Wild Yearning

by Penelope Williamson

  “Oh, I don’t mind.” Elizabeth’s face was bright and relaxed. Oddly, Delia thought, the pregnancy seemed to have done a lot toward reconciling the young reverend’s wife to life in the wilderness. “Each wheel has its own peculiarities,” Elizabeth explained. “That’s why it’s best I show you on your own.”

  “It’s Mary’s wheel.”

  “Yours now.”

  Nat wouldn’t agree, Delia thought, although she didn’t say so. As they passed the orchard, she noticed that last night’s wind had knocked down a lot of apples from the trees. She took Elizabeth’s hand. “Let’s gather up some apples and roast them while we’re spinning. It will make a nice treat for the girls when they come home later after their first day of school.”

  “You’re good with those girls,” Elizabeth said, laughing as she allowed Delia to lead her toward the orchard. “I imagine you and Nat are anxious to have one of your own.”

  Delia looked quickly away so that Elizabeth wouldn’t catch the sudden rush of tears that filled her eyes. She would never have a baby as long as Nat slept on the shakedown in the linter. She didn’t want Nat’s baby anyway; she wanted Ty’s.

  Delia made a basket of her short gown and they began to fill it with the shiny red fruit. Elizabeth joked that her skirts were too full of baby to find room for apples. Their laughter rang in the clear October air.

  A bevy of migrating ducks flew by, so many that for a moment they blotted out the brassy autumn sun and the flap of their wings sounded like a windstorm. It seemed dark and suddenly cold, and in the distance they heard the cry of a wolf.

  Elizabeth shivered and the old fear crept back into her eyes. Her hands curved around, protecting her stomach.

  “Something’s wrong …” Delia said. It was a feeling she had; her da would have said someone had just spit on her grave.

  Instinctively, she turned toward the house…

  She screamed.

  Nat buried his ax in a nearby stump and hunkered down before the fire, warming his hands on a noggin of hot cider. Raw blisters stung Nat’s palms and he winced as he pressed the noggin to his hands; it seemed it always took a couple weeks of swinging the ax to build up a good pad of calluses.

  Nat let the talk and laughter of the other loggers flow around him as the crew took their mid-morning break. He didn’t know too many of the men from Topsham and he wasn’t much interested in what they had to say. He was too busy thinking of what Delia had said, or rather shouted, at him earlier that morning … about him having to accept that Mary was dead and that he had a new wife now.

  Delia.

  He wished he knew how he felt about her. She aggravated him no end sometimes. But he had to admit she’d turned out to be wonderful with the girls, gentle and loving. She was pretty, too. Some days when he’d look at her his breath would catch. Even when they were courting, Mary had never made him picture—

  But he slammed his mind shut on that disturbing thought.

  He thought of sons instead. He could use some boys around the farm. It had always disappointed him that Mary had given him girls. Delia was slim around the hips as well, but there was a lustiness about her that made him guess she’d breed boys.

  Thoughts of a lusty Delia in bed beneath him, breeding sons, caused a stirring in Nat’s loins. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, but the erection always wilted before it fully bloomed because of the guilt, the gut-wrenching guilt, that came with it. He couldn’t hurt, couldn’t betray, Mary in that way. He knew he’d never manage it anyway—not with picturing Mary looking down from heaven, watching them.

  He decided to think about something safe. The slaughtering, for instance. That would have to be done next week. The hogs would have to be butchered to fill the pork barrels for the coming winter. And there were the windrows in the field he’d cleared last July that needed burning before the first snowfall-Just then he spotted Colonel Bishop coming down the trail from the direction of the Merrymeeting camp, which was three miles to the east of them, on the other side of the hill. The mast agent walked briskly, swinging his elbows, a musket hanging lightly from one big hand. Nat hadn’t brought his musket with him today, but now for some strange reason he was possessed with a sudden, fervent wish that he had. He didn’t know why, except that maybe it had something to do with hearing the wolf howl again. His eyes were drawn across the fire to the boy, who had stood up as well. The boy felt it too, whatever it was, but this time it was Nat who shivered.

  Suddenly there was a soft whistling sound. Colonel Bishop flung up his hands, arching his back, before falling face first onto the ground. For two seconds all was stunned quiet … and then the forest erupted into a cacophony of bubbling yells, bloodcurdling whoops, and screams of terror.

