Her behavior would doubtless seem perfectly scandalous in the eyes of the Lord, yet far worse in Sarah’s mind was the realization that although she felt shy and embarrassed in Kingston’s company, she was not the least bit remorseful. The fact that she knew little about her lover compounded the sin tenfold, for not only had she fallen, she’d fallen into the outstretched arms of a veritable stranger.
He must have sensed her turmoil, for he spoke without looking up from his task. “Something troubles Madame?”
Sarah felt the blood rise to her cheeks. “Yes.” She looked down at her hands, which were covered with soft gray pin feathers. “I suppose there is a great deal that weighs heavily on my heart and my mind this evening.”
“The heart I can heal,” he said with an answering smile. “The head—well, that is not so easily fixed. Will you tell me about it? Or shall I hazard a guess?”
“In light of—” Sarah broke off, greatly discomfited at broaching the subject of their recent intimate encounter, then wet her lips, gathered her courage, and tried again. “It has occurred to me how little we know one another. I fear we are virtual strangers, and yet—”
“Yet, we have made love, after a fashion?” he supplied with a nonchalance Sarah found maddening. “Expressed our passion for one another in an act of physical intimacy? Your body and mine, entwined, sharing sexual completion?”
Her blush ripening, Sarah inverted her face. “Indeed, yes. All of that.”
His eyes were warm in the glow of the fire he was kindling. “Sarah, we care for one another, we deal well together, and I am as taken with you as you are with me. What else matters?”
“The past, for one thing,” Sarah replied. “The present. And certainly the future.”
He frowned at the kindling he was adding to the flames. “The past is over and done with. Why drag all of that unpleasantness out into the light? As for the future—” he shrugged easily. “Who can say what the Creator has planned for us?”
Sarah lifted her chin, prepared to do battle. “I should very much like to know you better.”
“Would you not rather know the man I am now, than the boy I once was?”
“By discovering the latter, I shall better come to understand the former,” Sarah insisted.
He gave her a searching look, then shook his head and sighed. “Madame, you are impossibly stubborn, intent always on having your own way.”
Sarah slanted him a look from beneath the cover of her lashes, holding firm. “I bowed to your request earlier today and followed where my heart led. Now, I ask that you bow to mine. Tell me about the village where you dwelt amongst your mother’s people. What was it like, growing up there?”
He took the bird from her hands and finished plucking it, quartered it, and then placed it on the spit he had fashioned over the shallow fire pit. “It was a good place to be a youth,” he said. “In those days, game was still plentiful. My uncles taught me to hunt with a bow, and later on, to shoot the rifle my father presented to me during my ninth summer. They were kind to me in those days, before I went away—even Great Wind, who hated whites and whom I much admired. They were the sons of Gray Wolf, strong men, who took great care to teach me the things a boy must know in order to become a man, and they held great sway upon my early life.”
Sarah smiled, adding the turkey feathers to the fire—all but one, which he rescued from the flames. He held it to the light as Sarah brushed the pin feathers from her hands. “It sounds idyllic,” she said. “I knew no such freedom growing up in London. My father was a military man, who later joined the Moravian Church, and my mother was very protective of me.”
His expression solemn, he pulled the strings that secured her prayer cap beneath her chin, releasing the neat bow and plucking the cap from her head. Carefully, he removed the pins that held her chignon in place, arranged the shining brown mass over one shoulder and affixed the turkey feather among the waves so that it curved gracefully at her cheek. When he’d finished, he sat back to study her. “Now, you look the part of Sauvage’s woman.”
Sarah touched the feather with reverent fingers. His comment, casually uttered, warmed her heart considerably. “The village,” she prompted, her eyes cast demurely downward.
“You asked if my early life was idyllic,” he said with a sigh. “Yes, I suppose that it was. But a man never truly appreciates the beauty of his home or knows how precious it is until he has lost it. I would never know the peace of my early life in that valley until after I was taken from it. When at last I returned, the peace had been shattered, the fields and village razed, the people scattered to the four winds.”
