Lori Benton

by Burning Sky

  While the arrow’s intent was clear to Willa, Neil had been less certain. Shaken as they stood on the spot at the woods’ edge where they surmised the shooter had stood, he’d said, “Ye dinna think it was meant to …?”

  “Kill me?” Had the arrow been so intended, the deed could have been accomplished a dozen times while she ran hither and yon in search of the missing spade. She clutched the arrow she’d wrenched from the door. “It is a warning. From Richard.”

  Neil had glanced around the underbrush, striped with sunlight, belying the dark intent it had so recently concealed. “Or someone delivering it for him.”

  He’d spoken the words under his breath, but Willa caught them, and the furrowing of his brow. “What is it you are thinking? Tell me.”

  His blue eyes focused on her. “ ’Tis a thing that happened at the smithy, when I took Seamus for shoeing. Richard was there.”

  Alarm flushed hot down her spine. “Did you tell him about the children or Joseph? Is that why this has happened?”

  “No,” he said. “I ken better than to do so. Anyway, I barely saw Richard. ’Twas Aram Crane I spoke to. I mentioned Cherry Valley again, and he said some things about it that made me think he wasna there. Not on the side of the settlement, I mean. ’Tis been a niggle at the back of my mind since, but I think, maybe, he was part of the British regiment attacking the fort.”

  Willa did her best to hide her startlement, to keep the suspicion that dawned from showing on her face. She might be wrong. There was no knowing. Not until Joseph came in from hunting and she could ask him whether he had another reason for being in Shiloh, besides her. Had he tracked his deserter there too? And was that deserter Aram Crane?

  “It may mean nothing to the present situation,” Neil was saying. “And ’tis no surprise if the man doesna want it spread about that he was once a British soldier—if he was so.”

  “Do you think,” Willa ventured, unable to hold back such a burning curiosity, “he could be a deserter?”

  That surprised Neil. “I hadna thought it, but I suppose ’tis possible. What makes you ask it?”

  Willa shrugged the subject away. “No reason. It is the children that worry me. We must keep them close. Always within sight.”

  “Surely Richard wouldna harm the bairns?”

  “I don’t know.” Richard wasn’t the only man in Shiloh with cause to hate the Mohawks—nearly every man did, whether they would ever act on it or not—but she couldn’t shake the suspicion that he was behind that arrow in some way. Despite his words of repentance, his professed desire to help her, her return to Shiloh had rattled him, stirring up memories she thought he would rather have kept buried.

  “What I know is that this”—her grip on the arrow tightened—“cannot keep me from my work.”

  “How d’ye mean to work with no spade?”

  She’d already started toward the cabin and did not look back. “If I do not have a metal blade, then I will dig the ground with sticks!”

  In the end she found a tool more serviceable than a stick—a sharpened length of deer antler—but decided, once her temper cooled, that breaking more field ground could wait. She was on her hands and knees now, digging among a patch of burdock upstream along the bank of Black Kettle Creek. She’d lined her carrying basket with the coarse heart-shaped leaves, then added young roots to use for salves and wound washes. Two of the plants she’d harvested intact, roots packed in earth, meaning to start an herb garden.

  Their musky scent, the feel of earth and growing things, the creek’s burbling at her back, all combined to sooth her ruffled nerves. But her thoughts were still taken up with the arrow, the missing spade, and another theft discovered soon after. The magnifying glass had disappeared from Neil’s satchel, left on the porch while they probed the woods for the place the arrow had been shot.

  Fresh in her mind were thoughts of Aram Crane, and British deserters, and of Neil MacGregor unknowingly—if her guess was a right one—threatening the place that man had made for himself as Elias Waring’s groom. And if so, then maybe Neil MacGregor was the target. Not the children. Not her.

  That was one possibility. But there was another thing. She couldn’t shake from her mind that the spade and the glass had gone missing after the children arrived. Was it coincidence, or might that unhappy boy be responsible? Not for the arrow, of course. But what of the rest? Owl had stolen Joseph’s mare.

