Firebrand's Woman

by Vanessa Royall

  Was it greater to hold a lover in your arms, to lose yourself in mortal ecstasy, or to ride the far hills of heaven, cold and alone, no longer capable of touching or of being touched?

  The answer to that question came in a flash.

  Gyva left her dwelling and fairly flew along the meadow to the place of the brooding willows. Yet she did not go forth with a glad heart. She knew already that the meeting toward which she sped was mournful in purpose and in spirit. Behind her, from the village, she seemed to hear a mysterious voice, like an echo, but stronger, and it called, “Delia, Delia, Delia…”

  Was she being sought out, named, rendered at once different and oddly substantial? It was almost as though a stranger’s words had fragmented her identity, had caused her to become a conundrum unto herself.

  “Dey-Lor-Gyva,” Torch murmured, as she entered the veiled sanctuary of the living trees. But he did not come to her, or take her in his arms. Gyva sensed this even before her eyes perceived his stiff stance in the night. She stopped, and stood straight, too, and did not go to him.

  Nor did she speak a word.

  “Gyva? It is you?”

  “No, it is Swallow, come to whore for the love of a chief!” Gyva replied bitterly.

  “Do not say such.”

  She turned as if to leave, a movement born not of loss but of the knowledge of loss impending.

  “Stay!” There was urgency in his voice, an urgency not of physical need, but different, perhaps greater, if such a thing could be.

  “You are my chieftain. I obey.”

  “Must it be so between the two of us?”

  “Must it be? I am here again, as so many other nights I have been here.”

  A long pause, then: “Well do I recall those nights, and never shall time take the memory from me.”

  An ominous but hung unspoken on his words. She waited for it to come from his tongue, yet it did not.

  “You did ask that I come here?” she said.

  Tides of emotion—wordless, vexing, profound—swirled about them in the night.

  He hesitated further, then nerved himself. “Do you wish to remain among our people?”

  The tribe had cried “Banish her! Banish her!” but surely…

  With a pain keener than she had ever known Gyva framed her reply: “Where I am not wanted, I shall not be. But where else can I go?”

  The other tribes would not be overjoyed to take in a mixed-blood who had been expelled by her own people. And beyond them there were only the pale jackals, who would perceive in her not the white blood of her mother’s heritage, but her raven-black hair, her onyx eyes, and the fact that she lived and dressed and acted and was a Chickasaw.

  “We have held counsel upon many things,” Torch was telling her. “And many words were spoken upon the things that you have done these past days.”

  She made bold to say what was in her heart. “You are the leader now. Why listen to the public gossip of fools?”

  He spoke sadly. “That is true, I am the leader, and I both wished it to be and did not wish it so. As one brave, uncalled to leadership by Ababinili, I might have taken you upon my horse, and we two could have ridden where the sun sleeps, and worried for naught but ourselves. But—”

  “Now you have spoken the but, that I have heard since I came here to you. Pray, do go on, and tell me what your heart holds.”

  “You are a strong woman, and I do respect it.”

  “And you a strong man—so say it.”

  “But I am no longer one brave, capable of cradling my own destiny, to be concerned with it alone. I have sought the chieftaincy, and I have won it.”

  Gyva’s mind leaped ahead of Torch’s words. “You are telling me that the nation is your lover now,” she accused, not without hurt.

  Torch went silent. Then: “In a manner, you speak truly. I must first think of the people, then of—”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. No-us.”

  “So there is still an ‘us’?”

  “In my heart and soul there will always be.”

  “You will forgive me, but again I hear a qualification in your words.”

  “We have held Counsel, as I have said.”

  “You have said. It was about me. So tell me. But remember, among all these things I seem to have done to offend and alienate the tribe, I did also kill a raiding Choctaw, and I did take his lice-ridden scalp to hang upon the chieftain’s glory pole!”

  “Do not take anger. I have saved you among our people.”

  This news stunned her, and then it angered her.

  “How is it that I need to be saved from my own kind?” she asked accusingly.

  “Because you have seemed to be a troublemaker, bringing unfounded accusations, stirring turmoil in our midst.”

  Gyva was truly angry now. “The higher one rises, the farther behind is truth!” she snapped. “And the harder to find as well. Should one be even half-interested in locating it!”

  “Do not speak thus to me, maiden,” he said, softly but peremptorily. “There are things I must do. It may work out for us, and we may yet be as one, but only if you cease…”

  The seriousness of his words, and of his responsibility—to say nothing of her own plight—came down upon Gyva with the weight of a burden.

  “Tell me what I must do,” she said, bowing her head slightly. “In your love I live and shine, but in the womb of the tribe also do I live and have my being. I am your loyal follower, too.”

  With that, Torch stepped forward, reached out in the darkness, and touched her face. The warmth and strength of him were transmitted to her, and she felt as well the seriousness and complexity with which he regarded his new position. It might never again be the same between them as it had been in the days of wild love and freedom, but she did not doubt that she was special to him, and would always be.

