by Lori Benton
The heart could be deaf as a stone and twice as stubborn.
It was decided. William would shoot first. He wasted no time getting on with it. There was a stir when he took his stance, fit an arrow, and drew—not to the ear but to the chest, as he’d been taught by his father’s factor, Mr. Davies.
Not his father…The thought slammed him in the gut, robbing him of breath. He shut his eyes until his heartbeat slowed, then opened them. There was nothing now but the bow, the arrow, the cloud-bright sky. The target waiting down the beach. He let the arrow fly.
It hit the target, though not its center.
The wiry Indian took his first shot. It hit nearer the center than William’s, to the warriors’ delighted hoots and jeers.
William took his second shot, forcing back a tide of sickness surging up from his belly. He despised this limbo in which he was caught, wanting to cling like a drowning man to who he’d been, terrified of letting go and sinking…into what? Savagery, like that surrounding him now, egging him on to his third shot? He’d missed his challenger’s second. It was good, he saw. Better than either of their firsts.
Ought he to let the Indian win or try to best him?
Be a white man. Be an Indian. Oxford. Breed.
He took his stance and let it flow through him, the black despair, the bleeding betrayal, and loosed the third arrow with a shout of rage as if Reginald Aubrey stood before the target. For a moment after the string’s twang he saw nothing but a haze of red. Heard nothing but the blood rushing in his ears. Felt nothing but an oily wave of self-loathing and confusion. Then a thump on his shoulder roused him to the excitement swelling around him.
It hadn’t to do with the shooting. Campbell had disappeared. Another Indian, out of breath from running, was gasping out news of some import to his fellows.
William snatched up his discarded regimentals and hurried with his bow toward headquarters, where the news was abuzz. Weeks ago they’d received word that Brigadier General Barry St. Leger would command the forces gathered at Montreal, but exactly when and where they’d be campaigning remained obscured in a fog of speculation, until now. They had their orders at last: a three-pronged British attack meant to divide the colonies, with St. Leger’s command to muster in the west at Oswego with Colonel John Butler’s loyalist rangers and Indians. They would then march east to Albany, through the Mohawk Valley, sweeping all rebels before them with fire and sword.
And between Oswego and Albany, defenseless against such onslaught, lay the farm owned by Reginald Aubrey.
Anna…Lydia…the Doyles. Their faces rose before him as he made his way to his billet, intent upon putting the bow out of sight. He didn’t want to think of Reginald Aubrey as well but did so. Most of all he didn’t wish to think of those other hazy figures, a mother, father, brother, also in the path of destruction. Would any of them survive the coming campaign? Would they despise him forever for taking part in it if they did?
The thought had barely formed before a mountain of brown flesh and flashing silver loomed across his path. Clutching his bow like a stave, William drew up. The tall Indian was alone this time. They were in a populous place, near a market that reeked of fish sellers. He mastered his alarm.
“What do you want of me?” He’d spoken overloud, drawing the attention of several around them, most who took one look at the towering Indian and drew off. But the warrior gazed at him with eyes that reflected no hostility.
“You are William Aubrey.”
It wasn’t a question. “You know my name? Did Campbell tell it you?”
“Your officer said nothing of your name.” The Indian’s English was surprisingly good.
“How then do you know me?” They were standing in the way of customers attempting to buy fish. The Indian nodded his head, started to move off. After a brief hesitation, William followed.
Sam. He must know this warrior. Since Sam wasn’t here, was the man attempting to make contact with him, hoping William had goods to sell?
He stopped the Indian with a hand to a lean, powerful arm, a hand he snatched away when the Indian halted to face him. William took an involuntary step back. “Listen. I don’t know what arrangement you and Private Reagan have, but I’ve nothing to do with…”
He let the words trail off as incomprehension crossed the Indian’s high-boned face, feeling a chill creeping out from his innards. This hadn’t to do with Sam.
“Had I not heard your name,” the Indian said, “I would know you by your face. I know your mother, your father. When I lived at Kanowalohale, I was friend to the brother you were born with.”
They were standing at the corner of a stone-built structure. Against the wall a hogshead stood. William groped for its rim, feeling himself blanch. “My brother?”
“He and I went under the water on the same day. Made our hearts clean in Jesus.”
William blinked, struggling to make sense of the words. “You’re Oneida?”
The Indian shook his head. “No, but my father is Oneida. Years ago he sent me to Kanowalohale, where I came to know your kin. Your brother spoke of you—you and that Welsh bow.” The Indian nodded at the bow William had forgotten he clutched. “He wanted much to see it for himself.”
William couldn’t get his breath. His brother knew of his bow? How?
Anna. For a mortifying instant, William thought he was going to be sick with the tide of regret and longing that crashed over him, the fruitless longing for home—one he could never return to, had never truly existed. The Welsh had a word for such impossible yearning. Hiraeth.
He avoided the dark eyes studying him. “And what are you called?” he asked the Indian, having no idea what else to say.
“I have been called Tames-His-Horse since I was young,” the warrior replied. “But the name I favor now is Joseph.”
