Dory was grinning. "Good riddance to this place, I say. I never did like a Mohawk."
Storm Dancer pushed back the flap of his lodge and stepped back so that Dory and Rachael could exit. As the women passed through the doorway, he turned back for one final glance of the place he had called home for many years.
A few strings of dried herbs still hung from the rafters, their shadows dancing on the walls. Several empty baskets lay on the hard-packed dirt floor where Dory had dumped them in her haste to pack. Storm Dancer closed his eyes for a moment and allowed himself to remember only the good he had experienced in this village. He remembered himself as a child and the days that had stretched into adulthood. He thought of those early happy days with his first wife. Then he thought of Rachael. He conjured up the feel of her asleep in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder. He allowed himself to taste her on his lips as he had tasted her on their wedding night.
"Storm . . . " Rachael lay her hand gently on his shoulder. "I think we should go. It doesn't feel right out here. I can hear them all waiting, watching in the darkness."
They wait for the spirit to leave their presence. If it does not leave, they burn it out." He stepped out into the cool night and let the flap of the lodge swing shut. Then he took Rachael's hand and led her through the silent camp. Dory took up the rear.
There was not a single human to be seen as the three walked quietly through the village. The dogs stirred as they passed.
The eerie green smoke from the shaman's pot still hung in the air, slightly distorting images until nothing seemed real. Rachael felt gooseflesh rise on the back of her neck. It's as if we are dead, she thought.
She shook her head sadly. She could understand Broken Horn's hatred but not Storm Dancer's parents' apathy. And what of his friends? His cousins? How could they all turn on him like this?
At the edge of the village Rachael spotted She-Who-Weeps. "Your mother," Rachael whispered to Storm Dancer. "Speak to her."
He shook his head ever so slightly as they approached the beautiful older woman. "She couldn't hear me."
"Don't be silly. She's waiting for you, Storm. Tell her good-bye."
He squeezed Rachael's hand to silence her. "Just as I do not understand some of your ways, Wife, you do not understand mine."
"She's not allowed to speak to you?"
"To speak with spirits is forbidden except to the shaman."
Rachael looked at her mother-in-law standing beneath a tree limb. She-Who-Weeps looked at them, but to Rachael's amazement, her eyes did not see.
Storm Dancer held his head high and proud as he passed his mother and for the first time Rachael saw a resemblance between the two. As Rachael, Storm Dancer, and Dory passed, She-Who-Weeps spoke in a soft lilting voice.
"Though my son is dead to his old and ugly mother, he is not dead to her people. Let him go unto them so that they may welcome him to their bosom. Let him find a new life where there will be happiness again."
She-Who-Weeps spoke so softly that Rachael wasn't quite certain she had heard her. Yet she had. The three passed by her without speaking or looking in her direction.
Only when they had passed out of the village and into the forest did Rachael speak. "Did you hear what She-Who-Weeps said, Storm? What did she mean?"
He shifted his bow onto his shoulder and looked up into the dark sky that hung in a canopy above the treetops. "She said we are to go to her people, to the Lenni Lenape and there we will be welcome."
"To her people? They would take you there?"
"The Seven Nations are enemies of the Lenni Lenape and their Algonquian brothers. To them the walking death is a tale to frighten children around the campfire. They do not believe in it and so its powers do not affect them."
For the first time Rachael heard a glimmer of hope in his voice. "Do you know where they are?"
"I have never been to the great bay of the Ches-a-peake."
"But can you find it?"
"The sun and wind will guide me. It is south and east."
South and East, Rachael thought. Philadelphia was south and east. Did he mean to take her home? When Gifford or Thomas never came for her, she began to contemplate the thought that she might not ever see Philadelphia. If the chance came now, what would she do? Did she want to go home?
