A Flight of Arrows (12 page)

They'd stripped him to his chilled skin while he lay unconscious, needing to assess his injuries as quickly as they could. Anna grieved over the sight of him.
She
had wanted Two Hawks in her world.
She
had pressed for the apprenticeship.
She
had drawn unwanted attention on the quay. What if Papa was right? What if her carelessness had caused some of those men to devise this hurt? How could God, in the span of a few hours, answer a desperate prayer with a miracle, then allow her to do something so unforgivably stupid?

Two Hawks had refused more than a bark tea for his ease, still he slept again, brows pinched, pain etched on his battered face. The quilt was pulled to his waist now. Sitting in a chair drawn close, Anna studied every uncovered inch of him, imagining the fists that had struck him—eyes, mouth, arms, belly. Then, as he'd fought back with strength and skill, someone had produced a knife…

She winced at the gash across the front of his scalp, running from just below the crown of his head nearly to his left ear. The hair surrounding it was shaved away, the red line of the wound bisected by Lydia's neat stitches.

They hadn't thrown him in the Binne Kill. He'd gone in to escape his
attackers, swimming underwater and hiding in thick cattail growth until the men left him for drowned. Shivering and bleeding, he'd tried to get ashore. It was all he remembered until looking up into her horrified face.

He'd taken long to warm. The room was verging on hot now, but she would keep that fire going. Whatever it took for him to heal. She started to touch his face, but there was no place that didn't look too tender. Instead she slipped her fingers beneath his hand, resting at his side. His knuckles were badly scored.

The touch awakened him. His eyes opened, mere slits in swollen, discolored flesh, yet the pain in them went so deep, she felt she was falling down a well into his soul. Afraid to cause him more harm by raising his hand, she bent and pressed her lips to the back of it, tasting tears. “I'm sorry. So sorry.” Besides the snap of the fire, silence was the only reply. She raised her head, wondering if he'd fallen unconscious again. He was looking at her.

“Anna Catherine.” His cut, swollen lips barely moved over her name. “Do you still want me?”

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Are you certain this is the life you want?”

Her stomach gave a lurch of dismay. “Two Hawks…what happened today, surely it won't happen again. Maybe Papa's right. Maybe this
was
my fault. I'll be more careful. I promise I will. I'm so sorry.”

That steady gaze was hard to bear, harder still to read.

“It is bad…how I look?”

“Yes.” She wouldn't lie to him. “But nothing that won't heal in time. Lydia's sure of it, and so am I. You've some broken ribs. You'll be in this bed for a time. But I'll be right here all the while.”

He shifted on the bed, sucked in a breath, and went still. “Aubrey will let you care for me?”

“He hasn't a say in it!”

“Anna,” Two Hawks began. She could see he was growing weary, expending
precious energy in speaking. “He is finding his way. Be patient. It is you and me…”

Her throat ached. “What about us?”

“No clothes, or work, or name will change my skin.”

Anna let go his hand and sat back. She didn't want to hear these words of Papa's coming out of Two Hawks's mouth, giving them the weight of validity. She leaned close again, fingers spread across his chest where the bruising was lightest. “If it's going to be this hard for us here, then take me to
your
people. Where and how we live doesn't matter. Only that we're together.”

Her heart beat wildly at what she'd heard herself offer.

Two Hawks reached for her hand but only brushed it with his. Instead of the pleasure she'd hoped to see, a distance came into his eyes. “A man goes to live with his wife's people. That is part of being
Onyota'a:ka
. I will need to change much, and I am willing. But not everything. Not that.”

“All right.” She thought desperately, seeking a way. The image of his mother, Good Voice, sprang to mind. “Then help me get a new family. Is there someone who would adopt me, someone of a different clan, so we can marry? Clear Day—he's not Turtle Clan, is he?”

“He is Bear Clan.” Two Hawks's eyebrows twitched. “You would do this?”

“To be with you?
Yes
.” She laughed through her tears, but Two Hawks didn't even smile. He only looked at her, dark eyes searching her face. “Did you hear me? I said I would.”

Still he didn't answer. He closed his slitted eyes and turned his battered face away, as if sleep had claimed him. But she was almost certain it hadn't.

Early April 1777

Schenectady

S
o, Major. You mean for the lad to resume his work, or will you send him hightailing it back to his people?”

Bent over office ledgers, Reginald raised his head to find Ephraim Lang leaning in the inner doorway. He'd heard the question but pretended otherwise. Lang wasn't fooled.

“See him today, did you?”

Reginald took up a quill, jotted a note. “He was asleep.”

Anna had been away in town. She and Reginald hadn't spoken since their angry exchange the day of the beating—a tearing to his soul—still he'd been glad to find her gone from the house and only Lydia watching over his apprentice. It did not bear much thinking on, Anna and the lad under the same roof, even though it was the rest of the world he most mistrusted to treat his daughter well, given the path down which her heart was leading her.

Lang's voice intruded again. “I see you're perusing Schuyler's orders for bateaux. Seems another pair of hands is still needful. And I'm limited in my hiring by the number of bateaux you're able to crew. So I ask again, Major—will it be Jonathan, or will you start over with another apprentice who likely cannot tell a plane from a pitchfork?”

“He's barely on his feet,” Reginald countered, “sooner than Lydia would have it so. He rose from bed the day after the attack and moved his blankets to the floor.”

Lang chuckled at that. “No surprise there. Most Oneidas don't sleep on feather ticks. But you haven't answered my question.”

“I don't know—and there is honesty for you, Ephraim. What think you? Should I keep him on despite what happened?”

“What happened is the lad saved your boats and took a beating for it.”

“Well do I know it.” And well had he examined his heart, the guilt he felt over it, the pain of Anna's condemning gaze. “If only it was so simple a matter.”