  As she worked the sharpened antler tine around another plant, careful not to scar its roots, Willa remembered Joseph’s tale of the would-be theft, told after Neil left with his horse and the children napped inside the cabin.

  If it was the boy behind the thievery, how was she to deal with it? Among the Kanien’kehá:ka—those who lived still in longhouses—such items as a spade were held in common. Only what was stored above or beneath a sleeping platform was a person’s property, not to be touched or taken without permission. Anyone could pick up a tool set aside and use it.

  But if the boy had this understanding from his Mohawk mother, why not simply say where he left the glass or the spade when need of them arose?

  Maybe the thief was someone else entirely. Whoever it was had come so silently even Cap was not aroused—a thought that brought to mind the gifts that had appeared on the cabin porch after Anni’s first visit. Francis Waring had come and gone with such stealth.

  But no. It couldn’t have been Francis. He had his strangeness, his halfwild ways, but surely he would not have stolen from them.

  She lifted the loosened plant from the earth and settled it in the basket. Burdock was a large plant. Already the basket was full. She needed to head back and transplant them into the plot near the cabin she’d marked for the garden. Brushing dirt from her hands, she sat back on her heels and looked up at a massive hickory that spread its shade right up to the burdock patch.

  She stared straight at him without seeing him for several seconds, so still was he in the hickory’s leaf shade, until a twitch of his hand made his shape distinct. “Francis!”

  He flinched, and she knew at once he hadn’t meant to startle her. It was his way to hang back—skulk, some said—when others would announce themselves. There was no dark intent in the watching. Not like the arrow shooter who’d lurked near the cabin.

  Not at all like that.

  Breaking the grip of irrational fear, Willa got to her feet.

  “Francis, do you know about the arrow? The one shot at my door this morning?”

  Francis blinked. And nodded.

  Though she stood in sunlight, Willa felt a chill. “Do you know who put it there?”

  She remembered the Colonel speaking of an arrow embedded in the cabin door at the time the homestead was razed. Not unmitigated proof of which side did the razing, since Indians fought for both.

  No Indian shot that morning’s arrow, she was all but certain.

  “Francis, do you know?” Willa’s gaze dropped to his hand. His fingers tapped against his thigh, a tense, repeated motion. She remembered it was a thing he did when he was agitated. Or afraid. “If the arrow was a warning, will you help me heed it, Francis?”

  The hand twitching slowed.

  “Joseph is hunting meat for me, but he needs to know not to come to the cabin again, unless it is by night and with caution.”

  She could warn Neil and guard the children, but she needed to get word to Joseph, who she could not so easily protect. Best to find a place where he could leave the meat for her to come and collect it. It would need to be someplace close enough to check frequently, yet not so close that anyone watching would notice the coming and going.

  She took a step nearer Anni’s brother. “You helped Joseph before, when the assessor came. You warned him, didn’t you?” She smiled to show this was a thing that made her happy. “Will you find Joseph for me and give him this new warning and tell him the place he is to leave his kills?”

  She’d thought of a place but decided to show Francis rather than try to explain. She hoisted her baske
t and settled its strap across her brow, then started walking upstream along the creek, glancing back once to see Francis sliding through the woods after her, silent as her shadow.

  As a child, Willa had seen the lake as a vast watery world fringed by cattail reeds where geese nested and loons called their eerie cries through the drifting mist. In truth, it was not a large lake and took but half a day to walk its shore, which undulated in tiny coves where the hills rose wooded from its lapping waves.

  In one of those coves was the islet where she’d often snatched an hour to read her books, away from Oma’s disapproving stare, reachable through wading shallows at the lake’s edge.

  She had not returned since she retrieved the ruined copy of Pamela. Memories of her parents were sharp there. She didn’t know why, save that it was where she was captured. Memories pierced her now, as did the fact that she’d done nothing to prove their loyalties hadn’t lain with the British King George. One thing after another had distracted her, demanding her attention. Neil, Joseph, the children, the planting. But the need to feed herself for the winter was no more real than the need to prove her parents weren’t traitors—if far more difficult a task.

