Cherished

by Elizabeth Thornton

  William Addison lolled against the side of a great granite boulder. His pistol was tucked inside the waistband of his breeches. When Peter came up to him, he said, “I hope this isn’t some sort of trick. I don’t trust Gaboury and his voyageurs.”

  “There are seven of us and seven of them, but don’t forget, my men are armed with muskets.”

  William made a face and Peter laughed. Referring to the muskets, he said, “Brown Bess may not be much to look at, but when she is warm and dry, and in the hands of the right man, there are few women who can match her performance.”

  “Meaning?”

  One brow arched. “A trained soldier can load and fire her three times a minute. If you know of any woman who can match that, my men would like to meet her.”

  “Devil take them—if there is such a woman, I would like to meet her!”

  The laughter soon faded and William said, “Getting back to Gaboury—you are sure he is not leading us on a wild-goose chase?”

  “Quite sure. At every camp, there are signs that the women are still with them.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “Let us rather thank God for James Fraser.”

  They had had this conversation before. When Devereux had abducted the girls, they had feared the worst. That nothing as yet had happened to any of the women, they put down to Fraser’s presence. Once Fraser and Devereux parted company, there was no saying what would happen. The possibility that Leon was innocent, and therefore no threat to the girls, had never been raised.

  A sudden cry of alarm had the major fumbling for his pistol. Before he could cock it, a volley of warning shots buzzed around his head. Both he and William dived for cover.

  When the smoke cleared, the major saw at once that the situation was hopeless. Not only was the camp ringed around by three times their number, but half his own weapons were still useless. Three of his men, however, were in position, muskets braced against their shoulders. He gave a passing thought to the sentries he had posted.

  He should not be surprised that their attackers had crept up on them with the stealth of Indians, he thought. Most of them were Indians or close enough to pass for them. What did surprise him, however, was that Devereux could command such loyalty. Fraser must know that by aiding him, he was putting himself outside the law.

  “Throw down your arms!” came the call.

  Not one of the soldiers moved from position, though they faced certain death. It wasn’t that they were particularly brave, but they were well drilled. Major Benson was their commanding officer. His word was the only word that they would obey.

  The moment was a tense one. Peter gave the order and the silent collective sigh of relief was almost palpable. James Fraser and his men moved through the camp, gathering the weapons into a pile. It was Leon who approached Peter and William.

  “I’ll take that,” he said, indicating the pistol in William’s breeches.

  The man’s complexion was almost purple. He was trembling, but not from fear—rather from rage. “You’ll both hang for this,” he said. “There are others who will come after us. You will never get away with it.”

  What followed happened so suddenly that it was over before anyone could get their bearings. In the act of throwing down his pistol, William inadvertently set it off, the shot narrowly missing Leon. Almost instantaneously, he was hit by returning fire.

  The silence in that small clearing was suddenly electrified.

  “Hold your fire!” bellowed Leon, and not a moment too soon. Men were taking aim, selecting their quarry.

  While Leon went down on his knees to attend to the injured man, James spun around, his eyes searching for the culprit. It was his youngest brother, Nathan.

  Trembling in his boots, Nathan croaked, “He fired first.”

  “You might have started a massacre!” Nathan’s eyes fell away and James brushed past the major to join Leon beside the injured man.

  “How is he?”

  “Not good. The bullet is lodged in his hip.”

  “He’s not dead?”

  “No. He has fainted. We can do nothing for him here but staunch the flow of blood. We’d best get him to Ste. Marie.”

  In a tense undertone, Leon said, “Why didn’t you give the order to hold fire?”

  James shrugged helplessly, but before he could come up with an answer, Major Benson said, “This man requires the services of a physician.”

  The nearest physician was four hundred miles away in Fort William.

  It was James who took the bullet out of William’s hip, and Leon who assisted at the operation. James had hoped that Leon would be the one to do it, but that idea was scotched by Leon himself.

  “But why?” James wanted to know. “You have a steadier hand than I. I’ve said it before. You missed your calling. You should have been a surgeon.”

  “Stow it, James. I’m immune to your flattery, And even if that were true, I still wouldn’t do it.”

  The argument took place in the back parlor of the Fraser home, an unpretentious room which was occasionally used for food preparation and more frequently for family dining. The injured man had been set down on a table in the middle of the room. He had come to himself and was making quite a racket from the excruciating pain he was in. It took the combined efforts of Leon and Matthew to strip him of his boots and breeches. As instructed, Nathan had fetched a bottle of laudanum and was carefully counting drops into a half-glass of water.

  “You never used to be so squeamish.”

  “It’s not that. Look, James, would you remove the bullet if it were Benson lying here and not Addison?” Leon answered his own question. “Of course you wouldn’t, because if anything happened to Benson, Sara would never forget that it had happened by your hand.”

  Leon looked James straight in the eye, and there was complete knowledge in that look.

  Faltering, James said, “I take your point. I’ll do it. Nathan, have you got that laudanum ready yet?”

  Nathan, having become interested in the conversation, had stopped counting. “Coming,” he said, and studiously started counting again.

