the ridge in companionable silence. Cutting down the final wooded slope, Ian noticed his neighbor’s frown.

  “Something on your mind, John?”

  “Always.” John fetched him a half smile. “Just now I was thinking of Gabriel. Is there any news?”

  Under the boughs of an oak in fresh leaf they paused. Ian put a hand to the tree’s trunk, its bark rough against his palm, and told John of his parents’ plan. “It’s but three weeks since I wrote, and it’s heavy on my mind. Though for Judith’s sake I’ve kept it there.”

  “She knows of it?”

  “She’s praying for me,” Ian said with no small wonder. “For all concerned.”

  “A remarkable woman, your wife.”

  Ian looked away down the wooded aisles of the ridge, at the great boles of oaks and hickory and chestnut, the slender locust and birch. “I know.”

  “What do you mean to do?”

  Ian met his neighbor’s quiet gaze. “I need to know Seona’s mind. She’ll have to convince me this is what she wants before I consent.”

  “You would give up a father’s claim on Gabriel?”

  “What if I’m meant to? What if this needs to happen, willing or no?”

  “Were I faced with such a choice over Robin, I don’t know whether . . .” John’s words trailed off at a sound that had both men lifting their heads in the direction of the Reynold homestead: a child’s wailing.

  “That is Robin.” John plunged off through the trees, Ian on his heels. Before they reached the path, a booming voice mingled with the wails.

  “Mister Ian! Where you be?”

  They burst through a laurel thicket to find Ally, Naomi’s tall, strapping son, standing where the trail branched off to the Reynolds’ homestead. Dwarfed in his massive arms was John’s two-year-old son, Robin, red-faced and furious.

  John was first to reach them. “Ally! What’s amiss?” Robin reached for his father, who hoisted him into his embrace.

  Sweating freely as if from running hard, Ally shouted over Robin’s crying. “Mister John, Mister Ian . . . it real bad.”

  John’s face went chalky. “Cecily?”

  Ally wagged his head. “She gone to help. Left me with Robin to mind and find you iffen I could.”

  He swung toward Ian, who felt his whole being suspended, as if time itself had skipped a beat. His lips shaped a name. Judith.

  “Yes, sir. Fell to paining in the washhouse. She having that baby.”

  He was frozen, blood gone cold. “John.”

  “Go,” John told him. “We’ll come behind.”

  Ian gripped John’s arm, mouth too dry for speech. Then he was pelting down the path, staggering as his shocked limbs sought to devour the distance home. The babe was meant to come in June. Another month. Had Judith got the timing wrong?

  Ian raced into the clearing where the house once stood, cutting behind the kitchen, making for the cabin where they would have taken Judith. He heard no cries above the pounding of his boots, his ragged breath. No sound at all.

  With a stitch in his side like a knife jab, he ran straight into the cabin through the open door. Mandy stood in the front room, tiny and barefoot in her shift, curls mussed, fist jammed in her mouth.

  He nearly collided with Naomi coming out of the bedroom, arms full of rags so blood-soaked there was no knowing what their color had been. He halted, gasping.

  Naomi pushed past him and tossed the rags out the door. “Go in, Mister Ian. Baby’s come.”

  Even as she spoke, he heard a newborn’s mewling. He went in.

  The room looked like a slaughterhouse. Blood soaked the tick, the sheets, and the arms of Cecily Reynold, hovering over Judith in the bed, pressing what must have been the last clean wad of cloth they owned between her legs. The wet-copper scent of blood was thick enough to taste. Judith’s eyes were closed, her face ghastly white, but she lived, else Cecily would not be trying so frantically to stem the bleeding. Swallowing back the urge to gag, Ian started for the bed.

  Naomi caught him, strong hand on his unresisting arm. “Can’t stop it,” she whispered, voice throaty with grief. “But you got here in time.”

  She left him standing and hurried to a table pushed to the side where she bent over the bairn.

  Ian went to his wife, barely acknowledging Cecily as he knelt and took Judith’s hand in his. She turned her bloodless face toward him as her eyelids blinked open. Even her lips were drained of color. “Ian . . . a son.”

  He smoothed her damp hair back, then glanced at Cecily, who looked up, tears coursing down her cheeks, dark eyes asking the terrible question.

  Numb with shock, he nodded.

  Cecily slumped in defeat. Staggering a little, she pushed off the bed and went to join Naomi, doing something with the bairn still making his fretful sounds.

  “Is he well?” Judith asked, eyes darting as if searching for the babe.

  “Can ye not hear him?” Her fingers were limp, cold against his lips as he kissed them. A stone lodged at the back of his throat. So many things he wanted to say, should have said a thousand times before. “I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused ye. So sorry.”

  Judith’s brow tightened as she asked again, “He’s well?”

  The bairn had fallen silent. “He’s bonny,” Ian said, though he had yet to see their son. “Thank ye for him, Judith. And for Mandy.”

  “Miranda . . .” Her breath sighed out of her, and she closed her eyes, a faint smile curving her lips. “Grace. It is enough . . .”

  He leaned closer. “Mandy, do ye mean? D’ye want her now?”

  He searched her face, desperate to know what she needed. She had said, It is enough, but it wasn’t. He had never given her enough.

  “Judith?”

  Her eyelids fluttered. Her chest rose. “Call him Ian.”

  “I will,” he said. “Judith, I love ye. D’ye hear me? I lo
ve . . .”

  Her breath went out on a long exhalation that seemed born at the roots of her, leaving her parted lips agape. She didn’t draw another.

  He was breathless too, the air driven from him as if by a blow. Then he laid his head across his wife’s still breast as a keening arose in the room. The sound of an animal bewildered and in pain. Too robust for a newborn’s. He wondered who made it, until he clamped his lips tight. There was silence for a time before a hand touched his shoulder.

  “Ian?”

  He lifted his head. One look at Cecily’s trembling lips told him he had another farewell to make. “Bring him to me.”

  Cecily brought his son, cleaned and wrapped in a wee quilt Judith had pieced, to where he knelt beside the ruined bed, and laid the bairn in his arms. There was no time for unwrapping him, for counting fingers or toes, perfect as he might have been—save he had come a little too soon to thrive.

  “Water,” he said, never taking his gaze from the tiny features that bore striking resemblance to Mandy’s at her birth. “Hurry.”

  A stir of bodies moving, the splash of water pouring, then Naomi set a cup beside him. He was vaguely aware of John in the room now, holding Robin, an arm around a weeping Cecily, of Malcolm and Ally hovering in the doorway, Mandy whimpering, Naomi scooping her up, humming a sound like the drone of distant bees. Then all stood silent. Witnessing.

  His son was silent too. Ian burrowed his fingers past quilted folds to the sunken little chest, felt a fluttery heartbeat. He wasn’t too late to do this last thing for Judith. Dipping fingers in the water, he sprinkled droplets across his son’s scrunched brow.

  When he spoke, his voice was steady. “I baptize ye, Ian Hugh Cameron, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Almighty bless and keep ye, my wee son. And your mother with ye.”

  A choked chorus of amens filled the room, but Ian had replaced his fingertips against the struggling little heart and did not raise his eyes from his namesake’s face until the beat beneath his touch fell still. He kissed the anointed brow, then laid the bairn beside his mother.