Naked in the Winter Wind

by Dani Haviland

  “It’s just a business card—see,” I said and waved it in the air, showing off how harmless it was. “I guess it was in my backpack and…oh, my,” I looked at the card, “isn’t your uncle Lord Melbourne?”

  “Yes, and that’s the family’s coat of arms. But my uncle’s name isn’t James. I’ve never seen a card like this. The paper is so smooth and shiny, the letters are raised, and the printing is so, so perfect. What do all these numbers mean?”

  “Those are phone numbers. Remember when I told you about telephones? Phone numbers are how we kept everyone indexed, sorted, and how we accessed them, I mean… Well, there are also faxes, which need numbers, too, and emails, which use letters and/or numbers. And gosh, look at that—he even has his own website.”

  I set the card down. This wasn’t working, and it wasn’t because I had overloaded him with my rambling about numbers and modern technology. This 21st century business card was from someone with his family name, actually his kin by the use of the coat of arms and title. And I must have had it in my possession since…well, at least since a minute before I arrived here from the 21st century.

  I lifted my suddenly insecure fiancé’s chin and fixed my eyes on his half-closed ones. “Wallace, I think this is from one of your relatives, or rather your relative’s descendants. But I swear I don’t know how I got this. I don’t have any feelings for or about this card, or this ‘James Melbourne’ person, at all!”

  I hadn’t started out to be emotional or excited about a silly old slip of thick paper. Good grief, it was just a business card. I received cards like this all the time in my previous life. I think. But this was ‘when’ I was, here and now. It should be no big deal after seeing the smartphone a few weeks ago, but this had something to do with Wallace and Julian’s heritage. Or whatever the opposite of heritage was: descentage?

  Wallace’s head was bowed and still. I looked at the card again, then gave it back to him. He rubbed his thumb over the embossed lettering. “Oh, well,” he remarked nonchalantly, then lifted his head to gaze at me with a weak smile, “another mystery.”

  “Like bumblebees,” I said with a one-shoulder shrug of agreement.

  He raised one eyebrow and looked down his nose, asking me wordlessly, “Explain, please.”

  “Aerodynamically, bumblebees aren’t supposed to be able to fly, but they do. You know, fat little bodies and itty-bitty wings? An eagle soaring, that’s easy to see, but those chunky little buggers popping from flower to flower, mathematically and scientifically shouldn’t be able to fly. A mystery, but real; something we accept and don’t try to explain.”

  “Okay, a bumblebee,” he said and shoved the card back into the Bible.

  “Maybe we can do the names a little later,” I mumbled, suddenly feeling insecure.

  He looked over at me and saw that my big happy smile had managed to totally disappear and was now approaching a frown. “We have the first and last names. Why don’t we figure out a few middle names before we enter them in the Bible? After all, we aren’t going anywhere.”

  “Okay,” I chirped, popping right out of my funk, “fine by me.”

  And it was. Now what were some good middle names, and how many should I give each child? Those were happy posers for me to consider and didn’t even begin to drag me down into curiosity about my unknown past.

  Ӂ Ӂ Ӂ

  Wallace went to the barn to continue with his woodworking. He was finishing the babies’ playpen/crib that Julian had started. I was hoping to get a few minutes to myself before a baby woke up. I grabbed a clean cloth and filled a small pot with fresh water. I sat on the porch and untied my shirt. I felt icky, covered with baby spit-up and sweat. I wet the cloth and wiped from my forehead down to my neck. I rinsed the cloth and washed the top of my breasts then rinsed again. Ah, now the best part. I lifted one of my heavy breasts, and washed away the perspiration and spilled milk. The babies all nursed well, as in vigorously, but they all seemed to fall asleep with a mouthful of milk. It dribbled out their lips, and down and underneath my breasts. It wasn’t always possible to clean up after each feeding. There was always another one waiting to be fed or changed.

  My little sponge bath was just the pick me up I needed. I felt almost as clean as if I’d taken a whole bath. Maybe I’d be able to do that later on tonight.

