Lori Benton

by Burning Sky

  “You love him,” he said.

  “Not well enough. Not soon enough. He is gone away.” Gone, and expecting her to be angry with him. “And now you must go,” she said, looking into her brother’s eyes and suddenly remembering something that had taken place beyond the confines of her own troubles. “The council at Fort Stanwix. I never yet heard about it. Did you go there?”

  “I did not, but I spoke with some who did.” Joseph told her briefly about the peace treaty, how nothing much had been settled and that there was to be another soon, this time with the chiefs of the Continental Congress. “Much will be decided then, I think, about where all the Longhouse nations will be allowed to live, here or in a new place. As for me, I will take my mother and sister and go where Thayendanegea sees fit to settle us. Perhaps,” he added with a faint wryness, “I will make tables for all my Wolf Clan sisters who do not think to bring them on the journey.”

  Willa tried to smile. She would need another table now. And a cabin to put it in. But Joseph would not be the one to make it.

  He seemed to have the same thought as she. “You have a village now, hen’en? They will care for you, if you let them.”

  “I know. Colonel Waring will let me stay under his roof as long as I have need.” Which might be a long time, since in a matter of days she would lose even the dirt beneath her feet.

  Joseph drew breath to speak, just as somewhere in the still-standing corn behind Willa came a giggle, a shushing, then a volley of whispers. Willa glanced behind her. Matthew and Maggie Kershaw peered from the golden stalks.

  “I am ready to take them now.” Joseph nodded toward their poorly concealed audience, then to his extra horse. “If that is still what you wish.”

  “It’s not what we wish!” The boy came first out of hiding, face set in a familiar, stubborn firmness. His sister followed on his heels, fleet and graceful as a fawn, her face hopeful, open to every sling and arrow the world—or Willa—might yet fling at her.

  The sight of them made something warm and full press up against her heart; it nudged against the emptiness Neil MacGregor should have filled, taking up a little of its room, and because all she could do was stand there and let herself feel it—so glad for it, so glad—it was left to Joseph to speak.

  “What is this you are saying, young brother? As I remember it, you spoke different words the day I met you and your sister.”

  “Hen’en,” the boy said. “That is true. But we didn’t know your sister then. You said we would like her, and we do.”

  Maggie pulled her lower lip between her teeth, nodding agreement.

  Willa put a hand on both their heads and laughed, mostly so she wouldn’t cry. “That is good, for I like you. Both of you.”

  A smile tugged the girl’s lip free of her teeth. “We want to adopt you.”

  Willa blinked and her lips parted, but she didn’t speak, uncertain she’d heard what she thought she had.

  The boy turned on his sister, annoyed. “That’s not how we were going to say it.”

  “It is! We want her for our mother.”

  “I know.” Matthew sighed, and with color mounting in his face addressed Willa. “We know how it’s done, adopting, and there’s the creek for the washing—but we thought maybe that part isn’t needed because we’re all Wolf Clan already. We don’t have to go to Niagara to find our people. We don’t want to go. We want to stay and be your children.”

  When Willa was again struck speechless—this time by the emotion swelling in her throat—Joseph inserted gently, “Perhaps you should have begun by asking this woman if she wishes to be your mother.”

  Had it not been so touching, the boy’s surprise and chagrin would have made Willa laugh again. He might have been flustered by this turn, but his sister leaped the gap in their plan as nimbly as the deer she resembled.

  “Will you?” she asked, twining small fingers with Willa’s. “Be our mother?”

  Willa’s knees hit the ground, and she gathered them into her arms. “I would be honored to be the mother of such brave and good children.” As she knew she had been in her heart, even before the night of the fire.

  Blinking back tears, she let them go and rose, catching Joseph’s eye. He was happy for her, but this was hurting him as well; leaving was in his eyes.

  “Say your farewells to Joseph,” she told her children. “Then you may take my knife and go cut those last pumpkins. We will take them to Goodenough, who might be persuaded to let us make a mess of her kitchen—and a few pies.”

