Firebrand's Woman

by Vanessa Royall

  Thus she gained their ears for a crucial moment before outrage and anger once again took hold.

  She had, however inadvertently, given Torch an opportunity.

  “There is truth in the maiden’s words,” he cried. “Perhaps not as much truth as she believes, and far less than will satisfy most of us, but truth nonetheless.”

  The people quieted. Torch was speaking. “It is a great matter,” he went on, “and I shall call the seeress.”

  Teva was sent for. She did not deign to watch men die, and had not for decades attended an execution. “As one approaches age,” she said, “one’s own death begins to nod and wink in the night. Then death becomes less entertainment than friend. When you carry it with you, there is no need to witness it, or to cheer its presence.”

  But she came. Torch informed her of what had transpired. “It is my decision,” he stated, aware of the risk he was taking in the judgment of the tribe, “that the planter be released to go his way.”

  In spite of his power there were protests. He had, after all, not been chief for very long. “Trust is a thing we cannot abandon, and I believe the words of the man when he says he is not a fighter. Also, he has suffered already.”

  From the gallows Jason sent Gyva a glance of gratitude. But she herself was now in trouble.

  “Torch, our great chieftain,” cried Arrow-in-Oak, his knife still dripping the Virginian’s blood, “I am your loyal warrior and a true Chickasaw. But I cannot say otherwise. The maiden has, one time too many, affronted us all.”

  Acclamation came from the tribe at the sound of his words.

  “Put the maiden on the gallows then!” cried a woman somewhere in back of the crowd. “Let the man go, but let her writhe for the trouble she has caused.”

  Gyva looked around, trying to suppress her fear.

  “Ah, no,” she heard Little Swallow say with menace, “our Torch has loved her, and he will play favorites now.”

  Swallow seemed to be seeking in Gyva’s death a form of spiritual recompense for the death of Hawk, her lover.

  “A Chickasaw chieftain has no favorites,” said Torch scornfully. But on his face Gyva could see that he was well aware that his actions here would long color his relationship with the tribe.

  The tribe, she remembered him tell her. The tribe must come first for me now.

  A dull rumble of unrest rose from the people, some of whom wished to see Gyva die with the man, some of whom wished merely to see her perish in place of Jason.

  “They will both be sent forth!” Torch cried suddenly.

  All stilled in hush, listening.

  “Cut the man down, clothe him, give him back his belongings. Within this hour he shall be sent from our midst. He must seek his own fate now, and fulfill the life we have given him. And also the maiden Gyva shall be sent forth, to seek apart from us the happiness and tranquility she has not been able to find in our midst.”

  Torch was saying these things? Gyva wondered, stunned. Her Torch, under whom so many times, so well, she had worked the magic of her body to bring him the mystery of love.

  And Teva was nodding dolefully. “It is a wise decision,” the old witch-woman was saying, soothing the tribe. “It is not a happy decision, but it is a wise one.”

  Because she knew it was the only decision that could keep Gyva off the gallows.

  They allowed her mere minutes to gather up a few things. Her mind spun with sorrow and suffering as she rummaged about the wigwam, collecting clothing, a blanket of—rabbit skin? She looked down at the pale, soft pelts upon which she had slept since her panther skins had been destroyed by fire. No, she would not take these of the rabbit, or run like a rabbit into the forest. But Torch had rejected her and put her away as easily as if that were what she was, a hapless rabbit, fine for sacrifice!

  On the peg next to her sleeping place hung her little leather pouch, and in it her few pathetic adornments, Torch’s serpent-shaped war bracelet, and the white pebbles he had sent to summon her for the very first time. Oh, how she loathed them now, and what memories they stirred! She reached inside the pouch to draw them forth, to hurl them away, and the bracelet, too, but then she changed her mind.

  The tribe was waiting when she emerged from her dwelling. It took every last effort of courage to hold her pride, but she held it and held her head up before them. Near the gallows Teva was applying some kind of ointment to Jason’s wounds. He swayed at her touch, weakened as much by relief as by the ordeal.

