The Blooded Ones

by Elizabeth Brown

  Finola reached slowly for the charm. The woman raised it up with both hands in front of her face, her blue eyes widening as she studied it. She looked at Maggie, then back to the stone raven, her mouth falling open.

  “Where did ye get this?” Finola finally asked.

  “I’ve had it since I was a child. It was a gift.” She smiled a bit at the memory of when Marcus gave her the raven. “I was told the raven would chase away my bad dreams, that no one could hurt me as long as the raven watched over me. I’ve kept it ever since. It traveled through time with me, it’s the only thing I have left from the place I come from.”

  They both looked up at the creak of floorboards. Benjamin stood in the doorway. His face was etched in a mask, his skin pale beneath his crumpled brows. Behind him was Charles Potts. Maggie stood reflexively and patted down her apron, shielding her eyes as creeping fingers of panic gripped her. How much of their conversation had the men heard?

  “Good day, Miss Finola,” Benjamin said. He nodded curtly to Finola, and took Maggie’s hand firmly in his. She did not resist the pressure of his touch, even though his fingers tightened so much she feared he would bruise her.

  Maggie met Finola’s eyes. They shared one panicked glance before Benjamin pulled her into the street.

  Maggie watched at the window for Benjamin’s return. He did not speak to her on the ride home, his gloved hands fisted over the reins, and she was reluctant to spark a conversation. It was clear he overheard some of the exchange, yet Maggie could not tell how much information he gleaned from his eavesdropping.

  “Get ye in the house and wait for my return. Stay inside,” was all he uttered. He took a fresh horse from the barn and rode off back toward town, and it was the last Maggie had seen of him since he brought her home from her visit with Finola.

  A wide bright moon lit the darkness as night wore on. After she had changed into a simple white shift and let her hair down for bed, she finally heard the pounding of hooves against earth and knew he had returned.

  “Benjamin! I was worried!” she said as he crossed the room. The door slammed shut behind him with a thud and she felt the tremor of the floorboards beneath her bare feet with the force of it. He shed his cloak and hat, tossing them carelessly into a heap near the fire.

  She took a deep breath to steady herself. Turning to the hearth, she reached for a bowl to ladle him a bit of stew, but stopped at the sound of his low, cold voice.

  “I want truth between us, my wife,” he said evenly, advancing toward her one slow pace at a time. She equaled it by stepping backward, keeping the distance as best she could. She had never seen him so affected, not certain what emotion lay beneath his features as the veins on his neck bulged and sweat glistened on the chest exposed by his half-opened shirt.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she replied. He reeked of spirits, but his eyes were still sharp as he latched his steady gaze on her. She had never feared Benjamin, yet the manner in which he stalked her made her heart start to thud against her bodice. They had an arrangement; he would not come to her bed without invitation, and with the stench he carried in from the tavern she was certain that time would not be tonight.

  Her hand bumped the latch to her bedroom, and she sprung it, trying to slam the door shut before he could reach it. She was certain he would be more reasonable in the morning after he slept off the liquor.

  She made a grave error in thinking the door would deter him, and she shrieked when he shouldered the door before she could latch it, and he stalked toward her quickly now as if the door had been no barrier at all.

  “Where do ye come from?” he shouted. “Who are yer people?” He grabbed her arms then, and it crossed her mind that she was frightfully tired of men grabbing her like a sack of potatoes. She tried to shake him off, but he was strong, after all, and clearly not ready to budge.

  “Stop it!” she cried. He shook her hard.

  “Did Winn know? Tell me!” She flinched at mention of his name, and he read the look on her face with ease.

  “Stop it, Benjamin, stop it!” she yelled, finally wrenching away from him.

  “Ye are my wife, before God we were married. Have ye no love for me at all? Have ye no care to tell me? Ye lay with Winn, tell him your secrets, yet I get not even a sliver of such truth from ye!”

  “Benjamin, please—”

  “Did ye go to him willingly, or did he kidnap ye?”

  “Stop it,” she moaned.