Rachael allowed Storm to take her cold hand in his warm one and lead her through the forest. As they crossed a small stream she looked up at him. Even in the dim light of early evening he was a strikingly handsome man. Just to look at him made her blood stir. She thought of what they had shared yesterday morning and wondered if this was what love felt like. Did love mean being willing to leave behind all you believe in, all you think you ever wanted?
She wished she knew.
Chapter Fifteen
Rachael rested with her head against an elm tree, her eyes half closed as she watched Storm Dancer jiggle his fishing line in the water. They had stopped traveling at sunset and while Dory set up camp, Rachael and Storm Dancer had come down to a slow running stream to catch a couple of fish for the evening meal.
It had been nearly two weeks since the three outcasts had left the Mohawk village. For two weeks they had traveled steadily and though they covered less distance than Rachael had been forced to cover each day with Broken Horn and his men on the march north, Rachael was still relieved when evening came and they could rest for the night.
But for all the hardship, Rachael could see some good in the trek south. In the past two weeks she had learned a great deal about her husband. They had talked for long hours as they walked side by side, giving her a true insight into Storm's complex character.
Storm Dancer was not nearly as disturbed by his banishment as Rachael had anticipated. After the first few days of travel in near silence, he had awoken almost a new man. It seemed that as if after a period of mourning for the death of the brave he had been among the Mohawks, he brightened. His mood turned from black anger to white hope. He began to talk of his mother's people, the Lenni Lenape, relating the tales she had told him as a child of his grandparents and great grandparents when no one in the Mohawk camp had been listening. Storm Dancer told Rachael about the many differences between the Mohawks and the Lenni Lanape, differences she would approve of.
Once Storm Dancer had accepted the fact that he could no longer help his people, that they had refused his help, he accepted their future as their own fate. While he had once believed their destiny could be altered by his deeds, now he seemed to feel absolved. It was oddly wonderful for Rachael to see such logic in Storm Dancer. She had anticipated an entire gamut of emotions from anger to self-pity, even to resentment of her for adding fuel to the fire of discontent in the Mohawk village. But she had misjudged him. Gifford would have experienced all those emotions and taken his anger out on her, but not Storm. She should have known better of the man who called her wife.
Rachael smiled to herself. Despite Dory's presence, Rachael and Storm Dancer had made love several times since they'd left the Mohawk camp. Storm Dancer would lure her away from the camp on the pretext of going fishing or gathering some unusual plant for his medicine bag. Then once they were a safe distance from the camp, he would seduce her, and Rachael would find herself making love with the forest for a bedchamber. It was not until the third time they coupled in the forest that she realized each expedition was planned and orchestrated by her husband. When she had accused him of purposely enticing her into the woods for illicit purposes he had been amused, acting the innocent. The discussion had ended in a water fight in a small stream and lovemaking on the grassy bank beneath the stars.
Each time that Rachael made love with Storm Dancer, she found she lost a little bit of herself to him. He played her like the bone flute he carried in his bag and she reveled in the new discoveries of womanhood. If he would just once proclaim his love for her and express sorrow over how they came together, Rachael thought she might surrender to him and give up all thoughts of returning to Philadelphia. So far Storm had
made no such declaration.
It disturbed Rachael that in the past two weeks not once had Storm Dancer brought up the subject of their future. She knew they had to be nearing Philadelphia and yet he had said nothing about taking her home, not even for a visit. The further south they walked, the more agitated Rachael became. When she pointed out the fact that they would have to pass Philadelphia to reach the Chesapeake Bay to Dory, her friend had told her to hush her mouth and be grateful for the life that was being offered to her. Dory said she had no intention of ever returning to white civilization. Storm Dancer had promised to find her a good husband once they reached the Lenni Lenape. Dory joked that she thought she might take two.
Rachael wiggled her bare toes in the soft, springy green moss and watched Storm Dancer artfully set his hook and pull up a silver-bellied fish. Twice she opened her mouth to speak, then clamped it shut. On the one hand she was enjoying the closeness she and Storm shared so much that she hated to shatter it, on the other hand, she could not accept the fact that she was still a captive. She didn't know if she really wanted to go back to Philadelphia, but she wanted that option.