  Before the chieftain’s wigwam Torch waited. He stood separated from the people, and she approached. Quietly, lest the others hear, he said: “I would that it were otherwise, Gyva.”

  She said nothing, but her eyes condemned him: You could make it so.

  He read her thoughts. “No more. You have done too much for the people to abide. I must think of all now, not of—”

  “To be banished is to die,” she said.

  Torch shook his head sadly. “It is not, and you will, I hope, learn this in time, and think of me—”

  Gyva did not let him finish. “This is what I think of you!” she cried, and cast down in the dust before his feet the white pebbles and the bracelet.

  Never had she seen such hurt upon his face. Never had she caused such hurt to anyone. Instantly she felt terror at having done this, a hurt of her own, now that they were parting, never to see each other again.

  “Where will you travel?” he asked, making an effort to steady his composure. She did not at first know how to respond, or with what words. She looked down. There lay the symbols of his love. Symbols were much on her mind now, and what they meant, or what they seemed to mean.

  “I go,” she said, meeting his eyes, “to seek the golden stick of which you spoke in honeyed words. And I shall not forget the message written thereupon.”

  Then, giving him no chance to reply, no opportunity for fond farewell, she spun away from him and passed before the massed Chickasaw. Once they had been her people; now no more.

  Little Swallow had contrived to stand near the path Gyva would take into the forest. “Shall I follow you now?” she mocked. “Shall I do your bidding?” A reminder of Gyva’s boast to her, days earlier, about who would be a chieftain’s wife, and who a queen.

  “Whatever you choose,” Gyva shot back crisply. There was a certain relief, she discovered, in having lost everything. There was no more need for restraint. “But remember this, should he take you to wife: I loved him first, and loved him best. Even when you are in his arms, you will know that I am always in his mind.”

  Swallow started in surprise: Gyva’s words were true. She began to shape a retort, but none came. And Gyva was gone among the trees, cast out from the bosom of her people.

  Hours passed, and Gyva trudged along through the forest, slowly climbing into the hills. Her first thought—her only thought—was to put distance between herself and the village of her youth. Then, through the grief-numbed darkness that encircled her, the exigencies of living need, beating blood, growling stomach, intruded upon her. She was hungry; she was alive. The stomach has no mind to ponder the pain of banishment and disgrace. Now, too late, she cursed herself. Food! She ought to have taken food with her. No one would have gainsaid a bag of meal, a chunk of dried venison, corn bread wrapped in bark. No, she had been feeding on her pride back there in the village, feeding upon her chin-lifted appearance, her strong demeanor. Much good pride did her now—and how long and well would she feed upon her fiery retort to Little Swallow, who this very night might entice Torch down upon the loving earth, and offer her breasts to him, open herself for him, and close herself around him?

  Involuntarily Gyva cried out in loss and anguish, her sound carrying far off, rebounding from the wall of the mountains.

  Then she heard another cry, not her own. She stopped, more surprised than fearful. Were Harris and his men nearby?

  For the first time the need for safety, a destination, pressed itself upon her, as before the knowledge of hunger had made itself known.
Her clothing was already torn by brambles and wild rose; her moccasins were soaking wet and caked heavily with mud. Tonight she must sleep somewhere upon wet grass, with wild animals roaming about; the morrow would dawn, and still she would have no place to go. The Choctaw would kill her outright; she was Chickasaw, an enemy. What of the Sac and the Fox? They would learn of her banishment, even if they did not reject her for the smooth ivory of her skin. Even among her own people, the protection afforded by her grandfather’s position had been illusory.

  Again came the far cry, sounding off the mountains:

  “DEE-LEE-AAAAAAA!”

  Jason Randolph. She had forgotten all about him. For a long moment she debated whether or not to answer. If she were captured in the company of a white man, no tribe she knew would bother to listen to explanations before putting an end to her life. But the Virginian had seemed a good man, he was alone like herself, and at night one of them might watch for danger while the other slept.

