Many Sparrows

by Lori Benton

  Smoke ascended from the farmhouse chimney.

  A child played in the yard, near a snowy woodpile.

  A man was chopping the wood. Clare heard the chunk of the ax as he brought it down, the crack of the wood’s splitting.

  “Uncle? What…?”

  The man had his back to the coming sled; they were yet too far away for him to hear the hiss of its runners over the noise he was making. He hadn’t turned to show her his face. But she knew him by his long, lean lines and by the way he moved, though like the child he was dressed warmly for the weather in clothing she’d never seen—a heavy buckskin coat, a furred hat, gloves, and thick winter moccasins.

  Her mouth hung open as her body absorbed the shock, limbs and gaze and heart frozen, fixed on the man. Then in a heated thawing she looked again at the child.

  “Uncle, stop the sled!” She couldn’t get there any faster than the sled would bring her but she couldn’t sit still another second. “Please!”

  Alphus Litchfield pulled back on the lines; the horses slowed. Before they’d quite stopped, she’d bolted from the buffalo robe and hit the ground, managing to stay on her feet.

  “Watch Pippa,” she called and then was running down the untrodden lane through the fresh snow. “Jacob!”

  The man thrust the ax into the cutting block and turned, and she laughed aloud with the joy of seeing Jeremiah’s face. Though he was already striding toward her, the child bolted past him, running pell-mell to meet her at the edge of the yard.

  “Mama!”

  No sweeter sound ever graced her ears.

  No sweeter pain ever squeezed her heart than when Jacob barreled into her and they fell with her skirts awry and snow in places it had never touched, the both of them laughing.

  “Mama, we’re back. We’re home.”

  “I see you are! Oh, Jacob. My sweet boy.” She was laughing still but crying too, when a shadow fell across them and she looked up, arms and lap full of her squirming son.

  Jeremiah Ring’s face was shining down at her, his beard dark, his teeth white, the tip of his nose red with the cold.

  “Jeremiah, when? Where? How long?” She couldn’t get a coherent question past her lips, but she didn’t need to.

  Jeremiah laughed. “I’ll tell you everything, Clare. For now, it’s so good to see you again.”

  His eyes were saying it was much more than good. He reached down and took her mittened hand in his gloved one and pulled her to her feet, all crusted with snow. He didn’t let her go, but drew her in close and held her, and she melted into the warmth of his solid, sure embrace.

  Home, she thought. At last I am home. Not the farm. Not even Virginia. It didn’t matter how they lived or where. She could live anywhere with this man, anywhere he wished. In her world, or his, or somewhere altogether new.

  Perhaps the Watauga would do for them all. There was time to decide.

  Jacob bounced up as if he’d springs for knees. “Mama, he said you would come. Are you going to live here with us?”

  “Live here?” she echoed, blinking first at him, then at Jeremiah. Was that what Jeremiah had in mind, to live there on that farm? What of his Shawnee kin? “Of course I’m going to live with you, silly boy. You’re my son, aren’t you?”

  She’d been teasing but found she needed to hear him to say it.

  “I am. Don’t you remember?”

  “I do remember. But look at you, Jacob. You’re such a big boy now, I mightn’t have recognized you.”

  Her son had grown since she’d last seen him, his features a little more the boy he was becoming, less the babe he’d been. She glimpsed how much he would resemble Philip in a few more years—years in which she would watch that change happen, day by precious day. God willing.

  “They don’t call me Many Sparrows anymore,” he told her.

  “They?” she asked, but just then Uncle Alphus arrived in the sled—he must have walked the horses, giving them time to reunite—with Pippa sitting beside him peeking out of a blanket.

  Jeremiah’s gaze fixed on the sled. “Speaking of getting big…Clare, look at her.”

  At the sound of his voice, Pippa uttered a squeal.

  “She remembers you,” Clare said, as something caught deep at her heart, something sweet and tender, made of memories in a clearing, along forest trails, in a canoe on a river, and in a bark lodge far away. Their history.