  Naked and painted, brandishing war clubs and tomahawks, the Abenaki warriors seemed to come swarming out of the forest, like wasps from a disturbed hive. For a moment Nat stood frozen, watching as one bent over Colonel Bishop’s body to take his scalp and jerking up in surprise when the curled bobwig came off in his hands. Hysterical laughter bubbled in Nat’s throat at the sight of the Indian’s shocked face, laughter that was choked off when in the next second a Topsham man fell across Nat’s feet, his head almost sliced clean off his neck by a tomahawk.

  My God, Nat thought, his mind reeling in horror, I’m going to die. He lunged for his ax buried in the stump several feet away.

  He didn’t make it. An Indian pounced on the ax, jerking it free with a triumphant yell and sinking it in the back of a man who ran past him. The crackle of gunfire joined the whooping war cries and stinking black clouds of smoke drifted over the camp. From behind him, Nat heard his felling partner, the blond-haired boy, screaming in horror and he whirled in time to see a war club swing from the bronzed fist of a tall, naked Abenaki warrior … a club swinging hard and fast toward the boy’s unprotected face…

  And Nat ran.

  Terror squeezed the air from his lungs and blackened his vision. He had been swift on his feet once, tall as he was, but that was before he’d lost his foot. He staggered across the camp, heading for the cover of a stand of spruce, the stand he had been clearing just a few minutes earlier. He heard a footfall behind him, felt hot rancid breath on the back of his neck. Die, his panicked mind raced, I’m going to die. He tried to run faster. His wooden foot twisted beneath him just as he felt a searing pain on the back of his head. He swung around, throwing up his arm, and then he was falling, falling back, falling down, down, down into blackness.

  Flames crackled, licking at the cedar-shingled roof with fiery fingers, and smoke clouds billowed over the clearing, raining hot soot and ashes. A horse’s panicked whinny ended in a scream as its throat was slashed with a scalping knife, and the blood sprayed and gushed in an arc through the air. It was the bay mare, the wedding gift from Ty.

  They had tried to run, but they hadn’t gotten beyond the edge of the orchard before more savages emerged from the forest, surrounding them. The Indians played a game with them now, enclosing them in a loose circle, taunting them with cackles and whoops, and tossing their knives and tomahawks from hand to hand. The metal blades gleamed wetly, reflecting the dancing flames.

  Elizabeth clung to Delia, one arm pressed protectively across her swollen belly, her breaths sawing in her throat. “My baby,” Elizabeth kept moaning. “Oh God, please don’t let them hurt my baby …” Delia slid her arm around Elizabeth’s waist, drawing the girl against her. Unknowingly, she still cradled the apples in the lap of her short gown.

  The warriors were naked, without even a breechclout to cover their sex. On their chests, in red ochre, were painted identical heads of snarling wolves. Their faces were painted as well, each one differently. One had vermilion stripes across his cheeks, like three slashed and bleeding cuts. Another resembled an owl with his face smeared in yellow, his eyes ringed in white. Flames from the burning house glistened off the grease that liberally coated their bronze skin. They smelled sweetly rancid, like butter left in the sun too lo
ng.

  Over the crackling flames Delia heard the clanging of the blockhouse alarm bell. Suddenly one of the men took a step toward them. He was tall, with mammoth shoulders, and he wore a necklace of strange beads that fit snugly around his thick neck. His lips pulled back into a snarl-smile, revealing even white teeth. He fired a sentence at them, something quick and fast and menacing.

  Delia’s throat worked as she tried to talk. “I d-don’t understand. I don’t s-speak Abenaki.”

  His hand whipped up, pressing the knife blade against her throat, deep enough to slice the skin. She felt the blood, cool and wet, trickle down her neck, but she forced herself to look up into the Indian’s beak-nosed face and willed herself not to show fear. His eyes were as hard and black as obsidian, and merciless.

  The arm cradling the apples fell to her side and the fruit rolled onto the ground. The Indian stepped back and with a short, harsh laugh, speared an apple with the tip of his knife. As he bit into it, those even white teeth flashed in the sun.

  Another fist lashed out, gripping a hank of Elizabeth’s hair. He said something in his guttural tongue that made the others whoop and cackle and laugh some more.