  “Here!” she cried. “Here I am!” She looked about, to find a landmark for him to follow. “Come toward the hillock of windbent pines!”

  “Aye!” came his reply, rebounding from the rocky cliffs of the Twin Mountains. She glanced up at them once, remembered the diagrams Torch had used to summon her, and turned away, waiting now for another man.

  She sat in silence a long while before the Virginian appeared, stumbling through the underbrush. He looked very weak, but he smiled when he saw her, and collapsed on the earth beneath the tree where Gyva sat.

  “Delia!” he panted. “Now there are two of us, at any rate.”

  “Such was my thought.” She had meant to treat him somewhat coldly, lest he think banishment had broken her spirit; but he looked so tired, and was sweating so profusely, that she was immediately alarmed.

  “Are you taken ill?”

  “No…no, I think not. But I must rest for a time. The old woman with the strange mark upon her face treated my wounds, and that is something for which to be grateful. An odd woman indeed.”

  “Yes, she is magic”

  He looked at her, then nodded, accepting the explanation, but obviously not believing it.

  “She sent words for you.”

  “Yes?”

  “She said that if I saw you I must tell you it was for the best. That exile spared your life. That things all change with time, and you will return someday.”

  “Hah!” cried the maiden, bitterly.

  Randolph looked genuinely moved at her plight. “I am the one who caused you to be cast out, I know,” he said. “There is no way I can thank you for saving my life—”

  “Don’t,” she cut him off. “I was banished for many reasons, you the least of them.”

  He studied her. “Delia…”

  “That is not my name!”

  “No,” he replied, quite seriously, “but I am no Chickasaw, and it is my name for you.”

  She glanced at him sharply, and saw his eyes fast upon her, and saw tenderness in them.

  No. Not this. Not now. Not yet…

  “I do not choose to mark you with the name that is used by the other one…”

  “What? What other one?”

  With that, Jason took from his back the knapsack he had been carrying, opened it, and drew forth a serpent bracelet and the small white stones. “Your chieftain,” he said, “asked me, for a favor, to give these to you, in the event that I found you.”

  For a long, long moment he held the relics of her love, offering them to her in his outstretched hand. She did not reach to take them; they were too painful to hold, and yet she could not pull her eyes away from them. Jason watched as wave upon wave of complicated emotion came to assault the Indian girl, until he was moved to sadness by the great sadness she felt.

  It is all over, Gyva was thinking. Torch’s love had been as true as her own, but circumstance had forced them apart. She wished to heaven that he had not sent these tokens with Jason. A Chickasaw did not weep, and never would she do so before a white man, it was unthinkable, but…

  But then her tears came. Grief is a natural thing, and a dead love is as great as death, if not greater. The tears poured from her eyes. For a time she choked her sobs, but these, too, demanded relief, and soon she howled in loss and grief and despair beneath the pines. How it came about, she did not later recall, but by the time she fought her way up out of the throes of woe, Jason was holding her close, trying to soothe her, crooning to her wordlessly as if she were a child.

  “I am so ashamed,” she said, hiding her face from him, trying to get away. And she thought, I shall disappear into the forest, and die there like an animal whose time has come.

  But Jason was bewildered. “Ashamed? Why are you ashamed?”

  A white man. He knew nothing! “For I have shown tears before an en—”

  She stopped herself. She had meant to say, instinctively, “enemy,” because he was white.

  He heard the word she did not speak. “No,” he said, “I am not that. And no one need be ashamed of showing heartbreak. You must love him very much. It was a good thing, and there is no shame in grief for the end of a good thing. Do not violate the past by looking upon it with hard eyes now, lest in future years you have nights of painful memory.”

  She wiped away her tears and looked at him directly. There was much wisdom in what he spoke; her mind knew it, even though her heart was not yet ready to accept his truth.

  “If it was good, let it die as such,” he added. “Do not use your mind to deny what it was, or what it meant to you. I know that to do so is a natural impulse, and it seems to remove the pain, but that is only an illusion. Every loss brings pain with it, but pain dealt with honestly will sink away, like sweet water into the earth. Tears disappear into the soul, and if the tears are accepted, wisdom comes.”

