Whispered Promise

by Colleen French

  "I . . . I've come to ask your help."

  His upper lip curled menacingly. "You, Mistress Beale, have come to ask for my help! You come to ask me, a savage, a favor?" He threw back his head and laughed so hard that the fringe of his leather beaded tunic shook.

  Leah set her jaw. It was obvious he wasn't going to make this easy for her. She rose to her feet. For William, she had to do this for William. "Yes," she said quietly.

  "Why?"

  She searched his face for some flicker of the man Harrison had been. She saw nothing. "Because you are the only one who can help me. You're the only one who can save my son."

  He lifted his hand. "Don't tell me. I don't want to know."

  "Harrison, they took him." She walked toward him, reaching out to him. "They kidnapped my son! They—"

  "Enough!" he barked through clenched teeth. "Enough! I will not help you. Not you, white bitch. Not anyone."

  "Bastard!" Before Leah realized what she had done, she drew back her hand and slapped him hard across the cheek.

  He automatically lifted his hand to strike her back but she didn't flinch. As frightened as she was of him, she didn't flinch. She stared at him boldly, her own fury matching his. She was not the weak maid he had once known and she would not cower as one.

  He stopped his hand in mid-air and slowly lowered it.

  She took a breath. She had his attention now. She went on before she lost her courage, before she lost herself in the hatred that shone in his black eyes. "I want you to help me rescue my husband and son. They were kidnapped in New York before the army retreated into New Jersey. It was Indians, Harrison, and the army has done nothing. If I don't find them, if I don't go, then my only child will be lost forever."

  "What kind of Indians?"

  He was listening. "I don't know, but northern I think."

  "Iroquois. Probably Mohawk. We hear they've been giving aid to the British. The British pay them with flintlocks so they can kill their own. With whiskey so they can kill themselves."

  She clasped her hands. "I knew you would know who had done it. I know you can help me find them. I'll pay you anything, gold, food, clothing, blankets. Just tell me." She looked up at his stoic face. "You'll help me, won't you, Harrison?"

  He spun around and started out of the wigwam. "No."

  She ran after him. "Why not? Tell me why, Harrison?" She followed him outside. It was so cold that her breath formed billowy clouds in the darkness. She hugged herself for warmth. "Just tell me why."

  He gave a laugh, shaking his head as he stared up into the clear night sky. "Why? I cannot believe your audacity, Leah." He said her name so softly that she barely heard him. "After what you did to me?"

  "Good God, Harrison! I was sixteen years old! I was scared!"

  "You said you loved me. We made plans for our future."

  "You can't blame this all on me! You're the one who ran away! You're the one who left me, Harrison!"

  He turned to stare at her, his eyes narrowing dangerously. "It was what you wanted, wasn't it?"

  She brushed back a lock of hair off her face. "I didn't come here to argue with you, or to stir up the past. I came to ask you to help me."

  "To help you rescue the man you married when you had vowed to marry me? When you handfasted with me?"

  She tried to keep her thoughts in focus. William, William was all that mattered right now. "I came to ask you to help me find my son, my eight-year-old child, the only child I will ever have."

  He tore his gaze from hers and stared up into the sky again. For a long moment he was silent. "And why should I? Not that I have any intentions of helping you, but amuse me, Leah. Tell me, why should I help you?"

  She reached out and brushed her hand against his shoulder. She could feel her tears stinging her eyes. "For a love we once shared a long time ago? For a woman's love of her son?"

  He stiffened at her touch, but when he spoke his voice was softer and less abrasive. "I have troubles of my own to deal with here. Our village has made a pact not to become involved in your war. A friend . . . a man who was once a friend . . . stood trial today for his involvement. The world of the Shawnee is crumbling."

  "Without my son, I have no world."

  "Sleep in my wigwam tonight. Tomorrow I will find you an escort back to the bay."

  "Harrison." She clasped his hand, refusing to let him pull away. "You were a good man, always. Your father says you've changed. He says you're not the son he raised. True or not, I know that you're still a good man. I know you wouldn't let my son die knowing you could help."

