Many Sparrows

by Lori Benton

  She glanced at Jeremiah to find him gazing down at her with amusement, and hope, and in full sight of her uncle and anyone else caring to observe, she took his hand in hers. Claiming him just in case there was any doubt left in anyone’s mind.

  Jeremiah Ring swayed toward her as though he might do more than merely clasp her hand. She squeezed his fingers, hoping to relay that such would be just a little too much for now.

  “I see we’ve some catching up to do, Niece,” said her uncle, “but first we best get this man a bed to fall into before he does so at our feet.”

  The words might have made little sense save that while Uncle Alphus was still speaking them Jeremiah had done more than sway toward her again. He was fairly slumping on her shoulder.

  She’d thought him warm, but was he fevered? Injured?

  “Wolf-Alone!” she called to the Indian who until now had stood back from them, just beyond Alphus Litchfield’s notice.

  He was at her side in a few swift strides, catching his brother in strong arms before he swooned.

  OCTOBER 25

  CAMP CHARLOTTE, SCIPPO CREEK

  The Mingo, Logan, had refused the invitation to attend the peace talks with Governor Dunmore, but he was camped nearby. The trader, John Gibson—whose wife, Koonay, and unborn child had died at Baker’s Post—had gone to speak with Logan beneath a lone elm tree. Jeremiah, Wolf-Alone, and Falling Hawk went with him.

  Unable to bring herself to approach Philip’s murderer, Clare waited at a distance. With Pippa dozing in a shoulder sling, she stood with Uncle Alphus, who had no stomach for facing the Mingo chief either. Together they watched the scene, and she thought about Gibson, whom she’d met just that morning.

  The man’s little daughter, never found at the scene of her mother’s murder, had survived in a strange twist of fate; those who killed her kin had for some reason balked at taking her life. The tiny girl had been carried off and eventually given over to Major William Crawford, with whom Gibson had finally found her. He’d settled the child at his trading post, where he intended to raise her.

  Clare guessed he’d given Logan this news, for the two had embraced beneath the elm tree, and it looked as though Logan had wept.

  Then came a time of smoking pipes and talking, after which Gibson took what appeared to be writing materials from a knapsack, knelt on the ground, and began putting them to use. Logan was speaking. He went on speaking for a time while the others listened and Gibson wrote.

  Even from a distance Clare sensed the weight and solemnity of the moment. Her gaze went to Jeremiah, as it often did now when he was near. A day and a night’s rest seemed to have helped him toward the healing the long march with the army had delayed. His color was better today, but she didn’t like to see him on his feet so long, yet on his feet was where she longed for him to be.

  No one yet knew where Jacob and Rain Crow had gone; it was a thing Jeremiah meant to discuss with Logan. It seemed unlikely the Mingo would know, but they were leaving no stone unturned.

  Steadfast and true, Jeremiah was still bent on helping her find Jacob. He also greatly desired to find his sister.

  Knowing his heart was heavy for the woman who held Jacob prisoner created in Clare a roil of conflicted feeling. Always uppermost was the longing to have her son back. That couldn’t change. It simply couldn’t. But in that moment of understanding, of finally believing God was in control—that He had been all the while—she’d begun to glimpse a larger canvas upon which He’d been at work over the past months, since that terrible April day Philip rode out of their lives. That canvas included Rain Crow. She was the Almighty’s, one of His sparrows, of which there were many.

  How, Lord? How will this work good for all of us?

  “I do believe they’re winding it up,” Uncle Alphus said, recalling her attention to the gathering beneath the elm.

  Gibson had put away his writing implements and risen. Logan gripped his arm, then Jeremiah’s. The Mingo looked her way briefly, then put away his pipe and strode back toward his camp.

  Falling Hawk and Wolf-Alone followed.

  Jeremiah and Gibson made their way across the clearing to Clare and her uncle. She kept her gaze on Jeremiah’s face as they neared, searching it for sign of well-being, distress, news good or bad.