  Pies from the last pumpkins she would ever grow on her papa’s land.

  With joy and grief she watched Joseph and the children embrace, before they hurried off to do as she asked, already arguing about who would do the cutting.

  “It is good, my sister,” Joseph said. “It is part of what my heart hoped for you.”

  But not the whole. As she turned back to him, the enormity of what she had agreed to fell on Willa with crushing weight.

  “How will I provide for them with no land?”

  She told him then how she was to lose her farm, with no way found to stop it even though Richard wouldn’t be the one to own it. But Joseph only smiled.

  “Remember what the Scotsman wrote to you, about trust? He speaks wisdom.”

  Willa touched the bodice of her jacket where she had tucked Neil’s letter. Joseph pretended not to see that and moved away from her to untie the reins of his horse.

  She followed, saying quickly, “I haven’t thanked you for saving me and the children, the night of the fire.”

  He paused with the reins in his hands and looked at her, his eyes deep with love. “What sort of man would I be, if I did not do such a thing for my sister?”

  “Not the man I know you to be,” she said, and the tears came again, without shame. “I will always be thanking you, Joseph, in my thoughts, in my heart. Remember that.” She took his hand in hers. With her other she traced a fingertip across his jutting cheekbone, where the tight bronze skin had been broken by Richard’s fist.

  Joseph took both her hands in his. “And you remember this: you will not be alone, Burning Sky … Willa,” he amended. “ ‘A bruised reed …’ ”

  “ ‘Shall he not break,’ ” she finished, though it hurt to say the words. “I know. I am never truly alone.”

  Joseph started to shake his head, as if she’d misunderstood him. Instead he put his hand on her shoulder, leaned close and kissed her mouth. “I go,” he said. Then he turned the horses and walked away from her without looking back.

  Joseph Tames-His-Horse did not look back until he’d climbed the ridge north of Willa’s land and paused below the crest in a stand of yellowing poplar. Smoke still hovered thin over the clearing where the cabin had stood. The wind had been strangely calm since the night of the fire, as if the earth itself held its breath, waiting.

  It was a hard thing, perhaps the hardest he’d ever done, sitting his horse beneath the poplars and watching his sister’s tiny figure moving far below, poking through the ashes of her home, looking lost and forsaken, though in truth she was neither. There was nothing left to do or say, and he knew that he must go, yet he struggled with himself. Something still held him motionless too, watching, waiting.

  It was some moments before movement on the track that led to Shiloh drew his gaze, and the breath went out of him in a sigh like the breeze that finally stirred, quivering the yellow leaves above his head, ruffling the mare’s long mane, stirring the clearing’s pall.

  There were three of them coming up the track, all on horseback. Joseph knew them for men who carry news of import. It was clear in the set of their shoulders as they rode, and though the distance was far, he had seen one of them often enough to put a name to him now.

  He touched the place at his side that still sometimes pained him and thought, So be it. And then, reluctantly, Awiyo.

  It is good.

  Even so, Joseph Tames-His-Horse did not wish to see more. He looked a last time on the distant figu
re among the ashes, unaware of the future bearing down on her, and sent his voice to her softly on the wind. “Do not be afraid of what is coming, my sister.”

  With the press of a knee, he turned the mare along a game trail that threaded up to the crest of the ridge, the deserter’s horse following, and there he paused. He didn’t look behind him again but forward, over many trails to where a new land beckoned, where the People waited, in need of all their warriors to sustain them.

  He clicked his tongue to the mare and rode down to meet them.

  FORTY

  With the children busy among the pumpkins, the collie at their heels, Willa had wandered up to the yard, though there was no use in sifting yet again through the cabin’s remains. Not a charred beam was left unturned or drift of ash unstirred, perchance it hid some small salvageable thing. She simply wasn’t ready to turn her back on her past yet again and return homeless to Shiloh.

  Soon the auction would be held in German Flats. Soon a stranger would put his name to her land.

  She straightened from the rubble, stopping herself in time from wiping more soot on Goodenough’s petticoat. Instead she strode toward the slope behind where the cabin had stood and bent to clean her hands in the browning grass.

