Into the Wilderness

by Sara Donati

  “She asks Tall-As-Trees why he wears eagle feathers when he runs like a three-legged rabbit,” translated Hannah cheerfully. “Maybe she will take a switch to him like she did last year.”

  Falling-Day cast a glance at her granddaughter, and Hannah bit her lip. She ducked her head, but her grin remained.

  “It is a great honor to play for the clan in the Midwinter games,” Falling-Day explained more to Hannah than to Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth watched as the ball made a great arc over the heads of the players to be scooped out of the air once again.

  “The Wolf have the ball,” observed Many-Doves. “Maybe there will be a quick end to this.”

  “Let’s hope so,” muttered Katherine. She grasped Elizabeth’s arm. “There’s Richard,” she said.

  Elizabeth followed Katherine’s line of vision until she caught sight of Richard. He was walking along the playing field on its other side, his head bent low in concentration as he listened to the young Indian who kept him company. The more animated the man became, the more slowly Richard shook his head.

  “Do you know that man talking to Richard Todd?” Elizabeth asked Falling-Day.

  The older woman inhaled, nodding. “Half-Crow. Of the Caghnawaga Turtle clan, in Canada.” In a low singsong voice, Falling-Day began to recite Half-Crow’s family history and genealogy. Listening to Hannah recently, Elizabeth had come to realize that to ask any Kahnyen’kehàka about another Kahnyen’kehàka was to ask for a detailed history of his clan; she would have found this interesting, under other circumstances, but right now she was hardly able to concentrate. One of the players had caught her attention.

  He was running down the marsh full-out toward the goal, his hair flying behind him, the muscles flowing on his back. His long, powerful torso twisted gracefully as he swung the stick in an arc to snatch the ball from the air, revealing a barely healed wound which showed raw red on his right shoulder. She drew in a breath as he followed the swing through and turned full circle, revealing his face. It was painted in red and black, in a slashing geometric pattern that accented the strong nose and high brow.

  “Nathaniel,” Elizabeth breathed.

  Falling-Day broke off her narrative. At that moment, Nathaniel let the ball fly and it hit the boulder that served as a goal with a small thud. The spectators rose up with one voice, all restraint suddenly abandoned.

  “You’d never know that he’s white,” Elizabeth said softly.

  “Sometimes it’s hard to tell,” Falling-Day agreed. “That’s why we call him Deseroken. ‘Between-Two-Lives.’ ”

  With great satisfaction, Julian collected his winnings from a blank-faced and quite pungent trapper known only as Dutch Ton. He pocketed the coins and bills with a small smile, and then turned his gaze over the crowds.

  The players were being led away by the elders to a ceremonial washing at a hole chopped in the ice; later there would be prayers and long rites where the men would dance. The social dancing, when the women would get a chance, wouldn’t start until the evening. Julian knew that there wasn’t time to wait. His sister would want to be on her way, and he was bound to accompany her. Already Galileo was pacing a worn path around the team, eager to get on the road. Julian thought of sending the women ahead with Richard in attendance. Richard was too bloody pigheaded to be good company anyway. He hadn’t wanted to watch the game, didn’t want to be anywhere near the Indian village. Although he had taken one look at the game in progress and told Julian to lay his coin on the Wolf clan, and he had been right.

  Julian walked along, looking for his sister and contemplating the great satisfaction of a wager well placed. With a sigh, he acknowledged the necessity of moving on; Elizabeth was suspicious already, and it wouldn’t be politic to have the judge find out about the wagering, regardless of the outcome. As put out as Richard was with him, Julian knew he couldn’t necessarily count on his silence, either. The sad truth was, no one had any faith in his ability to keep things within bounds.

  About fifty yards from the longhouse Julian stopped on a rise, so that the whole scene was spread out in front of him. He watched as a crowd gathered around the old sachem who was distributing the spoils to the winners. The players were returning, dripping ice water and sweat, dragging a whole troop of children along behind them, hollering and dodging in and out, fighting over the honor of carrying the men’s lacrosse sticks. The old man who had run most of the prayer business was chanting, shaking a rattle over his head.