“It is still possible to find peace,” Sarah put in. “There are places yet where men and women live in harmony with their neighbors, red and white, English, or French.”
“Perhaps for other men these places still exist.”
“Not just for other men,” Sarah existed, “but for you, too.”
He shook his raven head, and the slight movement set his scarlet silk tassels to swaying. “This rifle is my life,” he said, laying a hand upon the weapon, always close at hand. “I was not born to guide a plow, nor was I meant to deal in trade, as my father discovered, soon after our arrival in Quebec.”
“He took you into his trading business?”
“You are surprised,” he said with a slight curve of his sensual mouth, the same mouth that had worshipped her breasts earlier. The thought made Sarah tingle. “That was Claudia Baer’s reaction as well, though I fear it was not as politely expressed.”
“She did not approve?”
“She was outraged. As Jean’s mother, and my father’s legal wife, she viewed my presence in her household as an insult. I was a half-breed, after all, neither wholly red, nor truly white, and the product of an illicit affair, a fact that she never allowed me to forget. That it was an affair of the heart, and not just the flesh, compounded the injury.”
“I remember that first night as if it were yesterday. She and my father argued bitterly. I had been deposited in a second floor bedchamber that overlooked the city, and late into the night I stood at the small shuttered window, gazing at the lamplight pouring from the houses while Claudia complained bitterly, and my father roared his intentions. I was a son of the household, he said, and I was to be treated as such. I would share Jean’s tutor, take my meals at table with the rest of the family, and spend my evenings at his warehouse, learning the business of trade, just as Jean was doing.”
“It must have been difficult for you,” Sarah sympathized. “Being suddenly thrust into a household full of hostile strangers, with only your father to act as a buffer.”
“That first year, I was sick inside,” Kingston admitted. “I missed the village, the wooded hills, the black and silent river. Most of all, I missed my family. My mother was gone, but two of my uncles were still living, and I spent a great deal of time wishing that I had been permitted to stay with them. My father was a different man in Quebec than he was residing at our village. He drank too much brandy, and was often away from the house until late into the night. When present, he was brooding and silent. At times, I felt that he hated Quebec as much as I did, more so, perhaps, for it was a hell of his own making.”
“Was he aware of your unhappiness?” Sarah asked. “Aware of his wife’s hostility?”
“I think that he must have sensed my discontent, my loneliness: certainly he was aware of Claudia’s hatred of me, yet I doubt he ever realized the lengths to which she would go to have her revenge against him. As for Jean, Father had a certain blindness where he was concerned, an ability to overlook all but the most blatant disregard of his dictates. And Jean was Claudia’s child in every sense of the word.”
Sarah frowned. “She turned him against you?”
“It was more that she cultivated the scorn that was already present,” Kingston explained. “They shared one mind, one will, one malevolence. Once Claudia slyly suggested that I took too much pride in my savage appearance. Shortly ther
eafter, Jean enlisted the aid of a footman to overpower me, and cut off my hair with a carving knife. It was possibly the worst thing he had ever done to me, though he would never know that—worse than all of the beatings, the humiliations, the threats, for my unshorn hair marked me as one of the People. By cutting my hair, he had stolen a part of my identity.”
“How terrible!” Sarah said. “What happened after? Did your father discover Jean’s perfidy? Was he punished?”
Kingston smiled at her reaction, but there was sadness in his eyes. “He was found out, and sternly warned against further acts of hostility, but never truly punished. The incident seemed to set my father to thinking. For the first time since bringing me into the house, he seemed to realize that I was having trouble adjusting to my new life, and deemed that a stronger course of action as the best medicine for what ailed me.
“The very next morning, a maid brought a gleaming copper tub and a pair of scissors to my room, and Jean, Claudia, and my father watched as the boy White Wolf was transformed into Kingston Sauvage. My skin was roughly scrubbed as I had seen others ceremoniously scrubbed in the river prior to adoption. That ceremonial scrubbing performed in the village had signified the cleansing away of ever last drop of white blood, and from that moment on, I was to be a citizen of New France in every sense of the word.