  As she did so, something near the tree line caught her eye. She climbed to it and, in utter disbelief, bent to pick up Neil MacGregor’s Bible.

  A few paces into the trees, half-buried in last year’s leaves, lay her musket. She stood there, caught in wonder and bewilderment, until it came into her mind that Matthew must have brought them out of the fire, only to lose them in the chaos of that night.

  Willa sat on the grass with her heart swelling within her, laid the musket beside her, and held the Bible across her knees. Some of its pages were rippled from the damp, its cover spotted with scorch marks, but it could be saved—not like poor Pamela, too long abandoned on the islet in the lake. She couldn’t bear to open it, however, and see the tiny words written in the margins of so many of its pages, or those on the slips of paper scattered throughout. Not yet. They would be for later, for many laters to come, to remember the man she might have spent her life loving.

  She held the Bible to her nose, cherishing the weight of it, the smell of the leather, and thought with a bleakness that her life thus far amounted to a trail of small things pulled from ashes: keepsakes brought on journeys, miraculous survivors of tragedy.

  Or now, things not so small. She had Matthew and Maggie. She had her children. Willa closed her eyes, half-formed prayers for Neil flitting through her mind. Prayers for herself and the children she would do her best to raise. Prayers for Joseph.

  She drew her knees up, letting the Bible slide down her thighs into her lap, and rested her head on folded arms. Her bottom was getting cold. Damp. She was thinking how the children would tease her when they saw it, but that wasn’t what made her lift her head sharply and look for them. It was the collie’s barking and the sound of horses coming up the track.

  It was habit to check the musket’s powder, though after lying in the woods, what was left in the pan would be useless. Still she came out to meet whoever approached with musket gripped in one hand, Bible in the other.

  Escorted by the frisking collie, the horsemen had reached the yard. There were three of them. One was Elias Waring.

  Relief flooded Willa. Hot on its heels came concern. The Colonel had only risen from his bed yesterday, for Richard’s burial. He shouldn’t have ridden all this way, and it amazed her that Goodenough allowed it. And the man riding beside him … She squinted, casting back in her mind to that day on the road above the mill, with the Colonel’s mule, and Richard come with that man to assess her land.

  It was the same man. Wendell Stoltz, the assessor who’d come in the spring at Richard’s fetching. Was that what this was about? Were they come to forcibly remove her? Then who—?

  The third rider had been fishing inside his coat, as if to assure himself something put there was safely there still. His head was bent, an unfamiliar, broad-brimmed hat blocking his face. Now he raised his head.

  She barely registered Maggie sliding down from behind his saddle or Matthew from behind the Colonel’s. The children ran to her, chattering. The collie circled them, barking. Willa stood like a woman chiseled out of oak, unable to move or speak, seeing nothing beyond Neil MacGregor, who had dismounted and stood now with his horse’s reins in hand, staring at her as he had that day inside the mill, as if nothing else in the world was worth his notice.

  Time did a strange thing then. It tangled and twisted, looping back on itself like a cord tied in knots. She didn’t remember Neil closing the distance between them. Of a sudden he stood before her, drinking her in with great swallows as though he’d thirsted long for the sight of her. Then he was talking about her land, and her father, about Albany and—

  “You have been to Albany?” She cut into his tumbling words, her voice harsh in its abruptness. It made his eyes widen. She’d forgotten how beautiful they were, bluer than the bits of sky showing now in breaks between gray clouds. She’d forgotten how pleasing was the shape of his mouth that had smiled at her so often when she hadn’t deserved a smile.

  His mouth wanted to smile now, she could tell, but something cautious in his eyes wouldn’t quite let it. “Aye. To Albany. I went to find Tilda Fruehauf, after I learned her letter to ye was stolen.” He glanced at the Colonel. “I kent ’twas the only way to get at the truth in time, to have it straight from the woman herself.”

  “A letter to me? But who …?” She was having trouble taking it in, with her heart beating loud in her ears, and the children tugging at her and asking questions, and the dog letting the world know its happiness at this reunion.

