by Lori Benton
Will he want to know me, even so? She clung to Two Hawks, her hands moving in a mother’s instinctive caress, under them the long, lean back she’d often stroked, the shoulders nearly as wide now as his father’s.
Then she gathered up her pieces and gently pushed her son away.
She’d tried to absorb what she could of this person called William Aubrey from the scraps Two Hawks brought her over the years, stories the girl told him, things he read in his brother’s letters. Her whole being yearned toward that young man on his way across the water, stretching toward him like the flames his brother was staring at now with a troubled gaze.
So troubled the muscles of his jaw clenched and his nostrils flared as he drew breath to speak.
“I am sorry,” he said.
“Why are you sorry?”
The sound that came from his throat was too strangled to be called a sob. “Sorry you have carried this pain so long. Sorry I have not known my brother. Sorry I have probably ruined things with Anna Catherine.”
Brown eyes reflected firelight, and a pain that made an answering ache twist in her belly even before what he said took on substance in her mind. Good Voice felt a dryness in her mouth. “What do you mean, ruined? Have you…done a thing to hurt her?”
Ai-ee, she thought as regret rippled over her son’s face. She waited in choked silence for him to tell her what he’d done.
He looked away, miserable with guilt. “I kissed her.”
Good Voice waited, breath suspended, but Two Hawks clenched his jaw tight and said no more. “You kissed her? That is what you did?”
He didn’t seem to hear the relief in her tone. “Yes! And now I do not know if she wants to see me ever again. She ran away, back across the fields to her home. I waited for her to come back, until what food I had was gone. She did not come.”
“Then you must be hungry.” It was a reflex, a mother’s response, certain her child needed to be fed, just as certain he hadn’t the sense to know it. But he wasn’t a child, and that he wasn’t hungry after so long a fast told her more than anything how deeply he felt for this girl he called Bear’s Heart.
Good Voice steadied herself, afraid there was more he wasn’t telling her. “Did anyone see you do this?”
That would be bad, if any of the girl’s people had seen it. She should never have let Two Hawks go so many times alone to her. Why had she let him get so close to the man who stole his brother, and close in another way to this girl who had turned his heart inside out?
Because of that cherished, tenuous link to her firstborn, forged through Two Hawks’s friendship with Anna Catherine. She’d allowed him to endanger himself, body and soul, because she couldn’t bear to give it up. What sort of mother was she to have done this?
“No,” Two Hawks was saying, looking as though he carried the weight of all their choices on his shoulders. “I do not think anyone knows about me. Or my father. Or you. At least…Anna Catherine did not tell them about us before. Maybe she has now. I do not know. Even if she does not tell, it will be harder now for me—for us—to get to William. It will be harder without Anna Catherine to speak for us. That is why I am sorry.”
Knowing that wasn’t the only reason for his pain, Good Voice reached for him, putting her hand on his dark head. “We will see your brother. God will make a way.” She stroked his hair, silently thankful that it wasn’t plucked away like a warrior’s. Not yet.
“Do you love that girl?”
“I want her for my wife.”
As he drew away, Good Voice felt the blood leave her face. She had known this girl was special to him but…her son wanted a white woman for a wife? Not one adopted and raised one of the People. One with no mother for her to speak to, to carry gifts to, to persuade her of Two Hawks’s worthiness to marry her daughter, to join her clan. There would be no clan for him to join. His children would have no clan. Had he thought about that?
“I am afraid of what my father will do when he hears William is returning,” Two Hawks said into the silence. “If he hurts Anna Catherine’s father, she will hate us. Hate me.”
“Stone Thrower will not hurt her father.” She said the words, but the instant they were out of her mouth she doubted them.
So did Two Hawks. “Do not try to tell me so. I have heard him say with his own mouth that he still has vengeance in his heart. That the dreams still come. They have a power over him, a part of him that he has not given over to Creator.”