  The meeting of their eyes left her breathless at the sparks of warmth it kindled all through her, so that what she’d meant to ask fled her mind when he stood before her. Awareness of him left her feeling shy with this man whose roof she’d shared, this man she’d vexed, defied, thwarted, and to whom she’d showed the worst of herself. This man who, barely on his feet, was doing all he could for her and Jacob. And she couldn’t even hold his gaze.

  As she looked down at Pippa, the crown of her blond-capped head nestled warm against her breastbone, Uncle Alphus spoke for her.

  “That Mingo have anything of import to say?”

  He hadn’t said murdering Mingo, but Clare heard it in his tone. She glanced up in time to see the look that passed between Gibson and Jeremiah.

  “A good deal of import,” Gibson said and swallowed over some deep emotion. He opened his mouth but seemed now lost for words.

  “He’d a message for Dunmore,” Jeremiah said. “And for you, Clare. We spoke of Jacob and my sister. Logan might know where she’s taken him.”

  Hope seized her heart, that familiar, painful squeeze of dread and joy. She didn’t know who reached for who first, but next she knew she was clasping Jeremiah’s hand. “Where?”

  “On the Scioto, north some thirty miles of Cornstalk’s Town. Place called Seekunk. Some of Logan’s people retreated there with captives and goods from their raids, so as not to have to give them back. We suspect that’s where Rain Crow has gone.”

  She couldn’t speak. Her whole being was a cry to the Almighty. Please. Oh, please.

  “Is that what you were writing down?” Uncle Alphus asked Gibson. “Something about the Mingos running off with their prisoners?”

  Gibson at last found his voice. “Logan meant to tell Dunmore of it, yes, but that’s not what I wrote. He…has a message for the governor, but I think it’s for anyone with ears to hear it, to hear the lament of a broken man’s heart.”

  Uncle Alphus didn’t alter his grim aspect. “That varmint begging forgiveness for his sins?”

  Another look passed between Jeremiah and Gibson, who withdrew from his coat what must be the paper he’d written upon.

  “I do not excuse what the man has done, especially to you, ma’am,” John Gibson said to Clare as he unfolded the paper. “Understand that, please, before you hear what Logan had to say.”

  “All right,” she said in a voice measured, braced. “I understand.”

  Gibson cleared his throat, stared mutely at the page, and finally thrust it at Jeremiah who, with no more than a brief pause, said, “These are Logan’s words, as best as John could get them down.

  “ ‘I appeal to any white man to say, if ever he entered Logan’s cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, Logan is the friend of white men. I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. Col. Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it: I have killed many: I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbour a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.’ ”

  No one spoke when Jeremiah finished reading. They all felt the power of the words, even Uncle Alphus.

  Clare was left stunned by their anguish, their defi
ance, the broken spirit behind them. She remembered the friendship the Mingo had offered Jeremiah long ago, how Logan had saved his life, and his soul, in his darkest hour. He truly had been a friend to white men, but white men had abused and betrayed that friendship one too many times, and friend had become enemy, murderer.

  Logan had made her a widow.

  Still, indirectly she owed as much gratitude as blame to that Indian. If his had been the hand to cause her loss, his had also been the hand to provide the means of aid in her darkest hour. He’d saved Jeremiah, helped make of him the man he had become, the man who had saved her, helped make of her what she was becoming.

  For she was becoming, being remade—as they all were, by their choices—and though it remained to be seen all that that woman would be, she knew she would be stronger, and yet at the same time more aware of her weakness and the strength of her God, for having walked this difficult path.

  Yet a part of her wanted to refute the words. Or some of them. Logan’s blood wasn’t utterly cut off from the earth, and yet maybe in a sense even those words were true. Logan still had blood kin. There was his niece, Gibson’s daughter, but she would never remember her mother or anyone else who died at Baker’s. She would never mourn as Logan mourned. Perhaps she would never even know her uncle. But she lived.

