by Lori Benton
“Two Hawks, you haven’t—”
“Listen to me.” She gasped as he took her by the arms. “I have prayed. Heavenly Father has shown me the way forward.”
She searched his eyes, looking for confirmation of what she thought he meant. The way forward.
“Then you still want to be with me?” She tried to melt against him, needing to hold him. His arms were like iron, unbending at his sides, but there was struggle on his face. She raised her hands to his arms. “Take me with you. If you cannot be part of my world, let me be part of yours. Let your people be my people.”
“You are not meant for that world.”
Tears burned. She raised her head, willing them away. “How do you know? I’ve never even seen it.”
Longing came into his eyes, but he mastered it. “A man joins his wife’s clan. I wanted to do this, to become part of your world. Instead I broke it in pieces. You are angry with your father, and he with you. I cannot now take you from him, only leave you to mend what is broken.”
“Two Hawks, I’m not going to live with Papa anymore. I’ve already settled it with Lydia. I’d rather live with her, and she’ll have me, but…” She shook her head to banish everything that wasn’t to the point. “I want to be with you. Please…”
Two Hawks looked dismayed. “If I took you with me, we would only drag harm behind us. Harm to my people. My parents. What kind of life would we have there with a dark cloud of shame over—”
“There’s nothing shameful between us!”
Two Hawks closed his eyes, drawing breath. “I feel no shame in loving you. But in defying your father would be much shame. Aubrey did not start you in the womb of your mother, but he gave you life, risking his own for yours. Even if Creator did not bid us honor our parents, for that alone I would honor him in my heart. Taking you from him without his blessing is not the path I am to walk.”
“What then?” she said, hating in that moment that he was so good, even as her heart rejoiced over it. “What path do you mean?”
“There is one thing I can do. I must find my brother. Return him to Aubrey. To my parents. To you.” He’d gushed the words like blood from a wound, as if he feared he’d never get them out otherwise, then clamped his lips tight. But he couldn’t mask the anguish rippling over his face. “Bear’s Heart…” With a groan, he reached for her, wrapping her in his arms. At last.
She clung to him, speaking against his chest. “You’re going to find William to redeem yourself in his eyes—Papa’s eyes—aren’t you?”
“What other way is there for me to clear the path to his heart? It is all Creator has shown me to do. I do not want to leave you, but I must if I am to find my brother.” He took her by the shoulders and put her from him. But he was flesh now. No more stone.
“What about what William wants? Has anyone thought of that?”
She saw in his eyes that he had.
“I cannot know what my brother wants until I find him. But I will do it. Only then will you see me again.”
The comfort she’d felt in his arms chilled. “How are you going to find him? Scouting? Spying?”
“If I must, I will do those things.” His jaw firmed. “I will also do what my people need of me. Maybe what those soldiers in the fort need doing.”
She’d begun to think she’d been mistaken about why he’d shaved his head, but now she saw her initial interpretation was correct. He was going into danger, prepared for battle. He’d set his mind, and there would be no pleading him out of it. She would get no more than he’d promised. “Only then will you see me again.” He needed her to understand that and to let him go.
She couldn’t stop her hands shaking, but she raised them and cupped his bruised face. She gazed into his eyes, memorizing him, this warrior looking down at her, features set, eyes pools of anguish. “I love you. I believe in you. Always. Remember.”
Relief flooded his gaze. “I will. You remember to trust in Heavenly Father. Life is blessing, but it is also testing. Take the one as you do the other and trust Him who allows all. Trust what Creator is doing, though we cannot understand it or see the full path. Honor your father.”
Her throat was too thick for speaking. She nodded.
“Let me hear you say you will do this,” he said, his breath warm across her brow.
“I’ll try,” she choked out. “God be your shield and give you wisdom and bring you back to me safe. That’s all I want.” With or without William, she added silently, though she hoped for all their sakes it would be with.
He took her hands in his and kissed them. Then he kissed her lips. She felt the roughness of his healing wound. “Bear’s Heart,” he whispered against her mouth. “Let whatever come, my heart is in your keeping.”