  It was still early, but looked like it was going to be another miserably hot day. There wasn’t a white spot in the sky, which was good. I didn’t mind the heat, but I hated the humidity that came with the clouds and haze. I decided to be brazen and leave my shirt open so I could thoroughly dry out. I knew I’d be able to hear anyone coming before they could see me, so I put my legs up and kicked back on the porch bench, ready to catch some rays and vitamin D.

  I looked up at the north end of the porch through squinted eyes and visualized a swing. I’d have to show Wallace how they were made where I came from—or would that be when I came from? It would be nice to have one wide enough for two adults to share. And it shouldn’t take much more effort to hang three little swings from the porch beam.

  I was fantasizing about swinging and fresh air when someone threw a cloth over my chest. I looked down and saw it was a diaper off of the clothesline.

  “Cover up, quick,” a husky voice ordered.

  I did, hurriedly tying together my blouse underneath the cloth—at the same time, looking for my modesty policeman. I didn’t see him, but did see a rider coming in at a fast pace, kicking up a twisty, tan dust cloud, followed by a wagon with three men.

  I searched again for the cloth-tosser, but didn’t see anyone. I called for Wallace, but he didn’t answer. Something fishy was going on, and I was starting to get scared.

  The rider, a scruffy-looking British soldier, jerked back hard on the reins when he saw me, and came to a gravel-crunching stop. He had kicked his horse hard and repeatedly to get her to the house so quickly. Fresh blood was oozing from the gouges in the long-legged black mare’s flanks. I looked over and saw that, although the man was dressed in a tattered and filthy British officer’s uniform, he was wearing Spanish spurs—mean, ugly, sharp ones that would give the SPCA and PETA fits.

  I walked to the edge of the porch to greet the stranger. “Can I help you, sir,” I said in my bravest voice. My knees felt watery, but gratefully, they still held me up. I reached out and held onto the porch post in order to give myself more stability. My courageous demeanor would mean nothing if I passed out from fright right in front of him.

  “I’m the new tax collector and I see that,” he pulled out a little booklet that looked like one of those cheap dirty novels that made the circuit, “this household has not paid any taxes this year.”

  I leaned in closer to see if I could see the name of his little novella. He quickly pulled it close to his chest, and shoved it back into his jacket pocket.

  He was lying, and I wasn’t the least bit subtle with my distrustful leer, letting him know that I knew he did not have a tax-roll book in his jacket.

  “I think you’re mistaken, sir,” I said with a newfound confidence, “we are current on our taxes. Someone must have given you the wrong book.” Then I glared at him, daring him to challenge me.

  That was probably a bad move. He was not a nice man by the looks of his horse’s bleeding flesh. I quickly backpedaled, “I’m sure it wasn’t your mistake though, sir.” I batted my eyelashes, hoping to cover my tough northern girl persona with a charming young southern belle flirtation. “Good help is so hard to find nowadays,” I added demurely.

  I should have continued with the engaging debutante role and asked if he would like a drink of water, but I really wanted him gone. Just as I was wondering what to do next, my decision was made for me. The creepy soldier jumped up onto the porch and literally got in my face.

  “What’s a sweet young thing like you doing out here all alone? Did your menfolk go out and get themselves killed by the mean old British soldiers?”

  His breath reeked of rum and rotten teeth. I took tw
o steps back to get away from him, but he advanced three.

  “If you’re lonely, I can be real friendly,” he cooed.

  His hands reached for my hair, but my reflexes were fast, and he didn’t get a chance to touch me. Instead, it was I who reached out. I instinctively slapped him across his stubble-whiskered cheek before I could think.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have done that, little lady. I don’t take to violence. At least I don’t like being hit. I do like to inflict a little pain every now and then, though. I find it—rather, arousing…”

  He dragged the last word out in a most perverse manner. I had ducked and drawn away from him with the slap, but he was closing in on me, making sure I didn’t have an escape route. He was between me and the steps now. I could hear his heavy breathing and smell his rummy breath. He reached down and grabbed the front of his pants. “Give the taxman his due, little lady, and maybe he won’t take too much from your little bitty home. The wagon is fairly full already, but what I’d really like…”

  “Mama, Mama,” the little boy said as he popped up between the extortionist and me. “I’m back. Did ye miss me?”

