Besides, although the sight of the horse seemed to buoy her for a little while and give her renewed vitality, her strength was ebbing fast. Ahead of her, through butternuts and red maples, she could see the forest growing even more dense. The ground was rising. She gave up trying to influence the horse’s direction and lay along his neck, only half conscious, letting him find his own way. She could only hope he knew where he was going.
Low branches tore at her hair, struck at her legs, ran twiggy fingers down her back, but she remained aboard him, her body sagging, her fingers twined into the horse’s mane. She was tired, so tired. Even coughing seemed too much effort. When she opened her eyes, the world began to waver, so she closed them again with a groan.
Only one thought sustained her: At least she was not at Daarkenwyck in the hands of the patroon!
CHAPTER 22
Lying limp and almost lifeless across the horse’s back, Charity must have dozed, but she came to with a cry. She was falling off the horse—no, being lifted off! Instinctively she raised her hands and struck at the arms that were holding her. At her outburst, a masculine voice, with a reassuringly surprised note in it, said, “There now! Wilt thou strike at a man who was but catching thee as thou fell to the ground?” Charity looked up into a pair of honest brown eyes set in a square sunburned face only inches from her own.
“I . . . didn’t steal the horse,” she said faintly and keeled over.
She did not know that he held her carefully in his arms, looking down at her, perplexed. She did not know anything at all for days. She moaned in delirium on a narrow bed. Sometimes she thought her mother came to her, and she wept brokenly. And at other times the patroon or Jochem—and her terrified screams rent the air. Sometimes she was so hot she thought she was tied to a tall pole looking down through a pillar of black smoke into an inferno, feeling her own flesh burning while the crowd below laughed and jeered. She was so frightened she coughed incessantly and could not stop. Always she seemed to be on fire, suffocating.
It was days before the fever broke and Charity lay, damp and sane and awake at last, and looked about her.
She could not imagine where she was.
Overhead were rough timbers and a coating of bark. Around her were crude walls covered with bark. There was one small window and a rough-hewn wooden door. Across the room sat a crude table and two benches, and two large leather-bound chests with rounded tops stood against the opposite wall.
The door opened, letting in bright sunlight, and a man came in. Charity tried to sit up, but fell back weakly. She gazed at him.
She saw that he was of medium height, square-jawed, tanned. He wore a wide-brimmed hat of coarse, dark felt; his hair was brown and rather short. He sported a shirt with rolled-up sleeves and no coat, loose-fitting leather knee breeches, coarse woven stockings and blocky-looking shoes. He looked strong and clean and he gazed back at her steadily.
“Ah, I see thou art awake,” he said softly.
Charity nodded. “Who are you?” she whispered.
“I am Ben Goode,” he said gravely. “And thou?”
“Charity Woodstock,” murmured Charity weakly. She felt very tired. The exertion of speaking was too much. A great enveloping fatigue seemed to be sweeping over her.
“Rest,” he said. “Later we will talk.”
Charity’s eyes closed. She slept.
Later Ben brought her hot broth. He sat on the edge of the narrow bed and fed it to her with a wooden spoon. By now she was aware that she was wearing a strange nightdress of rough cotton. Her chemise, neatly laundered, was hanging from a nail driven into the wall some distance away, and beside it her dress and petticoats. She stared at them, fascinated.
“Is there—a woman here?” she asked.
An expression of pain passed over his face and was quickly gone. For a moment the spoon in his hand quivered. “No,” he said quietly. “Only myself.”
Then he had undressed her and laundered her chemise. Charity cast another quick glance at the chemise and a hot blush flooded her face.
“Eat,” Ben commanded gently. “I did hear thy story in bits and pieces as thou didst toss in delirium. Here thou art safe from harm.”
His jaw hardened as he said that and Charity looked up at him with curiosity. Meekly, she swallowed another spoonful of hot soup.
“How didst thou find this place, Mistress Woodstock?”
“The horse brought me,” said Charity absently.