“When I rose from the tub, my skin was raw and bleeding, my hair was clubbed at my nape, and I was forbidden to utter so much as a single word of my mother’s tongue.”
“How unfeeling! How heartless and cold!” Sarah said, incensed for the injustices he had suffered at the hands of his family. “What happened then? Did you obey?”
Leaning forward, he dropped a kiss on Sarah’s cheek. “At first I was rebelliously silent. I hated the stiff clothing and uncomfortable shoes. Most of all, I hated my father for forcing me to this shameful pass. As time went on, I spoke French and English almost exclusively, resorting to my own language only when I was alone. My reluctance to speak faded, and only my resentment for Antoine Baer and his world remained.”
“You did not forgive him?” Sarah questioned. “His actions were deplorable, it’s true, but it is our place to forgive others, so that we ourselves can be forgiven.”
He smiled at that. “Yes, but you are full of goodness, and I am not. My father died of an apoplectic seizure during my eighteenth summer, our difficulties still unresolved. That same evening, I departed Quebec and never looked back.”
“And from there, you returned to the village of your birth?” By now, Sarah was thoroughly engrossed in the tale, filled with empathy for the young man he had been.
“Yes, but when I arrived at the village, nothing was the same. The old life was gone—only Great Wind remained, and he was old and bitter. He did not recognize me in my white man’s clothing, and cropped hair. And though I told him that I was White Wolf, he remained unconvinced. ‘White Wolf’, he said, was a young man who had shown great promise as a warrior, and in whom he had taken great pride. He said that he had been a good hand with a rifle, and had possessed an eye as sharp as a hawk in flight... but he had gone away to become a Frenchman, and alas he was no longer. Sadly, Great Wind was right. The Delaware boy was gone, and Kingston Sauvage, the man who had taken his place, and who had not belonged in Quebec, did not belong in the village, either. Indeed, he did not belong anywhere. He was lost, doomed to exist between worlds.”
Sarah’s sapphire eyes were shining as Sauvage finished recounting the tale of his past. “Not lost. There is a place where you could belong, a people who would rejoice in your presence should you choose to dwell among them. A place where peace, love, and harmony still exist. It is the Shining City. Come with me, Kingston. Come and dwell among us. To know that you are near and safe would bring me great joy.”
Sauvage found her plea oddly touching, for he knew that it was genuine. Reaching out, he brushed her cheek with his knuckles. Her skin was so soft, her sudden blush becoming. “And it would make me miserable. To be so near to you, to think of our time together, and to know you were wed to another?” He shook his head. “No, Madame. My capacity for generosity is not as great as yours.” He smiled down into her face, so grave in the firelight and turned his hand to cup her cheek. “You know that I cannot accept your invitation. I am not a man of peace.”
Sarah’s invitation was set aside, but not forgotten. Stubbornly, it lingered in the back of Sauvage’s mind, to be secretly touched upon again and again throughout the course of the evening.
Was the Shining City truly a place where peace and brotherhood still existed? And if so, would a man like him be welcome there? It hardly seemed possible.
Yet, he found the prospect strangely appealing. It had been so long since he had felt a sense of belonging. Not since his boyhood in Kit-han-ee had he belonged anywhere, and for a moment he allowed himself to imagine a life with Sarah, and the ever-present shadow of her betrothed was far, far away.
The Ohio Country
Late August, 1757
Hergus Samp was dozing in her chair by the fireside when the vision came to her. Seventy-seven years of hard living and the death of a quartet of husbands had taught her to heed the gift when it came, and to prepare.
Before the first sifting of soot trickled down the chimney, Hergus had doused her straw tick with a vial of bear oil and thrown it on the fire. As the flames tore up the chimney, the first of the attackers lost his grip and fell, scattering sparks and ashes. The painted Huron rose to a crouch and the old woman cleaved his skull with the ax she kept by the hearth.
“Cum on, noo, ye heathen bastards, daen’t be shy! Send me down two more, and I’ll bury them beside my poor dead husbands.”