15
Thundering Moon
Kanowalohale
While warriors kept watch along the great north river called St. Lawrence, from Lake Ontario to Montreal, spying on the British to learn their plans for war in the coming season, sachems had journeyed west to Niagara to treat with Colonel John Butler, head of the British forces there. When they returned, they carried news of substance. Daniel Clear Day, scarcely home from seeing the American army with Kirkland, had traveled to Niagara with the sachems. While the fire popped beneath a kettle of boiling hominy, Good Voice, Stone Thrower, and Two Hawks listened to what happened there.
“That Butler is one who speaks with two tongues,” Clear Day told them. “In the hearing of all, he told the Onyota’a:ka not to meddle in this war but to go on standing to the side. After we departed, we learned from one who heard it that Butler spoke to the Haudenosaunee out of our hearing. He told the Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas—Onondagas too—that they could take American scalps and much plunder if they fought for the British. He promised to liberate the Mohawks surrounded by the whites at Canajoharie and Fort Hunter.”
Stone Thrower grunted at this. Butler’s false face to them was no surprise, even if it was unwelcome news. “Butler is no friend to the Oneidas, keeping his true heart from us.”
At mention of true hearts, Good Voice glanced at her son, still finding it jarring to see his head bared and that scar running down nearly to his ear. As always when she saw it, she forced down a throat-full of anger and confusion, nearly as choking now as on that day he returned to them. Though his bruises had faded, in his eyes as he caught her gaze was a brokenness unhealed.
“Another thing we learned,” Clear Day said, capturing their attention again, even Two Hawks, who’d left the fire to sort through the provisions he’d been preparing before Clear Day arrived. “The warriors out hunting around Niagara and Oswego have been ordered to return by the Planting Moon, the moon the whites call May.”
Good Voice knew what that meant. Whatever attack the British were planning, it would come soon after the Planting Moon.
“I will go to Fort Stanwix and look for Ahnyero,” Two Hawks said. “I was going anyway, b
ut this news makes me want to go with more urgency. It may be I will find…”
He didn’t finish the statement. Good Voice didn’t need him to. Two Hawks wanted to find his brother before fighting began, to convince him to leave the British and return south.
Good Voice made no argument against what her son proposed. Neither did Stone Thrower. They’d said all they had to say about it. Their words had fallen on deaf ears.
Clear Day read this in their faces, for when he spoke, he only gave counsel to be careful, to listen to Ahnyero, as Two Hawks rolled up his bedding and gathered his rifle and bow for the journey to the fort, where the army would supply him for any scouting he might do. He appeared to listen, but Good Voice doubted he was thinking of anything but Anna Catherine. All the while, she’d been putting dried venison and parched corn into a sack. She gave it to her son as they met in the doorway of the lodge.
They had a door of wood now, hung on stiff leather hinges. Two Hawks pushed it open. In the light of afternoon that showed his scar no mercy, he took what she offered and held her briefly in farewell. She gripped him with care, knowing he’d taken hurt in his ribs and it was still not fully healed. She knew of the beating, what sort of men had done it and why. He’d told them that much. What she didn’t know was why Aubrey sent him away after he’d done such a good thing for the man, saving his boats from being burned. What happened to make her son leave the woman he claimed to love and wish to make his wife? What words were said? What was done to him, or what did he do, that there was such pain in his eyes?
Those were the questions her son wouldn’t answer. It took much restraint not to ask them again but to take his face between her hands and pray for his safety, for his skill and wisdom in what he was setting out to do. Then she lingered in the doorway, watching him walk away through the town toward the trail to the fort, already feeling the wrench of his absence in her chest and thinking how hard it was to be the mother of a warrior, to let go when the heart yearned to clutch.
Before his path took him from sight, Two Hawks was intercepted by a smaller, slender figure. Strikes-The-Water. Good Voice couldn’t hear what words they exchanged, but what their bodies spoke needed no ears to interpret:
The Tuscarora girl questioned where her son was bound.
Two Hawks told her.
She put a hand to his arm, asking to go with him.
He shook off her hand, refusing her.
Though Strikes-The-Water’s shapely mouth opened to argue, Good Voice could see it was no use. Two Hawks stood unmovable as a stone that a river sweeps past. Still he let Strikes-The-Water say all she had to say. Good Voice couldn’t see her son’s face, only the girl’s. Frustration, anger, and hope moved like currents across her features. When she stopped talking, Two Hawks shook his head and made a cutting motion with his hand, meant to end the talk. He sidestepped her and strode away.
Good Voice’s heart went out to Strikes-The-Water, whose face showed a crush of disappointment. There’d been more to her request than that proclivity to do the things men did. Strikes-The-Water wanted to go scouting, but maybe more she wanted to be with Two Hawks, wherever he was going.
