Candace McCarthy

by Fireheart

  Where were all the men? he wondered, relaxing as he noticed there were none around.

  Gillian was nervous. She clung to him, her fingers digging into his side, breathing heavily. He looked at her, feeling annoyed. Why was she afraid? Didn’t she realize that there were no men in sight?

  “John, I’m scared.”

  “Gillian, there are no warriors here.”

  She stiffened with surprise and looked around. “There aren’t?”

  His lips firmed. “Do you see any?”

  “They are here,” Thomas Brown said, interrupting. “The villagers are gathered in the Big House. Their chief has died. Today is his funeral.”

  Gillian’s eyes grew round as saucers. “Oh.”

  John noticed then that there were wigwams ahead as far as his eye could see. There are men here, he realized with dismay. Lots of warriors.

  “Do we have the right village?” he asked Brown.

  “These ladies wouldn’t say, but my guess is yes.”

  “They wouldn’t tell you?”

  The guide shook his head. “But I could tell by their expression that they recognized Joanna’s name.”

  “So you think we’ve come to the right place—”

  “I think we’ll know soon enough,” he said, glancing around. He saw the door flap of a wigwam raised from the inside, and a blonde woman in Lenape clothing exit the structure.

  “Your Joanna,” he said. “Does she have blonde hair . . . kind of red and golden like the sun?”

  John stared at him. “Why, yes . . .”

  “Then we may have just found her. Turn around.”

  John turned, cautiously, slowly. He spied Joanna crossing to another wigwam and was stunned at her appearance. She was dressed as one of them—like a savage. “Joanna!”

  She halted as she was about to enter the other wigwam. Joanna turned, saw him standing in the middle of the yard, and her eyes went wide with surprise for a moment. Then her expression brightened. She approached them.

  “John!” she said, her green eyes warm. She held out her hand to him.

  Smoothly, John took her fingers and brought them to his lips.

  “Joanna?” a soft hesitant voice said from another direction.

  Joanna turned and stared. “Gillian?” Her eyes grew round with surprised pleasure. “Gillian!” She hurried forward to give her friend a hug. “I can’t believe you are here!” She glanced from one of her friends to the other. “I can’t believe you’re both here. Why have you come?”

  “For you,” John said, trying not to show his displeasure at how well she’d apparently adapted to the Indian way of life.

  “We were worried about you,” Gillian added softly. Her violet gaze, as she studied Joanna, was filled with concern.

  Puzzled, Joanna looked from one to the other again. “You must have left when I’d been gone for only a couple of months.” Her frown disappeared. “I was thinking about going back. Perhaps you read my mind.”

  “You were?” Gillian asked. She flashed John a meaningful glance.

  John narrowed his gaze at his lover, then smiled at Joanna. “That’s wonderful. We can travel together then.”

  Joanna nodded. “I had planned to go back days ago, but then Wild Squirrel died, and . . .” Her voice dropped off and her eyes filled with tears. “He is the reason I came,” she said in the softest murmur. “The chief—he was like a grandfather to me.”

  Gillian’s eyes filled with tears in instant sympathy. “Oh, Joanna, I’m so sorry.”

  “Joanna?” Mary crossed the yard, having seen the newcomers. She eyed the man and woman warily as she approached. The second man had left the group and was conversing with one of the braves.

  “Mary,” Joanna said, “these are my friends. John and Gillian. They came here from England because they were worried about me.”

  Mary studied the two and gave a solemn nod.

  “We were hoping that Joanna would be ready to return with us. When we mentioned it to her, we learned that she is.”

  “I see,” Mary said.

  Joanna felt her cousin’s gaze. She saw Mary’s tense smile of welcome.

  “You will stay awhile with us, though, won’t you?” Mary invited.

  Joanna gazed at her cousin with understanding. She knew that Mary was upset by the talk of her leaving. She knew her cousin wanted her to stay, just as Mary had known that she would have to leave someday.