  For a split second they shared the warmth of each other's hands in silence and then he pulled away. "Inside, Leah."

  She watched him walk away and disappear into the huddle of shadowy wigwams. Somewhere a dog whined. Looking skyward at the stars that twinkled overhead, Leah whispered a desperate prayer and then went back inside to get what sleep she could.

  At dawn Harrison sat cross-legged at his grandmother's hearth stirring a little white sugar into the English tea she had poured from a porcelain pot and now insisted he drink. Though he hated the English tea and all it represented in his mind, it was easier to drink it than to argue with her over it.

  Starlight took her seat cross-legged across the fire from her grandson, still as flexible as she'd been twenty years ago. They conversed in the tongue of the Shawnee. "You rant and you rave like a crazed boar of what she did to you and why you should not help her, but you do not tell me you will not save her son." She looked at him over the rim of her handleless tea cup. "You could if you wanted to. If he is alive, you could return him to his mother's bosom. Will you help her?"

  "It would be wrong. I have taken a vow to remain neutral in this fight between the white men."

  Starlight cackled with delight as she sipped her hot tea. "And still you do not answer me, grandson of my heart."

  He set down his tea cup, feeling silly to be drinking from a vessel with yellow flowers painted on it. "Of course I will not help her. I owe her nothing. She betrayed me."

  "And what does she say of that betrayal now?"

  He rose and began to pace. "Nothing. She made no excuses for herself. She asked for no forgiveness. She despises me as much as I despise her."

  "She said that?"

  Unable to meet his grandmother's gaze, he studied a basket of dried tubers hanging from the rafter above his head. "She didn't have to."

  "It is hard for this woman to believe she would come so far to find a man she hated."

  "I told you. She wants her son back. She thinks I can find him."

  "And the husband?"

  "She didn't really speak of him, but yes, the husband as well."

  "So why is this such a hard decision for you, Harrison? Why did you not sleep all the night? Tell her no and send her back to her home on the Great Bay."

  Harrison rubbed his eyes. They were scratchy and irritated. "As much as I hate myself for it, I still . . ." He left his sentence unfinished.

  Starlight smiled sadly. " . . . you still love her," she finished for him.

  "Grandmother, I held her in my arms. She was the first woman I ever made love to. I married her beneath the stars in God's eyes."

  "To you she is still your wife, though she sleeps with another man."

  "It's doesn't make any sense," he said angrily.

  "It makes as much sense as anything in this world of ours, grandson. We cannot control love. You can no more stop loving her than a mother can stop loving the child she gives birth to."

  "I hate her for what she did. I hate her for not loving me in return."

  "I wish that I could soothe your hurts with a grandmother's balm, but I cannot." Starlight touched her left breast with her fist. "Would that I could take your pain and make it my own, but I cannot."

  "I should just send her away. Were I to find the husband, I think I would kill him."

  "You have many paths to choose from. That is one of them. Kill the husband, take this Leah for your own.
"

  "I don't want her, not after all this time. Not after the pain she has caused. I could never trust her. Never."

  "So kill the husband anyway."

  Despite the graveness of the situation, Harrison had to smile and shake his head. His grandmother was ruthless. She always had been. "Not even that could right the wrongs."

  "Let me tell you something, grandson. When you gave your love to this Le-ah, you gave her a part of your soul. That piece is now missing. That is why you are so restless. That is why you cannot love another woman or allow another woman to love you. This old woman would suggest that you will never be whole again until that piece of your soul is returned. Make peace with Le-ah. Do what you must to make that peace and then you will be able to move on with your life."

  "You're not making any sense, Grandmother. You forget that in this brave's body is still a white man's mind. You know how I fight the two men in my head, red and white."

  "Think on my words." Starlight took a sip from her tea cup and reached for a wooden stick to stoke the fire. "And bring her to me."

  "What?"

  "Bring this Le-ah woman to me. I want to meet her. I want to hear her speak."