  There was Elizabeth, observing with that crease between her eyes that meant she would remember every detail. How his sister could manufacture enthusiasm for the most bizarre events was ever a mystery to him. He supposed she would stay for the ritual storytelling and dreamtelling and never have to suppress a yawn, in spite of the fact that she wouldn’t understand a word.

  Julian called across the playing field and Elizabeth turned toward the sound of his voice, and along with her, Many-Doves.

  It shouldn’t have come as a surprise anymore, but Julian was struck almost dumb by the sight of her. Many-Doves—a ridiculous name, but it suited her. He couldn’t think of her as Abigail; Abigail was a name for a girl like his sister, proper and boring and without a clue about men. No, Many-Doves reminded him of the madonnas the Italians painted over and over again: dark and light at the same time, silent, but with eyes that looked right into a man and wouldn’t let him go. As if she knew everything there was to know about him without a lot of questions and discussion. It was no wonder so many white men went native, he thought. Another luxury he couldn’t afford.

  Many-Doves stood focused on the approaching players and Julian watched as her expression suddenly lost its usual remoteness. He noted with some regret that her look was for the player walking toward her, the big pockmarked buck who had dominated the game. Even from fifty yards Julian could see that he was covered with gooseflesh, and still breathing hard. Many-Doves stood waiting for him like a queen for a knight who had just championed her.

  She didn’t step toward him or even smile, but it was there on her face, her eyes fixed on his. Many-Doves lifted her arms, sending a red-striped blanket into a billowing arc over his head to settle it on his shoulders. She stepped up close to draw it across his chest.

  Once or twice Julian had had women look at him that way, the way women look at men when they imagine themselves in love. The way Elizabeth was looking at the next man.

  Julian watched astounded as Nathaniel Bonner, half-naked and painted like a savage, came to a halt in front of his sister. Elizabeth stepped forward with a blanket and she raised her face up, showing herself to be more like Many-Doves than Julian would have ever imagined. His tight-hearted, self-sufficient, don’t-come-near-me sister. Looking at Nathaniel Bonner with her eyes like torches in the night.

  “Where the hell have you been hiding yourself?”

  Startled, Julian turned to find Richard with Kitty trailing behind. “We won’t be home before dark at this rate,” Richard said.

  “Do let’s be off,” Kitty said, in a less angry tone, glancing uneasily between Richard and Julian.

  Julian turned the two of them away from the longhouse and toward the sleigh.

  “Go on, tell Galileo we’re on our way directly,” he said, pushing them off. “I’ll get Elizabeth and follow you.”

  Kitty hesitated, but Richard was walking off already with great impatient strides.

  “Go on, Kitty my dear,” said Julian with a smile. “We’ll be right there.”

  XVI

  When the parlor clock struck midnight, Elizabeth rose. What she was thinking was madness, and yet she imagined doing it so clearly that it felt inevitable. It would take her an hour, now that she knew the way. She could find Hidden Wolf: the skies were clear, the moon near full. It didn’t matter that she had been up since sunrise, or spent ten hours on the road. She could be back before the moon set. Who would know?

  With her dress half buttoned and one stocking on, Elizabeth lay down again and buried her face
in the pillow. She was so vexed and irritated that she could easily cry, or shout, or throw something.

  When Elizabeth had last seen Nathaniel this morning, he had been shivering with exertion and cold, his face bloodied under the paint. But he had smiled when she put the blanket around his shoulders, an ecstatic, ravenous smile, a smile that steadied her in her resolution.

  I’ll come to you, he had whispered while Julian stood waiting impatiently, watching. I’ll come as soon as I can.

  He might not even be back from Barktown; perhaps he wouldn’t be back for days.

  Elizabeth found the candle on her bedside table and went to the hearth. She crouched before the banked fire and held the wick to the pulsing scarlet embers until it caught, a single small flame. Then she sat there on the cold floor with her arms around her knees and stared as it began to consume the mixture of tallow and bayberry.