  “Tell me, wife!”

  “Benjamin—”

  “No more lies!” he roared.

  She bit down hard on her bottom lip to quell her sobs. What did it matter now? Let him shout, let him prove he was her husband, let him sate his jealousy, and in the morning he would beg forgiveness and life would go on.

  “Why was he worthy of yer secrets, yet I am not?” he demanded.

  His shaking hands latched onto her upper arms, and she closed her eyes in anticipation against what was to come. His breath came fast on her skin, hot along her cheek as he took her face into his hands. The less she responded, the harder he held her, until his fingers dug into her tender skin and he drew away with a low uttered swear.

  “I saw ye that night, when ye visited with him. I followed him into the woods. I watched him dishonor ye.” His throat constricted as he swallowed. “I thought of nothing but saving thee after that,” he said quietly.

  “I didn’t need to be saved,” she whispered, tears bursting forth on her pale cheeks.

  His lips twisted. “Even now, you love him, don’t you? You stand here as my wife, and still, you love him.”

  She did not reply, but she knew he could read the truth on her face just as surely as she felt it in her heart. He dropped his hands away from her and stepped back.

  “I thought I was the better man, but I am not,” he said softly. “Charles told the magistrate what we heard. I could not stop him. He’s accused ye of witchcraft. They want to hang thee, ye know.”

  “And you? Do you think I’m a witch?” she asked, her chin tilting up a notch with her words.

  “Yes, my wife,” he murmured. “I think…I think ye are.”

  He closed the door behind him when he left, and the latch clicked to lock. She sat down on the bed in the room to wait.

  They came for her at dawn.

  She imagined a more orderly abduction, sure the English would treat a woman prisoner in a better fashion than Nemattanew had treated her, yet she was chagrined to discover just how brutal the cultivated whites could be. Bound fist and ankle, her mouth gagged with a dirty bit of rag, she succumbed to the arrest without a fight.

  Benjamin watched from a few paces away. By his side stood Charles Potts, his hand resting on Benjamin’s shoulder in an apparent show of sympathy.

  Someone was laughing, a frivolous, shrieking howl that nearly curled her toes inside her leather boots. It was not until they hurled her up into the wagon that she realized the laughter came from her own lips, only slightly muffled for their efforts to quiet her.

  “This is ridiculous!” she screamed, the words emitted as a slur amidst her howling. Jonathon Pace bent over to tie her hands to the bench, and when he came in range, she butted her head against his with a crack. He uttered a rather feminine scream and fell back holding his nose, and then Charles leapt into the wagon.

  “She hit me! The witch broke me nose!”

  Charles glanced at the bleeding man, and then to Maggie. She shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes, and shouted a few foul responses into the rag before Charles lifted his revolver over her head.

  “I’ll clout ye, witch. No more trouble, ye hear?” he snapped.

  Bound beyond any hope of moving, her hands tied to the bench at her side, what other option did she have? She nodded in agreement and slid back as far as she could away from them.

  “It’s a half-day ride to James City, best ye spend it praying fer yer black soul,” Charles added. He gave his companion a kerchief from his pocket, and they all settled ba
ck for the ride.

  CHAPTER 35

  Thump. Thump. Maggie grimaced at the infernal banging noise, her eyes still sealed shut from sleep.

  Thump.

  Damnit, there it was again. The back of her head began to ache, the steady pain washing through her skull in a rhythmic throb. She cracked her swollen eyelids and saw her hands sitting in her lap, bound by a coarse length of rope twisted into a double knot. The wagon lurched, and her head snapped back.

  Thump.

  The noise was her own head banging against the wooden wagon brace.

  She adjusted her hips and squirmed back up against the pole, moving as little as possible when she spotted the three men resting across from her. Jonathon Pace and Charles Potts, still there. Great, the English had sent her to death accompanied by two village idiots. Not that it mattered anymore how her life ended, but she did take slight offense at the fact that her security team was chosen from among the incompetent.