  I reached down and clutched the unknown dark-haired boy to me, and hugged him hard. “Oh, I did miss you,” I said sincerely, keeping hold of this little person who had just stopped an assault. He was about ten years old and wiry—hard, skinny, and definitely clever.

  “Father says that he’ll be right back. He and uncle and cousin and all the men from the…the…the store will be here any minute. He says he loves ye and misses ye.”

  The little boy stammered on where the menfolk were, and I hoped the taxman—or whoever he was—had missed his little sign of lying.

  “Thank you, dear,” I said as I brushed his wayward hair out of his eyes.

  I gasped, glad that my back was toward the soldier. I suddenly realized who this boy must be, and I was sure the look of shock showed on my face. He had to be Ian’s son! His features, that hair that wouldn’t go where it was supposed to, and those soft brown eyes—if he wasn’t Ian’s son, I was a rhinoceros.

  My momentary trance was broken by the sound of a baby crying. It was little Danielle. If I didn’t get to her soon, she’d have her brothers awake and screaming with her. “I need to take care of my daughter,” I said as I excused myself, not waiting to see if he had any objections. No one was going to keep me from my babies.

  The little boy followed me inside. He literally stood guard at the door as I sat on a kitchen chair and bared a breast to both quiet and feed her.

  “Get out of here,” growled the little boy. “This house is for family only.”

  There wasn’t any sign of fear in his voice, and I realized why. I think he knew I was feeding his sister; she was his family.

  My back was turned away from the opened door—I wanted at least a modicum of privacy in nursing—and I didn’t see it coming.

  “Move out of the way, boy. I wanna see what we have here.” I heard the shuffle of bodies in contention, and turned around just in time to see Little Ian fly through the air. The taxman had lifted him bodily and tossed him into the corner like a dirty shirt.

  I stood up and backed away from the man as he neared me with a lusty smirk. “Ooh, a little one, but she’s too little right now. Give her a couple of years, and she’ll be just right.”

  “Keep away, you bastard,” I hissed, controlling the urge to scream—I didn’t want to startle the baby. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Little Ian had come to his wits, and was inching our way.

  “Now lookie there; she is a fresh one, isn’t she? I’ll bet you and your husband—if there even is a husband—haven’t had relations since she was born.”

  He reached up to brush my breasts with his huge, filthy hand, but I feigned right and dodged him. Now I was on the other side of him, and could easily run outside. But I couldn’t leave him in the house with my other two babies. One of them was sure to awaken soon.

  He glared at me, angry at my clever escape. It was a stare-down, and I won. Sort of. His eyes changed focus and peered down, leering at the opening of my blouse. Then he looked up to my gold nugget necklace, and another kind of lust appeared.

  “Aarrgghh!” I caught sight of the tanned buckskinned-clad boy just as he tackled the taxman behind the legs, effectively knocking the much bigger man flat on his back…and evidently the wind out of his lungs. The man’s mouth was moving, but his chest was still. He couldn’t draw a breath

  “Hmph,” I snorted. I didn’t care if he ever breathed again.

  Little Ian stood above his prey, a dirk in his hand, his foot ready to stomp on the man’s windpipe if he should try to rise. “Shall I cut him?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I answered angrily in emotional reflex. “Cut him? Oh, no,” I said as I suddenly realized what he meant.

  “Too late,” he said.

  I was afraid that he had meant kill him, but he hadn’t. Nevertheless, he really had cut him. The taxman had a ‘Y’ cut into his cheek. He still couldn’t breathe, though, and was beginning to turn blue. Little Ian stepped back and kicked him hard under the ribcage. The man gasped, and his color started to return with the intake of air.

  I heard a noise in the doorway, saw that it was Wallace, and was relieved.

  And then it was terror time all over again.

  I noticed the look in Wallace’s eyes and the knife at his neck—he was being held hostage. Three men were standing behind him, grinning like cats at an overstocked fishpond. The taxman’s reinforcements had arrived.