  Traitors. Not Papa, Mama. They’d wanted only to be left in quiet, to live their lives in peace and, as much as lay within their power, help others do the same. That was how she remembered them.

  Willa rounded the last neck of land before the islet came in view, so deep in troubling thoughts she’d half-forgotten Francis moving through the brush behind her. She started when his fingers closed on her arm, firm enough to halt her.

  “We are nearly there. See? That islet, where the birches grow, that is where I would have Joseph leave his kills. If you could tell him …”

  Anni’s brother was making agitated noises. His grip became a tug. He might seem childlike, but for all his slightness, he was a grown man now and as strong as one. Something just short of fear took hold of Willa. “Francis, let go of me.”

  He did so, backing away and beckoning her. Fear receded, replaced by puzzlement. “The lake is this way.” She pointed at it, clearly visible through the trees.

  Blue eyes pleading, Francis edged around a clump of holly until he was out of sight. Circling the holly on the opposite side, she ducked a low bough.

  From the thicket a cardinal took flight, startling and red. She reared back, snagging her hair in the prickly leaves, wincing at the pull at her scalp. She untangled herself and hurried forward and was jolted to a halt by what lay across her path.

  There were two of them, side by side in the holly’s shade, distinguishable from the surrounding duff by the small white stones outlining their oblong borders. And the sticks tied into crosses, planted at the head of each. And the dried flowers tied with string, a bundle at each foot.

  Francis materialized beside her, still agitated. She did not look at him. She couldn’t tear her gaze from the crosses and the letters carved into their transverse pieces. DO on the left. RO on the right.

  Dieter and Rebecca Obenchain.

  A terrible ache was in her throat. She sank to her knees at the foot of the graves, as any remaining shred of hope that she might find her parents still living somewhere thinned like smoke on the wind and vanished. Her parents were not gone away to Canada or Albany. They were dead. And no one left in Shiloh must know or they would have told her.

  Wouldn’t they?

  Someone carved those letters in the crosspieces. Someone placed flowers on their graves, like the flowers she’d found on the hearthstones in the cabin. Surely that someone was Francis, who dropped into a crouch beside her. She removed her carrying basket and, striving for calm, faced him.

  “You tried to lead me away from this place. Did you not want me to see them?”

  Francis wrapped skinny arms around his shins and beat his brow against his bony knees, rocking himself gently. Though it was a behavior she had witnessed long ago, and came as no surprise, his distress was as unsettling as the graves.

  “Who did this, Francis? Who killed my parents? Or who found them dead and put them here?”

  Beside her, Francis rocked and whimpered. It would do no good to grab his shoulders and shake him, as everything inside Willa screamed at her to do. It would do no good even to press him with more words. Either he did not know the answers to those questions, or he was so afraid of the answers that the words were lost inside him, with no way out.

  Willa put her hands over her face. After a moment she stood and stared down at the stone-marked ovals in chilling realization. Two graves. Only two. “Where is Oma’s grave? Francis, where is my grandmother?”

  But in the time it had taken her to realize there should have been three graves, Francis Waring had slipped away into the woods.

  The collie, sniffing behind the cabin, barked in welcome when she came out of the trees.

  Seeing her, Neil MacGregor left the children sitting on the end of the porch and crossed the yard to meet her, doing all he could to tuck a grin into the corners of his mouth.

  Spying the cause of it, Willa halted. The plot of ground behind the cabin, marked for a garden, had been partially broken and turned since she left. Not a large area, but more than enough for the burdock. She stared, blinking, at the rectangle of earth he must have labored over since the moment she walked into the woods. His hands were still soiled from it, the knees of his breeches stained.

  “You did this,” she said. “With your wrist?”

  She had not wept at her parents’ graves, had found no tears on the walk back. Now they burned hot behind her eyes. Tears of gratitude. Tears of grief. Tears of emotions she feared to name and had no wish to feel.