  She said nothing, considering his words, grateful for the sincerity of the effort he was making in her behalf, and slightly astonished at the depth of sensitivity in a man who must be less than thirty circlings of the sun.

  “Yes,” he nodded. “I know grief. I have told you of the loss of my wife and child. That is why I understand what you have lost.”

  “Your loss…” she began, admitting it, and by so doing rejecting self-pity, “your loss was far greater. I thank you for the words you have spoken, for being kind to me.”

  “Delia…”

  Whatever he meant to say then, he did not. She took from him the white stones and the bracelet and placed them inside her leather pouch. The great pain of loss was still upon her, but Jason’s wisdom had made its mark in her soul. To reject her memory of Torch, to bury it, would mean that, for years, that memory would lie dormant within her, like an evil seed, to sprout one day, dark-flowered obscene, with thick black vines to entangle her soul and drag her down. No, she would not have that transpire. She would keep the tokens of her lost love, and someday, someday far in a future she could not now even dream, the bracelet and the stones would comfort her.

  He smiled slowly, watching her place the items in her pouch.

  “You will not be sorry for that,” he said. “Though I might be,” he added obscurely.

  “Of what do you speak?”

  “Nothing. Only a thought.” He stood up. “You have not brought food?”

  “I…” She shook her head, feeling inept “I did not think…”

  “It is all right The old woman gave me water and a kind of bread. We shall share, and rest”

  “What then?”

  “I am going north to Harrisville. It is the only white settlement around. And you will seek another tribe?”

  She explained why this would be impossible. “Then you are alone?” he asked, truly alarmed. “You shall come with me until you find a place, or make new plans.”

  “Do you not understand? I am Chickasaw. Harris will—”

  “You are also a white woman. Don’t worry. I will protect you. I am sure this man Harris is not as your braves have fearfully decreed him to be. He is a man like any ot
her. And in any event, you need not worry. I will vouch for you. The word of a Virginian, of a Randolph, will hold good even here on the frontier. And to be doubly safe, you will wear my wife’s—you will wear white woman’s clothing. It is in my bundle. I could not bear to throw it away.”

  “You are of great family?”

  “It is sufficient. Our ancestral lands are adjacent to those of the President’s family.”

  “Moon-Row?”

  He laughed. “Monroe. He is our neighbor.”

  “I, too, am the daughter of high ones,” she began, not wishing him to think that she was some vulgar little thing cast off by her people for unworthiness.

  Jason Randolph’s face turned serious. “Delia,” he said, “I knew that as soon as I saw you. And,” he added, “so will everyone else.”

  They ate, and then rested that day, to shore up their strength for the passage through the mountains to Harrisville. Evening came, and with it a cold wind. Jason had one tattered blanket, the maiden none at all, but she showed him how to fashion a windbreak shelter with saplings, leaves, and vines. “We shall share the blanket as we have shared the food,” he offered. “I shall not trouble you in the night.” So they nestled together down upon the earth, a bit awkwardly at first, but as darkness fell they curled close to each other for warmth and comfort, two animals alone in the wilderness.

  “Good night, Delia,” Jason said sometime later, and drifted into sleep.

  But she stayed awake for a long time, listening to the wind, which howled down among the trees like a lost ghost seeking the trail toward home. Delia, she thought, as the moon rose, blasting the shuddering pines. Her past was gone. Dey-Lor-Gyva was an Indian name. Jason was right. Delia. If need be, it was a name fine enough for any white lady, and if she must pretend to be one for a time, so she would have to be. Delia.

  This is a good man, and a wise one, she thought drowsily, feeling his heart beat slow and sure in the strong body that pressed against her own; and in spite of what had happened to her she felt grateful, and murmured a prayer of thanksgiving to Ababinili, up there among the stars. Grandfather, she implored, watch over me. And then she was gone to the living earth, taken and rocked and forever cradled in the velvet womb of mother night.