  Tomorrow she would go to the cabin. She would go alone, to see to the last preparations for school. In two days she would teach her first class. All those children, in her care. She recited their names to herself, in a rush: Ian and Rudy McGarrity, Liam Kirby, Peter Dubonnet, Praise-Be Cunningham, Ephraim Hauptmann, Obadiah and Elijah Cameron. And the girls: Dolly Smythe, Marie Dubonnet, Hepzibah and Ruth Glove, Henrietta Hauptmann, and Hannah Bonner.

  He would find her there; of course he would.

  I must sleep now, Elizabeth thought. Tomorrow, when I’m rested, tomorrow I’ll see Nathaniel. Sleep’s the thing, she told herself firmly.

  She put the candlestick on the mantelpiece and went to her window. The moonlight lay like a quilt of blues and pearl-grays over the woods and the hills, painting the village in stark lines. Hidden Wolf rose like a protective specter, silent but benevolent and watchful. Elizabeth followed the path with her eyes as far as she could, and then imagined it where it disappeared into the woods. Lake in the Clouds, in shadow.

  Something moved on the path, just a speck at first. She blinked, thinking she had imagined it, but it was steady, as steady as a candle flame, growing larger. It disappeared into shadow and then emerged again. Elizabeth stood utterly silent, her fingers cramping on the windowsill as the speck grew into the indistinct shape of a man. Another five minutes and the moonlight lay like a cloak on his bare head and shoulders; a tall man, moving fast, silent as the woods. Nathaniel.

  She held her breath as he approached the house, her heart beating loud enough to wake everyone. Loud enough to wake the dead. Nathaniel stood below her window, his face cast half in shadow, the moon picking out one cheekbone, one half of his mouth, one eye.

  He raised a hand; she raised hers, held up one finger. He nodded, and disappeared into the dark.

  · · ·

  Silently, Elizabeth closed the door of the sleeping house behind her and pulled her shawl tight. She started at the long shape of her own moon shadow, flat and stark. There was no sign of Nathaniel. She thought for a moment that she had imagined him, dreamt the whole thing.

  She had almost walked past him when he reached out and caught her wrist, pulled her up against the wall of the house. They stood there, shoulder to shoulder, Elizabeth trying hard to calm her breathing, the candle flame shaking with the beating of her heart. She followed him to the barn where he stopped to look at her, his face all angles in the moonlight.

  Wait, he whispered. She stood shivering, her hair breaking in waves around her shoulders like a wild sea.

  He came back, gestured her forward.

  The horses shifted uneasily in their stalls. Elizabeth stood opposite the oxen and felt their dull eyes on her, blinking, blinking, their great bulk radiating pungent warmth. Nathaniel’s hand pressing her wrist told her to be quiet. They stood like that for minutes, until the animals grew tired of them and turned inward once again.

  The candlelight jumped on the rough board walls, a small circle, as valuable as gold in this darkness. Nathaniel took the candlestick out of her hand, his fingertips touching her wrist, sliding over the beating of her pulse. Elizabeth let it go with an indrawn breath.

  When he had found a secure spot for the candle on the tack shelf above their heads, he sat next to her on a narrow bench. He bore the scars of the game: a crust of blood over an eyebrow, a bruise on his cheekbone. His hair was tangled, his cheeks stained dark with a growing beard. She held on tight to her own hands, which wanted to raise themselves and touch him, make sure that he was real, that this was real.

  “Talk to me.”

  Elizabeth told him. She told him about Richard’s proposal, about the corner her father had put himself in, about Richard’s plan for Hidden Wolf. She told him about her discussion with Mr. Bennett, most of it word for word. She talked and talked in a low voice, feeling his eyes on her the whole time, but unable to meet his gaze.

  “And there’s this.” From the pocket of her dress she drew forth a folded piece of newspaper and put it in Nathaniel’s lap. She watched the candlelight on his face while he read.

  WANTED. Any word on the whereabouts of the old Indian Sachem Chingachgook, known also as Great-Snake or Indian John. To settle a debt.

  Jack Lingo. Leave a message at the Trading Post, Stumptown.

  He rubbed the stubble on his jaw thoughtfully.

  “Who’s Jack Lingo, and what does he want from your grandfather?” Elizabeth asked.