  “I want to see Pippa!” Jacob dashed for the sled and clambered up to sit beside his sister, while Uncle Alphus held the horses still and gazed at them all, looking as near to tears as Clare had ever seen the man. She caught her uncle’s gaze while her children became reacquainted.

  It struck her that he wasn’t the least surprised to find Jeremiah and Jacob at the farm.

  “How long have you known?”

  “Little over a day.”

  “Uncle,” she said, thinking she should be aggrieved but unable to be for the joy overwhelming her and yet…“How could you not tell me?”

  Her uncle looked a bit shamefaced. “I…well…”

  “That was my doing.” Jeremiah’s dark eyes searched her face. “I came to him at the mill, day before yesterday, toward evening. I’d left Jacob at the farm but needed to let your uncle know we were here. I’d a question to put to him before I put it to you, Clare, because I knew I couldn’t bear to see you without asking it straightaway. Forgive me for making you wait even one day more, but this question is of utmost importance. So is your uncle’s blessing.” He looked to Alphus Litchfield, still in the sled with the children. “You’ve had time to think on it?”

  “I’ve brought her here to you,” said her uncle.

  Clare was trying to make sense of this. “Why did you come alone to the mill? Did you leave Jacob here at the farm on his own?”

  That didn’t seem a thing Jeremiah would do, not after he’d somehow—she intended to hear every detail of how—gotten Jacob away from Rain Crow and brought him home to her at last.

  “Not on his own,” Jeremiah said, and would have said more, Clare was certain, had not the door of the farmhouse opened and a young woman in homespun, wrapped in a woolen shawl, stepped out. A woman with black hair coiled on her head above a face like smoothly beaten copper. A face strong-boned and elegant, one that would have drawn every gaze even had her presence alone not been so compelling.

  Rain Crow came to them across the snowy yard, looking almost otherworldly in the way she was laced and gowned, moving as if she floated across the snow, feet hidden beneath a full petticoat.

  “Alphus Litchfield,” Jeremiah said when Rain Crow reached his side. “Allow me to introduce my sister, Abigail Ringbloom. She looked after Jacob,” he added, turning to Clare. “I’d never have left him alone, not even here.”

  Clare’s mouth hung open again as she watched Rain Crow’s slim brown hand lift to Jeremiah’s arm, as if seeking comfort.

  “Jeremiah, what is this? Why…?” There was a tug at her shawl and she looked down into Jacob’s upturned face.

  “Mama,” he said, as if she was unaccountably slow. “He wants to marry you.”

  “Exactly,” Jeremiah said, with a laugh uncharacteristically nervous. “I went to your uncle’s mill to ask his permission, Clare. And his blessing. I came away with the impression that he wasn’t wholly against the idea.”

  He looked toward her uncle as he said this last. Clare didn’t follow his gaze, but he must have seen something in the man’s face to give him leave to press on with the matter. He still held her hand in his. He drew it close to his heart.

  “Clare, you are a woman of amazing strength and courage, and I want you by my side. I want to make what we pretended to in Cornstalk’s Town our truth. I love you. I want you for my wife.”

  She was vaguely aware that Rain Crow had stepped away from them, but she didn’t take her gaze from the man before her.

  “Jeremiah, I…You…” She shook her head, overcome. Her heart beat wild with the joy of it. But there were things she needed t
o understand before she could answer him truthfully. “Why have you brought your sister here? Why is she calling herself by your name? Can she not bear to be parted from Jacob—still?”

  “No, Clare. That’s not why. Not exactly. When I found her on Lake Erie with the Mingos that fled Seekunk, she was already repenting having left Cornstalk’s Town and taken Jacob away from you. From us all. I told her what I told you—”

  “About God’s judgments being righteous and true?”

  “That and more. She wept over it. She knew she couldn’t keep Jacob, that he belongs with you. Yet she despaired, not knowing any longer where she was meant to be—with our brother or with her mother. So I told her…” Jeremiah paused, clearly uncertain how she would receive his words. “I invited her to come with us to Virginia, to come away from both those lives, take some time and see what the Almighty might have for her. By then winter had closed in, and I didn’t want to risk travel. I knew you were waiting, and again I ask your forgiveness, but there was another reason I didn’t want to leave Cornstalk’s Town right away.”