  “Yes, John, you must stay awhile,” Joanna said, wanting to banish the new pain from Mary’s expression. Mary already had enough sadness at this time in her life. Perhaps if they stayed a little longer . . . “This is a sad time for the Lenape,” she explained, “but after today the funeral ceremony will be over, and everyone from the other villages will leave Little River.”

  Gillian looked horrified. “There are sav—people,” she amended quickly, “from other villages here?”

  “Yes, there are people from several Lenape villages and from the Shawnee, too,” Mary said. “They have come to pay their respects. Our sachem was a good leader. Many loved him. They are here for him and his family.”

  “If there are so many people here, where will we sleep?” Gillian asked.

  “You can stay with my husband and me,” Mary said. “Joanna is with us. There is room for two more.”

  “Thank you, Mrs.—” Gillian began.

  “Mary,” she said. “Just Mary. Or you may call me Mary Wife as the Lenape do.”

  Even though she looked puzzled by the Indian name, Gillian nevertheless agreed.

  Thomas Brown returned, having finished his conversation with Big Cloud, a Lenape brave. “Woman with Eyes of Hawk has invited me to stay in that big house over there with other members of her clan.”

  “We’ll be staying with Joanna and her cousin,” John said. He gave Brown a meaningful look. He didn’t want to stay in the village long, despite Joanna and Mary’s invitation to do so.

  “We can discuss when to leave later,” Brown said, interpreting John’s look correctly.

  “Fine.”

  The fur trapper addressed Mary. “Any chance of getting a taste of the food in that pot over there?”

  Mary smiled slightly. “Most certainly,” she said. Then she gestured for them to follow her.

  Still reeling from the hurt of being rejected by Fireheart, Joanna was more than glad that John and Gillian had come. As she’d told them, it seemed as if they had read her mind and then appeared. Their arrival was like an answer to her prayers for leaving. Thank goodness Cara and Harry had been delayed in Philadelphia. She wanted to leave this place of pain, and now her friends were here to take her away from it.

  The last one she’d expected to see with John was Gillian, however. She was so pleased that Gillian had braved the voyage. She hated the time spent onboard ship herself. She could imagine how difficult it must have been for her friend. At the first opportunity, she would thank Gillian for caring for a friend so much that she would come all this way just to make sure she was all right.

  That opportunity came later that day, the last day of the ceremonies, before the Indian guests had left, when Joanna finally found the time to ask Gillian to walk alone with her. Gillian, who seemed a little lost in the Indian village, was only too happy to have something to do.

  As they started down the path toward the lake, Joanna was silent. There was much that she needed to tell Gillian. Where should she start?

  With Fireheart, she decided. While her and Mary’s relationship had vastly improved, she found it easier to confide in Gillian about her feelings for the handsome brave. It was easy to talk with her friend. From the first day of their meeting, they had become instant friends. They had told each other secrets, encouraged each other when one wanted to do something daring or bold. Their friendship had endured over the years from the time they’d met when they were fifteen until the present. It was a friendship that Joanna valued highly.

  As the dancers danced their final steps and some of the villagers ven
tured out to eat, Joanna and Gillian went to the lake where Joanna suggested they take off their shoes to wade in the clear water.

  Studying her friend as Gillian removed one shoe, Joanna realized that Gillian wasn’t just uncomfortable in the wilderness, she seemed terrified of it. It was as if her friend expected a warrior or a beast to jump out at them at any moment.

  “Gillian, relax. It’s safe here,” she told her. For the time being, she could have added but didn’t.

  “But the Indians—”

  “Harmless,” Joanna assured. “Oh, not all of them are.” She was forced then to explain about the Iroquois and their attack on the village. She was sorry she’d said anything at all about them when she saw her friend’s rising fear. “Don’t look so alarmed, Gilly. The Cayuga won’t be back,” she quickly assured her. “Our Lenape men took care of them.”

  “They killed them?”

  Joanna nodded. “Yes, all of them.” All but one, she thought, but soon he too would be a dead man.