  Judah and Leo chose that moment to wake up and call for their lunch. I let them scream. I knew an infant’s cry was irritating to a human male’s eardrum. The high pitch actually caused men physical pain…or so I recalled reading or hearing…somewhere. If I could irritate the intruders in an unobtrusive manner, maybe they wouldn’t be able to think clearly. Then Wallace, the boy, and I could find a way out of this mess.

  The boy! If Ian’s son was here—and how in the hell did he have a son that he didn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me about?—then Ian was around here somewhere. That made me feel better—I had an invisible ally.

  Surely Ian would want his prey out in the open where he could see them. Now I felt like I was part of a rescue team, and my partner was out there somewhere, just waiting for me to flush out his quarry.

  “How about if we go outside where it isn’t so noisy,” I suggested as I put Danielle down into the nest of quilts on the bed. I picked up Leo—he was protesting the loudest—turned my back on the men, and let the baby start nursing. There was no reason for him to be deprived of lunch. And right now, I needed him as much as he needed me.

  Leo and I followed the gruesome foursome outside. I hoped Wallace, the boy, the babies, and I had someone—my modesty policeman maybe?—to help us.

  The taxman was a bit loopy from his assault, but managed to grasp onto one of his cronies, and made it to the porch bench. Little Ian—or should that be Wee Ian?—had picked up little Judah, and brought him outside to be with me. He was cooing and cuddling the baby; actually doing a great job of distracting the little two-week-old—oh my, Judah was his little brother!

  I took a deep breath to compose myself. Too much had just happened, and I couldn’t handle it, even with the aid of my little dark-haired champion. “Lord, help us,” I prayed softly to the man upstairs.

  “Who you talkin’ to,” asked the skinny man who still had a knife to Wallace’s neck.

  “God,” I answered with self-assurance. I suddenly felt braver because I knew He would help us. “You know, the man who gave us ‘thou shalt not kill’ and ‘thou shalt not steal’ and about eight other good ‘thou shalt nots’ to live by.”

  “Hmph,” was the monosyllabic reply from the man who looked like he had a single digit IQ.

  Okay, maybe I could work this in my favor. The taxman was evidently the head honcho in this little extortion ring. Right now, he was pretty much out of commission. His three apes were apparently trying to k
eep up the intimidation and theft gambit, and weren’t quite sure about what to do next.

  “Would you believe that you have a knife to the neck of General William Howe’s son?” I asked. “You do know who General Howe is, don’t you?”

  Skinny looked at the other two, and they all shrugged their shoulders.

  Gee, maybe these guys were too dumb to fool. “General Howe is a big time British general, and his brother is ‘Admiral’ Richard Howe. You know him, of course. Everybody knows him,” I said dramatically.

  Skinny started bobbing his head, then the others did, too. “Yeah, we know ‘em; everybody knows him,” the bald one said enthusiastically. He was lying and I knew it.

  Of course, I wasn’t lying. I hadn’t said that Wallace was the general’s son. I had said ‘Would you believe?’ and they did.

  “Now,” I continued with great sincerity, “if the Howe family found out that you hurt one of their own kin... My, my, there would be, pardon the vulgarity, hell to pay.”

  The boys were getting nervous now. “But we can’t leave without takin’ somethin’,” the bald one—evidently the new leader—said.

  “Now, how are you going to get your—captain, is he?—home with all of this ‘stuff’ in the back of your wagon?”

  I walked over to the wagon and lifted one edge of the canvas tarp covering it. I couldn’t see what was in the little barrels, but I could smell it. They had gunpowder. Kegs and kegs of gunpowder. I wasn’t a betting person, but still I’d bet those long boxes under the seat had rifles or muskets in them.

  “I’ll tell you what, why don’t you just unload this wagon here, and then your captain can ride in the b…”

  “Shut up, bitch,” boomed an angry voice from the porch. Taxman had regained his senses, and was reclaiming control. “I’m going to take you for everything you’ve got. Including that little boy of yours, the bastard,” he said as he reached up to feel the wound on his cheek.

  I needed to think of what to do next, so I stalled. Leo had finished nursing, so I moved him off the breast and covered myself in one smooth move. As I walked back up the porch steps to be near Danielle, I put him over my shoulder to burp him. Five seconds passed, and I still hadn’t had a brainstorm.