Even atop the pony it was evident that Powan was a tall man. His buckskin-clad legs were very long, and dangled far below the horse’s belly. He was not so much red as he was a deep, deep bronze, and his eyes were the darkest mahogany color Jassy had ever seen. He carried his head with the air of a king, and his features were somehow noble, too, high-boned and broad, long-nosed and square-jawed. He looked at them with a penetrating gaze, an autocrat who wore a cloak of blue-and-white plumes over broad, heavily muscled shoulders. Despite the growing December chill, he wore no shirt beneath the cloak, and Jassy could see tattoos of primitive hunting scenes upon his arms.
“Powan?” she murmured.
He carried a feathered and sharpened shaft, some kind of a spear, but he held it more like a scepter than a weapon. He nudged his pony and advanced upon them. Despite the fact that they were basically alone with Sir William by the fencing, Jassy was more curious than frightened. Perhaps it was a dangerous fascination, brought on by the endless stories she had heard of the Algonquin family savages. But surely there could be no real danger. The men were busy collecting the last of the winter harvest from the fields, and carpenters and laborers worked on various dwellings within and without the palisade. Nearer the river, a number of the women were busy with candlemaking, dipping and stringing their tallow. Powan had come with only a handful of braves. Jassy was aware that her knowledge of the Indians was limited, but instinct told her that this was a peaceful venture.
“Powan!” Sir William said, and he lifted his hand in a gesture of friendship. The Indian dismounted and came forward. He was very tall, as Jassy had suspected. As tall as Jamie at least. And there were other curious resemblances between the men, she thought. They were built much the same, lean but tightly muscled, graceful, and supremely confident in their silent movement.
“Good day, William Tybalt,” the Indian said, and Jassy started at his use of the king’s good English. His eyes fell upon her and, in a leisurely and insolent fashion, traveled up and down the length of her. Jassy flamed beneath the pagan regard and wondered at the red man’s thoughts, for in a month the pregnancy she had concealed for so long in the pure volume of her petticoats and skirts had become quite evident. Still, he seemed to find her as fascinating as she found him.
“Powan, it is always good to wish you good day,” Sir Tybalt said. “This is the Lady Cameron, Jamie’s woman, his wife.”
A curious flicker of emotions passed over the Indian’s strong features. “Jamie’s wife?”
“Yes.”
“Good day, Jamie’s wife,” Powan said.
“Good day, Powan,” Jassy said. Impulsively she stepped forward. She took his hand and shook it. He watched her with a mixture of amusement and pleasure, then laughed and looked at Sir William. “She is a fine woman for my friend, Jamie. She grows heavy with his seed. It is good.”
Elizabeth still cringed behind Jassy. Jassy dragged her sister around. “This is Elizabeth. Lady Elizabeth. She is my sister.”
Elizabeth could not speak. Powan looked her up and down with a certain contempt and spat on the ground. He muttered something in his native tongue, then lifted his hand, and one of his men came forward, carrying a broken musket. The firing mechanism had disjoined from the wooden barrel.
Powan moved on to matters of business. “Where is Jamie? I would like this fixed.”
“Jamie has gone to see Opechancanough,” Sir William informed Powan, “at the chief’s request. In his stead I will give you this musket …” He paused. Jassy was leaning upon the weapon. She smiled quickly and lifted up the heavy weapon to give to Powan. He took it from her and laughed. “She is a strong woman. Good for Jamie. She will work hard in his fields and give him many children.”
Then Powan had nothing else to say. He shouldered the musket and lifted his feathered shaft in a gesture of farewell. He leapt upon his saddleless pony, lifted the gun and the shaft again, then whirled the horse around and headed for the forest, his men jogging along after him.
Elizabeth let out a gasp of relief, then started to fall in a swoon. “Oh, catch her!” Jassy cried, and Sir William did so, lifting Elizabeth into his arms. Elizabeth’s blue eyes opened, wide and dazed. “Oh, he could have killed us!”
“Nay, nay, lady!” Sir William said assuringly. “We are at peace with the Indians.”