Another tried to enter by way of the chimney and he, too, fell beneath the old woman’s weapon. When the chimney piece fell quiet, Hergus turned her attention to the heavy plank door, which nearly buckled beneath the savages’ blows. Hergus shoved the table against the door and once again hefted her ax.
Outside the door, La Bruin gave the signal to his lieutenant to break the door in. The Indian was reluctant. “The Chippewa have gone. They say the old woman is bad medicine, a warrior squaw, and they do not wish to stand against her.’
“To hell with the Chippewa!” the renegade roared. “Red Legs, Standing Elk! Break down the door! No one defies La Bruin!”
Red Legs and Standing Elk rushed forward, chopping furiously at the door with their war axes. The door fell inward at the top. Red Legs tried to squeeze through, screamed, and fell back with a gaping gash to the throat. Standing Elk fell back with his war ax, and no amount of encouragement or abuse from La Bruin could convince him to try the warrior squaw again.
Infuriated, La Bruin snatched the ax from Standing Elk’s hand and furiously attacked the door. In a moment, the panel fell in, revealing the old woman, whose height was an impressive six feet. Iron gray locks snaked out in all directions around a thin face, blackened with soot. “Fool,” she sneered. “Ye ain’t welcome here.” She raised the pistol she’d concealed in the folds of her shabby skirt, and fired.
When the smoke cleared, La Bruin still stood in the doorway, staring stupidly down at the crimson blood welling from his left thigh. “Accursed witch! I’ll have your scalp for this!”
Lunging for Hergus, he raised the ax for the killing blow, but the war chief, Tall Trees grabbed his wrist, forcing it down. “The old one has taken the life of my nephew, and I decree that she must live as a slave in the house of Autumn Woman until she is no longer useful.”
No argument would change the Huron’s mind, and as they began the long trek back to Fort Duquesne of the Blessed Virgin, the act of outright defiance against him by one of his allies troubled the French renegade far more than the trifling wound in his thigh.
Chapter 12
From Burnt Cabins, Sauvage led Sarah along the Raystown Path westward through Edmund’s Swamp, into the wilderness realm known as the “Shades of Death.” Between Evitts Mountain and Laurel Hill, the trees soared a
hundred feet above the forest floor, their limbs so thick with leaves and tangled vine that the sun could not penetrate, creating an ever-present gloom that turned bright day to night, and night to hellish blackness.
Sarah was unnerved by the lack of sunlight and sound. There were no birds in the branches overhead; songbirds kept pace with the settlements, and there were no white men foolhardy enough to defy English law and bring their families west of the mountains known as the Great Blue wall. The land was ruled from the air by birds of prey: the eagle, the owl, and the red-tailed hawk—from the ground by the silent stalkers—the bear, the panther and the wolf.
It was Kingston’s world through which they made their way, and it was a world of profound silence, unbroken except for the hoot of an owl, or the lonely cry of a wolf calling to its mate.
The absence of sound and light and cheer was having an impact on Sarah. Her imagination ran rampant. At intervals during the past few hours, she had caught sight of several shadowy gray forms, barely discernible through the dimness, yet eerily present, slipping silently through the trees and following a course that ran parallel to the one she and Kingston followed.
Wolves. Sarah shivered, searching for their sleek forms in the near darkness. Oddly watchful, they kept their distance, never offering to venture near.
Kingston seemed not to notice, and she was somehow reluctant to mention their presence, afraid to discover they were nothing but a product of her fear. She was afraid, though she strived to hide it. Afraid of this place, of the wolves. Afraid of the catamount whose blood-chilling cry she had heard in the night. Even the smallest bit afraid of what would come after she emerged from the ocean of trees and arrived at the Shining City.
Kingston inclined his head to indicate the wolves, mere shadows in the near distance. “There is bad weather coming. That’s why they are so near.”
Sarah said nothing and thunder rumbled along the ensuing silence, trembling the earth underfoot. Kingston grasped her hand. “Come. We must hurry.”
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