I Am Regina (5 page)

Breathless, I try to stand. Tiger Claw grunts. He kicks me to the ground. Whimpering, I cover my head, expecting his next blow. Struggling to hang onto me, Sarah screams.

The Indians talk above me and Tiger Claw yanks me to my feet. Sarah clutches my neck, trying to regain her balance. I stumble over a rotted log as I am herded with the other captives to a clearing by the stream.

Galasko stands framed by the gold of poplar leaves. He raises his rifle in the air then disappears in the direction that Barbara rode. Six Indians follow him.

I wish courage for Barbara. I wish wings for the stallion's feet. I wish for the trees to part, making a path that will lead her through this wilderness to the soldiers who will return to rescue me.

My legs are shaking. I cannot seem to catch my breath. Marie lifts Sarah off my back, then she puts an arm around me. She always used to smell like violets.

Now she smells of fear. “Barbara will be all right,” Marie whispers. “She is so brave.”

The five remaining Indians keep us closely guarded as the minutes slowly pass. The silent minutes seem to stretch—to nine, to ten, to twenty, maybe more. The sun glances off the nearby stream, turning it to gold.

I am thirsty.

If only I could ignore the threat of the Indians' rifles. If only I could skirt the Indian in the linen shirt and walk the seven paces to the stream....

Water could quench my burning thirst, my fear. Water could tell me, “Barbara will be all right.”

The forest fills with a wild sound, as if a hundred wolves were howling.

“The Indians,” Marie gasps, turning to me. “What are they doing? What have they done to Barbara?”

My hands feel as cold as ice.

Mary Anne hides her head in the folds of Marie's blue dress. Jacob crouches, watching the trees where Barbara disappeared.

“Your sister will die,” a low voice whispers.

I turn. It is the madwoman, Elizabeth. One dark eye looks at me, the other drifts, now looking at the stream, now at Tiger Claw who slouches against a tree, his rifle resting on his forearm.

“They will build a bonfire and burn her.” Elizabeth laughs.

“No,” I whisper, shaking my head from side to side.

The howling changes pitch. Now it rings with triumph and beside us Tiger Claw starts yipping like a moon-crazed dog.

Marie tightens an arm around me. Only her arm keeps me from falling. Moments later, the chestnut stallion, riderless, trots into the clearing. His reins are dangling. The whites of his eyes roll.

 

 

 

A
ll my hope of being rescued, of escaping from the Indians, dies when, minutes later, Galasko and Shingask emerge from the poplar trees holding Barbara up between them.

“Regina! No!” Peter cries as, throwing fear aside, I run to my sister. I stumble through the stream, Indians shouting angrily behind me, and reach for Barbara. Galasko holds his rifle up between us and tries to push me back. But the look in Barbara's eyes transfixes me and I cannot move. My bones seem to turn to ashes. Barbara's eyes look ... stunned ... like a badly injured fox, legs mauled by a trap. “What have they done to you?” I whisper.

Peter pulls me backward, out of the rushing water. He leads me to the other captives Tiger Claw and four other Indians guard beneath a grove of birch trees. The bark reminds me of dead people's skin, cold white and pale. I feel the dark barrels of Indians' guns focused on me now.

“You cannot help her,” Peter whispers, as Galasko and Shingask drag my unresisting sister over to a dead ash tree standing in the center of the small clearing just a few steps away from me. Bark hangs in ragged sheets from its forked branches. Barbara's cheek and neck are gashed. Blood has stained the collar of her gray homespun dress. Her eyes look dull and lifeless, as if all her courage has now died. I cannot bear to see it die....

Galasko wraps a rope around Barbara's waist while other Indians emerge from the forest, talking excitedly among themselves. He secures Barbara to the ash tree and I force myself to reach for him, touch the bared skin of his arm. “Please. Leave her alone. She has been hurt enough,” I plead, searching his stony face for a sign of mercy.

Galasko shrugs me off, as if my fingers were flies. Desperate, I turn to Shingask who watches his father bind Barbara to the tree. Shingask must be about John's age, only sixteen. He is too young to hide the hurt I see in his eyes. He thinks Barbara has betrayed him.

