Sundancer's Woman

by Judith E. French

  His grin broadened until a dimple flashed on one cheek. “You may be cold, but I’m not. We’re in a cavern behind No Return Falls. I carried you here after you—”

  “I remember,” she interrupted. “I ...” She steadied herself against the wall. She was foggy-headed and trembling with cold. “I fell,” she said in English.

  “You’re safe with me, Mistress Fleming ... Elizabeth.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I doubt that.” He was as dangerous-looking as any Seneca, tall and formidable, with hard, powerful hands and those eyes that didn’t miss a heartbeat. He might be a white man, but he’d bought and paid for her. She couldn’t be sure he hadn’t purchased her for the reason he’d told Yellow Drum, because he wanted a woman to warm his bed. “No,” she repeated in a firmer voice. “I don’t know you, and I don’t trust you.”

  He made a quick motion with his right hand that looked as Indian as she’d ever seen. He didn’t move like any white man either. True, his nose wasn’t as craggy as most Senecas’, but his lips were thin and his cheekbones were sharp slabs of granite.

  “Your father hired me to rescue you,” he said. “He never gave up trying to find you. Two years ago, a French trapper claimed to have seen you with the Mohawk. Colonel Westerly sent two scouts to try and trade for you, but it turned out to be a German girl instead. And nearly four months ago, a Catholic priest saw you in your Seneca village.”

  Elizabeth watched him suspiciously. The lure of the fire was beguiling. She’d never wanted anything so badly as she wanted to be warm, but she didn’t trust him. Worse, she couldn’t trust herself. What was it about this man that so unnerved her—that made her pulse quicken and her belly feel as though it was full of butterflies?

  She had to be very cautious. She was free of Yellow Drum, but she couldn’t allow this mysterious stranger, whatever his real name was, to take advantage of her. “Back away,” she said. It was easier to think clearly when he wasn’t too close. When he did move back, she inched toward the heat, still holding the rock tightly in her hand.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he said, but his dark eyes kept watching her.

  “I don’t remember entering a cave.” To her surprise, that observation came out in English. The words were flooding back now, filling her head with a jumble of memories, images, and smells.

  “I carried you.”

  She nodded, still confused. “Alone?”

  “I could have used some help.” He grinned lazily. “You’re an armful. Especially uphill.”

  Her face flushed from an inner heat. “You carried me here.” She held her hands over the flames. She wished desperately that she’d had more experience with men. It was hard to know what to say to him.

  She forced herself to think of her children. Poor Jamie. She could still hear his frightened cries ringing in her ears ... still imagine the feel of his small body pressed against hers. Soon it would be dawn. Rachel would waken, and her mother wouldn’t be there to bathe her or make her breakfast. What would her children think? Would Raven tell them the truth, or would she say the Ugly Woman had abandoned them?

  The stranger broke into her thoughts. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, lifting an open palm in the universal sign of peace. “I’m going to add more wood to the fire.”

  She tensed, not relaxing until he’d moved back again. He pointed to the nearest blanket, and she wrapped it around her shoulders. She wanted to sleep, but if she closed her eyes, she’d be vulnerable. If she closed her eyes, she’d see the faces of her children....

  “I’ll give you my knife if that will make you feel better,” he offered.

  She held out her hand, certain that he was mocking her. But to her surprise, he drew his skinning knife from the beaded sheath at his waist and, holding it by the blade, handed it across the fire to her.

  His fingers were long and very clean. They brushed hers, and she jumped, nearly dropping the weapon into the flames.

  “You’ve been hard used,” he said. “I’m sorry for that.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to look tougher than she felt. Was his gentle behavior toward her a trick? she wondered. What kind of man was he to show such tenderness to an ugly woman? “Aren’t you afraid I’ll do you harm with this?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “No.”

  Something in his dark eyes made her trust him, just a little. Releasing the rock, she passed the knife to her right hand and glanced down at it. It was a long tongue-shaped blade of tempered steel with an antler handle. The heavy weight lent her courage, and she met his gaze without flinching. “Is my father alive?”