  Jeremiah raised his gaze to Clare’s, full of pain for this man once a friend. “Logan had something more to tell you, Clare. He said…well, his exact words were, ‘Tell the mother I am sorry for taking the boy.’ ”

  Uncle Alphus put his arm around her shoulders; she could feel his anger and indignation through the embrace, but something different was happening inside of her. Something hard and jagged was breaking open and melting, as it had been doing now for days. Since she uttered those words to Rain Crow?

  “Don’t you remember?”

  She’d been remembering—that the Almighty didn’t place the same degrees upon wrongdoing as men did. That she had murdered in her heart.

  She knew what she had to do.

  “I don’t wish ever to see Logan again, Jeremiah, much less speak to him, but if ever you do—or you, Mr. Gibson.” She looked to the trader, who had tears running down his face. “Would you give him these words from me? Tell him that I forgive him for taking Jacob. And tell him, though he isn’t sorry for killing Philip, I forgive him for that as well. Would you do that?”

  OCTOBER 26

  CAMP CHARLOTTE, SCIPPO CREEK

  John Gibson had had more to relate to Governor Dunmore about the Mingos who’d rejected his terms of peace and fled to Seekunk. They planned to journey farther north with their captives in two days’ time, to a new village near Lake Erie. Dunmore ordered Major William Crawford to take several companies of militia to stop them and liberate the captives. They would leave on the morrow.

  Alphus Litchfield, present when these plans were made, came to Clare at the camp on Scippo Creek where she was staying with Wolf-Alone and Jeremiah, an arrangement that felt right and familiar—to her uncle’s consternation.

  “I’ve spoken to Dunmore,” he told them after relating the particulars of the campaign, fixing Jeremiah with a drilling gaze. “While the governor hasn’t expressly given you pardon, or permission, he’s willing to turn a blind eye should you slip your guard—namely me—and be found no longer in camp come morn.”

  Relief and dread seized Clare simultaneously. Jeremiah was being given his freedom, but he would have to take it that very night.

  Already the sun was setting, the short October day grown chill. Clare had a shawl wrapped warm around her and Pippa. She held her daughter close, looking from Jeremiah to Wolf-Alone.

  “Can you?” she asked, for he wasn’t yet recovered from his wound. “Will you?” She half-hoped he’d say no, was desperate for him to say yes, tried not to pin hope or expectation on either outcome.

  Beneath the trees along the creek bank, Jeremiah stood straight, his gaze on her level and certain. “Of course I’m going after them, Clare. I’ll get out ahead of Crawford’s army if I can.”

  “How? You’re not yet recovered.”

  “I will go with him,” Wolf-Alone said when she turned to him in mute appeal. She felt a rush of gratitude and held his gaze in thanks.

  “And then?” she asked, the question directed at Jeremiah.

  “I’ll do as God leads. Pray He enables me to bring Jacob back to you.” Jeremiah gazed at her, calm and steady. She knew he was expecting her to demand to accompany him and Wolf-Alone, to help fix what was broken, as she’d demanded and insisted from the start beside that shattered wagon.

  But she said nothing at all.

  Clare left Pippa in Jeremiah’s care and went down to the creek to walk along the bank as night fell, wrapped in the warmer folds of a blanket now. She paced and she wrestled—with her heart, with her God, with things said to her moments ago.

  “There’s no more you can do for Jacob,” Uncle Alphus had said. “You have Pippa to consider, and winter’s coming on. You’ll only be a hindrance to the search if you insist on going.”

  Though he didn’t say it, Clare knew Jeremiah was of like mind. She also knew she was well able to fight both his and her uncle’s will and prevail. She’d learned much about the limits of her determination, and stubbornness, when it came to achieving her heart’s desires, to seeing her will be done. Both were terrifyingly boundless.

  She also knew she’d far more reason than those her uncle had cited to hesitate following the demands of her heart, which yearned after her firstborn as desperately as on that morning she found the wagon empty, her arms emptier. Since that moment she’d grasped and clutched and striven to fill them again by any and every means possible, to no avail.