“And mine you take with you.”
They’d said such words last autumn, in the barn the night before he left with his parents. She’d hoped they would never need say them again.
Eyes closed, she clung to his hands, knowing she would have to be the one to let go. She forced herself to do it and felt him step away. The morning’s chill enveloped her, bereft of comfort. She heard him take up his kit and weapons, heard his moccasins on the stones. But she didn’t open her eyes to watch his going.
14
Early April 1777
Lachine, Montreal
It wasn’t snowing, sleeting, or raining, which was the best that could be said. Muddied to his gaiters, Private William Aubrey stood with his assembled regiment while one Corporal Dewitt, charged with stealing Crown provisions and trading them to the King’s Indian allies, received a reduction to the ranks and the first one hundred of five hundred lashes laid upon his bare back. They were up to thirty-nine.
The heads in front of William rose short of his own, save for a lanky private in front who topped his height by an inch. Shifting to the right, William could block sight of the metal-tipped lash falling across Dewitt’s pasty flesh, the jerk of his bony frame with each blow.
He couldn’t shut his ears. Half-muffled screams broke over the otherwise silent parade, relentless as an ocean tide. Forty-one…
Unpleasant as it was, William wished Sam Reagan were witnessing the spectacle. Sam was gone—back to the Mohawk Valley on an intelligence-gathering mission organized by Major James Gray, who commanded the Royal Greens while Sir John Johnson was away in British-held New York City. William hoped Sam had the sense to stay clear of Schenectady. If he’d any sense at all.
Maybe what Sam had was the luck of angels; had he not gone a’spying, he’d likely be sharing the lash with Dewitt. Though William had yet to catch him in the act, his suspicions of Sam’s involvement in illicit trading had never been completely squelched.
Forty-seven…
He leaned left, perversely granting himself a peek at Dewitt, shackled arms raised, head pressed to the post…and leaned back again, mind seared. The administering sergeant wasn’t showing mercy. Campbell never did.
Fifty-one…
Leaning left had brought him into close proximity to Private Robbie MacKay—near enough to have heard the lad’s labored breathing. He cast a sidelong glance and was alarmed by Robbie’s pallor. The lad was barely old enough to have enlisted. His father, Angus MacKay, had come north over the mountains with Sir John, bringing his entire family into exile. While all the former tenants of the Johnsons shared a bond of hatred for their rebel neighbors, William had seen nothing to match the rage that seethed in the heart of Angus MacKay over the loss of his estate. His eldest son, Archie, harbored a matching lust for revenge. Robbie did his best to make his father believe his rage burned as hot, but William found the younger MacKay’s efforts lacking in conviction.
Just now, the Royal Green’s newest recruit looked ready to slump into the mud at their feet. “Bend your knees a bit,” William said under his breath.
Robbie uttered a faint groan but stayed upright.
Positioned on the right flank of his company, William had a view across the grounds. Over by the headquarters building, behind
the doors of which Major Gray was ensconced, William spotted his new commanding officer, Captain Stephen Watts, grim gaze fixed on the whipping post and its hapless prisoner.
William’s transfer into Watts’s light infantry company had happened a week ago at firing drill, thanks to his having hit his target six reloads in sequence while Captain Watts, seeking to fill the ranks of his company of sharpshooters, had paused to observe.
William suspected his being plucked from the ranks might have had something to do with the vitriolic abuse Sergeant Campbell had been breathing down his neck while he took those six shots—surely being pinned under enemy fire couldn’t prove as rattling—yet he still felt the mixture of smugness and relief that had engulfed him at the look of fury and disappointment on Campbell’s face when Watts stepped forward and recruited William.
Sixty-two…
He hoped Campbell wasn’t venting his displeasure on Dewitt.
The suspicion vanished like his clouding breath as another contingent of the proceedings’ audience snagged his gaze—a cluster of Dewitt’s illicit customers; Indians, a dozen of them, congregated around a stack of barrels at the parade’s edge. Warriors all, most of them young. Canadian Six Nations come in answer to the call to fight in the spring campaign.