Good Voice clenched her fists as rage boiled up in her heart, not against Stone Thrower but against the man she still thought of as Redcoat Aubrey. It dismayed her to know there was part of her she had held back as well, held back from being made new and clean. She forced her hands to relax, hoping her son was too distracted to have seen.
“I cannot let him hurt Anna Catherine’s father,” Two Hawks said. “Or I will have lost her. And it may be we will lose William. Or do you not know that after all this time that man is his father, too?”
That was true enough.
Good Voice was thinking now, hard and fast. Should they keep this knowledge from Stone Thrower? Two Hawks was right. His father had admitted he’d never truly laid aside the need for retribution. And William…He was no longer a baby who could be taken back by force, molded to a way of thinking, of being, but a man who could only be persuaded. Spilling blood that might be precious to him now would persuade him of nothing but hate, as Two Hawks had said.
Then she thought of something else. She was the one who lost their firstborn. It was from her side he was taken. Perhaps it had happened this way, this news coming while she was here and Stone Thrower wasn’t, so that she might have a chance to do what she failed to do years ago.
Guide me, Father in Heaven.
“We must tell your father your brother is returning,” she said. “But we do not have to tell him right away.”
That brought a flaring to Two Hawks’s eyes, hope leaping, stretching up tall in a steady flame. “When you go to the fish camp, do not tell him. I will go back and see if Anna Catherine comes to look for me. If she does not, I will go and put my fist to the door of their house to see her and give her father warning.”
Give the redcoat warning. That thought had never entered Good Voice’s mind. Looking into her son’s pleading eyes, she had a revelation: he had determined to forgive Aubrey, forgive completely, for the sake of his love for the man’s daughter. And in the heart of his gaze, she saw his hope that she would also forgive the man.
Hadn’t she forgiven the redcoat, long ago as she knelt outside the window of Kirkland’s house? What was this rage still doing in her heart? It wasn’t a killing rage, as Stone Thrower struggled with, but it wasn’t forgiveness.
Only one thing was certain in her mind. If there was any chance of William being part of their lives, then they must go to the man who raised him not bearing a war club but with the white beads of peace.
Stone Thrower had buried those beads and refused to dig them up again.
It felt like a dagger in her heart, excluding him from what she meant to do, but she couldn’t risk the old rage getting the best of him and ruining what might be their last chance to bridge the chasm that divided their son from his blood, his family, his people. “I will go to the fish camp. And I will keep this knowledge from Stone Thrower.”
“What will you say of me?” Two Hawks asked.
“I will think of something. I do not know how long we will have before your father questions your absence at the camp. Go back to that place quickly, my son. Even tonight. And Heavenly Father go with you.”
28
May 1776
Papa had left her at Lydia’s and driven a wagon to Albany to meet the sloop coming up the Hudson, bearing William home. Since they couldn’t be sure of the exact day of his arrival, Papa meant to hire a room while he waited. That had been four days ago, and it was all Anna could do not to prowl Lydia’s house like an agitated cat. She ran a rag over the dining room’s sideboard, breathing fumy
linseed oil, her thoughts batted like a shuttlecock between William and Two Hawks.
The notion of Two Hawks’s twin, stolen at birth, haunted her. To never know where he was, whether he lived…It was almost too horrible to dwell upon. Perhaps it was so for Two Hawks. He’d no sooner told her about his brother before he dropped the subject as if it were a snake, turned to her and asked her to keep a place for him in her heart, then swept away all thought of missing brothers as the world narrowed to his mouth on hers—
“Anna?”
Startled, she snatched up the polishing rag she’d let fall to the floor. Lydia had entered through the kitchen passage, arms around a stack of pewter dishes. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Obviously.” Lydia grinned as she set the dishes on the sideboard.
Anna clenched the oily rag and returned to polishing, nearly as mortified to be caught reliving that kiss as she’d have been had anyone come upon her and Two Hawks in the midst of it.
I only need you.
Because she hadn’t known what she needed, she’d run like the frightened child she’d once been. Every moment since, when she wasn’t thinking about William, she’d wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t run but let Two Hawks go on kissing her.