  Clare searched his face, seeing in it now the marks of grief. A fresh grief. Dread tightened her belly as her mind flitted over the faces of those she’d come to know in that town far away on Scippo Creek. “What has happened?”

  “We’ve lost Split-Moon and Wildcat. And…Wolf-Alone.”

  Their names landed like blows.

  “Lost? You don’t mean…?”

  “I do,” he said, and squeezed her hand.

  “How?”

  He swallowed and told the tale. “After we returned from Lake Erie, Wolf-Alone and Falling Hawk took Split-Moon and Wildcat hunting. They didn’t cross the Ohio, as per the treaty with Dunmore, but they were near it. In camp one evening they were set upon by whites, already trespassing across the river meant to hold them back.”

  They were fired upon, he told her, relating it as Falling Hawk had told the story to him. Old Split-Moon was shot and killed immediately. Falling Hawk, so soon recovered from his battle wound, had fallen as he tried to escape and took a musket ball in the leg.

  “He managed to crawl off into a rhody thicket to hide but saw Wolf-Alone grab Wildcat, throw him over his shoulder, and go dodging into the darkening woods like a deer. They were pursued. Shots were fired.”

  Falling Hawk was left for dead. It took him days, but he made it nearly back to Scippo Creek when he was found by other Shawnee hunters and brought home to tell the tale. They retrieved Split-Moon’s body and buried him, but Wolf-Alone and Wildcat were never found. Either they’d been captured or were killed.

  “I cannot imagine any other reason they wouldn’t have returned,” Jeremiah said. “My family has been much grieved. I didn’t want to leave them, Clare.”

  “Oh, Jeremiah. I understand.” Clare felt the weight of grief herself, thinking of that old man, of the boy and Wolf-Alone, that enigmatic warrior, now not only was his past a mystery, but his passing.

  Or might by some miracle he and the boy be alive somewhere? Unlike Jeremiah, she sensed that could be possible. She recalled her last exchange with Wolf-Alone, his talk of having a new name. Had he’d a presentiment of some wrenching change coming?

  One thing she knew: Wolf-Alone would give his life to save Wildcat, in more ways than one.

  “When I finally made ready to leave, me and Jacob,” Jeremiah was saying, “Abigail announced she would go with me as I’d asked. She wishes to take my name for now and stay with us for a while. Until she knows her own mind, if you’ll allow it.”

  Apparently the woman hadn’t gone quite out of hearing during Jeremiah’s recounting, for she was at Clare’s side of a sudden, a graceful hand raised now to her arm, beseeching.

  “Sister,” she said. “I am sorry for the pain I’ve caused you, in keeping your son from you after I learned he had a mother. I was wrong to do it, but I did not want to see that for a long time. Now I am the one seeking mercy, for I do not know where I belong. Will you let me stay with you and my brother until my eyes are clear and I can see the path ahead of me again?”

  Sister. Clare looked into the eyes of the woman who had tried to claim her son but didn’t see the defiance, the pride, the anger she had come to expect. She saw grief. She saw confusion. And hope. She saw the woman she’d glimpsed that moment in Cornstalk’s Town uttering those words, “I remember.”

  But it was the words she’d just spoken that echoed Clare’s heart. “I do not know where I belong.” Or her heart until a few moments ago.

  She belonged at Jeremiah’s side.

  Yet deeper in her soul a sense of unbelonging remained. Where did any of them truly belong? Was it a question all humanity asked, to be answered only by eternity and in time they would reach it—those who came by the narrow way?

  They were only pilgrims here, walking that narrow path. Should they walk it together, she and this woman? Even for a little while? Would she be safe in allowing it? Would her children be safe?

  Rain Crow seemed to understand what was going through her mind. “I make no claim on your son. We have brought Jacob back to you. He is yours. I understand now why I wanted him. I…”

  “I know,” Clare said, when the other woman faltered, tears welling. Rain Crow had been using Jacob to fill the void of her grief. A void only the Almighty could fill. In her own way, so had Clare.