“Let’s go back to the house and have some warmed mead, shall we?” Jassy suggested. She didn’t want Elizabeth to see it, but she was still shaking herself, and she didn’t know if it was with fear or excitement.
Sir William carried Elizabeth, but near the palisade she determined that she could walk; she did not want someone making a fuss over her. At the house Jassy quickly searched the wooden shelves behind the big table for a ceramic jug of mead and, finding it, poured out a glass for Elizabeth. Elizabeth choked it down, then smiled dazedly at Jassy. “Oooh, he was so frightening!”
“Nonsense, Elizabeth, he did nothing frightening at all!” Jassy protested.
“Powan is a friend,” Sir William assured her. “Jamie is his good friend. In the winter of 1608 to 1609, Jamie was here with Captain John Smith. The whites were nearly betrayed by Powhatan, and a ruthless killing started up between the two sides. Powan and Jamie were just lads, but Powan stumbled upon a group of bitter Jamestown settlers on the river. They meant to string up Powan, but Jamie let him go, telling the men that the king’s good Englishmen did not murder children. They have never forgotten each other. Powan is a chief of his people now. Opechancanough is still the final law upon the Confederation, but Powan does have a certain authority.”
“He is a savage!” Elizabeth insisted, shivering. She swallowed more mead.
“Savage, yes, but a part of this land,” Sir William said. He smiled ruefully to Jassy. “You handled yourself very well, Lady Cameron. Jamie would have been proud.”
Sir William bowed low to her and Elizabeth, then took his departure. Jassy watched his retreating back and wondered just what her husband would think about his Indian friend’s approval. She made a good wife—she would work hard in Jamie’s fields and give him many children. Well, it was what Jamie had wanted.
That night when she lay in bed, she thought about her husband, as she had every night since he had left. She ran her fingers over the bed where he usually lay, and she was swept through with a curious shivering and anguish. She missed him sorely. Even hating the way that they had parted, she missed him. She did not care if they fought, if they came together in tempest or in anger. She wanted him beside her, touching her. She liked the security of lying with him, and she was anxious for the deep sound of his voice. And now she missed the laughter, too, and the tenderness that they had shared so many times. No matter what she tried to hold from him, she gave all of herself too easily. She lay down upon the bed, and he swept her to new heights. He touched her if she feigned sleep, and he awoke her with the dawn. Sometimes he was fierce and impatient, and sometimes he was achingly slow and gentle, and yet she could never lie still, never pretend that he did not unlock the deepest secrets and passion within her, for he would always persist, and in the end she would submit to the overwhelming sensation. Now, with him gone, she had only her dreams, and they were usually sweet. She dreamt of him, of his indigo eyes, naked in their intent and purpose. She awaited him in a bed of white down, and he strode toward her, bronzed and savage and beautiful, and she lifted her arms out to him.
That night the dream changed. It began the same way, but then it changed. Jamie was coming to her. Tall and towering and muscled and sleek and bronzed and blatantly sexual in his sure, silent approach. She awaited him, aching for him. But then he was no longer purely naked; he wore a cloak of white feathers, and his look had been altered, until he was coming upon her like one of the pagan Indians. It was Jamie still, but then it was not, and she was afraid. He caught her ankles within his hands and wrenched her down toward him, brutally parting her legs. She started to scream, but no sound would come, and she was drowning in a sea of white feath
ers.…
The feathers were lifted into mist. She was walking now, approaching a bed. She didn’t want to lift the covers, but she had to do so. She started to scream again. There were corpses there, a line of them. Her mother’s emaciated body was riddled with worm holes. Jamie, in the white feather cloak, lay beside Linnet, and an ax protruded from his heart. Beside him she lay herself, white and wide-eyed, the head of her scalped infant child cradled in her arms.
She bolted up and discovered that she was not alone. Elizabeth and Lenore were in her doorway. Robert was at her side.
“It—it was a dream,” Jassy said. She was trembling still. Robert took her into his arms, and she started to sob. He soothed her, smoothing back her hair.
“It is all right. It is all right,” Robert said.