“She will not run away again,” I promise Shingask.

He looks away from me, and Barbara begins to cry.

Tiger Claw forces himself between Shingask and me. He holds his rifle up like a bar, forcing me backward into Marie. Five Indians with angry faces now corral our little group. They force us to move—three, four, five paces backward, until a large space filled with withered grass and brush separates us from Barbara. Mark and Johann, the two small boys, are crying. They cling to Jacob and he puts his arms around them.

“She shouldn't have tried to run away,” Mary Anne sobs, hiding within the circle of Marie's pale arm.

“She wasn't running away! She was riding to Fort Schamockin. She wanted to alert the soldiers and bring them back here. She risked her life to save us! We must save her now. Somehow, we must save her.” I look from one face to another. No one will meet my gaze.

Peter casts a warning glance at the Indians surrounding us. “Speak softly,” he says, keeping an eye on them. They are talking among themselves. “There's nothing we can do,” Peter whispers. “There are too few of us. The Indians would kill us all.”

“But ... but they are going to burn my sister.”

The dark-skinned Indian called Suckachgook now piles twigs and pine boughs at Barbara's feet. A rope binds my sister's waist to the dead ash tree. Her hands are free. Her fingers pluck aimlessly at the rope binding her, as if she cannot believe its presence.

Marie takes my hand and holds it tightly. Suckachgook pokes Barbara with a stick, as if she were an animal. I flinch, but Barbara doesn't. Tears are streaming down her face as she stares at the ground. I need to see her eyes. Meet her gaze. Let her know, everything will be all right. Even though I know ... it won't.

An Indian with a gray blanket draped across his shoulder starts to chant.
My sister is about to be burned alive.
Why would he want to sing? Now the others join in, as if this were a celebration.

Someone should stop this!

Galasko offers Barbara a large, black book. The cover is torn and smudged, but I can tell it is a Bible.

“He is preparing her to die,” Elizabeth says.

Barbara looks at the Bible for a moment, then pushes it away.

“Take the Bible, Barbara,” I whisper, thinking of all the times we read the Bible together as a family. Its words always gave us strength and the courage to go on. Barbara must not refuse them now.

Galasko grabs Barbara by the hair and pulls her head back. “You read.”

“I can't read it.” Barbara sobs. “This Bible. It is French. I ... I read only German.”

Galasko searches through the pile of loot the Indians took from our families. He finds another Bible. A German one.

Barbara wipes her face on her sleeve. Her long white fingers tremble, fluttering like moth's wings through the pages of the book. Now they stop, hovering over an open page. Still sobbing, Barbara begins to read aloud, “The Lord is my shepherd, I ... I shall not want.”

It is the Twenty-third Psalm, Father's favorite. He often read it to us, especially when we were sad and troubled. I can almost hear him now.

“Thou ... preparest a table before me ... in the presence of mine enemies ...” Barbara sobs so hard she cannot speak.

“Thou anointest my head with oil,” I say out loud. All around me the Indians chant. “My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Barbara closes the Bible as I finish the psalm for her. Shingask approaches her. He is not chanting like the others. He speaks to Barbara and she listens. She shakes her head. “No run,” she says.

Galasko pulls his son away.

Shingask's hands gesture as he talks to his father.

I turn to Peter Lick. “What is he saying?”

Peter strokes his red beard, listening intently. “Shingask says he does not want the brown-haired girl to burn. That she has promised him she will not run away again. That he dreamt of her ... he dreamt that the brown-haired girl had become his wife.” Peter squeezes my arm gently. He knows what these words mean to me. I feel as if I am going to be sick.

Galasko, laughing, pounds Shingask on the back.

The other Indians are chanting louder now. Suckachgook waves a torch at my sister's face then lights the brush piled at her feet. The fire begins to smolder. I can almost feel the heat. Barbara screams. Oh Lord, there must be
something
I can do.

Galasko grabs Barbara's chin. He forces her to look at him. “Shingask say he no want you die.”