  Almost an hour was to pass before Leon went in search of the ladies. He found them in the dining room, standing around aimlessly. He was the first to speak, and it was to his wife that he addressed his remarks. “Addison’s injury is severe, but it is not lethal. If it does not become infected, he has every chance of recovering from it.”

  Ignoring the ensuing babble of questions, he approached Charlotte Fraser. “Charlotte,” he said gently, “we shall need a room on the ground floor where Mr. Addison can convalesce. He is going to be laid up for some time and will require constant attention.”

  Charlotte conferred with her mother. Of all the ladies present, Mrs. Fraser was the most composed. It was as if she had been holding herself in readiness for this moment. The men had done their part. The rest was women’s work. Calling to the younger girl, she immediately left the room, leaving Charlotte to explain.

  In her quiet way, the girl said, “There is a room just off the back parlor, a maid’s room. My mother believes that it will be convenient for all Mr. Addison’s needs.”

  Leon was only too happy that Mrs. Fraser had taken his meaning without elaboration. Evidently, she understood about invalids and stairs and the necessity of chamber pots and proximity to the outside privy. To mention such subjects in the hearing of English ladies was considered indelicate. He looked at Hester and almost gave in to the temptation.

  She had raised one hand, assuming control of the conversation. Leon propped a hip against the table and folded his arms across his chest. “What is it, Hester?” he asked, and managed to sound pleasant.

  She looked down the length of her patrician nose. “Are we to understand that Mrs. Fraser and her daughters have the care of Mr. Addison?”

  “You are.”

  “But…”

  “Listen carefully to what I have to say…” and he spoke in that fluid, softly menacing tone that unfailin
gly secured the attention of his hearers. Deliberately, for effect, he paused, then began again. “At this moment, Major Benson and his men are held in the Common Gaol.” He ignored Sara’s quick rasp of breath and went on evenly. “James and some other men are with them now, taking the first watch. If you try to see them you will be turned away.

  “Furthermore, if Addison had not sustained an injury, he would be there also. He is not a guest in this house. He is our prisoner and as such he is to remain incommunicable except to certain persons designated by myself or James.”

  If he saw Hester’s raised hand, he gave no indication of it. “At any rate, he is in no fit state for visitors, for he is heavily sedated.

  “There is one other thing I wish to say to you,” and here he allowed himself a small smile. “I should warn you that the men who have been sent to guard Major Benson and Addison are armed.”

  Emily recovered first from the shock of his words. “Are you expecting an attack of some sort, Leon?”

  Hester rounded on her. “Widgeon! He thinks that we are the ones who may try to rescue William and Peter!”

  “That is not the only reason,” said Leon, “but it did occur to me. And now, ladies, I beg leave to be excused. I have an appointment for which I am already late.”

  Emily was still smarting from Hester’s barb. Perhaps she was a widgeon, but it was unkind of Hester to say so. It took a moment for Leon’s abrupt change of subject to penetrate. “Appointment? What appointment?”

  Hester was shrewder, more quick to put two and two together. “You are going to see that girl, aren’t you? The one who was once our maid.”

  Leon acknowledged Hester’s words with a slight inclination of his head.

  “Devereux, you are a fool,” she scoffed. “The girl is an Indian. She stole things. She may swear your innocence on a stack of Bibles, and no one will ever believe her.”

  He straightened and came away from the table. “I shall believe her,” he said simply, and then in a crisper tone, “I should be back by noon tomorrow. Be ready to leave with me then.”

  As he turned to go, Sara cried out, “But…but what is going to happen to Peter and the others?”

  Over his shoulder, he replied, “They will be released in a day or two, once we are safely away.”

  After his departure, a pall fell over the little group. Conversation was sporadic and interspersed with long silences broken only by the sounds of coming and going in the back parlor. Before long, the ladies decided that the excitement of the day’s events had taken its toll. They were ready for bed.

  At the top of the stairs, before they turned away to their respective chambers, Hester spoke what she had been thinking. “My mind is made up,” she said. “I am going no farther. Devereux can’t make me, and there’s an end of it.”

  She was terrified when her husband told her that he was bringing a fur trader, one of the English, to their little cabin. She had wanted to take her babe and hide in the woods till they were gone. Doucette would not allow it. They knew about her, knew that she was his wife. If they wanted to, they could make bad trouble for him. They could refuse to hire him on as a guide next year. They could turn him away at the posts when he brought in his buffalo meat and hides for barter. They might even stop him hunting the buffalo out west this summer. Then where would they be? Is that what she wanted?

  It wasn’t what she wanted. If her husband fell foul of the whites, they and their babe might starve to death, or she would be forced to return to her people and she would lose face.

  No. That must not happen. She had her pride. She was the wife of a buffalo hunter. She went with him everywhere. No woman could skin a buffalo or dress the hides and dry the meat as well as she. As Doucette’s wife, she had status. The other women envied her good fortune. And so they should.

  Doucette was far above their husbands. He made more money than a common voyageur. He was a good provider. He had a temper, but he had never done more than slap her with his open hand. Some husbands beat their wives—men like her first husband. It was how she had met Doucette. The buffalo hunter had pounced on her husband when he was beating her. Doucette had knocked him to the ground and had threatened that he would cut off his ears if he ever came near her again. Her husband had slunk away and she had become Doucette’s woman.