  She was done grasping.

  Which meant that for Clare Margaret Inglesby, widowed at twenty-six years of age and aching for the return of her child, there was but one other course of action to take. With every breath she must deny the desire that screamed within her to fix what was shattered, demand justice, make it right. Instead she would stand still and be silent and open her hands, holding her heart’s desire there, unprotected and submitted. And she would wait.

  Not my will be done, but Yours…

  The choice of surrender was a tearing in her soul. Bent with it, she hunkered on the creek bank, the blanket around her, and rocked and wept and released her little boy to the Almighty and to His chosen vessel, Jeremiah Ring.

  “I will trust, I will pray, and no more,” she whispered into the blanket’s muffling folds. “Even if it means I must grieve Jacob and pass through life and death to see him again. I believe You have him, have us all, in Your hands. You’re doing what You will, and it will be for the best.”

  But help my poor battered heart. Give me strength to do this.

  She remained so for a time, listening to crickets in the brush, the murmur of water flowing by, the wind in fading, papery leaves clinging to the branches above. When she was ready, she stood and went back along the creek and up the bank and found Jeremiah standing alone by the fire.

  She didn’t ask where Wolf-Alone or her uncle had gone. She saw Pippa asleep inside the tent but didn’t go to her. She walked into the circle of Jeremiah’s arms, weeping spent, and laid her head against his chest.

  “Clare.”

  She loved how he simply said her name, for there was so much in it, layer after layer of feeling, of history, of hope. She felt his hand splayed warm on the back of her head, his breath against her hair, his heart beating beneath her cheek where it was pressed.

  “I’ll stay with Uncle Alphus while you and Wolf-Alone go, but I will pray for you and for Jacob—and your sister—until I see you both.”

  She felt him draw a breath, deep and clean. “When I come to you again, it will be with your son or I won’t come at all.”

  She hadn’t expected that. Stepping back from the embrace, she searched his face by firelight, thinking of never seeing him again. Something wrenched beneath her ribs, as if one had
sprung out of alignment.

  It didn’t go back.

  She put her fingers over his lips. “I want you to come back to me. Even if you cannot find Jacob.”

  He seemed to know how hard that was to say. She hoped he believed her.

  “I want to,” he said, but whether he meant he wanted to find Jacob or come back to her, she didn’t ask. It was enough. For of one thing she was convinced: Jeremiah would do God’s will, even where it conflicted with his own. And if God willed for them to be together as she now wished, what could stop it?

  She looked long into Jeremiah’s eyes and knew a power of feeling unlike anything she’d ever experienced, even with her children. It was a bud unfurled as yet, as it should be, for winter was coming.

  But spring always followed winter, did it not?

  Voices were approaching, Uncle Alphus and Wolf-Alone returning from wherever they had gone—to gather supplies for the journey north, a glance at their laden arms revealed.

  Jeremiah would be leaving in a matter of hours. That out-of-joint rib gave another wrench.

  Maybe his had too, for he touched her face and said with plain regret, “It has to be tonight.”

  “I know.” Then she said the thing that was most important. “Thank you. I can never say it enough. Thank you for all of it.”

  “I’d do it over again. A thousand times.”

  “If we had even once to do it again, I’d do it better…now.” She’d carried one thing down to the creek with her, held it while she paced and prayed. Now she opened her hand so he could see it.

  “Philip’s timepiece?” he said, raising dark eyes to hers in question.

  “I need to say this, need to tell you that Philip is the past. All those regrets, they are the past. I’m ready to move on with living…in that way,” she added, holding his gaze with an intensity that made her tremble. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  The longing in his gaze wrapped around her, made her barely aware of the two men who had joined them in camp. “After you have Jacob back? Is that what you mean?”

  “No. Yes.” She shook her head and smiled, self-conscious now but aching to make him understand, so there would be no question in his mind when he left her this night. “I want him back, of course. I’ll always want that. But there are other things I want.”