Into the Wilderness (123 page)

She
wished for the power to keep from flushing, even as she felt the color rising
on her neck and face. From the way her aunt's mouth curled down at one corner
Elizabeth
knew that none
of the intrigues of how and why she had married had gone unnoticed, and also,
more strangely, that her aunt's sensibilities had not been fatally insulted.
Because she could not resist,
Elizabeth
remarked on this.

"I
expected your disapprobation," she said softly.

"Because
you ran off into the wilderness with Nathaniel Bonner?"

"Yes,"
Elizabeth said slowly. "And because of the way I secured my claim to the
property. All of this—" She gestured out the window. "All of my life
now, so different from what you hoped for me, I think."

Aunt
Merriweather's bright blue eyes could be hard, but her expression now was not
an unkind one. "Are you happy about the child you carry? About the man who
is the father of your child?"

"I
am, yes. I am very happy."

"Then
I see no sense in criticizing you for living a life different from the one you
would have had in
England
.
This is not
England
,
after all—so much I have learned on this journey. No, the truth is,
Elizabeth
, that I am a
bit envious. Do not smile, you insolent girl, when I reward you with a
confession. I assure you, I do not make many of them; old age has some small
compensations."

The
mixture of exasperation and amusement on the older woman's face faded away to
be replaced by something more thoughtful as she looked out into the night.
Benjamin was walking toward the house with a rushlight to show him the way, and
the strange shapes thrown by the pierced tin of the lamp shade danced like
fairy lights in the darkness. In the endless woods above them, a stag called
out, a great rolling sound that echoed down the mountain valley.

"What
a strange and wonderful place this is," Aunt Merriweather said. "Everything
is bigger, and taller, and brighter—even the night sky is intemperate. I'm
quite sure we do very well with many fewer stars in
England
."

"Why,
Aunt," said Elizabeth, surprised out of her watchfulness. "I believe
that you like it here."

There
was a flicker on her face, regret perhaps, and sadness. Gone as quickly as it
came, forced away by sixty—five years of studied pragmatism.

She
said: "Had I been born a son, I should have come with your father to this
new land to make a life for myself." She hesitated, examining the backs of
her hands. "At your age I would have disappeared into this wilderness,
too. Even now, I can still feel how it lights a fire in the blood." She
turned back to the window. "Is that not so?"

"It
is so," Elizabeth said. "It is exactly so."

They
talked for a very long time,
Elizabeth
getting up from her place now and then to put more wood on the fire and trim
the candlewick. Her aunt had always been a good storyteller, and she had much
of interest to relate. Even so, Elizabeth was startled to see the time when
Nathaniel finally came to knock on the door.

"The
rest of them have all gone off to bed, and Hannah can't hardly keep her eyes
open."

"Oh,
I'm so sorry—what have you been doing with yourself?"

"I
had a talk with Will Spencer, and then a longer one with Joshua and Daisy.
Looks like another wedding soon."

"That
will please Curiosity,"
Elizabeth
said with considerable satisfaction of her own.

Nathaniel
hesitated. "Do you want to stay here tonight?"

"Of
course she does not," Aunt Merriweather said behind them.

"Take
her back to your mountain now, Nathaniel. I shall come tomorrow to see what
kind of home you two have made together."

Elizabeth
kissed her aunt's soft cheek, and the old woman held on to her for a moment. "He's
a fine man, my girl. You did better for yourself than my Amanda did, but you
know that, do you not?"

* * *

She
wondered if Nathaniel would raise the subject of her relations straightaway,
but he was more concerned about Richard Todd, and unable to curb his curiosity.

"I
can't see your aunt dining at Beaver Hall," Nathaniel said, shaking his
head as he pulled off his leggings.

"She
said it was all very elegant. The lieutenant—governor of
Montreal
was there, and a Huron sachem, and a
French counte escaped from the Terror and Richard in the middle of all of
them."

"I
don't like it," Nathaniel said. And then, after a longer pause:
"There was no sign of Otter?"

"I
described him quite carefully. She saw other Indians, but she is fairly sure
that she did not meet Otter. And Richard did not mention him. Apparently,"
Elizabeth continued slowly. "Apparently Richard was paying court to a
young woman."

"It's
a good thing that Kitty's squared away, then," Nathaniel said, but his
thoughts were clearly still with Otter.
Elizabeth
thought of pointing out to him—as her aunt had pointed out to her—that Richard
might still marry Kitty, who had a much more attractive dowry to offer. But
Nathaniel had already headed off in another direction.

"If
he has any interest in
Paradise
, or the
mountain, he'll be back here before winter settles in."

"Yes,"
Elizabeth
said.
"He mentioned to Will that he had business in
Albany
."

"Not
anymore, he doesn't," Nathaniel said firmly.

"But
he could not have known that at the time."

Nathaniel
lay back on the bed and reached up to tug on Elizabeth's hair, which she was
plaiting for the night. "He can't go after you anymore, in court at
least."

She
ran a finger over the stubble on his jaw, enjoying the rasp of it. "I had
some chance of standing up to him," she said. "Kitty—well, I am not
sure what will happen if he comes proposing marriage all over again."

"Maybe
you could give her lessons in how to turn him down. Since you've got some
experience at it."

"I
think that perhaps I may have to do just that," Elizabeth said, leaning
over to tousle his hair. "Thank goodness, I've got Aunt Merriweather and
Amanda to help me, for I fear Kitty will be a reluctant student."