Eyeing them sidelong, William recognized a few he’d seen about the drill square, remote and alien in their garish trade-cloth shirts and breechclouts, leggings and moccasins decorated in beads and quills, heads shaven into a variety of scalp-locks, silver in their mutilated ears. A shudder ran through William at sight of one warrior’s slit and stretched lobes hanging in fleshly loops nearly to his shoulders. To think that might have been him standing among their ranks tricked out like a peacock, had Reginald Aubrey not—
He bit off the thought, spat it from his mind like rancid meat.
The Indians were intent on the whipping, brown faces set in disapproval…all but one, who appeared to be watching him with equal interest. He’d never seen the warrior—he’d have remembered that one. The Indian towered over his companions. Biggest Indian William had ever seen. Or tallest. Length of bone lent him his size; no spare flesh clung to that lean frame. Dark eyes burned into William like tiny fierce suns. William looked away. Counted a few more cries from Dewitt—whimpers now rather than screams. Looked back.
The Indian watched him still.
His scalp prickled as if a horde of ants had crawled up under his hat.
At last Dewitt was dragged away. The regiment was dismissed, Corporal Cameron’s command, to which William belonged, to a woodcutting detail. Robbie MacKay was part of the company, his one proficiency being a deadeye for target shooting, a skill learned hunting squirrel along the Mohawk. Visibly relieved to have the flogging over, he trailed William to the axes.
“I thank ye,” he said softly, as they each hefted a blade. He didn’t look at William as he spoke.
“Not a pretty sight, flogging.” It wouldn’t be the last the lad would be forced to watch.
They prepared to head out with the rest, pausing to let pass the troop of gaily bedecked Indians William had seen watching Dewitt’s lashing. Off to watch one of the companies at drill? It seemed a favorite pastime among them, ogling the troops.
The tall warrior was last to file by, giving William that intense stare from his lofty vantage. Though his head was shaved to a scalp-lock, his ears bore only a simple piercing. He was younger than he’d appeared from a distance. Not many years past William’s age.
Gripping the ax, he returned the Indian’s scrutiny until the imposing warrior passed him by, making to continue on into the village with his fellows.
Robbie gave a low whistle and said something in the Gaelic, needing no interpretation. “Aye,” William agreed. “Glad I am he’s on our side.”
He’d just relaxed his grip on the ax when behind his back a voice spoke another stream of words he didn’t comprehend but knew for Mohawk. Both tone and speaker he recognized.
Campbell, giving insult.
The tall Indian pivoted, crow-wing brows lofted high at whatever Campbell had said. For an instant William thought the sergeant had lost his mind and maligned the savage, until those dark eyes locked on William. The Indian voiced a question at him. Pure gibberish.
William shook his head.
The Indian’s gaze shot past William as Campbell spat out, “Half-breed.”
A word the Indian apparently knew. Surprise washed over his face, then a look of enlightenment that left William grinding his teeth in baffled anger. Without further glance at William, the warrior strode away.
“Get a move on, soldiers,” Campbell barked. “Wood isna goin’ to chop itself now, is it?”
Amid muttered “Aye sirs” from the rest of the men, William turned to troop down to the riverside to which felled trees had been dragged, ready for the ax.
A rough hand grasped his shoulder and spun him round. Campbell’s blunt face tilted up at him, inches from his own, as the man strained his spine to minimize their disparity in height. “What was that ye muttered then, Breed?”
With a cringe at the man’s breath as well as at the sobriquet—despite loathing it at the time, he much preferred Oxford—William stood at attention and though he hadn’t muttered a word said, “ ’Twas my agreement I was stating, sir—about the wood. Right enough it won’t chop itself. A thing we learned at Queens.”
Expression fixed in innocence, William inwardly cursed himself for goading the man. He expected a scathing dressing down or to be sent off to some more menial detail than woodcutting—emptying privy pans in the hospital or the like. But Campbell merely nodded him off to the riverside.
William went, wishing he hadn’t seen the calculating twist of the sergeant’s mouth as he turned to go.