  “We all pitched in. Even Owl. We took your advice and used sticks …” As Neil neared, the smile that had won out against his efforts faded. “Willa, you’re pale as if ye’d seen a ghost. Let me get that.”

  He meant the carrying basket. Before he could touch her, she stepped from his reach, lips pressed tight. His hand fell to his side.

  “Are you not pleased with what we’ve done? Did I mistake the spot ye meant for the garden?”

  “It is where I wanted it.”

  He studied her, concerned but baffled. From the porch, the children peered warily. The need to say more pressed on her. She wanted to say more. Where were the words?

  “It will need a fence or the deer will get at it.”

  That wasn’t right. That sounded as if she were displeased. She was very pleased. She simply hadn’t expected such a kindness. And she thought, I do not deserve it.

  Neil MacGregor searched her eyes. “Aye, a fence we can do. Now tell me what’s upset ye. Did something happen in the woods? Not another arrow, sure?”

  Willa wagged her head. “Not that.”

  Her throat closed, but Neil stood between her and the cabin, looking as though he could—and would—wait until the sun set for her to say what she didn’t want to say. She knew she must just say it, but speaking it aloud would make it real beyond recanting.

  “I found my parents. They are dead.”

  She pushed past him so she wouldn’t have to see it become real to him as well, or the compassion that would come into his face. So she would not break.

  SIXTEEN

  “I don’t know, Willa. Something doesn’t feel right with this one. I’ve no energy at all. With the twins, I was mad with the urge to sweep and scrub for the whole nine months.” Straightening from the wash kettle in her cabin yard, Anni pressed her fists to the small of her back, then caressed her rounding belly as she gazed down toward the mill’s timbered roof.

  Willa took the idle laundry stick and gave the boiling garments a prod. The day was overcast and cool, but the fire and the rising steam warmed her, dampening the tendrils escaped from her braid. “You do have the twins now and more work than when you carried them. That you’re tired is no surprise.”

  Her words hid her true concern, for Anni did not look as well as when Willa had last seen her, back at the beginning of May, n
early three weeks past. Purple shadows hung beneath her eyes, and her face had thinned.

  Willa lifted one of Charles’s shirts with the stick, transferred it to the washtub, then bent for the chunk of hard soap on a bench.

  Anni waved at the row of tubs and kettles. “I oughtn’t to have attempted this today. Goodenough usually rides over to help, but Lem’s taken fevered and she didn’t like to leave him—Richard stopped by this morning to tell me.”

  Willa felt Anni’s stare, though she was careful not to meet it.

  “I do think he’s trying, Willa.”

  She bent over the shirt, scrubbing the soap around the collar, the cuffs, all the places a man sweated. “What is he trying?”

  “To make things right with you.”

  “If that is so, then it is for himself he does it. So his conscience is clean when he bids on my land.” She put the shirt in the rinsing tub.

  “I don’t believe that.” There was anger in Anni’s voice, but she seemed too tired to sustain it. “Though I see you do. I hope he proves you wrong.”

  Willa didn’t reply, and for a while they worked in silence until she asked, “Who is midwife in Shiloh now?”

  Anni seemed glad for the shift in conversation. “The one we had went down to Fort Dayton when the raids were at their worst, but she never came back.”

  “There is no physician?”

  Anni laughed bleakly at that. “We’ve not seen so much as a simples peddler since the war.” The laughter faded as her hands cupped her belly.

  Willa motioned her to a spot of grass in the sunlight. “Sit and rest. I will finish this batch, then help you ring them.”

  Garments were already spread on the bushes edging the yard: shirts, frocks, shifts, mended stockings. Anni had been at work since sunup. She groaned in relief. “Oh, Willa, bless you! But mustn’t you be getting back to your fields?”

  Always, no matter where she was, Willa felt the pull of her land, the work to be done, the pressing knowledge of a short growing season, of a harsh winter looming, and the uncertainty of where she would be by then. But she said, “There is time to help a friend.”