As she watched the girl slip away between the lodges of the Turtle Clan, Good Voice ached to know the true heart of her son concerning Anna Catherine. He’d come home from whatever bad thing had happened looking gaunt as a wolf in winter, one that had tangled with another too strong for it. Had her son said more to Clear Day in that brief time the old man had been in Kanowalohale, between his trips? Those two had grown close in the time Stone Thrower wasn’t present to be a father. That closeness hadn’t ended, though much was healed now between her son and husband.
Good Voice went inside her lodge to find the men discussing Reginald Aubrey. She hurried to her kettle and settled there to mind it and their talk.
“No,” Clear Day was saying. “He said nothing to me. I wish that he had, for I am much troubled in my mind about that man.”
“We are all troubled,” Stone Thrower said. “It has been in my mind that when he did that thing that harmed us so and still hurts our hearts and the heart of our firstborn, he may have done a worse thing to himself. He has lived all this time with it beating his soul like a club. I know what that does to a man, to walk the earth with the burden of his sin on his back. It poisons all he touches.”
He met Good Voice’s gaze, eyes speaking to her gently of the sorrow he still felt over those years of neglect and abuse but also joy that they were past and he was forgiven by Creator. And by her. She smiled, reassuring him, as he sometimes needed to be, that it was so.
“I wish now I had gone into that place on my journey back from the American army,” Clear Day said. “I wish I had known how badly things had gone. I might have learned more.”
Clear Day had returned to Kanowalohale sooner than some of the warriors and sachems Kirkland had escorted east. Kirkland himself hadn’t returned. They didn’t know whether he would. It seemed the generals wanted him elsewhere, ministering to soldiers. She wished he were with them still, and his wife, Jerusha, who had become her friend.
“Do you think I should go back to him?” Stone Thrower asked.
Clear Day sat forward, gray braids swinging from his chest. “Go back?”
“To Aubrey. Maybe I can speak to him about Two Hawks, discover what went bad between them.”
Good Voice expected her husband’s uncle to approve this idea. Instead he stood to his feet, more slowly than a year ago he might have done, and looked down on the nephew she knew he considered a son.
“Maybe that is a thing to do, but I do not know. Many have done this and done that, said this and said that, still Aubrey’s heart is shut to Creator. And, it would seem, to your second-born.” The old man shook his head, staring into Good Voice’s fire, face creased with troubled musings. “Let an old man think on it and be sure.”
“Kawʌniyó, Uncle,” Stone Thrower said, rising to his feet as his uncle made to leave. “A good word. We will be sure of what we do.”
On her knees, Good Voice stirred the boiling corn, staring through the steam as the ashes she’d added worked loose the outer hulls, leaving behind the soft inner kernels. She was grieved for her son and Anna Catherine, sorry for their pain, yet how much easier it would be if her son would choose a wife among the Haudenosaunee.
“I suppose you also will be leaving me soon?”
She looked up at Stone Thrower’s words. “Leaving you?”
There was teasing in his eyes. “You have not been to the women’s hut for your moon time yet.”
Even as he spoke, his strong brows drew in. Good Voice blinked at him, thinking about the women’s hut and how long it had been since she’d needed to go there.
“True…I did not go this moon,” she said, thinking maybe soon she would be counted among the grandmothers. Then she thought further back. Stone Thrower knew of only this moon. He was away at the fort during the time she should have gone last moon but didn’t. Because there had been no need. And the moon before that was when…
The thought dawned in their minds at the same instant. Good Voice knew it because their gazes were locked, while the steam and the smoke of her food cooking rose up to the roof. She stood to her feet so hastily it dizzied her. She put a hand to her mouth, took two steps, and sat down hard on her sleeping bench. She felt Stone Thrower’s strong hands on her shoulders, steadying her.
“When?” he asked, kneeling before her.
Not When did you last go to the women’s hut? That wasn’t the when he meant.
“I know when.” She raised her eyes to his. “The very day…my Caleb.”
His Christian name was all the reminder he needed of that day. Understanding lit his eyes. Then he was grinning like a warrior half his age, and she thought he might loose a jubilant cry, but he sat beside her and said, “Come here,” and reached to pull her onto his lap. “Both of you.”
Both of you.
“But…I must be forty summers now.”
…even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were. Words out of the Book—she knew not when she might have heard them—came to her, she whose womb had been long barren, as if Creator were speaking to her, flooding her with trust that this child would thrive inside her, that she would see it, hold its life in her arms come…
“Autumn,” she said and pressed her face into Stone Thrower’s smoke-scented hair, threaded now with gray. “She will be with us in the last moon of autumn.”
16
Planting Moon
A day’s journey north of Fort Stanwix, with a moonless night closed round, Two Hawks and Ahnyero settled in the lee of a ridge. They lit no fire. Even within sight of the fort, it was possible to be ambushed by Mississauga or even Mohawk scouts.
Ahnyero took first watch, but Two Hawks found his mind yet running its trails. The other man stood some paces off, a pillar against the stars, alert for disturbances beyond the rustlings of night creatures. Two Hawks sat up, hooding his blanket, and just loud enough for Ahnyero to hear said, “That new commander at the fort, he is a friend of yours?”