  "Grandmother, that's not necessary," he said softly in Shawnee. "I'm going to send her away. I will not leave you to traipse across the country in search of a child I care nothing for."

  "Bring her here, anyway." This time it was a command, not a request.

  Harrison sighed. "I will bring her to you and then I will send her away." He went back to the fire and sat down. Starlight was now serving ground corn mush. He took the wooden bowl and pewter spoon she offered him. "Enough talk of the white woman. Tell me what will happen at council today."

  "We vote."

  "I know that. I also know what the outcome will be. "How will you punish him, Grandmother? What will be Kolheek's sentence?"

  "It can be but one thing." She hung her head, sighing. "It is times like this that I wish I was not the leader of this village." She touched the corner of her eye. "It is times like this that I wish your grandfather was alive to tell me what he thought, to help me make the decision I must make."

  "Grandfather never told you what to do. You have been chief twenty-five years and you have always made your decisions on your own."

  She nodded. "True, true. But it helps to have the true love of your heart at your side. It eases the pain of what one must do."

  "You could pardon him. You could give him another chance."

  "He is not sorry for his deeds. Kolheek will not admit his wrongs, my grandson." She pointed her spoon at him. "Would you give him pardon?"

  Harrison took his time in answering. "I would not."

  Starlight nodded.

  The two ate their morning meal in silence and then Harrison excused himself. He took his time in walking through the village toward his own wigwam. He stopped to speak to Taa and his son. He stopped and briefly discussed a hunting expedition with an elder cousin. He even played ball with a young brother and sister and their dog for a few minutes.

  Finally he reached his wigwam. Without calling to Leah he walked in. It was his home, he had a right to be there. She was the intruder.

  Harrison was surprised, then taken off guard by the fact that she was still asleep.

  His first impulse was to call her and wake her from where he stood. But she looked so peaceful lying there on his sleeping platform, covered by a woolen blanket. He toyed with the thought of what it would be like to be lying there beside her. What would it be like to touch her as he had once touched her?

  Against his better judgment, he reached out and smoothed a lock of her magical hair. As he did, his finger brushed her cheek. She sighed in her sleep. Never once had they slept a night in each other's arms. Theirs had been a relationship of stolen hours.

  In his mind Harrison could almost feel the weight of her rounded girlish breasts in his hands. He closed his eyes. He could smell the scent of her clean, silky hair and damp pale flesh. He could taste the sweetness of her mouth on his.

  Harrison had lain with other women after Leah, but it had never been the same. He wondered now if the feelings he recalled sharing with Leah had truly existed all, or were they nothing more than figments of his imagination? Obviously he had imagined that love he had assumed existed between them. Perhaps the lovemaking was the same, all boyhood fantasies.

  Harrison reached down and shook Leah. "Wake up."

  Startled, her eyes flew open.

  "Get up. The chief wants to speak with you."

  Leah slid her legs over the side of the sleeping platform, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "The chief?"

  "I'll take you. Then I'm going hunting. Once she is done with you, you'll come back here and wait for me. You'll go nowhere else. You'll speak to no one." He held out her cloak.

  "You said she. Your chief is a woman?" Leah slipped her feet into her leather riding boots and stood.

  "Enough questions, woman." He flung her cloak at her.

  She caught it, staring at him. "You're considering helping me, aren't you?" Her voice was husky.

  "No. I told you, my people have vowed not to take part in this warring."

  "You wouldn't be. You're taking no sides. My son is an eight-year-old. Eight-year-olds know nothing of politics. He is not on either side of this war, he's caught in the middle, Harrison."

  "But not you. You sent men with guns from your plantation. You made a choice."

  "As did your father. We chose freedom."

  He shook his head, unwilling to discuss his father with her. "The Shawnee choose freedom, freedom to be left alone. But their choice has not been honored, has it?" he demanded. "Soon this village will have to move west to the Ohio valley with their brothers and then the Shawnee that lived on these grounds for a thousand years, ten thousand, will be gone from this land forever."