Storm Dancer tossed the fish high up on the bank and dropped his hook into the water again. He stood naked, waist-deep in the running stream, his blue-black hair rippling off his shoulder in the wind. The sight of his bare bronze chest, his flat stomach, and sinewy buttocks sent a familiar flutter in Rachael's chest, but she ignored it. This was it. It was time to deal with this matter.
"Storm . . . "
He glanced over his shoulder, then back at his line in the water. "I wondered when you would finally speak. You have wanted to say something for days."
She frowned. She didn't know how he did it, but he always seemed to know what she was going to do, even what she was going say before she did so, and it annoyed her. "Storm we've been walking southeast for two weeks now. Fifteen days to be exact."
"Yes."
He wasn't going to help her out with this, she could tell by the edge in his voice. He already knew what she was going to say. Deep in her heart, she already knew his answer. "I want to go home to Philadelphia."
"To the coward who left you behind."
He was jealous; she could hear it in his voice. "No. I told you. That was over before I was kidnapped by your brother. I am not in love with Gifford and I want nothing to do with him—ever."
"Even once you were my wife you waited for him. You wanted him to come back for you."
"I waited to be rescued."
"Have I been unkind or cruel?"
"No."
"Have I struck you?"
"No."
"Have I tried to help you adjust to your new life?"
Her throat constricted. I won't cry, she told herself, I won't do it! She took a deep breath, taking her time to reply as was the Indian way. "Yes, you have helped me; you've helped me so much."
He turned to look at her, his face stony. "Then what have I done to make you want to leave me, Wife?"
She wanted to look away, but she didn't. Her gaze locked with his. "You have not given me a choice," she managed as she rose to her feet, her hands clenched in fists at her sides.
He turned back to his fishing, his voice cold when he spoke again. "You are my wife and you will remain with me. It was the bargain. I saved you from the fires of death and you agreed that in payment you would be my wife."
She fought the tears that clouded her eyes. "I know what I said, but—"
"But you lied?"
"No! Yes . . . " She exhaled slowly. "I wanted to live."
His voice became void of any emotion. "But not to be my wife?"
"Storm, you don't understand." She stared at his broad back, wishing he would look at her. She loved him and she didn't want to hurt him. "Storm, it's just that my entire life has been controlled by men, first my father and my brother, then Gifford, then Broken Horn, and now you. I want to be allowed to make my own decisions."
"If I took you to the place called Philadelphia, you would leave me."
She thought a long moment, wanting to be certain she meant what she said before she replied. "I don't think so."
He jerked another fish out of the water. "Then there is no need to go to this Philadelphia." He waded to the bank and climbed out of the water, attending to the fish as if that was the end of the argument and both parties were in agreement.
Rachael's first impulse was to walk away. It's what she would have done six months ago, but today she would stand her ground. "Storm, we have to talk about this."
"Women talk too much."
He made her so angry she wanted to strike him. She dropped her hands to her hips. "You say you want me to be your wife. Do you really want a wife that is your wife only because you force her to be so?"
He knelt facing away from her and picked up his knife from the grass and began to clean one of the fish. "I want you to be my wife. But I want you. I will take you willing or not."
She pushed her hair off her face, trying hard to understand him. It was difficult to talk to him when he put his back to her. "You could live with yourself knowing the mother of your children was forced?"
"In time you will know that you and I are meant to be."
She lay a hand on his bare shoulder, suppressing the urge to touch his shining black hair. "If I am forced to be your wife . . . if you do not take me back so that I might be sure that it is you and your life I want, I'm afraid I will come to hate you, just as I hate your brother."
Storm Dancer spun around so quickly that Rachael stepped back in fear.