  “He was when I last saw him in Charles Town.” His mood became somber. “Your father, Elizabeth ... and your brother Avery.”

  She blinked in confusion. “Avery? Alive?” A lump constricted her throat. “Avery’s dead. He died in—”

  “Did you see him die?” he asked gently.

  “No, but there was so much blood. I thought—”

  “Avery hid under a haystack and escaped the massacre. He’s very much alive, and he lives in Charles Town with a wife and four children.”

  “Sophie Van Meer?”

  He shook his head. “I believe this is his second wife. I heard that his young Dutch bride was killed on their wedding day.”

  Elizabeth stared at him in stunned disbelief. Avery was alive? It was hard to accept. She’d thought of him as dead for all these years. She’d thought them all dead except her. Then a wild hope fluttered deep inside her. “My mother?” she asked in a small voice.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She inclined her head and drew in a ragged breath as the small flicker of hope guttered and went out. “It’s all right. I’ve mourned her for nine winters. Nine years,” she corrected herself. “The Seneca killed her.”

  “No, they didn’t. According to your father, she hid as well. She survived the attack and died in Charles Town four years ago, of fever.”

  “Mama died at home?”

  “In her own bed.”

  “Thank you.” It came out first in Iroquoian. She tried again, and this time, she got it right. “Thank you.” She covered her mouth with her hand. Her lip was still swollen and throbbing from Yellow Drum’s blow, but she ignored the ache. “I can not know ... do not know why my words ...” Impatient with herself, she made a sound of disgust. “For long time, I no ... not speak English. Thank you for tell ... telling me about my mama, and thank you for not leaving me in the forest.”

  “It’s all right, Elizabeth,” he answered. “I understand how you feel. We have a lot in common. I was captured by Indians when I was a boy and lived among them until my late teens. I would have forgotten English if it hadn’t been for my father’s insistence that I teach him to speak it.”

  “Your father? He was capture ... captured with you?”

  “My Indian father, Wolf Robe. He’s a great man. If I amount to anything in this life, it will be because of him.”

  She held out her hands to the fire. “So you’re really not a half-breed? That was a lie?”

  “An exaggeration. Yellow Drum’s people don’t like white men. It would have been better to say I was a Delaware, but I’m too light-skinned under my clothes to pass as a full-blood. So I claim to be half Indian when it’s necessary.”

  “My father said the half-breed children are an abomination—worse than Indians.” She looked down at the flames. “There is a saying in Charles Town. Half Indian, half white, half devil.”

  “You believe that, Elizabeth?” he asked. She didn’t answer.” That little boy was your son, wasn’t he?”

  Pain knifed through Elizabeth. Jamie was safe with his father; Yellow Drum loved him. But the hurt burned into her like a living flame.

  “What’s his name?” Hunt asked quietly.

  “Yellow Drum’s first wife, Raven, named him Otter.” She blinked back tears. “I call him James, after my grandfather, James Avery Fleming.... Jamie.” She squared her shoulders. “Jamie is Yellow Drum
’s son, but I was never Yellow Drum’s wife. I was his slave woman. They say that Otter is Raven’s son, not mine.”

  “That’s the Seneca way.”

  “Yes.” A log snapped, sending orange and cherry sparks into the air. “It’s Seneca custom. It’s not my way,” she added deliberately in English as she watched his face. She’d gotten very good at judging another person’s thoughts; it was what had kept her alive all these years.

  “The boy will be all right with them.”

  And my baby girl? she wanted to scream. What about her? Raven tolerates Jamie, but she hates Rachel. What will happen to my Rachel now that I’m not there to protect her? But she didn’t speak. Keeping her thoughts private was too ingrained in her soul. Weeks and months and years of keeping her own council couldn’t be changed in a matter of hours ... not for a man whom she didn’t know or trust.

  He broke the silence. “The Iroquois are like the Delaware and the Shawnee in that they believe children belong to God, rather than to their parents. Most Indians treat their young far better than whites do.”

