Savage Surrender

by Colleen French

  Giving Rachael the benefit of the doubt, Storm Dancer remained in the camp until the first streaks of dawn began to paint the morning sky. He waited until he heard the chirping of squirrels and smelled the dew begin to burn off the thick green leaves of pine oaks. Then he packed his sack. He covered the firepit he had made for Rachael and slinging his weapons over his shoulders, he turned away from the evil city called Philadelphia and started home.

  Rachael turned and twisted beneath the heavy blankets that had been piled on top of her. The scratchy white nightgown that went from her neck to her toes was tangled around her legs restricting her movement. She was dreaming she was drowning, thick reeds tangled around her drawing her under the surface. She couldn't breath. She couldn't think. She was nauseous and her head pounded so hard that the slightest sound made her cringe in paranoid fear.

  Occasionally she heard voices, but few were familiar. Storm? She tried to call to him—to tell him she was sick. No sound came out of her mouth. She wanted to see her little boy with the chubby round cheeks. Why were these people pouring this foul tea down her throat and making her choke. She didn't like it. She didn't want anymore. Where was Ka-we-ras? Where was Storm? Why wasn't he here taking care of her? Didn't he know she was sick?

  Glimpses of the past drifted through her head. Some were so hazy that they barely registered in her mind while others were as clear as the crystal water that ran from the Metuksik River. She thought of Storm's smile, the sound of his laughter, the feel of his rough calloused hand as it cupped her breast. She remembered the picnic she and Storm Dancer had taken Ka-we-ras on just before they had left—

  They had left . . . Yes, she remembered that now, but where had they gone? She struggled to recollect, but her mind was a jumble of sounds and sights that made no sense. She wasn't home; she knew that. She wasn't in her wigwam. The smells were all wrong. This place stank of sickness and closed quarters. There was no breeze, no light, only stifling darkness.

  "Rachael?"

  A voice penetrated her stupor and slowly she turned her head toward the sound though the sound of the voice was nearly unbearable.

  "Rachael, love, can you hear me?"

  "Gifford?" Her voice was barely a raspy whisper. She couldn't open her eyes, it hurt too much.

  "Yes, Rachael, love."

  "W . . . " she tried to think of the words. "W . . . where's Storm. I want Storm."

  "I don't know what you're talking about, love." She felt someone pick up her hand and squeeze it. Her muscles made no response. "You're very sick, you know."

  "I . . . I want Storm." she insisted. "I want my husband. Please, Gifford, please find him."

  "Oh, sweet, love, I am your husband. And I'm right here. I've barely left your side in the two days since you fell ill."

  "No. Not my husband. Storm . . . the Dancer of the Storms. He is my husband. He—"

  Gifford chuckled. "You've been hallucinating. You have no other husband, silly girl, just me. It's been a year. We've been married a full year."

  She turned away, a sob rising in her throat. "No. I'm Rachael, wife to Storm Dancer."

  "You are Rachael. You were Lady Rachael Moreover. You came from London with your brother to marry me."

  "T . . . Thomas?"

  "Yes, that's right. But he's dead now. Your brother is dead, drowned in the sea. You've no one but me, sweet wife.

  "The I . . . Indians?'

  He pulled the heavy covers to her chin. She wanted to protest, they were too hot, but she didn't have the energy. "There were no Indians, love."

  "Broken Horn, Pretty Woman—"

  He laughed again. She heard a chair scrape the wooden floor as it drew closer. "It's just your mind playing tricks on you. You always did have quite the imagination.

  Hallucinating? She was dreaming? She dreamed about the Indian called Storm Dancer? It couldn't be. "But, but we . . . we were captured. Iroquois, I remember, I'm certain," she managed, her strength waning. Her lips were so dry that they cracked when she spoke.

  "Just a dream, just a bad dream, my love." He leaned over her and though she didn't see him, she felt his presence. "Now drink this and it will make you feel better."