  “You wish to be called Abigail now?”

  The woman lowered her eyes, then raised them again, looking at Clare straight on. “I once told you never to call me that name, but I will be called so now. Names have power. Maybe I will become who that woman is, and maybe I will do that becoming here with you.”

  Jeremiah’s sister dropped her hand from Clare’s arm. “I will let you and my brother speak of these things. I will do as you decide.”

  She stepped away, turning to go back into the house.

  When she was halfway across the yard, Clare called to her. “Abigail? Would you please take the children in out of the cold?”

  The woman turned, face shining with a startled relief.

  “I will,” she said and went to the sled and took Pippa in her arms and, Jacob following, headed for the house.

  Jacob chattered happily as they went, and while it was a wrench to let him out of her sight, Clare reminded herself he was back now. He was hers. Then she flung herself into Jeremiah’s arms again and wept, and thanked him. Again and again. And he held her.

  “Did I say you were a woman of strength and courage? Add heart to that, and grace.”

  Clare didn’t hear her uncle start the horses toward the barn, but after a while she realized she and Jeremiah were alone. She pulled back, still in his embrace, and took his face between mittened hands. His beard had grown on the journey to her, though it was still short, hugging his lean jaw. She hoped he would keep it.

  “She needs a refuge—how well I understand that, for you were that to me all those months and I didn’t even realize it at the time. She may seek her refuge with us.”

  Between her hands Jeremiah’s lips parted in a smile. He reached up and wiped away the residue of her tears with the tip of a gloved finger.

  “That’s one question answered.”

  “Did you ask another?” Clare replied, holding back a grin. “I seem to recall you stating an intention…”

  His smile turned playful, but the look in his eyes was earnest, full of hope. “Clare Inglesby, will you marry me?”

  “I will,” she said. “And I love you, too, in case I haven’t said it—but I think you know it.”

  They were already embracing. Such an easy, natural thing, the meeting of their lips. Jeremiah kissed her thoroughly, their breath mingling in the cold, until she heard the crunch of her uncle’s footsteps coming up from the barn through the snow.

  They broke their embrace. Uncle Alphus halted, studied them, then nodded, apparently accepting what he saw. He came nearer and, in his blunt way, addressed the practicality of the situation.

  “What will you do, the tw
o of you? Can you remain in Virginia safely?”

  Clare felt a clutch in her middle as she stepped back from Jeremiah to gauge his reaction. She’d not thought of the battle between the rivers at Point Pleasant for weeks, but her uncle’s implication was clear. Jeremiah had fought against the governor’s troops and not been officially pardoned. He’d been taken prisoner. By either of his names he was known—as a traitor.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “I don’t want you risking your freedom,” Clare said. “We can go anywhere. Even back to the Shawnees if we must.”

  “Do you mean that?” Jeremiah asked.

  “If that’s where you need to be, I’ll go there with you.”

  Alphus Litchfield looked alarmed at that. “Hold on now. Things being as they are—likely war coming, maybe even a break with the Crown—there may be no one left calling you a traitor. You could stay in Virginia. Or,” he added, “there’s always the Watauga.”

  “The what?” Jeremiah asked, then his face cleared. “You mean that independent colony, west of the Yadkin?”

  “It’s not exactly a colony,” Uncle Alphus replied, “but they’ve drafted a plan to govern themselves, and it might be a good opportunity for a man—and his kin—looking to start afresh.”

  “I think Uncle Alphus has already made up his mind to sell the mill and this farm and head west again,” Clare said, wondering if this was the path opening up for them all, at last.

  “I’ve been waiting to see you settled first,” Uncle Alphus said, “before I decided how to dispose of my doings here.”

  “You really are serious then? You’ll go?”

  “I suspect I’ve one last adventure in me. However, I don’t necessarily fancy going alone.” He caught Jeremiah’s gaze. “Not if I had strong young kin willing to venture with me.”

  Clare looked at the two men, young and not-quite-old, both eminently capable, and felt that in their company she wouldn’t be afraid to venture into the unknown. For Jeremiah it wouldn’t even be the unknown. The frontier was home to him, its people his.