“I am aware the horse brought thee,” he said, a tinge of irony in his voice. “Tis my horse.”
Charity’s head swung around to look at him. She caught her breath. Stealing horses was a punishable offense. “I didn’t steal the horse,” she protested quickly. “I—I was much in need of transportation and—and he was there. I do not remember the ride.”
He nodded gravely. “And so thou didst bring him home to me. A good deed, surely, for otherwise I would needs have gone to fetch him. Were others with thee?”
“No, I was alone.”
In the corner of the room she heard a baby crying and Charity looked at him in surprise.
“Tis mine,” he said proudly. “Tis my little Letty.” Before Charity could question him further, he rose and went to tend the baby, who lay, wrapped in soft linen, in a small wooden crib. She looked awfully tiny. He cradled the baby in his arms, spoke to her soothingly, but when he turned to face Charity again his face was wracked with pain. Without a word he turned and plunged from the cabin.
The next day, when Charity was well enough to rise feebly and sit at dinner with him at the crude wooden table, Ben told her his story. It was a simple one, but shocking. They were Quakers, he and his Rachel. They had saved their money thriftily in England before they were wed, doing without all but the necessities, and had come here to the Colonies where, he told her proudly, he had bought this “holding.” He had built this cabin for his Rachel, who then had a child on the way. His voice rang with pride and Charity looked around her, again. The cabin was actually quite cozy in its crude way.
Ben continued his story. A few weeks ago there had been some friction with the Indians. He had not known about it, for he was out of touch with his neighbors, none of whom lived close. But while he was out hewing logs near the house, Rachel had gone searching for herbs in the forest. He had warned her not to go far, but she had not listened. He knew this because he and three others had followed the trail of her soft moccasins—moccasins bought from the Indians—over the soft spring earth wet from recent rains. They had found a number of footprints—Indian footprints, possibly a war party. They had seen where Rachel’s footprints turned and ran, and a few yards later where those other footprints had caught up with her. There must have been a struggle, for small pieces of her dress were left on the brambles, along with her basket and scattered herbs. Then they had found her smaller footprints mingled with those of the Indians’, heading toward the northwest. By a stream they had lost the prints, so the Indians must have gone on by canoe. Ben’s friends had followed the course of the stream a long way northward, but Ben himself had had to return home lest the baby starve. His three friends had returned saying they had lost Rachel’s trail, but that they suspected she was being taken to the big Indian slave market situated near a great northern lake. All Ben could do was to send word to the trappers who frequented the area to watch for her, and that he would pay a good ransom to get her back.
Charity could see that he was filled with terror that his Rachel was dead and lost to him. She remembered with horror the trappers’ conversation in New York about the many white women captured and dragged to the Indians’ northern slave market. Her sympathy went out to Ben, who was held fast to his cabin by a tiny baby, frantic with worry about his young wife, unable to leave even to go look for her.
Charity felt her eyes mist over with tears. She would look after the baby, she offered. She had no friends, nowhere to go. Ben brightened. Would she do that?
But, Charity admitted sadly, she had no experience
of life in the wilds. She would try to learn—if he would teach her.
He did. Life with Ben was a perpetual wonder to her. He was very courteous and grave and patient with her at all times. The first night that she was strong enough to be up, he escorted her to her new sleeping quarters in the tiny dark attic beneath the thatched roof, reached by a rude ladder through a hole in the attic floor. He would willingly sleep up there himself, he explained, but it was best he be downstairs in case of attack by Indians or wild beasts.
Charity was very glad to let Ben have the downstairs room. She had no desire to contend with either Indians or wild beasts.
Under Ben’s tutelage, Charity learned to make butter, to milk a cow and to skin game. She learned to dip candles and make the coarse brown bread of Indian meal. She tended the baby—and those were the happiest times, for Letty was a sweet affectionate child who soon won her completely. She also fed the sow and her litter with scraps from the table, and carried water endlessly in a wooden bucket from the nearby stream.