  “How can you stand it?” Gillian’s face looked white, as if the thought of the battle had made her ill.

  “What?”

  “This life?” She glanced back. “Living in huts. Eating who knows what?” She caught Joanna’s arm. “They don’t eat people, do they? Tell me I don’t have to worry about that.”

  Joanna laughed softly. “No. At least, not lately. Now, I don’t think I can say the same for the Iroquois—especially the Mohawks.”

  Gillian glanced around with fear. “Are there any of them here?”

  With an amused smile, Joanna shook her head, then chuckled out loud when she heard her friend’s sigh of relief.

  Joanna was glad that no one else was at the lake. She preferred this time alone with her friend. Hoping to help Gillian to relax, she sat down on her favorite rock, and invited Gillian to join her.

  Once seated on the rock with her feet kicking lightly in the lake, Gillian seemed to relax as she watched the play of the water against her feet. It was late afternoon, and the sun was an orange glow in the sky. The orange orb lit up the sky, and shimmered on the lake’s surface. It was peaceful and lovely, and the drums that had seemed so sinister before were less so now, coming from farther in the distance.

  The two women were quiet for a time, each content simply to be in each other’s company. It has always been like this with us, Joanna thought. Good friends, willing to wait for the other one to speak.

  “Gillian, there is something I have to tell you. It’s about a Lenape brave. His name is Fireheart....”

  Then Joanna began to tell Gillian about the man she loved. She told her about the warrior who was now chief, and about the woman he intended to marry.

  The funeral ceremony ended, and Wild Squirrel’s body was taken to his burial place, a grave hollowed out of the ground in the forest. The gravesite was a lovely place surrounded by ferns and wildflowers.

  The hole in the ground that would serve as the chief’s resting place had been lined with planks of wood along the sides and on the bottom. After the body was lowered inside, the men would lower boards to cover the top, too.

  The braves who carried Wild Squirrel set the chief’s body in his grave. His nephew Fireheart placed Wild Squirrel’s bow and arrow at his side while a matron put in a supply of food. These items and those that another warrior included would be things necessary to the sachem during his long journey from this life to the next one. They were items that would ensure Wild Squirrel’s comfort and safety.

  The chief’s face and exposed body parts had been painted red by his clansmen. He was dressed in the finest clothing: a new breechcloth, beautifully adorned moccasins, and his feathered headdress. He wore an embroidered sash with beads and porcupine quills. He lay curled on one side, a position he’d been laid in shortly after his death. He looked like a gentle old man sleeping the sleep of peace. Only his people knew that he had a battle still to fight, and a journey to make to the Spirit World.

  Those at the gravesite remained for a few minutes while the shaman sang a prayer, made an offering of tobacco to the spirits, and then laid the first piece of birch wood over the dead man’s grave. The other pieces of wood followed, laid over the body by friends and relatives saying farewell. Then one last prayer was said, and the funeral post was placed at the head of the grave to mark the site. With that done, Fireheart and the others said their silent good-byes and returned to the village.

  Fireheart felt the emptiness of having lost someone dear as he entered the village yard. Seeking comfort, he searched for Joanna and saw instead two strange white men. His body became seized with a chill as he wondered who they were, what they were doing here in Little River.

  Was one of them Joanna’s guide? Rising Bird had told him that Autumn Wind wanted to go home to England. Had this man come to take her across the sea, home to the house of her uncle?

  He tensed, recalling Joanna’s scars. Why would she want to go back to that place? The place which held bad memories for her, a place of tears?

  He sensed Joanna’s presence before he saw her coming up the path. She wasn’t alone. She had someone with her. A white woman.

  The white woman was someone she knew, he thought. A friend. From England?

  Fireheart studied the dark-haired woman and found her wanting in comparison to the woman he loved. She wasn’t as vibrant or as beautiful as Autumn Wind. Still, this woman was Joanna’s friend, so she must have been good and kind to her.