  Neil MacGregor raised a hand. “Wheest!” he said to one and all. Though he laughed as he said it, the noise and tugging ceased.

  Willa set the musket on the ground, next to it the Bible, then straightened with her eyes on his, determined to understand. “You went to Albany … for me?”

  “Of course,” he said, frowning a little. Then the frown went away, and he said, “Aye, I was forgetting. Gavan never made it to you with my letter. He’s all right, though, on the mend. I’ve seen him. Seems the same hand did us both harm, he and me.”

  “I … He …” And then she understood; he spoke of the letter Joseph had only just given her. She pressed a hand to the place where the missive was tucked into her bodice and began quietly to cry. It did not make half the sense it probably should, but it didn’t matter. Neil MacGregor was here. Not just his words on a paper or in his Bible, but himself standing in front of her, telling her he left Shiloh not because of her, but for her.

  She wiped a palm across her cheek to stem the tears, then saw the state of her hand. “I am all over soot!” she exclaimed, embarrassed for what she must look like after sifting through the fire’s devastation.

  “Willa.” Neil’s voice was thick with feeling. She thought his arm was about to come around her, but he stopped himself. It was then she saw; only one of his arms was inside a coat sleeve. The other, the same that was wounded when she found him, hung once again in a sling, snug against his shirt.

  “You are hurt?”

  “ ’Tis nothing. A bit of trouble on the road back, is all.”

  “More than a bit,” said Wendell Stoltz, inserting himself into the conversation. “I found him at a tavern a few miles shy of German Flats, shot through the arm.”

  Neil had been waylaid on the road, Stoltz went on to explain, and ridden injured for miles before falling from his horse practically in the tavern yard. After having his arm set and a night’s sleep, Neil—in company by then with Stoltz—had pressed on, determined to reach her.

  The children listened to this account with wide-eyed admiration, but a flush had risen from Neil’s neck, and in his eyes was contrition. “I didna ken then what was happening here,” he told her, with a glance at the Colonel.

  “But who was it waylaid you? A highwayman?” Wil
la asked, unable to quell a jolt of fear, belated though it came.

  “That’s what I thought at first,” Neil said. “But no. ’Twas Aram Crane shot me. And got away with the deed.”

  “Neil …” Though gripped by concern, his name on her tongue was a sweetness she savored. “We were right about Aram Crane. He wasn’t what he pretended to be. He …”

  But Neil was nodding. He already knew. Of course, the Colonel would have told him all.

  “I’m sorry, Willa,” he said. “So sorry about the cabin, but I thank the Almighty Lord with every breath that you’re safe, you and the children. And … Joseph?”

  “Gone back to his people,” she said. “I only wish he’d got that man and saved you this hurt.” She reached to touch his bound arm, tenderness for him nearly overpowering, but drew back in uncertainty before her fingers brushed him. “But what is this about Albany? And my mother’s cousin? You have seen her?”

  “I have,” Neil said, eyes shining.

  “It seems,” the Colonel interjected, “your Albany relation is a meticulous hoarder of correspondence.”

  Willa drew in her breath. “Papa’s letters?”

  The Colonel looked on her dawning comprehension with a pleasure that almost chased the grief of the past days from his face. “Dr. MacGregor has acquired a dozen letters written by your father in the early years of the war, but there’s one of particular significance … if I may?”

  The Colonel looked to Neil, who drew a thick bundle of letters from his coat and, seeming to know which was wanted, handed one to the Colonel. Elias Waring scanned the creased, yellowed page while they waited in silence—even the children—then cleared his throat. “This was written by Dieter Obenchain in spring of 1778:

  Though you may think otherwise, I have given long Consideration to many of the Persuasions for this Rebellion against the Crown you have presented in your letters, weighing them against what Holy Scripture tells us: “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.” But what is to follow when, despite all Effort to the Contrary, a man sees around him another Scripture coming to pass: “for they speak not peace: but they devise deceitful matters against them that are quiet in the land.”