  She nodded. “Most do.” How could she tell him about Raven’s threats? Fawn’s clumsy, Raven would say, calling Rachel by her Seneca name. You should watch her better, Ugly Woman. She could fall into the river when you’re not looking. She could wander off into the forest and be eaten by wolves. Or, Fawn has the proper hair and eye color for a human, but she’ll always be ugly. I don’t know where we’ll find a husband to take her off our hands.

  Raven was careful to utter her threats when Yellow Drum wasn’t around, but Rachel heard and she was frightened. The child never let on; she never said anything, but she always crept closer to Elizabeth, and she would never, ever stay alone in the longhouse with Raven.

  Yellow Drum loved Jamie, and he claimed Rachel as his daughter, but he had never cared for her in the way he did his son. He would not mistreat her, but neither would he risk Raven’s anger to champion her. He was a man who cared for his son more than his girl child; he was a man ruled by his chief wife.

  Elizabeth inhaled softly. Yellow Drum had a second wife now. If Many Blushes produced children, Raven wouldn’t need Elizabeth’s daughter anymore. Rachel would be expendable.

  “It’s hard to leave your boy behind,” Hunt was saying, “but you’ve got to accept that it’s for the best. He will have a good life with the Seneca. It wouldn’t be the same if he came with you.”

  “Because of men like my father who would not accept him?”

  “There’s a lot of bad blood between Indian and white. A lot of prejudice, most on the white side. And you have to think of your own future, Elizabeth. You can—”

  “Find a new man? Marry and forget Jamie exists?” She kept her voice flat ... emotionless. That was another lesson she’d learned at Raven’s hearth. Pretend not to care. So long as a thing wasn’t important, Raven wouldn’t trouble herself to forbid it. Yellow Drum’s chief wife interfered in her slave’s affairs only if she thought Elizabeth cared passionately about something ... or if she could cause her rival unhappiness.

  “You won’t forget Jamie,” Hunt Campbell continued. “I never forgot the sister I lost when our cabin was burned and we were captured. Becca was everything to me—mother, sister, friend. I never saw her again after that day. But I never really lost her.” He tapped his chest with a fist. “I keep her here, close to me. You can do the same thing with your boy.”

  “Was it your choice, to be separated from Becca? Was that her name?”

  He smiled. “Rebecca, but I always called her Becca. No, it wasn’t my choice. I was ten.”

  “Leaving you wasn’t her choice either, was it?”

  “No. The war party that took us split up. She went one way, and I went another.”

  “You don’t blame Rebecca for leaving you?”

  He made a sound of derision. “How could I? She had no part of it.”

  “That’s the difference between your sister and me. You’re asking me to walk away from my son and—”

  “I’m not asking you, Elizabeth. I’m telling you what’s best... what has to be.”

  She pursed her lips and stared into the glowing coals. So easy, she thought. It sounds so easy. Go back to Charles Town to the big house on Broad Street. Let Papa clothe me in silks and satin gowns. He’ll send me away like Cousin Claire when she was caught in the stable with that young groom. They arranged a hasty marriage for her in Jamaica. Doubtless Papa can find a rich husband for me, far off, in the Caribbean or even England, someplace where no one knows about my ordeal ... someplace where the myth of my spotless reputation can be maintained.

  “Without Jamie, I can marry well,” she said. “My disgrace ... my mistakes can all be swept under the rug—so long as it is an expensive carpet.”

  “You can’t have Jamie; he might as well be dead to , you.”

  She smiled faintly. “You sound like Raven. ‘Your child was stillborn,’ she said. ‘This one is mine.’ She hoped I would die in childbirth. She said I would never bring forth a healthy child with brown eyes and human features.” Memories of the two days she’d struggled in labor flashed through her mind. Raven had threatened to smother the coming child if Elizabeth screamed in pain, but she hadn’t weakened. She’d bitten through a thick leather mitten, but she’d never cried aloud. And she’d delivered a strong boy child that had become his father’s pride and joy.