  Benjamin was the third man. While the two half-wits slumped dozing along with the rocking of the wagon, Benjamin sat across from her, his long legs sprawled so that his heels touched her toes, his arms crossed over his chest. He was staring straight at her.

  Maggie bent her legs and pushed hard with her feet to shove away from him, which was not much considering that her ankles were still bound. He slowly uncrossed his arms and sat up, leaning forward toward her, and she flattened herself against the wagon brace to get away from him. His lips twisted at her evasion, but he continued to breach the space between them, placing two fingers to his mouth in a gesture to silence her. She had no reason to trust him, yet she remained quiet. He eyed the other two men, and once satisfied they slept, he swiftly moved across the wagon to take the bench beside her. His lips bent to her ear, but he did not touch her.

  “Answer me this, Maggie,” he whispered. “Do you love Winn still?”

  Her eyes felt too swollen to shed more tears, and thankfully, they were, because the sound of his name sliced through her heart like a blade and it was all she could do not to scream herself senseless. Did Benjamin wish to torture her, as if her mind were not already filled with visions of Winn as she rode to her death? How surely she had misjudged him, thinking Benjamin had a kind heart beating inside his chest.

  “I have never stopped,” she said softly in reply. There was no more reason for lies between them. She expected the confirmation to wound him further, and wondered if he would be happy to see her hang. Perhaps she deserved his anger for his damaged pride, but she never imagined him such a callous beast.

  Benjamin closed his eyes for a moment and then nodded, as if agreeing to his own internal dialogue. When he opened them, he took her bound hands to his lips and kissed them softly.

  “Then go. Go to him.”

  She panicked. What was he talking about? She had no time to consider his request. He leaned over and cut the rope that bound her ankles. Before he could free her wrists, Jonathon Pace stood up, and when he saw what Benjamin meant to do he reached for his pistol. Benjamin was faster, and took only a moment to wrestle the gun away and then shoot him point blank in the chest with his own pistol. His blue eyes were cool but steady when Charles jumped to his feet, saw his dead friend, and threw himself at Benjamin as the wagon came skidding to a stop.

  “You killed him! You’ll hang for this, Dixon!” Charles shouted, his eyes darting from his dead friend to the eerily calm Benjamin.

  Maggie heard horses screaming and the wagon lurched when the second shot went off, but she kept hanging onto the bench with her fingertips as the wagon tipped dangerously sideways.

  With the second man wounded but still struggling, Benjamin glanced back at her.

  “Benjamin!”

  “Get out! Go, now!” he shouted. “So help me, Maggie, get out of this wagon! I won’t see you hang! Go!”

  He pointed his hand, urging her to make escape, but when he turned his palm Maggie caught her breath, her feet frozen in place. It was not often that Benjamin went without gloves, and suddenly she understood why. Singed into his bare hand, pale and aged, was a carved entwined scar.

  A knot that looked exactly like her own.

  The mark of a Time Walker.

  “Benjamin?” she whispered. Their eyes met one last time.

  “Go!” he roared, then launched himself at Charles.

  She braced against the beam and looked out the back, stumbling as the wagon shifted and falling to her knees. The wagon finally slid to a stop and she took the moment to jump out, landing on her hands and knees in the frigid creek bed. She scrambled to gather her sodden dress in her bound hands and crawled forward, making it up on one leg before she tripped on the heavy fabric and fell face first again.

  The sound of screams and gunfire suddenly broke from the front wagon in the caravan, the cries of both horses and men shattering the air. She spit up creek water and tried to push herself back onto her knees, knowing she only had moments before they chased her. Bracing herself on her palms, she wrenched her skirt up to her thighs and rose up on bruised knees when she heard the splashing of footsteps through the water beside her.

  She slowly looked up. Two chiseled legs attached to beaded moccasin boots stood before her, water dripping off the gleaming brown skin. A familiar face glared down at her, streaked with red war paint and his chest splattered with blood. Her heart sank as Makedewa bent down with one hand and swiftly jerked her to her feet, knife in his other hand.