"Listen to me and listen to me well, Wife," he shouted in a voice Rachael had never heard. He pointed an accusing finger at her. "You are my wife, you are mine—body and soul. I have lost one wife, but I vow before God I will not lose another. Be content in what you have, or be not content, but you will remain at my side if you must be tied to it. Do you understand my words, Rachael-wife?"
Rachael narrowed her eyes, oblivious to her tears. "So you're better than the rest of them, are you? A savage. All of you . . . Gifford, Broken Horn, Storm Dancer," she spit. "I see no difference!" With that she turned and strode away, beating at the branches to make her way through the trees toward the camp.
Dory looked up as Rachael came through the trees into the small clearing where they'd set up camp. The red-haired woman shook her head. "Tole 'im you had to go to Philadelphia, didn't you?"
Rachael wiped her tears with the back of her hand. Dory was supposed to be her friend and here she was siding with him! "Yes. He said no. He said he'd tie me up before he let me go."
Dory frowned and went back to tending the small campfire. "Use your head, Rachael-honey. He loves you and he don't want to lose you."
"Loves me? Hah! He's incapable of loving. He comes from a place where they eat people for God's sake, Dory!" She wiped at the tears that were still flowing down her cheeks. "You don't understand, either. I don't even know that I want to go back, I just want to know that I could. If he really loved me, he'd let me go."
Dory snapped a stick over her plump knee and pushed it into the fire. "Men don't look at things that way. All he knows is he loves you and you love him and he wants you with him the rest of his days."
"Love!" She laughed without any humor in her voice. "I could never love that man. I don't know that I could ever love any man."
"You're just sayin' that 'cause you're mad with him. You do love 'im and you know it." Dory slowly rose to her feet. "But both of you been hurt. You by Gifford, Storm Dancer by his wife I'd suspect."
"Gifford never hurt me!"
"Sure he did, 'cause he made you not believe in yourself. He almost made you think you needed a man to live. He made you think you didn't have a peck of brain in your head."
Rachael shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know anything about his"—she hooked her thumb in Storm Dancer's direction—"other wife and I don't care. I don't care about any it. All I know is I'm not going to be held prisoner a
nymore." Rachael grabbed the knapsack she carried on her back during the day. "I'm not going to do it!"
"Where you think you're going, missy?"
"Home. Home to Philadelphia. And if he won't take me, I'll take myself!" Rachael started in the opposite direction of the stream.
"So go off in the woods and get your bein' mad over with," Dory shouted after her. "But if your arm or leg gets ate by wolves, don't be cryin' to me!"
Determinedly, Rachael pushed a lock of hair behind her ear, and stepped into the woods line. Now that it was dark, she wasn't even sure which way Philadelphia was. Her tears blinded her and she pushed through the heavy undergrowth. Was nothing ever going to be right again? Why did she have to love Storm Dancer? Why? It wouldn't hurt so much if she didn't love him.
Rachael knew she should turn around and go back to the camp. It became dark quickly and it wasn't safe to be in the forest alone after dark. She knew her behavior was childish. But why did he have to shout at her like that? Why couldn't he understand how hard this all was for her? Why couldn't he have taken her into his arms and told her he loved her so much that he couldn't let her go?
Rachael was so lost in her thoughts as she tromped through the woods that she never heard the man until he stepped out of the bushes. She cursed her own stupidity. Hadn't Storm taught her that the most important thing about surviving in the forest was always being aware of the sights and sounds around you? It could cost you your life he had said.
"Oh," Rachael breathed. She stood perfectly still, staring at the man, trying to decide if he meant her harm. Perhaps he was just lost. She glanced at his clothing. Even in the semidarkness of dusk she could tell he was wearing a tattered English uniform.
Her blood went cold. A deserter. A man beyond the law.
Rachael took a step back.
"Hey there, little lady. My name's Reuben." The tall, painfully thin stranger grinned. "Fancy finding you here. An answer to our prayers, wouldn't you say, Beauregard?"
A snicker from behind made Rachael stiffen. "An answer to prayers . . . " a deep bass voice answered.
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