  “I’m not trying to hurt you. You’ve been hurt enough.” Hunt Campbell stood up. “I have to leave you for a few minutes. Some of my gear is back there.” He gestured toward the cave passageway. “You rest here while I fetch my stuff. When I come back, I’ll fix us something to eat. Are you hungry?”

  “Thirsty,” she admitted. She needed sleep more than anything, but how could she sleep? This man knew what she was—what she’d done with Yellow Drum. He probably considered her a harlot. Was there a special name for a white woman who slept with an Indian?

  “Elizabeth?” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “I’m going now, but I’ll be back. You’ll be safe here by the fire.”

  “I didn’t want to share Yellow Drum’s sleeping mat, you know,” she said.

  Hunt’s face darkened. “You don’t have to justify your actions to me,” he said. “What’s done is—”

  “Best we get it out,” she said quickly, before she lost her nerve. “He offered to take me as his second wife when Jamie was born, but I refused. He could keep me a slave, but he couldn’t make me marry him; it’s not the Seneca way.”

  Her own words sounded foolish. How could she make him understand that not wedding Yellow Drum had been a stubborn act of defiance? It had cost her dearly in suffering. A slave could be beaten or starved, while a wife had rights that must be honored. But she had never forgiven Yellow Drum for forcing her to lie with him, and she would never be a wife to a man she didn’t love.

  “You did what you had to do to stay alive . . . what any sensible person would do.”

  “No.” She shivered. “No, not any sensible person. There was another captive in the village a long time ago, a French nun. She wouldn’t serve as a slave, and they murdered her. I saw a man crush her head with a stone,” she whispered.

  He took a step toward her, and she shook her head. “Stay away from me,” she warned. “I want you to hear it all.”

  “Talk if it helps you,” he answered.

  “I was a child when the Seneca captured me. It was a year before I had my first bleeding time. All those months had passed, and I thought ...” She swallowed against the constriction in her throat. “Raven was a cruel mistress, but I learned how to make myself useful. As long as I worked hard and did what they said, I thought I could stay alive.” She broke off, not wanting to go on.

  “Say it all, Elizabeth. Get it out and forget.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and rocked back and forth. “Raven said she needed a child. She would never be properly regarded among her people if she wasn’t a mother. She sent Yellow Drum to my bed. He forced
me, and she watched.”

  Elizabeth couldn’t prevent the tears from welling up. “She named me Ugly Woman. Raven said I had the hair and eyes of an English fox instead of a human. I never thought of myself by that name. Inside, I tried to be Elizabeth. Usually I pretended not to understand when they called me Ugly Woman. They thought I was too stupid to learn Iroquoian properly, but I learned what I had to to stay alive. If that makes me a coward, then I am one.”

  “I don’t blame you for living.”

  “My father might.”

  “He won’t. He’s spent a heap of money trying to get you back.”

  “Her back,” she corrected, “trying to get her back. He wants fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Anne, the girl who wanted a spoiled Dutch boy to ask her to dance. He doesn’t want a Seneca war chief’s leman.”

  “Sir John is an intelligent man. He knows what happens to white girls who live with the Indians. Most take an Indian husband in time. You were with the Seneca for nine years. He would have to expect—”

  “Will he expect a dark-skinned grandchild?” She wiped away the tears that kept spilling down her cheeks. “When he finds out about... about Jamie, he’ll wish I was dead too.”

  “If he thinks that way, he’s a fool.”

  “I can’t go to Charles Town. I can’t.... I won’t forget what I left behind in Yellow Drum’s village. You go to Charles Town and tell him you were too late. Tell him Elizabeth Fleming died last summer.”

  “Tell him you’re dead? And what will you be doing in the meantime?”

  “Figuring out a way to get my son.” And my daughter, she swore silently. I’d rather be a slave-I’d rather be dead—than separated from my children.

  “That’s crazy talk.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You sleep. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  She tapped the flat side of the naked knife blade against her open palm. “I’m going back, and you can’t stop me.”

  He folded his arms over his chest. “I said we’d talk about it tomorrow.” The hard, evenly spaced words revealed his effort to control his rising anger.