She worked from dawn to after dark.
And was happy.
She knew that Ben was not. Often he would walk to the edge of the clearing at night and stand dejectedly and stare into the dark woods—and she knew he was inwardly willing his Rachel to return to him. At other times he stared down at little Letty with such a woebegone face that Charity winced, realizing how deeply Ben missed his young wife for whom hope was fast fading.
Charity sometimes pondered Rachel’s fate, shuddering, as she imagined the young woman pulled along by the Indian braves, made to endure forced marches, to cook for them—and no doubt sleep with them. And then to come stumbling, after her long terrible journey, into the Indian-run slave market and find herself sold to the highest bidder—it was a fate that made Charity blanch.
She could see that the thought of it ate at Ben too, and that he yearned to be off seeking his Rachel. But Charity was still not well enough acquainted with life in the wilds to be self-reliant. She could manage with Ben there to guide her, but she knew, from the thoughtful searching look he sometimes gave her, that he did not consider her ready to meet frontier life alone.
Ben was always polite and courteous. Sometimes their bodies brushed inadvertently as he taught her some new skill, and always he moved nimbly away from her as if he had been stung by the contact. Once at dusk, she heard a crashing amid the tamaracks at the edge of the clearing and turned instinctively to seek reassurance by clutching his arm. She felt his muscles respond spasmodically to her touch, though he flinched away from her. Another time, when she was trying to carry her pillow down the ladder from the attic, she stumbled and he leaped forward to steady her. She fell against his chest and, for a moment, lingered there before she could right herself. Ben seemed quite shaken by the incident and avoided her eyes for several days.
Charity, who had not felt any great electrical surge as their bodies met, looked on Ben with great warmth and respect. She was grateful that he had not asked her many questions, but had accepted at its face value her lie that she had come downriver from Albany on a boat which had capsized, drowning all the other passengers. She had been seeking shelter, she explained, when she found his horse and let it bring her to him.
It was, she supposed, as good a story as any other. And it did not involve her with the patroon. Nor would Ben be implicated in her escape if the patroon found her. To Charity that was very important; she felt her own life was a shambles, but she had no wish to involve those who were kind enough to help her in her troubles. She discounted Ben’s remark that he knew her story from her disjointed fever ravings since he never mentioned it again.
Though her hatred for the patroon still held, with a kind of bitter clarity here in Ben’s simple cabin in the forest, Charity could now view her life at Daarkenwyck and her relationship with Pieter almost in the abstract—as if it had happened to some other girl.
“I got no more than I deserved, she told herself fiercely. “I did not love Pieter. I would have learned to hate him. For his grossness, his disregard of others, his insensitivity ... so many things. If I had married him, I would indeed have been selling myself for gold.
Before, she had been obsessed with the thought of marriage, intending to save herself only for a marriage bed, now her view shifted subtly.
I will let no man hold me in his arms for his own purposes, she vowed. I will not suffer any man to touch me intimately unless I wish it. And I must love him.
Then she frowned to herself and thought, If need be, I will dissemble, I will flirt and entice—and so gain my own ends. But I will give myself only for love—and never for gold.
So the bright days of early summer passed, and Charity’s emotional wounds gradually mended and she was made whole again in the simple woodland surroundings.
As time went by, Charity realized that Ben was torn by great conflicting emotions: he still loved Rachel but in his heart he knew he had lost her, and Charity was young and lovely and within his grasp. She was aware that his eyes followed her with yearning, although he tried never to let her see it, and she carefully looked away at those times when his face might reveal too much.
Her fondness for Ben deepened. She saw him as clean and bright against the darkness she had known. In her mind Tom, the light-hearted highwayman, had faded, grown dim, obscured by the harsh realities and intrigue of Daarkenwyck with its resident spider. And Roger Derwent . . . her feelings about him were confused, for he was a man to whom she might, recklessly, have given her heart. She tried never to think about Roger Derwent. Ben filled her life now, Ben and Letty, and she was happy in a sweet fulfilled way that had no passion in it. She supposed it was not really a full existence, that she was not a whole woman never lying in a man’s arms, never feeling his warm body pressed against hers, but Daarkenwyck had left such a coldness in her heart that she sometimes shivered and thought never to be really warm again. And now Ben, with his kindness, his simple goodness, was melting that coldness so that she had become a woman again, a creature of feelings and passions and vulnerability.