  She knew her pleas would mean nothing to him, and she would not give him the joy of seeing her beg before he gutted her. She closed her eyes and waited for the blow. Puzzled when it did not arrive, she cracked one eye open to peer at him, and watched as he slid the blade between her wrists and cut her bonds free.

  “You are much trouble, Red Woman,” he growled. “Come!”

  He pulled her through the shallow creek, away from the melee. She looked back at the caravan and shuddered, seeing dozens of Indians in battle with the English. One of the horses was down, struggling to rise, but caught in the stays of the wagon and unable to stand. Braves on their war ponies crashed through the water, their shrieks overtaking the cries of the English. She wondered where Benjamin was, and grabbed Makedewa’s arm.

  “We have to help Benjamin! He killed two men to help me escape— we can’t leave him to die!”

  “No! We leave now!” he shouted. She balked and twisted away when he tried to stop her, his hands like steel around her waist as he refused to let her go back.

  The bellow of war cries pierced the air and the hooves of running horses sent water splashing in all directions. More warriors approached, a sorrel pony leading them, the gleaming warrior astride its back afire with rage and headed straight for them.

  The warrior’s chest and face was smeared with red war paint, his head flanked by a crescent of black tipped eagle feathers. His face contorted when he screamed their fierce cry, water spraying around him as he galloped down the creek bed toward them. As Makedewa’s hands tightened on her waist she realized he meant to pass her off to the rider and she tried to twist away from him.

  Makedewa gripped her forearms with a grunt as the rider thundered toward them, and in the moment before he thrust her upward into the warrior’s outstretched arm she wondered if she imagined the flash of bright blue eyes beneath the paint.

  The horse scrambled up the riverbank until it was on solid ground, and she grasped its mane to keep from falling off. Half perched, sliding against his chest, he yanked her closer as another rider approached. She recognized Chetan as the second rider in all his war glory, all trace of his gentle nature shadowed by his finery. He nodded at them.

  “Go. Take her. We will finish this.” Chetan issued the order to her captor and immediately spun his pony around to rejoin the fight. Had even Chetan abandoned her, and agreed to obey Opechancanough by seeing her dead?

  She had no power to speak, afraid to utter a single syllable or to even look at the warrior behind her. The horse carried them up through a hi
ll pass, then burrowed down deep through a valley where they put space between them and the English. They came upon a familiar formation splitting the mountains, where a waterfall graced a narrow ledge. The horse navigated the path with a steady pace, and Maggie gasped as they passed through the waterfall.

  She sat soaked and shaking, but the warrior gave nothing away, and they made tracks out the back of the waterfall through a crevice which led to a sloped grassy alcove.

  They had been there together once before. Unchanged since that day, yet still different than when she would live there, the site of her future home awaited them. She remembered him dancing away from the brown bear, saving her life. He took her heart into his keeping that day, and she realized with a pang of despair it was no longer hers to control.

  The mouth of a cave was partially concealed in the jagged rock crevice. The rider sat back and the horse came obediently to a stop.

  She thought she had no tears left, but when the warrior dipped his head to her shoulder and his arms tightened around her waist, tears came. His voice, strained and low, echoed against her ear.

  “Go inside, Tentay teh. A fire burns. I will return soon.”

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 36

  Maggie waited for Winn to return as the hours stretched on. She could not control the shaking that wracked her body, and if it stemmed from the cold or the knowledge that Winn lived, she did not know. The long muslin dress was soaked through, the fabric wrapped around her legs and the weight of the layers still pulling her down. She needed to get warm. Standing above the fire, she tried to unfasten the front of her shift, but her fingers were numb and slipped off the tiny buttons. Her teeth chattered and snapped together as the shaking overcame her again, and this time it brought her to her knees.

  Winn entered the cave entrance as she gave up on her bindings and pulled a fur up around her shoulders. His blue eyes locked with hers and he slowly approached, his gaze never wavering even as the fur slid from her shoulders in a heap around her hips. The traveling sack fell out of his hand and he dropped to his knees beside her.