  Elizabeth emitted an animal-like whimpering sound and her eyes rolled. Delia dug her nails into the girl’s arm. “Don’t faint. If you faint they’ll scalp you.” There were fresh scalps hanging from their arrow quivers and the handles of their tomahawks, so fresh they dripped blood onto the ground. One looked like Nancy Sewall’s reddish-brown hair.

  A high-pitched yipping sound came from the river. It must have been some sort of signal, for suddenly the taunting game, if it was a game, was over. The women’s wrists were quickly bound in front of them with leather thongs, which were attached to short leashes, and they were dragged at a fast trot into the forest.

  They ran for a long time, long enough for a stitch to form in Delia’s side and her lungs to start burning. She was afraid for Elizabeth, that having to run like this would harm the baby. From time to time she would twist back to be sure Elizabeth, who ran behind her, was all right—only to be jerked forward by the leash with such force that her arms were nearly pulled from their sockets.

  They slowed as they climbed into the hills, and Delia realized they were heading toward the lumber camps. Hope welled within her at the thought that they might still be rescued.

  It died with a gasp of horror a few moments later as they were dragged into a clearing strewn with bodies of slaughtered men. The air reeked of blood and gunpowder and fear. More Indians, naked and oiled and painted, cavorted around the campfire like red devils straight from hell. Another, smaller raiding party emerged from the woods across the clearing, bearing one prisoner on the end of a leash: Sara Kemble.

  She had been run hard as well. Her face was as purple as a beet root and her cheeks puffed as she drew in drafts of air. When she saw Delia and Elizabeth she screamed at them, “They’ve killed the Sewalls. Killed and scalped them, the murdering savag—”

  A fist in the small of Sara’s back sent the air from her lungs in a keening wail. Delia started toward her, only to be pulled up short by the man who held her leash. Elizabeth continued to stare straight ahead, not even blinking, as if she were oblivious to her surroundings.

  An Indian danced in front of Delia, waving his tomahawk and yipping like a dog. Delia recoiled, then uttered a cry of shock for the man had Colonel Bishop’s yellow bobwig perched backward on his grease-coated black head. Eyes wide with horror, she looked more closely at the bodies strewn around the logging camp. She found the colonel by his shiny shaved head. He lay sprawled across the trail, an arrow in his back. Hot tears clogged Delia’s throat. Poor Anne.

  She started to turn away, unable to bear the sight, when she noticed a slight flickering of the colonel’s eyelids. Just in time she froze her face to keep from showing any reaction, for surely if the savages discovered he was still alive he’d be slaughtered within seconds.

  Slowly, the colonel’s eyes opened and fastened onto her face. He was trying to send her a silent message. A message of hope, of warning? She couldn’t tell. Then his eyes focused on something in back of her and they widened a bit, darkening with horror. At that moment Sara Kemble screamed, only to have the scream cut off by the back of her captor’s hand. As if pulled by an invisible power outside her will, Delia turned around.

  The big Indian who had cut Delia’s neck was bent over a body at the edge of the clearing. Delia gasped with horror for she saw long, rangy legs wearing golo boots that were twisted awkwardly together like a pigtail, and the blood-soaked coat-tails of a blue fly coat. The Indian blocked her view of the man’s head, but then he shifted a bit, revealing a bloodied pulpy mass of smashed and unrecognizable flesh that had once been a man’s face. Delia emitted a tiny, whimpering cry. Slowly, the Indian straightened, turning toward her and grinning demonically.

  Tossing back his head, he howled, a long, penetrating wail of triumph, and swung his fist into the air. And from the fist dangled a scalp of straw-colored hair.

  “Easy, easy,” Ty crooned softly, as he worked the barbed arrowhead slowly out of Colonel Bishop’s shoulder. “Easy now.”

  The arrow came free with a sudden, sucking pop. Blood welled up out of the hole it left. Ty pressed a wadded cloth against the wound, his nostrils flaring at the stink of the blood, which seemed part of the air he breathed, like mist.

  “Am I going to live?” Giles Bishop gasped in between sobbing breaths as Ty helped him to sit up.

  “You’ll be dancing with Anne at the Christmas frolic.” Ty leaned the colonel against the tree trunk and held a noggin of water to his pinched lips. “I see you lost your hair.”