  "You know how I feel about that. You know I never mistreated or spoke ill of any man or woman, black, red or chartreuse."

  "Your father—"

  "My father was a fool. Now he's a dead fool and there's no need to speak of him or his deeds right or wrong."

  Harrison set his jaw, fighting to hang on to his anger. It was all he had to protect himself against her. "I'm sorry. I knew he was dead. My father told me. I should have—"

  She brushed past him and out of the wigwam leaving him no choice but to follow. "I don't want to talk about him, not about anything that happened in the past."

  Harrison caught up to her and strode beside Leah, leading her toward his grandmother's wigwam. He was confused by Leah's tone when she spoke of her father. She was the one who had sent him after Harrison. She was the one who had already agreed to marry Edmund while still making love to him. Did she regret her actions? Was that what she was saying? He wondered, but didn't ask. There was no need, not now, not after all these years.

  "Harrison, if you're going to help me . . . When you agree to help me, you have to understand that we must hurry. William," she looked up at him, "he's my son. William has been missing for two weeks!" She took a deep breath. "I don't know how long he can survive out there."

  Against his will, he could feel himself being drawn into her pain. "Why would Iroquois take the father and boy?"

  "Edmund was an expert on arms. He was an assistant to a man called Knox. He knew information about the state of our artillery that no one else but Knox himself knows." She combed her tangled hair with her fingers as she walked. Out in the sunshine, her hair shone in a thousand shades of brilliant red.

  "My guess is that he was spying as well. He was at Manhattan with the army before they retreated," she went on. "My guess was that he was to deliver information to Washington concerning arms. The British sent the Indians into the camp to bring him out. They knew soldiers wouldn't be able to pull it off, but Indians could."

  "If he was in the army camp he probably already told all he knew."

  "Perhaps, perhaps not. He'd only arrived that night. Even if he had alre
ady passed the information, I would guess that it was important to the British that they knew what Edmund knew . . . what Washington knew."

  Harrison stopped outside Starlight's wigwam. "Why the child?"

  "My son was with Edmund. I imagine the bastard took him along as cover." She looked away. "No wonder he insisted he had to take the boy," she murmured to herself. She looked back at Harrison. "All I know is that William was with Edmund and when Edmund was kidnapped, William was too."

  "They are probably dead, you know that?"

  She shook her head. "William's not dead, not yet. I would know if he was dead."

  "How?" He lifted a sooty eyebrow, mocking her. "Mystical powers, Leah?"

  "I'm his mother," she answered fiercely. "I'm telling you, I would know."

  Harrison lifted the doorflap of his grandmother's wigwam and Leah ducked inside.

  Starlight, still seated at her fire, nodded regally. "I am Starlight of the Bear clan of the Shawnee. Welcome, Le-ah."

  "My grandmother is the chief of our village."

  Leah looked at Harrison and then at Starlight. "Your grandmother." She smiled as if she was meeting an old friend. "This is your grandmother that you spoke so often of?" She crossed the wigwam offering both hands. "I'm very pleased to meet you. Harrison told me a great deal about you. It is truly an honor."

  As Starlight accepted Leah's hands, she looked over Leah's shoulder at her grandson and lifted an eyebrow.

  Harrison frowned. "When you're through with her, send her back to my wigwam. She's to wait for me there. I'm going out hunting with Taa. I'll be back well before council is called."

  Starlight tapped the hide mat beside her. "Sit. Have you eaten?"

  Leah shook her head. "No."

  Starlight reached for the cooking bowl of corn mush and served a healthy sized portion into a clean wooden bowl. "My grandson is a poor host." She sprinkled a little maple sugar on top and pushed it into Leah's hands. "Eat, child. Your journey has been long."

  Harrison stood at the door watching his grandmother and Leah. She liked Leah. He could tell. He remembered so many years ago wishing they could meet, knowing they would be compatible. Now, he wished they had not met. He didn't want his grandmother to like her. He wanted her to hate Leah, just as he hated her. He wanted to keep that hate alive in his heart. It was the only thing that protected him now from getting hurt again.