  She felt the warm rim of the teacup touch her lip and she turned away. "No!" It smelled ill and tasted worse and each time they made her drink it she tumbled back into the well of hallucinations. It was then that she dreamed of the Indian village . . . then that she fantasized of the savage lover with the glorious black hair.

  "Rachael, you must drink this if you are to ever become well." Gifford spoke firmly.

  She shook her head again. "No!" No, don't make me drink it. Don't make me hurt inside. Help me . . . someone help me . . . .

  "Very well, if you don't drink it on your own, I shall have to help you."

  Rachael clamped her mouth shut to keep out the evil brew, but he pried it open and poured it down her throat. She held her breath as long as she could, but then she began to choke and when she tried to breath the tea slipped down her throat.

  "There, there, that's better."

  Gifford was wiping her chin now. She could feel the tears rolling down her cheeks. "Go away," she whispered, feeling herself begin to slip back into unconsciousness. "Go away and leave me to die."

  The chair scraped the floor again and when Gifford spoke it was from the far side of the room. "All in good time, my love," he answered in a strange voice. "All in good time."

  Storm Dancer stood behind the wall of a dairy watching a young girl in a mobcap hang out laundry. He leaned against the cool brick and waited for her to take her leave.

  Storm Dancer had walked an entire day before he had allowed himself the time to go over the past events in his mind. Rachael had not returned so she had betrayed him. Wasn't that right? Or was it? Rachael was not Ta-wa-ne. She had never been Ta-wa-ne and was nothing like her. Rachael loved him. She didn't just say so. He saw it in her eyes, in her touch, in the sound of her voice.

  And Rachael was an honorable woman. If she had decided to leave him, she would have stood up to him. She would have said so. He twisted his moccasin into the soft grass. It was unfair to jump to the conclusion that she had betrayed him. Why had he been so quick to condemn her? Because of Ta-wa-ne he supposed. Because of the pain she had caused him and the natural distrust of women she had instilled in him.

  No, once the initial anger and hurt had passed, Storm had realized that he had not been thinking clearly back on that road to Philadelphia two days ago. He had jumped to conclusions too quickly. A good shaman did not do that. A good shaman weighed all odds and gave each man and woman a fair chance. He feared he had not given Rachael a fair chance . . . his sweet Rachael.

  Of course Storm Dancer knew that there was the remote possibility that she had betrayed their love. In everything there was possibility. But if she had betrayed him he wanted to see her face once more. He wanted to hear her words from her own lips.

  The laundry maid in the blue tick skirt and droopy mobcap picked up her basket and wandered back toward the kitchen. Storm watched and waited until she disappeared inside and then he stepped out of the shadows and into the sunlight.

  From the clothesline he snatched a pair of burgundy breeches, a white linen shirt, and a pair of white hose. Behind a trellis of strongly scented roses he stripped off his buckskin tunic, loinskin, and ankle-high moccasins. He dressed in the silly white man's clothing and then, having no shoes, put his moccasins back on. He tore a strip from the hem of the shirt and tied back his mane of black hair in a queue. He then hid his bag in the brush, leaving all his weapons behind save for his hunting knife which he tucked into the waistband of his breeches and covered the hilt with his shirt. Now he knew he need only find a hat and then he could walk down the street of this Philadelphia drawing little attention to himself. Rachael had explained to him that there were Indians who frequented the city of Philadelphia, Indians who had become trappers or traders and depended on the white men for business, so he assumed that correctly dr
essed, he wouldn't be stopped.

  As he walked along the backyard and out onto the cobblestone street he mentally thanked the good Lord that he had had the sense to question Rachael on the layout of the city. Though her sketches in the sand had been crowded and disproportional, at least he knew where the law offices were and where the coward resided. Instinct told him to head for the coward's home. He would go there and he would find his Rachael and then he would know for certain if it was by choice that she had left him. Not matter what her words were, Storm knew that the truth would be in her sky-eyes.