  The man wheezed an unsteady laugh and started to reach up to rub his bald head, then grimaced from the pain. He looked slightly befuddled, as if he weren’t quite sure what had happened. “What are you doing here, Ty?”

  “I was over in Topsham, setting a broken leg. I heard shots and saw the smoke. From the looks of it I’d say all the homesteads along this side of the Kennebec are burning.” He tried not to think of Delia. If she were dead, it had already happened and there was nothing he could do about it. Later he would bear the pain of it. If he could.

  As Ty crouched on one knee beside the colonel, he looked around the clearing, at the carnage the Abenaki war party had left behind. He thought that after ten years of living with it, he should have been inured to death, but the sight brought a sharp stabbing pain behind his eyes, as if splinters had been jammed under his lids. Splinters under the eyelids—it was a favorite torture of the Abenaki.

  He forced himself to study the dead. With guilty relief, he realized this must have been the Topsham crew, for he saw no Merrymeeting men. Then he spotted a familiar bright blue fly coat, although the face of the man who wore it had been smashed beyond recognition by an Abenaki war club.

  Colonel Bishop noted the direction of Ty’s gaze. “Nat Parkes,” he confirmed. “I watched them take his hair.” Then his eyes widened as he suddenly remembered. “And they’ve got—”

  A twig snapped beneath a man’s foot and Ty’s hand gripped his musket. It was already primed and ready to fire, and he sighted it into the woods, toward the snapping twig. He didn’t really think it was an Indian, however; the man was making too damn much noise.

  “Don’t shoot, Ty! It’s me.” Sam Randolf barged out of the forest, followed by two other Merrymeeting men. “We heard shots and—Keerist!” he exclaimed when he got a good look at the slaughter in the clearing.

  Ty felt a hand on his arm and looked down into Colonel Bishop’s white, sweating face. “I started to say … they got his wife.”

  “Sam’s wife?”

  “No, Nat’s wife. Delia. The savages have Delia and Mrs. Hooker. And Sara. Sara Kemble.”

  Ty went cold all over. There was a fierce rushing sound in his ears, as if he’d just stepped beneath a waterfall. “How were they painted?” he heard himself ask from a long way away.

  “Wolf …”
Giles Bishop sighed as he drifted into unconsciousness.

  Ty looked northeast, up into the blue spruce-covered hills. Malsum, he thought. The wolf, totem of the Norridgewock tribe.

  Delia’s feet were bruised and bleeding from the unseen roots and stones that lay beneath the short brown needles carpeting the ground. She was so thirsty her mouth felt as if it had been swabbed with a dry cotton rag. Every breath was bitter-sharp, like the bite of an ax into a tree.

  They followed a deer trail, and the meshed sunlight that filtered through the thick canopy of trees was fading now. They’d been running steadily since they’d left the lumber camp, a ground-eating, loping gait that the Indians managed easily, but that soon had the women gasping for air and stumbling from exhaustion. When they tripped, their thighs and calves were thrashed mercilessly with the leather thongs.

  At least their hands had been unbound and Delia had one arm around Elizabeth, half carrying her. Elizabeth had embraced her fear like a shield, withdrawing deep inside herself to a place beyond pain, beyond awareness. Even the cut of the lash brought no response, not even a moan. Delia was afraid that if she didn’t drag the girl along, Elizabeth would simply sit down in the middle of the forest and watch the tomahawk fall without a blink of her pale gray eyes.

  Delia knew the savages would murder them if they couldn’t keep up, because they’d almost killed Sara Kemble. They had gone barely a mile when the fat woman had tripped over a root and landed with a jar that sent her mobcap tumbling over her eyes. She’d remained there on her hands and knees, her breath whistling like a tea kettle, sobbing and cursing. One of the Indians, a man with a horribly pocked face, had stood calmly over Sara, his war club raised in the air, within a split second of bringing it down on her bowed head.

  “No!” Delia had cried, unthinkingly throwing herself against the man’s arm, throwing him off balance. It had been a terrible mistake, for he’d whirled on her, his lips peeled back in a snarl, the war club raised again, at her this time. She had seen the promise of her death in his eyes. Eyes that were hard and flat like chips of polished coal.