  Doucette was strong. He would protect her. Other men feared him. He had promised that the fur trader would talk with her and then he would go away. She had nothing to fear. She had not done anything that was so very wrong. Still, she was wishing that she had gone back to her own people to have her babe. Or they should have gone on to the buffalo lands, far beyond Fort William and the long reach of the whites.

  She heard their steps long before the door opened. Catching her blanket more tightly to her shoulders, she gave suckle to the babe in her arms.

  Leon entered at Doucette’s back and took a moment to examine the small interior. There was a scorched table with a lantern upon it. The woman sat on a cot against one wall. The single chair was beside a stone fireplace. In the empty grate there were fish bones and feathers. The stench of fish and stale tobacco smoke would have gagged a man of less sterner sensibilities. The one-room cabin was primitive beyond imagining.

  He should not have been surprised. Doucette and men like him did not put down roots. Permanency was a concept that was unknown to them. They were adventurers. In a month’s time, the urge would strike him, or he would hear of greener pastures and he would be off, taking his little family with him.

  The woman could not be more than sixteen. God knew what she saw in Doucette. The man was ferocious-looking, like the villain of a child’s fantasy. His hair was long and unruly and topped by a slouch hat with an ostrich feather sticking in its crown. A blanket coat covered his wiry frame. According to James, Doucette’s services as a guide were unsurpassable, and to be had only when the buffalo season was over.

  Leon’s hopes, which had never stood very high, completely deserted him. He had come on a fool’s errand and the sooner he reconciled himself to his fate, the sooner he would put his life in order. He was thinking of Emily, knowing that he would never permit her to live under the cloud which would follow him for the rest of his days.

  He was here. If for no other reason than that, he might as well get on with it.

  Speaking first in French, then in English, he said, “I am not English. I am an American, and when I leave here I shall be going across the water to my own country. I won’t return. No one else wishes to question you. Only me.”

  The woman spoke neither language fluently and finally her husband translated in her own tongue. From her expression, Leon saw that she was still far from reassured. He decided he might as well be direct.

  “You were once a maid to Lady Sara,” he said, and waited till the woman had arranged her babe to nurse at her other breast. The action set up a train of thought that put Leon off course for some few seconds. He heard the woman’s reply and gave her his undivided attention.

  Her hair was dressed in elaborate knots and plaits. Her features were regular, her complexion dark, but no darker than her husband’s, and Doucette was a white man. Leon made note of many small details and he came to the conclusion that she was a woman of the Cree. Among fur traders, it was generally acknowledged that there were no more comely Indians than the Cree. Again he wondered what the girl could possibly see in Doucette when she could have done so much better for herself.

  Abruptly, he asked, “Did you try to poison your mistress?”

  Her husband translated. For a moment or two, shock held her speechless, then she let fly with a torrent of words. The answer was an unequivocal no. What else had he expected the girl to say?

  “Do you know who did try to poison her?”

  By this time, she wasn’t waiting for her husband to translate. Almost as soon as the words were out of Leon’s mouth, she was shaking her head. He wasn’t getting anywhere. He tried another tack.

  “Lady Hester says that you stole things
.”

  This was greeted by a cry of alarm and a spate of words directed at her husband.

  Doucette answered for her. “She didn’t steal things. She broke plates or scorched linens when they were drying by the fire and she hid them so that the older one would not find them.”

  Leon had no trouble in deducing that “the older one” referred to Hester. “Where did you hide them?”

  Another conference, then, “When she went to the privy out back, she concealed them in her skirts and threw them into the latrine.”

  It was a trick employed by children and servants the world over to escape the wrath of their betters. Nobody was going to poke about in a latrine for evidence, unless perhaps a body was buried there.

  Leon stared at the girl, catching the betraying dilation of her pupils before she quickly lowered her lashes. She was terrified now, where before she had only been wary of him. Why?

  The words he said next were not the ones he planned to say. “But you didn’t throw everything away. You kept something. And I am not leaving here until you give it into my hand.”

  Both husband and wife looked at him as though he had suddenly sprouted another head. Their jaws went slack. Doucette recovered first, and began to bluster. In an instant, Leon had him by the throat. When he saw that he had made his point, he let him go.

  “Give it to me!” he hissed.

  Doucette looked into those fathomless black eyes and his Adam’s apple began to wobble. Though he did not know that he was staring into the eyes of a man who was once an assassin, instinct mixed oddly with superstition was painting lurid, fanciful pictures inside his head. The American was as sinister as Satan. Before taking him on, a man would need the protection of the Virgin Mary and all the saints. In that moment, Doucette truly regretted he had not led a blameless life.

  Turning on his wife, he barked out an order. When she made to argue with him, he lifted his hand as though to strike her. She did his bidding, but sullenly. Keeping her child close held to the warmth of her body, she moved to the fireplace. One hand slipped inside the chimney, fumbling for something. A moment later, she withdrew a leather satchel. She kept her eyes down as she handed it to her husband. Without a word, Doucette put the satchel into Leon’s outstretched hands.