  Storm Dancer walked down the cobblestone sidewalk with his eyes on the ground. When a pedestrian approached him, he stepped off the walk in an appropriately submissive way, much as an Iroquois woman would have moved for a man. He had not gone a block when he spotted a three-cornered felt hat left on a wagon bench by the driver who was delivering vegetables to a house. The moment the vegetable man disappeared down the walkway that wound around a house, Storm snatched the hat off the bench and stuffed it on his head. Feeling better camouflaged in this strange, noisy world, he hurried northeast in the direction he thought the Gifford house to be.

  The houses were so much alike that Storm Dancer feared he would never figure out which belonged to the coward. It was only luck or divine intervention that he passed the house at the precise moment that the coward appeared in the front doorway to speak with an agitated visitor. Taking care to be certain no one saw him, Storm Dancer stepped behind a screen of tall boxwoods just past the house and listened intently to the conversation transpiring.

  "You let me see her, you little prick, or I'll have your head!"

  "Now, Thomas, I have explained to you that the surgeon has forbidden visitors. She's far too ill. She'll never know you've been here."

  Thomas? Was not Thomas the brother of Rachael? Was Rachael ill? Was it she they spoke of?

  "I don't care. I just want to see her."

  "And you will. She's doing better. She's been conscious several times. I see definite improvement. I imagine that within the week she'll be up and about," the coward went on. He was dressed in some sort of woman's robe made of blue silk.

  "What the hell is wrong with her? You haven't said why she's sick."

  Storm studied the brother's stance carefully. He had one booted foot planted on the top step and he was shaking his fist. The material of his clothing was good, but he had a certain masculine untidiness that set him apart from the peacock Gifford.

  "The surgeon isn't certain. Shock he conjectures. Pure shock at having survived her capture. Pure shock at having been rescued."

  "I spoke to John Calmary. He said she wasn't ill when he picked her up on the road into Philadelphia."

  "No, she wasn't physically ill yet, but she was obviously mentally off-balance. She was confused and babbling. Why at one point she even denied being my wife." He laughed. "And of course you know I have the papers to prove it."

  "Bastard."

  "Now, now, that will be enough. Hurtling insults at me will only leave me less likely to let you in."

  "When can I see her?"

  Gifford stroked his shaven chin. "Tonight . . . perhaps."

  "If I return tonight you'll let me see her?"

  "As long as she continues to improve, I don't see why that wouldn't be a possibility."

  "All right." Thomas lifted a finger beneath Gifford's nose. "I'll wait until evening, but I warn you. If you're jerking me around, Gifford, there'll be no limit to my fury. I won't be held responsible for my own actions."

  Gifford stepped back into the doorway. "Come back tonight, Tommy, and we'll see."

  The door slammed shut and Storm Dancer lowered himself into the boxwood hedge. He watched the brother Thomas look up at the curtains drawn tightly in the windows overhead. Then, swearing beneath his breath, he turned and headed down the street.

  His Rachael sick? Storm Dancer felt ill in the pit of his stomach. Of course the coward could be lying. She might just not wish to see her brother, but she might be truly ailing.

  His first thought was to walk into the coward's house and find Rachael. He would see for himself. But a wise shaman did not enter the enemy's camp without preparation, did he? Storm watched the brother turn the corner and disappear. He thought for a moment and then stepped out onto the sidewalk, pulling the cocked hat down low on his brow, and headed in the same direction the brother had gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Storm Dancer followed the Honorable Thomas Moreover down the cobblestone street. As he walked, he tried to mentally gather all the information he knew about this potential ally.

  Rachael liked her brother; he was certain of that. She had said he was a simple man, levelheaded and fair. He was a man who sailed on the big dugouts that crossed the endless ocean. He was the man who had told her not to marry the Gifford coward.

  Storm Dancer thought that perhaps he would like this Thomas.

  In addition to what Rachael had said of her brother, Storm Dancer had the evidence of the conversation that had just taken place between Thomas and the dog, Gifford. Rachael's brother's stance had silently spoken of hatred and distrust for Gifford. But Storm Dancer had also caught a sense of caution in the air. Thomas was wary of what the coward was capable of, which in Storm Dancer's eyes meant Gifford was dangerous . . . or had the potential to be so, something Storm Dancer had not considered.