“I think we can use it for a mirror now.” Anna’s hand jerked to a stop as Lydia set a candle atop the sideboard and peered at the flame’s reflection in the gleaming wood. She gave Anna’s face careful scrutiny. “Shall we break for tea?”
In the kitchen, Lydia brewed a pot of what she called her garden blend, which changed from day to day. This time it was strawberry leaf and lemon balm. Anna had scrubbed her hands and removed her soiled apron. Both she and Lydia were overdressed for housecleaning; they wanted to be ready whenever William and Papa arrived. As ready as may be.
Anna’s heart gave a thud. She curled her fingers round the steaming teacup and stared at a smudge on the blue cuff at her elbow. Lydia, in plum linen, sat across the table from her and sighed. “Waiting is most wearisome.” When Anna didn’t respond, she added, “But what news we’ll have to tell when they arrive—though like as not they’ll have heard about Sir John already, fast as news flies to Albany.”
Anna’s thoughts flew not eastward but westward. Did Two Hawks know the late Sir William’s son, John Johnson, had followed Guy Johnson’s lead and fled to Canada?
“And all those families loyal to the Johnsons gone with him.” Lydia paused to sip her tea. “To think of women and children forced across those mountains. Poor things must be half-starved by now.”
Anna scoured her mind for something to say. She’d heard that General Washington looked to draw the Six Nations in as allies, woo them away from the British, if possible. Surely not the Mohawks, so loyal to the Johnsons and the Crown. Probably not the Senecas, closest to the British in their lake forts. The Oneidas alone among the Six Nations seemed inclined to support the colonists, but what of the Onondagas, Tuscaroras, and Cayugas? Would the Great Peace between the nations be broken, as Two Hawks feared it might be?
She longed to speak of these things to Lydia, but conscience stopped her. Lydia would want to know why she cared, why she knew so much about it. It was Papa she must tell first about Two Hawks. And soon.
I’m being courted. By an Oneida brave.
Feeling warmth steal into her face, she took a gulp of tea and nearly scalded her mouth. She didn’t know how Indians went about such things as courting, but surely Two Hawks wouldn’t have kissed her as he had if he didn’t want…more. Was it marriage he wanted?
Anna’s belly turned over at the thought. Would Papa countenance such a thing? She was nineteen, old enough to be contemplating matrimony. With a tradesman. Or a farmer.
But Two Hawks was a Christian. More of a Christian than anyone I know, barring Lydia.
How sweet was her memory of that Day of the Bear, as she thought of it now, when he prayed with her and she opened her heart to a faith she’d somehow known she lacked. Bear’s Heart, he’d called her that day. A woman baptized in courage.
Why then had she run from him? She ought to have been braver, taken him home and made everything open. She ought to have done so long ago when all there had been between them was friendship. It was more than that now. Anna closed her eyes, shutting out Lydia, the tea, William’s imminent homecoming, remembering the naked longing in Two Hawks’s eyes…
“I suppose we shan’t recognize William.” Anna opened her eyes to find Lydia watching her with a curious, almost speculative look. “Too bad we’ve not had even a sketch of him all these years.”
Anna’s belly turned over again. Now she hadn’t only Papa to tell about Two Hawks but William as well. Unless William was the one she should tell first. Perhaps we can tell Papa together if—
From the street came the rattling approach of wheels. Anna held her breath. Across the table Lydia’s teacup paused midway to her lips. When the rattling faded, they exchanged a grin, acknowledging their nerves.
Lydia sipped her tea, then fingered the rim of her cup, a frown knitting her brows. “William hasn’t mentioned anything of the sort in his letters to you? What he looks like now.”
Anna shrugged. “I suppose he looks as he always has, only…grown up. Like me.”
Lydia swept her with a wry look, but the question made Anna think of the William she remembered from nine years ago. A blue-eyed boy in breeches, racing through muggy cornfields, fetching her treats behind his mother’s back.