Tears stream down my sister's face.

“Shingask say you no run away.”

“No ...” she gasps. “No run.”

Galasko looks at Shingask then at Barbara. “You be brave, like
nianque,
the wild cat. Then I know you make good Indian. You stop cry, then my son, he let you live.” Galasko releases Barbara's arm. He folds his arms and watches her, the way a cat would a chipmunk. But she does not stop crying.

Smoke rises from the kindling piled at her feet. Moments later, a small, hungry flame starts licking at the twigs. A small branch next to Barbara's left foot catches fire.

If tears could quench this fire, my sister's would. I want to grab her and shake her. I want to slap her face as Mother once did mine. I shout, “Barbara! Stop crying. If you stop, the Indians will let you live!”

Small flames now leap and catch onto another, larger branch, only a foot away from the torn hem of Barbara's homespun dress. Barbara struggles against the rope that binds her to the ash tree and cries as if she will never stop.

Shingask talks to Galasko. He seems to be pleading with him. The other Indians chant. A branch near Barbara's right foot catches fire. Soon flames will engulf her.

It is then, in desperation, that I do the only thing that I can do. I sing for my sister. Although my throat is tight with fear, I sing out loud, willing my voice to drown out the awful chanting, the fire:

One by one the other captives, who stood so helplessly before, join me in singing the battle hymn by Martin Luther. Do our words touch Barbara as they touch me? Our voices fill the clearing:

The Indians surround us with their rifles. They aim them at us but we sing on:

Suckachgook bends over the fire and picks up a burning branch. He threatens little Johann with it. The boy screams as he backs away. His shirt catches fire! Peter throws him to the ground, rolling him over and over until the flames are smothered. No one is singing now.

The wide-winged shadow of a chicken hawk circles the clearing. Its darkness touches Barbara whose head is bowed.

Has something died?

Moments pass. Long moments filled with the hiss and crackle of a mounting fire. Barbara shudders. The flames are strong enough that if the wind were to gust, her skirt would catch fire. She takes a deep breath and lifts her head. Relief floods me when I meet my sister's gaze. Her dark eyes are alive with feeling. “Untie me.” Her voice is full of tears, but she does not cry.

Galasko gestures to Shingask. He unties my sister's bonds and, clutching the Bible to her chest, she runs to me. She falls to her knees and I kneel beside her, so full of relief I cannot speak. Shingask stands over us, but we do not look at him. Together, Barbara and I, with nothing now but the Bible and the powerful memory of a song to sustain us, watch the dead ash tree catch fire, watch the flames lick upward to a darkening sky.

 

 

 

 

A
sparrow perches in the tree which shadows the ground where I lie. She fluffs her feathers against the cold north wind.

I wish I were that sparrow. I have no feathers to warm me. The dress Mother made for me, from linen and wool that she wove together on her loom, is in tatters from crawling through briars and windfall. Soon I will be naked.

If I were that sparrow, I would fly over these endless hills to where our farm lies. I would nest in the oak tree which shelters our cabin.

My mind plays tricks on me. I have no cabin. It is ashes now. I saw the Indians burn it down. Saw the oak tree burn. Oh, Father, Christian.

I do not know where I am going. It must be somewhere west of the Allegheny Mountains. The paths we follow always lead toward the setting sun. My shoes are gone. My feet are raw. They bleed.

It is morning. Tiger Claw grunts as he stretches and stands. From this bed I've made of fallen leaves, I watch my sparrow flit away. Perhaps she will join a flock of sparrows. They will fly together, feed on seeds. They will not be lonely, for they have each other.

I have no one now save Tiger Claw and Sarah. I try to be brave for little Sarah who sleeps so soundly beside me, blanketed with my woolen shawl. For the past two days, I've told her that someday we will reach a home somewhere. A fire will warm us and kind people will clothe our bodies. They will tend to our cuts and feed us stew rich with meat and gravy. I have not told her this is but wishful thinking; that Tiger Claw has said nothing of a home or family. But we must be going somewhere. A journey cannot last forever.