"So
Amanda had more men to choose from, did she?"

She
turned away to look for the rawhide string with which she tied her plait. "Not
so many as her sister Jane, but yes, I believe she had three or four. But she
accepted Will straightaway, once he got to the point."

Elizabeth
gave
in, finally, to his silence.

"Nathaniel.
We were playmates, and I ... enjoyed his company as young girl. He was one of
the few people who would talk to me of books, and did not scold me for my
curiosity. He never had any interest in me, and he never knew I had any
interest in him. In the end he married as his family hoped and wished, and all
parties were most satisfied with the arrangement. If I felt any regret, it was
for the friend I lost. And perhaps at first I was disappointed to see him marry
to better his connection, rather than for love. But I soon came to see that he
and Amanda suit each other."

"Do
they?" Nathaniel asked. "He never even looks at her."

"I
suppose when you and I have been married for six years we might seem the same
way, to strangers."

At
that he caught her by the plait, and pulled her down next to him. He kissed her
soundly, and held her until she stopped struggling, and then he kissed her
again until a small sigh escaped her and she lost track of the conversation,
and everything but the taste of him, and the textures of his mouth and the feel
of his shoulders under her hands. When Nathaniel raised his head they were both
short of breath.

"Do
you think you'll have enough of kissing me, in six years?"

She
laughed. "Not in sixty. But must we judge them by our own standards?
Amanda is a good wife to Will," she said with an air of finality.

"And
I suppose he is a good husband."

"You
do not like him. That is very sad, because I do."

Nathaniel
lay back, his hands behind his head. The room was chilly, but he did not seem
to mind the cold, for he lay there in only his breech clout Then he turned on
his side to talk to her.

"I
don't dislike him. It's just that he reminds me of someone I knew once,"
he said. "It was a long time ago, when I first went to live at
Trees—Standing—in—Water."

"When
you were first with Sarah?"

"Aye."
He gave her a grim smile, and then cupped her face in his hand.

"I
was spending half my time with her brothers and father—this was long before
they were killed in the raid. The other half of my time I spent trying to
convince Falling—Day and Sarah that I would be a good husband and that I
deserved a place in their long house Do you remember, I told you back in the
bush that I had been Catholic once?"

"Perhaps
that is one detail of your past that we need not share with aunt
Merriweather."

"Do
you want to hear this story?"

"I
do. But please take your hand away, because it is distracting me."

She
was a little sorry to have him comply so willingly, but then she was also
interested in what he had to tell.

Nathaniel
said: "There was a priest living there then, a Frenchman who went by the
name Father Dupuis. But the Kahnyen'keh'aka called him Iron—Dog."

She
had to laugh, in spite of the seriousness of his tone. "What a strange
name."

Nathaniel
shrugged. "He had a beard which was ugly to them—they might have just
called him Dog—Face, which is what they often call bearded O'seronni. But he
also had their respect, because he lived and worked like a man among them.

"I
got to know him pretty well, because Sarah wanted me to be baptized. It was one
of the conditions she put on letting me come into the long house I can see
you're uneasy with that, but it didn't mean much to me, Boots. It was just some
water and some words, and I didn't believe any of it. I would have done and
said a lot more than that to get where I wanted to be with Sarah."

"So
you did it to please her?"

"Aye,
I'm afraid so. But remember, I was barely eighteen, and at that age a man lives
between his legs, mostly. Though some hide it better than others, or deny it.
The thing about Iron—Dog was that he lived and worked among us as a man, but he
had none of a man's needs."

"Nathaniel,"
Elizabeth began slowly. "As a part of his training he was taught to
suppress such urges—I think it was Saint Augustine who said that complete
abstinence is easier than perfect moderation."

"That's
just it," Nathaniel said. "I spent a long time watching the man, and
I came to the conclusion that he never had any appetites to start with. It
wasn't a struggle for him. He never looked twice at the women when they went
bare—chested to work the fields, or worried about the way young folks would
disappear into the woods—he just didn't care about those things, and that made
him unusual for a priest, and for a man, too. It's part of the reason he lasted
so long among the Kahnyen’keháka."

Elizabeth
turned onto her stomach and put her chin into the cup of her palm. "Are
you trying to tell me that he had ... unnatural leanings?"

Nathaniel
drew up, surprised. "No, that ain't what I meant at all. It wasn't that he
liked his own kind—I've known a few like that, and that wasn't it at all, with
him. There was no hunger in him at all for human touch, of any kind at
all."

Elizabeth
was
disconcerted by the comparison of such a man to Will Spencer. She sought in her
mind for examples of her knowledge of him that would disprove what Nathaniel
was proposing.

"You
saw him greet me," She said. "Surely you could find nothing cold in
him there."

"I
never used the word
cold.
"

"You
might have," she said. "You are accusing him of a lack of interest in
things worldly and mortal, as if he were some kind of ... would—be saint. You
are perfectly at your leisure to dislike Will, if you must, but perhaps it has
less to do with him than it does with you."

Nathaniel's
face went very still for a moment, but there was a great deal of movement
behind his eyes as he thought. She could see him weighing words and rejecting
them.

"I
never said I didn't like him, Boots. I don't know him well enough to come down
on either side of that, yet. But you've put your finger on something. Maybe
there is something of the saint in your Will Spencer, the way there was in
Iron—Dog. And maybe it's me that's at fault, then, because I might respect a
saint, but it's damn hard to like one."