“It was the Indian,” Elizabeth said bluntly. She looked at Lenore. “She had ceased the nightmares, and now she has them again. It was the Indian, I know it.”
“We shall all be slain in our beds!” Lenore said, distressed.
Listening to them, Jassy realized her own weakness. She pushed away from Robert, quickly and ruefully wiping the tears from her cheeks with her knuckles. “I’m sorry. I’m such a fool, really. I do have dreams now and then. It’s all right. I’m all right. Lenore, we will not be slain. Powan is Jamie’s friend. We have a good guard about the hundred. I am so sorry that I disturbed you. Please go back to sleep, and don’t be alarmed.”
By then Amy Lawton had come up the stairs, and she stared at Robert and Jassy together. “What is it?”
“A dream, Mrs. Lawton, nothing more. I am so very sorry,” Jassy said.
Robert kissed her forehead. She rose quickly, hugged both her sisters, and offered Mrs. Lawton another apology. “Please, forgive me. Go to sleep.”
When she was alone again, she did not think. She lay awake, not dreaming, but imagining her husband. She saw his dark eyes, his tall, proud build, powerful, exciting, arresting. She respected him, she knew. The dream had reminded her that he was his own man, and that he made his own rules. He had defied propriety and class and had married her. He had swept her from poverty and starvation, and the cruel grip of a life of labor. He had quickly demanded her respect. But there was more to it now. She might be angry, but she did not detest him. She wanted him, she desired him, with a fever that was surely indecent. She was afraid to fathom what she felt, but she promised herself that night that when he came home, she was going to be a good wife to him in all ways.
The next day, another of her husband’s ships appeared on the river. It was the Lady Destiny, and her captain, Roger Stewart, quickly sought out Jassy. The Lady Destiny had brought many gifts from England. Jamie had ordered Jassy a wool-and-ermine cloak for the winter, and a whole assortment of fur muffs. Crate after crate of soft silks and laces and taffetas and brocades was delivered to the house. There was also a set of gold-plated chalices, and a multitude of ceramic jars and vases from Italy and Spain. The finest of the gifts was a delicate filigree necklace from which suspended a fine blue sapphire surrounded by diamond chips. With her sisters about her to help her, she laughed joyously as they opened box after box. Jamie, she thought, was very good to her. She would quit complaining about this place, she thought, and she would strive to like it. Perhaps it would not be so hard. More and more, the hundred became a complete community. There were now two kilns, and two talented potters at work. Another weaver and a metalsmith had arrived from England.
Mr. and Mrs. Donegal had opened a trading center where the artisans sold their crafts. Even John Tannen was doing well, with Molly more frequently with him than with Jassy and the household.
Tamsyn was no longer an old drunk. He was clean-shaven and neat in appearance and never imbibed too much liquor these days. He was not even so old, Jassy realized, and she enjoyed his company often in the afternoons. She would come out to the large stable built off the back of the house, and while he worked upon the horses, he would spin tales for her about things he had learned during his days at Oxford. He opened the world to her, and once, when he realized that she was brooding, he reminded her that he had been a good physician once, and that he would readily die himself before letting anything happen to her in childbirth.
Aye … the days were growing good, and far less grim than Jassy had imagined. Tamsyn had regained his soul and his strength, and Molly might well become the wife of a free man with a fine future. Little Margaret looked happier and prettier by the day, and it was all a magic she had created … by her husband’s largesse, she admitted. A husband who now haunted her dreams and inflamed her senses.
For the first time Jassy realized she might do more than survive. She might also have a chance to be happy.
With her palm upon the bed where Jamie should be, she smiled, and at last she slept, in peace.
Jamie and his party, Father Steven among them, arrived home in the early-dawn hours of December seventeenth. The first soft snow of the winter season came floating down to the ground, and though the day was cold, it promised to be beautiful too.
Jamie was weary and confused as he rode. Opechancanough had been behaving very strangely, he thought. He had invited—summoned—Jamie to his home; he had assured Jamie that he liked him well, and then he had suggested that he go home. Not to the hundred, but home, to England.