Lang studied him, blue eyes piercing. “You want simple? How does this suffice: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.' Recognize those words, Major? Would you surmise that Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and the rest meant them?”

“Doubtful they'd have put their names to the declaration—or their necks in the Crown's collective noose—did they not believe them.”

Lang nodded. “And does ‘all men' include William?”

“Of course it does. Or will. You know I hope it will.”

“I know it,” Lang said. “But what of his brother, whose skin isn't as white? And while I'm being blunt, I might as well say that to my mind you've less right to hope anything for William's sake than you do his twin's, who's come to you of his own free will.”

Reginald felt his face stiffen. Lang knew the truth about William, to whom he was born and how he came to be an Aubrey, but in his gruff, forbearing way had never openly judged Reginald for it. Was he doing so now?

“Because he wants something of me. He wants Anna.”

“He wants you to know him and to know you in return. Given everything you've told me of what happened before we met in the wood between Fort William Henry and Fort Edward, that says a lot about that young man's character.” Reginald started to speak, but Lang held up a
hand. “Would it surprise you to know you aren't the only one with secrets in his past—or present? I'm fixing to divest myself of one, so hear me.”

Reginald waited, attention and curiosity captured.

“The woman you know as my wife,” Lang said, “isn't my first. My first was a Mohawk woman from Canajoharie. I married her about the time you stopped your trips upriver so you never knew of it, but she bore me two children before she died. Boy and girl. Three and five years they be now, living with their people. I see them every time I pass on the river.”

Lang crossed the office to the outer door, wrenching it open when it stuck. “Whatever Jefferson and his lot may truly believe,
I
hold those truths to be self-evident for my children. For their aunties, their uncles, and their old grannie too, should they want them. And that's all I aim to say on the matter.”

He stepped out onto the quay, shutting the door behind him.

It was five sleeps since they brought him to Lydia's house, though Two Hawks had done his sleeping during the day. Awake now on his pallet, he knew by the room's slanting light that the sun wasn't long for setting. He expected to spend the coming night as he had the others, awake before the hearth fire, staring into flames he fed through the long dark that wasn't truly cold enough to need a fire. Its presence helped him to pray, to think—and being awake at night made it less likely he would find himself alone with Anna Catherine.

Not that he didn't want to be alone with her. Nor did he regret her seeing him wounded. Among his things brought up from the boatyard was a looking glass he used to shave the beard that was coming in thicker than his father's now. In it he had seen his bruised eyes, the egg-sized knot on his cheekbone, his scabbed-over lip, the stitched gash across his scalp. Though it hurt Anna Catherine to see him so, she bore it with courage.
That wasn't why he wished to avoid her. She'd given him much thinking to do, and her nearness made it harder to think about some things.

On his feet, he reached for his brother's shirt, draped on the too-soft bed beside the other garments he'd worn the past weeks. Careful of his healing ribs, he pulled it over his head.

Anna Catherine's offer to come and live with the People had filled him with such painful joy, he'd been unable to answer her. He was glad now he hadn't. The answer he'd wanted to give went against what he believed was right for a man to ask of his wife. To leave her people? Join his? Despite what had happened, he knew in his bones he was meant to cross that line. Not his Bear's Heart. But he needed help to do it. Aubrey's help. Not only his permission but his blessing and support. His heart.

Two Hawks eased his arms through the shirt-sleeves. He hadn't yet grown used to the breeches but pulled them on, then sat on the floor and stuck his feet into stockings, fastened the garters, buttoned the breeches over them at the knee. He buckled the shoes that had belonged to the man who had been Lydia's husband.

He hadn't spoken to Aubrey since the attack. Nor had Anna Catherine. That was not good. Two Hawks needed to make her see that she would have to find it in her heart to forgive. To honor. Not an easy thing to ask, or do, but he had the example of his own father to follow. His father and the white beads.

Now he had come to an end of thinking and it was time for speaking. A bad thing had happened, but he would heal. They would be strong in Creator's grace and not let it cause their hearts to grow afraid or bitter. They would set the pattern to follow in future years, whenever such things happened.

He was no such fool to think they never would again.

Two Hawks hadn't ventured often from his room, not wanting to alarm Lydia by prowling her house at night, but he knew his way to the kitchen. If Anna Catherine was home, she would be there, where the
women worked and ate their meals. But the kitchen was empty. A fire in the hearth looked tended, but he saw no sign of either woman.

Were they outside, behind the house where they had a garden? It was too early for planting, but he decided to check and was heading for the door when he heard a splash. It came from behind a curtain hung across a portion of the kitchen used for storage. Thinking one of the women was back there pouring water, he went to the curtain and moved it aside, starting to speak Anna Catherine's name.

The name caught in his throat. She wasn't pouring water. She was immersed in it, sunk inside a basin with legs and wheels on the legs, with her head above the water at one end, bare knees poking up near the other. Her eyes were closed, her hair spilling over the back of the basin onto the floor, a river of honey glinting in a candle's light.

His heart beat strong and fast. It led his mind straight over the present uncertainties to a day when he and she were one in the eyes of Creator and he could fill his gaze with her like this and never have to stop looking.

Then he remembered. That was not now.
Turn away. Stop looking
.

Surely he would have done so had Anna Catherine not opened her eyes and seen him there.

“Two Hawks!” Water sloshed from the basin as she gripped its sides, pushing up out of the water so her knees went down and her shoulders came up, slender, graceful, and bare. Her eyes were startled but unafraid. They held him, drew him.

He gripped the curtain, heat building in his face. He had only come looking to speak with her, but now he was gazing on what he had no right yet to see. He looked away, putting the curtain back in place, turning to retreat to his room.

His retreat was blocked. Behind him in the kitchen stood Reginald Aubrey, disbelief and outrage on his face.