  “You must cease to speak up,” he said. “You must withdraw from the public life of the tribe. You must be, for some time, quite faceless in our midst, to earn back by obeisance and anonymity what you have squandered by willfulness.”

  “It was not willfulness!” she cried. “It was—”

  “The council does not care what it was! I am telling you what is, and I am telling you that you must take heed, and take heed quickly. They would already have sent you alone into the forest, into exile, had I not pleaded for you, pleaded to give you one last chance to act as you ought.”

  Gyva felt shaky. That was how her own people felt about her, when all she had tried to do was bring to their attention evils being perpetrated in their midst…

  “And so you promised for me that I would be good?” she asked.

  He seemed to shrink, there in the darkness. “Yes,” he said. “I had to. It was the only way. I do not want to lose you,” he added, “though it may well be some time before the two of us can, in public, go about…”

  “And what of this place of ours, here among the willows?”

  Torch hesitated. “It may be…it may be some time for that again, too, but—”

  “I have heard enough buts for one night,” she cried, “and I thank you for all you have done for me. You may rest assured that I will do as I have been bidden!”

  “Gyva!” he cried, anguish in his voice.

  But she was already gone, back into the night, back to her wigwam, there to lie awake in angry sorrow until dawn.

  Chapter III

  Torch looked every inch a chief as he strode majestically before the tribe, which was gathered for the execution of Jason Randolph. Only on Gyva did his gaze linger, and in his eyes she saw an implicit accusation: It was not I who ran away last night in anger.

  While she sensed that he forgave her, Gyva knew another thing: Once again she had acted impulsively, heeding only the advice of her soul. And once again, by having so acted, she had complicated everything still further.

  But is not your soul the essence of all that you are? When your soul speaks, how can you not but act, without defiling yourself by o
mission?

  Jason Randolph was dragged out in front of the tribe, where a raised scaffolding had been erected. The long trials of the nation, so vexing and protracted, were now to earn a measure of expiation; wrath and revenge for so many trials, so many wrongs, would fall upon the planter from Virginia. He wore the same buckskins in which he had been captured, but it seemed that he had slept some, for he appeared more alert than he had on the previous day. Listening to the people jabber, Gyva learned he had been given fruit and honey, to give him strength lest he succumb before the entertainment was fully commenced.

  Jason was shoved through the jeering crowd and came before the raised stakes of the scaffold. Gyva saw his gaze rise to those beams and ropes, and upon his face she saw despair mixed with an effort of courage. If this was the way he had to die, he would do it as bravely as he could. Perhaps because of the white blood in her veins, or perhaps because she had found him decent when conversing with him, Gyva felt great sympathy. Put an evil warrior, a Choctaw, a traitor to death by these horrible means, but not a man of peace!

  “Secure the captive,” ordered Arrow-in-Oak, who had begged to be in charge of the execution.

  A dozen rough hands grabbed Jason Randolph, knives slashed loose his clothing, and he was bound naked, spread-eagled, between two uprights. There were murmurs of approval from the watching tribe: This man Randolph was fine and strong of body.

  “See how pure and white is his body!” someone observed.

  “Hah!” snorted Arrow. “In due course it shall be red with blood,” which raised a shout of raucous laughter.

  Jason closed his eyes as if in prayer. Perhaps he was calling on that white man’s God, the one whose blood the jackals were supposed to drink. Then he seemed to resolve something for himself, and spoke.

  “I say again,” he told all the tribe, looking from one to another most fearlessly. “I am a man of peace and of the earth. I come here only to make bountiful the land. Never did I fight an Indian of any tribe or nation, nor do I wish to. I cannot believe such a life has earned me this most cruel of deaths.”

  “He begs!” Although many of the Chickasaw could not understand the white man’s tongue, they knew that he sought to be spared.

  Torch felt it necessary to clarify. “You were upon lands that have been ours since time began. We were not approached, even to grant permission that you might traverse the Chickasaw hunting grounds. That in itself is a violation of principle.” His English was clear, but not as fluent as Gyva’s.

  Jason seemed to study the new chief, to decide that here was an Indian who might at least listen to reason.

  “Had we realized that was what you wished, we would indeed have sent an emissary to request such a favor. But—hear me—we took nothing from this land of yours, merely passed across its face. Does the bird require leave to wing through the free air? So it was with us on the way to Harrisville, which is a white man’s land.”

  The people cried out in sudden anger.

  “It, too, was once ours,” Torch observed. In truth he was of two minds regarding this execution. The tribe demanded it, and the process had advanced so far that it could not be broken off. But the deaths of the members of Jason’s party were almost certainly known in Harrisville by now, and this additional execution would add fuel to the fire of white rage.

  “How came you to lose the land, then?” Jason was asking.

  “In battle did you take it from us.”

  “Not I,” Jason replied, quietly but without fear. “For never have I carried knife or gun. It is as I have already said: No man is my enemy. If you lost your land in war, it was not of my making. It takes two sides to make a war.”

  This time the cries of the people went on for some time, ominous with terrible anger as the prisoner’s words were translated. Jason’s words had goaded them, had placed upon them certain responsibility for their own plight.