They were nearly done the task when William next saw the Indians. Stripped to his shirt-sleeves as he tossed the split hardwood faggots into carts waiting to be trundled off, he ignored them for a time, focusing on the burn of his arms and shoulders, the prick of splinters in his palms…until he felt his neck hairs rise.
Ax clenched, he turned in the direction he knew the Indians loitered, yards down the pebbled beach noisy with wheeling gulls and the river’s lap and rush. A few warriors lounged against a rise in the bank. The rest stood in a knot around a short, burly figure.
It was Sergeant Campbell, and he was speaking to the Indians in some earnest. Among them stood the tall warrior. William was turning away and so nearly missed it when Campbell waved in his direction. Like mules hitched to a single trace, every Indian’s gaze swung to follow the gesture to where William stood with the wind whipping across his bared head, drying the sweat on his face and forearms.
“Private!” Campbell shouted at him. The man had in hand a long, slender stick of driftwood, or so William thought it until he squinted and realized…
Blast the man, he’d been to William’s billet—likely with the excuse of routine inspection—and filched the Welsh bow.
Before he knew his own intention, William was striding down the beach toward Campbell, while the rest of his detail left with the wood carts. How did Campbell even know of Grandfather Aubrey’s bow? He’d kept it wrapped and concealed the winter long, never once taking it out.
Not his grandfather. Not even his bow. He’d as good as stolen it when he took it from the farm. Smarting nevertheless at the violation, he halted before Campbell, doing his best to ignore the brown faces staring at him, the split ears, the dark, expectant eyes.
“Yes sir. What is this about, sir?” But he knew. His blood. Campbell had decided it was a good day to rub his nose in it.
“They’ve seen how bonnily ye shoot a Brown Bess.” The sergeant tilted a nod at the assembled warriors. “Now they’ve a mind to see can ye shoot as well with your wee Welsh bow. I suggested a demonstration…in the interest of keeping friendly with our allies, aye?”
William didn’t bother inquiring what might follow should he refuse the suggestion. Like as not he’d rue it, but h
e was furious enough to try the man.
Campbell read the thought and smiled. “Dinna make me order it, Private.”
“Very well, sir.” As Campbell handed over the bow, William added, “I’ll be needing arrows.”
Marking this development, the Indians began jabbering among themselves. William faced them as one of their number, a sinewy fellow with a crested scalp-lock, stepped forward with a quiver and bow of his own. “We have game?”
It was a competition they wanted, not a demonstration.
“All right,” William said, whereupon the Indian yanked three arrows from the quiver at his back and thrust them at William, who took them with a nod. Voices again rose in a babble. The loungers on the ground stood to join in.
William knew the laying of a wager when he saw one.
Campbell had drawn off to watch the scene he’d set in motion, legs planted wide, beefy arms crossed, enjoying William’s discomfort. Hoping for humiliation?
Ignoring the man now, William moved to stand beside his challenger. “The shed, yonder? That do for a target?”
This being accepted, another Indian produced a piece of charcoal and loped off down the beach to one of the abandoned sheds—near where he’d found Sam talking to the old woman, months ago. The warrior drew a series of circles on the weathered timbers, then came loping back.
While the Indians wrangled over who would shoot first, William’s gaze was drawn to the tall one who’d watched him on the parade ground. He caught William staring and raised his chin in acknowledgment. Or had it been a signal? Was this one of Sam’s acquaintances?
William thrust the arrows through his belt and strung the bow that belonged to a lineage he could no longer claim. It was an old bow, well kept, made of a single elm stave. No match for the great medieval bows he’d seen, reaching six feet in length, this bow had been crafted as an ambush weapon, meant for close quarters among Welsh woods and hills, not the distance shooting of the longbow. Drawing and testing it now, William felt the imposter, yet couldn’t quell his attachment to the weapon. It was one thing knowing the bow, and the old man who’d looked down his patrician nose from the portrait in the hall of the Aubrey estate, bore no true relation to him. Try telling his heart that connection was a lie.