So she drifted through the summer days, content to be in this leafy shelter away from the torments that had plagued her in this wild raw land.
She knew of course, in a vague sort of way, that some word might eventually reach them about Rachel.
But it was a shock to see who brought it.
CHAPTER 23
Charity had been out searching for berries that grew near the clearing in the forest. She returned carrying a small basket, sufficient for their supper and tomorrow’s breakfast. As she paused in the doorway, to accustom her eyes to the darkened cabin, she was conscious that there was another man in the room with Ben. The other man had his back to her.
“Charity,” said Ben, “this is Bart Symonds. Mistress Woodstock.”
And as Charity stood stiff with shock, basket in hand, Bart turned and gave a smirk. “I think we’ve met,” said he.
“Ah, then ye be from Albany?” said Ben.
“Near enough,” shrugged Bart, his eyes devouring Charity. He grinned and his tongue passed over his lips as if savouring a feast he would soon be enjoying. Charity shrank away from him.
“He comes from the Indian slave market by the great northern lake,” explained Ben, and Charity noticed how drawn Ben’s face was.
“Nay,” Bart was swift to correct Ben. “I never reached the slave market, but I had word from French trappers who did reach there that none had seen a woman by the name or description of your wife.”
“I thank thee for thy kindness in bringing me these sad tidings,” said Ben, his head sinking to his breast. He roused himself. “Wilt thou not take supper with us and spend the night? Tis late for a traveler to venture out into these woods.”
Bart gave Charity a sly look. “I’d be much beholden for some good food and a place to lay my head.”
With compressed lips, Charity laid out the supper. Before serving the fresh berries, she brought in a pitcher of clotted cream that had been poure
d from a crock wedged in by rocks in the cold running stream near the house. As she watched Bart devour the food with the silent devotion of a starving animal, she was appalled by his crudeness. How could Tom ever have liked him, she wondered.
“Have you—heard from Tom?”
Bart paused in mid-bite, while wolfing down a joint of wild turkey Ben had shot. “No,” he said. “Have you?”
She shook her head, and to Ben’s questioning glance, she said, “Tom is a mutual friend.”
Those were the only words she spoke at supper. Ben sat, crushed and sad, half-heartedly trying to eat. Charity picked at her food uneasily. She was afraid of Bart, and suddenly she realized that she was afraid of him not only for herself but for Ben. She thought it quite likely that Bart would try to pick a fight with Ben, kill him deliberately, and make off with her leaving the baby to starve. Her hands grew cold, thinking of it.
After dinner as she cleared the dishes, Bart asked Ben if he had anything to drink.
“Only water and milk,” responded Ben. “I do not drink spirits.”
Bart settled back sulkily and tried a new tack. He challenged Ben to a contest of strength. Charity bit her lip, watching the two men lock hands. Ben’s solid woodsman’s strength was unavailing. Powerful Bart easily bore Ben’s hand down upon the table, and crowed of his victory, demanding as a forfeit from Ben for losing—a kiss from Charity.
“That is for Mistress Charity to say,” said Ben stiffly. “She has the giving of her own kisses.”
“Oh, that’s the way it is, is it?” said Bart with a nasty laugh. Charity gave him a venomous look and began to prepare snap beans for next day’s dinner in the farthest corner of the room.
When Bart left the room for a moment, she set down the bowl and rushed to Ben’s side.
“Bart is a dangerous man,” she whispered. “He will most likely kill you if you turn your back on him.”
“Why?” murmured Ben in surprise. “Why should he kill me? I have not harmed him.”
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