Jamie—alone with his ten men in the midst of hundreds of Pamunkees—had promised the chief that he would think about it, but he had expressed his confusion. Sharing a pipe with the chief, he had told him, “But if I leave this place, what benefit will it be to our people?
The Englishman has come here to stay, Opechancanough.”
“The land belongs to the Powhatan. My brother fought to bring the tribes here to order. Order will remain.”
Jamie had left laden down with gifts once again, with dried meat and bags of grain and maize corn, and he had left Opechancanough with several scores of old buttons with the Tudor rose emblemed upon them. The chief had seemed pleased. And still, the entire visit had disturbed Jamie. He intended to take care in the months that followed.
He had not realized the extent of his worry until he left the forests and came upon the clearing for the fields of the hundred. He looked toward home, and the palisade still stood, with the cannons rising westward in the shadows. He let out a pleased cry that brought laughter to his men, then he nudged his horse and shot like a bolt ahead of them. The palisade gate opened as he approached it, and he was glad and relieved again, for it meant that an armed man was on duty, keeping careful watch.
Few people were about as he hurried his way to his house. The man Tamsyn was up, and he sleepily took Jamie’s horse. “How fares my wife?” Jamie asked him.
The man smiled and answered him with an articulate tongue. “The lady fares very well, Lord Cameron. She blossoms daily.”
Jamie laughed and hurried for the house, pulling off his gauntlets. At the door to the hallway he paused.
He had not thought of their parting argument since the early days of his departure, when the words they had exchanged had haunted him nightly. He was wrong, he knew, and he had no right to taunt and bait her about Robert Maxwell. Robert had his faults, but he was a trusted friend. And Jassy …
She had never lied to him. She had married him with the truth of her feelings upon her lips, and yet she had never really given him reason to believe that she would betray him.
It was his temper, he thought, his damnable temper, and the jealousy that soared from his heart—and his loins—when he saw the sparkle in her eyes when she spoke to another. Aye, it was bitter medicine, but he loved her, and he must hide the emotion from her. Anger was easier than betraying his heart. If often seemed that she had none, and therefore a wise man would build a careful shield around his own. He was, perhaps, a man possessed, but proud nevertheless, and he’d not let his heart or his loins rule his mind. He would be master of his own house despite the minx, and if she never learned to love him, she would come to obey him.
He won
dered bleakly if she would ever cast aside the barriers that she had set before him. If she would ever come to him with husky laughter on her lips and the bright fire of passion in her sapphire eyes. That was what she kept from him, he realized. That was what she held away, like some sacred prize.
It was a prize, he thought, for he longed to obtain not her submission but her partnership.
He inhaled and exhaled, and a hot shudder swept his body, piercing his loins. For the time being, he thought, he could live with submission. He had thought of nothing but her soft, creamy, naked flesh during all the nights of his journey. He had thought of her sky-colored eyes, of her hair tumbling about the fragile structure of her face, and he had thought of the evocative swell of her breasts and the darkened shade of her nipples, and he had imagined the curves of her body as she lay awaiting him. He had seen her lips, parted, damp, and he had awakened many times in a cold sweat, wanting her. She would be further along now … but not too far along.
He had to see her.
He pushed open the door impatiently. Amy Lawton, in her nightcap with her long gray braid streaming down her back, hurried out with a candle to meet him.
“My Lord Cameron! Welcome home.” She looked at him a bit askance—he was dressed in soft, warm buckskins given him by the chief, and his head was bare. He might well have resembled a savage himself.
“Thank you, Mrs. Lawton, I am glad to be home.” He spoke softly, for it seemed that it was still night in the house. He had ridden through the darkness, anxious to be here. The days of Christmas were almost upon them, and he wanted to be among his own people for the Christian celebration. No … he wanted to be back with his wife. He wanted to know if she was still angry for the way they had parted, or if she had forgiven him. He had just wanted to touch her again. If she did not give in to him, he wanted the passionate, frenzied response that he could draw from her, he wanted to see her lips parted and damp, and slightly swollen by his kiss, her eyes open and blue and heavy-lidded with desire.…
Sweet Savage Eden Page 27