  “He’s an old voyageur,” said Nathaniel. “He wanders the bush causing trouble and looking for the Tory Gold.” He raised one brow. “Is that what you want to talk about?”

  She swallowed hard.

  “No. I think we should talk about Richard.”

  “What about him?”

  Elizabeth looked Nathaniel straight in the eye. “I wish you had told me. About Richard’s mother.”

  He looked at her, surprised. “Would it have changed something?”

  Elizabeth wound her fingers in her shawl. “No. But it makes him easier to predict. And to understand, with his mother buried on Hidden Wolf.”

  “My mother is buried there, too.”

  “I didn’t mean he had a better claim. Just that it makes me see him a little more clearly.”

  Nathaniel’s watchfulness eased a bit. “It’s not just his ma that draws him to Hidden Wolf, you know. It’s more complicated than that. It has to do with Sarah.”

  “I don’t know if I want to hear this right now,” Elizabeth said, dropping her gaze. Sarah was one subject she had not anticipated in this discussion, one subject she had been pushing away from herself firmly for days.

  “Never underestimate the force of a blow to a man’s pride,” Nathaniel said. “Or what he might do to see it set right. Richard wanted Sarah, once upon a time. And now he wants you.”

  “Well, I’m very sorry for his early trouble and loss,” Elizabeth said. “But I can’t marry him to salvage his pride, and I won’t marry him and watch him turn you off Hidden Wolf. And he won’t buy it, either, not if I have my way.”

  Finally, a grin. “I’m right glad to hear that,” Nathaniel said. “But what did you have in mind?”

  “I could just pay my father’s debts, but it would mean all of my savings,” Elizabeth said. “And in a few years’ time he’d most likely be living beyond his income again, or making bad investments—”

  “And there’d be no more funds to bail him out,” Nathaniel finished.

  She nodded.

  “So.”

  Elizabeth glanced around. The candlelight cast a meager oval; it painted Nathaniel’s face in quiet tones, softening the strong lines of his face. He was looking at her with infinite patience, and something more, something she had been hoping for. She drew in a deep breath.

  “I will let Richard court me,” Elizabeth said slowly. “Until my father is sure enough of me to sign the deed of gift. That will have to be done in Johnstown, before Mr. Bennett, as magistrate. And then—” She swallowed hard.

  “And then?”

  It took every bit of courage in her, but she met his gaze. “We could marry. You and I—” She pushed on,
stumbling, her voice cracking. “Immediately. At that moment all property I own becomes yours. And that would include Hidden Wolf, of course.”

  His face was utterly blank.

  “You want to stay single,” Nathaniel said evenly, his face masked. “You’ve told me that any number of times.”

  “Your memory does me no good service.” Elizabeth tried to strike a lighter tone, but she was unable to control the trembling of her voice, or even to meet his gaze directly.

  Nathaniel was watching her closely, something on his face she couldn’t quite place. Fear? Anger?

  “I don’t want your charity.”

  “This is not charity!”

  “What would you call it, then? You want me to marry you so you can give me your property. What did you intend to do about the taxes?”

  Elizabeth blinked. “Pay them.”

  “Aye,” said Nathaniel hoarsely. “You intended to pay them. There’s a word for what you’re asking me to be, but it ain’t exactly polite.”

  Shocked, Elizabeth drew her hand away. “I was thinking of you—”

  “Goddamn it, woman,” Nathaniel hissed. “It’s not your pity I want.”

  “No,” Elizabeth said, lifting her chin to meet his gaze, her own eyes blazing. “You want justice. And you said—you said that you wanted me, too. But perhaps that was just talk.”

  He jumped up, towering over her; she stood to meet him, her fists balled at her side.

  “And what about you? What about what you want?” He was full angry now, his hands on her shoulders, hard, pressing.

  Elizabeth felt her heart melting like the candlewax, felt it running down to her feet. She pushed his hands away.

  “If you weren’t such an idiot, perhaps you’d see what I’m trying to tell you!” she spat out. “This is for me, too. Do you think I’m fool enough to throw everything away, to hand over everything I own”—she swallowed, hard—“for no reason? I had come to the conclusion that I’d be better off as your wife than my father’s daughter—but now I wonder.”