Lydia had fallen silent. Anna looked up to find her expression, momentarily unguarded, drawn with unhappiness. Was it to do with Papa? With a prick of memory, Anna recalled the poorly concealed strain between them when Papa saw her into Lydia’s keeping before he left for Albany. Lydia had made no mention of a quarrel. In fact, she’d barely mentioned Papa the past four days.
“Lydia,” she began. “Is there something the matter between…?”
Out in the street came the grind of wheels again. This time it halted without passing on.
Abandoning their tea, they hurried into the sitting room, which opened to the narrow front entry. Voices outside. One of them was Papa’s.
Lydia gave her hand a squeeze and went to open the door. Anna’s insides writhed as late spring sunlight spilled into the entryway, illuminating Lydia’s sweep of plum skirt and the winter cloaks hanging in a row, pattens lined below them, not yet put away.
“William!” Lydia exclaimed, stepping out of view.
Anna wanted to rush forward, but her feet had taken root.
“Lydia,” said a young man’s voice. “Look at you—so small you are!”
Papa came first into the sitting room, limping from long hours in the wagon, looking tired, strained. Behind him another figure, lithe and tall, dressed in a tailored brown suit with a high white stock and buckled shoes, stepped into the light from the sitting room windows, removing his hat as he did so, uncovering thick hair tailed back—not the blond-brown Anna remembered but a darker shade.
The young man caught sight of her and halted.
Anna felt the ponderous thudding of her heart, an eternity of bewilderment stretching between each beat as she sought for a scrap of resemblance to Papa, or Heledd Aubrey, or her hazy memory of the boy she’d known, in the person standing before her now.
All her mind could scream at her, impossibly, was Two Hawks.
The likeness wasn’t perfect. William’s hair had darkened, but not to black. The startled eyes fixed on her were blue, not brown. His complexion was swarthy for a white man’s, but only a little. Yet in every other way he might have been Two Hawks: the wide, bladed jut of cheekbones, the smooth sweep of brows, the molding of his slightly parted lips, curved at the corners as though hiding a smile.
“William?” she said, certain her eyes deceived her.
“Anna—” He took a step toward her, clutching his hat, then shot Papa a look of stunned accusation. “Father…you ought to have warned me she’d grown into such a beauty.” He uttered a shaky lau
gh, and it was Two Hawks’s laugh. Two Hawks’s voice. The same timbre, the same tones, but with a lilt as thick as Papa’s.
Lydia and Papa were hanging back on opposite sides of the room. Papa said something in response to William, but the words didn’t penetrate because William had gained possession of himself and come closer…was standing in front of her…was reaching for her hand even as she lifted it for him to take. His lips brushed her knuckles, as over her hand his eyes grinned down into hers. “Well, Anna. Did I not tell you I’d one day be bigger?”
She heard Lydia give a small laugh. Without intending to do so, Anna snatched back her hand and flung her arms around her brother. With her cheek pressed to the breast of his coat, she held him and burst into tears. “You’re here. Oh, William—you sound like a Welshman!”
He rocked back, then steadied himself, arms coming around her. She heard the beat of his heart, pounding like hers, as in a voice half-choked he said, “It’s what I am then, aye?”
No, she thought. It isn’t. Because except for the clothing, holding him was exactly like holding Two Hawks.
Anna jerked her head back to stare up at his face, understanding flaring like a musket flash, leaving behind a choking billow of denial. It couldn’t be. William was Heledd’s son, Papa’s son—William Llewellyn Aubrey, born during the siege of Fort William Henry, saved out of the massacre in which her parents had perished, from which Papa had rescued her. Fort William Henry…where there had been plenty of soldiers in red coats. British officers. Like Papa.
And captive Indian women?
No. He never said it was Fort William Henry. Besides, William was white.
“Anna?” William’s brows tightened in a look of concern so dizzyingly familiar that she stepped back from him, trembling. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost. Look you, I promise you I’m truly here.”
She was making a scene, one she couldn’t explain. She glanced at Lydia, standing awkwardly in the dining room doorway. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect to be so…”