  Fireheart didn’t move, but waited for Joanna to see him. When she did, she stopped, and he still fought the urge to go to her. It wouldn’t be right if he looked too anxious to talk with her. He wanted her, but she would never belong to him. And he had to remember....

  “Moon Dove,” he murmured.

  As if to taunt him, to incite his guilt, the Indian maiden came up from behind him and touched his arm.

  “Fireheart, I have brought you a cool drink,” she said with a soft smile.

  He returned her smile as he accepted the cup she offered him. “Wa-neé-shih,” he murmured before taking a sip.

  Drinking thirstily of the cool water, he thanked her again, told her he had had enough, and gave her back the drinking vessel. She seemed pleased as she nodded and took it away.

  Moon Dove will be a good wife, he reminded himself.

  And wouldn’t Joanna? an inner voice taunted him. He knew the answer, but he refused to listen to it. He couldn’t accept what his heart and his mind were telling him. If he did, there would be no chance for his future happiness with Moon Dove.

  “Kihiila,” his heart and thoughts said anyway.

  Yes, Autumn Wind would make me a good wife.

  Chapter 15

  “Joanna, there is something I need to discuss with you.”

  She frowned at John’s tone. She had never before seen him looking this serious. “What is it, John?”

  He glanced around, scowling. “Is there someplace where we can be alone?”

  Joanna nodded, and led him from the village toward the river, not the lake. It was morning, the time of day when there would be others at the lake, bathing, washing dishes, or fetching water.

  They walked for a time, and then Joanna turned to him. “What is it? Has something happened to Neville Manor?” she asked. Strangely, the thought of a calamity there didn’t particularly upset her.

  “No, no,” he assured her. “Nothing like that.”

  “Who is overseeing the estate?”

  “My brother Michael’s man. He’s very good actually, but not as good as your uncle, I’m afraid. That’s why I wanted to speak with you.” He took off his vest, and laid it on the ground, then gestured for her to sit.

  Joanna did so, studying him with curious eyes.

  “Joanna . . .”

  His reluctance to continue puzzled her. “Yes, John?” she encouraged him.

  “You are returning home with us, aren’t you? You didn’t just say that you were when we got here because you were happy to see old friends.”
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  She looked away. “Of course, I’ll be returning home with you. It’s time I go back. There are things to do there, affairs to take care of—”

  “Marry me, Joanna,” he urged.

  Her eyes widened as she stared at him. “John—” “I think you know where my heart has been all along, and when your uncle died, I didn’t want to push the issue. But it would work out for the best, don’t you see? I can handle all those business matters for you—”

  “That’s a generous offer, John, but—”

  “Oh, I know that you don’t love me.” He smiled. “But I hope to change your mind in time. I have a great deal of affection for you. We are good friends, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, of course, we are—”

  “Then won’t you give us a chance? There are worse things than two friends marrying. It seems like a wise decision to me. I know people who have married with far less between them.”

  Joanna knew such people, too. Those who married for money, or for an English title. Those who married because their parents had made an arrangement when they were children, or just born.

  John was right, she’d always suspected he wanted to marry her, and she understood why. He was a twin. It was his brother Michael who had inherited Burton Estates, not John, yet John had worked beside his brother loyally as if the property belonged as much to him.

  She didn’t doubt that he cared for her. He had shown it in many ways over the years. But would friendship be enough? she wondered.

  Her heart gave a lurch as she thought of Fireheart. When she had tasted heaven, would she be satisfied with earth?

  It was on the tip of her tongue to refuse him.

  “Don’t give me your answer immediately, Joanna,” he said. “Think about it for a while. You will, at least, do that for me, won’t you?”

  She gazed into the blue eyes of her good friend and nodded. Of course, she would think on it for a while. She owed him that much. “I’ll think about it.”

  John smiled. “I’ll not rush you. I promise.” He extended a hand to help her to her feet.

  “John, I can’t promise to give you the answer you want to hear.”