  “So you say that you have never fought,” Torch observed, trying to find a way to lessen or eliminate the most brutal aspects of death by torture.

  “That is true.”

  “Then what say you to this challenge? If I order you cut down from the scaffold, and place a knife in your hands, will you use it to defend your life against a warrior from our number?”

  “No. No!” cried the people, who worried that they might be robbed of the spectacle of execution. Never had Gyva been more discouraged by the behavior of her own people, even though she understood what gave rise to it.

  But Jason would have none of the suggestion. “If I agree to that which you propose, am I not myself cooperating in my own death? And is that not participation in murder, which I have never done in my life and have no intention of performing now? And even if, through some chance, I should succeed in defending myself, would that not also lead to my spilling the blood of another man?”

  “Let us end this worthless talk!” cried Arrow. “Like all white men, this one has too many words. Words take time and time is a trick of the jackals. By the time he concludes his serpentine disputation, it may be tomorrow, and a rescue party will come for him.”

  The people applauded his words vigorously.

  “Well may it be true,” Torch stated, “that you are innocent of specific acts against us. But in war—and we are at war, as we have been for years—the rules are altered. You are a symbol of your people, and so you shall suffer—as at this very moment one of our own children, Bright Badger, may be lying in suffering at the hands of Roo-Pert Harris.”

  Jason showed surprise. “Harris? Is he not the leader of the settlement north of here?”

  “That is the one. He is the man who gave me the evil name Firebrand, and put upon my head a price of gold.”

  “I have no personal knowledge of him. Word reached me in Virginia that he wished more settlers in his community. He is said to be shrewd and powerful, but also a peaceful man.”

  “Lies—more lies!” the people clamored. “Kill him now, as Arrow-in-Oak has advised.”

  Torch had reason enough to regard Harris with antipathy, and it seemed strange to him that a white man would not know the vicious predilections of one of his own kind. True, Jason claimed not to know Harris personally; but such an excuse had little meaning now. The Red Beard was evil, and devious, and a cheat of the lowest sort, who would resort without conscience to the meanest of tricks. Anyone going to join Harris’s settlement must accept a burden of culpability.

  The discussion was over, and Torch stepped back. Arrow advanced, taking from his belt a knife sharp as a nettle weed. Gyva saw that there was no hope now. Arrow, grinning, made a thin slash in. the flesh of Randolph’s thigh. Jason groaned and twisted in bondage. Then Arrow made a second slash, parallel to the first and about an inch apart. Deft flicks of the knife joined the two longer slashes, and an elongated rectangle, bloody bordered, stood out on Randolph’s white flesh. Then, still grinning, Arrow grasped a shred of skin in his hands and ripped it away. Jason screamed, and the tribe cried out in gleeful satisfaction.

  “You ought to have chosen the knife fight,” Arrow mocked the Virginian. “It would have been much faster than being skinned alive.”

  “I say…for the last time,” Jason cried, gasping in pain, “I am a peaceful man, who seeks only to cultivate the land and build a plantation. I have done nothing…”

  “You are right,” Arrow interrupted. “You have said so for the last time.”

  The Chickasaw roared with laughter. Arrow made a long slash across Randolph’s abdomen.

  Gyva moved up next to Torch as Jason howled with the new pain. “Stop this, make it quick for him,” Gyva whispered.

  He did not look at her, but he did answer. “Perhaps I will be able to do so in a while more. But I cannot now.”

  “Why not? Are you not chieftain?”

  “I am. And that is the reason. Affairs are not so clear-cut and well defined as you might think. I must walk a tightrope.”

  “Hah!” Gyva hissed, angrily. “What good is it to see that good man d
ie so?”

  “Do not speak such things. The people will begin again to call for your banishment.”

  Arrow ripped away another long length of skin, and Jason groaned like a dying horse and sagged upon the ropes that bound him, almost dropping into unconsciousness. The people themselves groaned, but in disappointment. “Give him strong wine,” someone cried. “Revive him, that we may feast upon his misery!”

  It was Little Swallow who stepped forward with an earthenware jug.

  And it was Gyva who dashed out from Torch’s side and struck the vessel to the ground, where it shattered into a hundred fragments, the spreading pool of berry wine soaking into the earth like Jason’s blood.

  A great silence fell upon them all, a silence that was partially of awe. Gyva felt the anger begin to smoulder, and she sought to cut it off with her words.

  “What have we become?” she cried.

  Torch regarded her with wonder. On the gallows Jason raised his head, astounded. A flicker of hope passed over his eyes.

  “Are we all truly murderers,” Gyva asked, “that we should howl like rabid wolves over one man’s pain? If so, then we are exactly as Jacksa Chula and his kind believe us to be. We do such a thing as this upon the gallows today, and our enemies will say, ‘See? See what they do? They are as crazed with blood lust as we have ever said they were!’”

  Her words, she saw, had some effect, mostly due to the fact-that she had stunned the people by the suddenness of her action.