  Was Rachael in jeopardy? Had she caught a fever after she had made the decision to remain with the white coward, or had he taken advantage of her illness to hold her against her will? Was she truly sick at all, or was the man holding her prisoner, keeping her from returning to Storm Dancer?

  Thomas turned into a doorway and Storm Dancer slowed his pace. The wooden sign that swung over the entrance read The Swine & Boar. Storm Dancer halted in the shadows of the frame building and considered the tavern for a moment. He could smell the water from here and surmised they were near the docks. Most of the street traffic was sailors. An oxcart rumbled by burdened with hogsheads of some precious cargo bound for England. This world was so foreign to Storm Dancer he felt completely out of his element. It even frightened him a bit.

  Then he thought of Rachael, sick, perhaps calling him. Was she frightened? Had this world become foreign to her? He regarded the tavern sign again and stepped inside.

  Storm Dancer had not taken but a few strides through the dark, dank public room when a short English sailor appeared out of nowhere and threw up his hand. "No red niggers," he sneered. "Not in The Boar."

  Out of the corner of his eye, Storm Dancer spotted Thomas. He had taken a seat at a trestle table near the cold stone fireplace on the far side of the room. He was leaning over the table, resting his forehead wearily on his hand. A young woman in soiled skirts was serving him a leather jack of ale and chattering. Thomas made no response.

  Storm Dancer glared up from beneath his cocked hat at the sailor who had made the mistake of barring his way.

  "What's matter, boyo, you don't speak the King's English?" The sailor slapped Storm Dancer on the chest. "In case, not, I'll repeat myself for your own stupidity. I said no red niggers allowed."

  Storm Dancer's hand snaked out so quickly that the sailor never even had time to flinch. Storm Dancer caught him by his tarred pigtail and lifted him off the floor until his feet dangled in the air. He raised his blade to the sailor's exposed neck. "I have business with a gentleman," he enunciated in perfect English. "Have you a problem with that, sailor mon-key?"

  The sailor stared up in wide-eyed fright, his useless legs peddling in the air above the sawdust-covered floor. "No . . . no . . . no mate, I ain't go no troubles with that."

  Storm passed the knife a hair closer, drawing a perfect line of blood for emphasis. "This is a good answer." He nodded as he slowly loosened his grip. "A good answer. Now take yourself from this place before I skin you and hang your flesh to dry upon my lodgepole."

  The moment the sailor's booted feet hit the ground, he ran straight for
the door.

  Storm Dancer slipped his knife back into the waistband of his English breeches and scanned the dim low-ceilinged room that smelled of rancid tallow and splashed ale. No one seemed to have taken notice of what had just taken place, either that or no one cared. Deeming the public room relatively safe grounds, Storm Dancer approached Rachael's brother.

  Thomas looked up and then back at the jack of ale he held in his hands. "If it's work you seek, see my quartermaster upon the Lady Rachael." He dismissed the red man with a sweep of his hand.

  Storm Dancer stood stock still, his obsidian eyes fixed on Thomas.

  Thomas repeated himself, not bothering to look up again. "I said if you seek—"

  "I do not ask to sail upon your great ship," Storm Dancer responded. "I seek your help."

  The tone of the Indian's voice made Thomas look up. "My help? Then what is it?"

  "You have a sister called Rachael."

  "Yes, yes I do." He took a moment to study Storm Dancer closely, his eyes narrowing in speculation. "Why do you ask? What do you know of my sister?"

  Storm Dancer looked behind him. There were only a few patrons in the public room, all still content to mind their own business. "May this man take a seat so that he does not draw the attention of others?"

  Curious as to what this soft-spoken Indian wanted, Thomas indicated the bench directly across the table from him. "Please."

  Storm Dancer sat carefully on the white man's furniture that always seemed to him to be a little precarious. "I am the Dancer of the Storms of the Lenni Lenape," he said carefully. "A shaman of my people." He watched Thomas for his reaction to his next words. "I am the husband of your sister."