Into the Wilderness (56 page)

Nathaniel
was very clear to Elizabeth suddenly. She saw him, still bloodied from the
lacrosse game, his face drawn and tired.
I
married her because I wanted to be red and she married me because she wanted to
be white.

She
did not realize she had spoken those words out loud but Robbie was nodding.

"That's
the short and the long o' it," he agreed. He sighed, and gestured with his
chin. "The needle is showing you north and south from east and west.

Elizabeth
blinked hard.

"Come,
lass," said Robbie gently. "Ye've got a fine man an a', and ian' tae
live on, and your school, and a bonnie dauchter tae raise, wi' more bairns tae
come."

She
glanced up at him, her eyes glittering with tears.

"You're
sure of that?" she asked.

He
nodded, his color rising and falling like the tide. "I am," he said.
"And so must you be."

* * *

Within
three days, Elizabeth felt as if she had always lived on Robbie's mountain, and
that she might always live here. The old soldier was good company, with
interesting stories to tell and things to teach her. Some of the lessons she
perhaps did not enjoy as much as others: there was a long discourse on the best
way to remove ticks, an exercise which Elizabeth found distinctly distasteful,
but which she finally mastered to his satisfaction. Bears came and went,
bringing the results of his hunting with him so that the lessons Elizabeth had
long anticipated were no longer avoidable. She would never have to butcher such
large game herself but she put her hand to the rest of it, learning to deal
with the details of drying and smoking meat and curing the hide. It was hard
work, smelly and dirty, but still it was engrossing in its own way. The worst
thought was that she would not have Robbie's caves available to her when she
had to put her hand to this kind of work at Lake in the Clouds.

"I
will miss the hot springs," she said to him on the morning of the
first—week anniversary of her wedding.

"Are
ye' awa', then?" he asked, looking up from his corncake.

She
shrugged. "I'm not sure what Nathaniel has in mind. But he did say we
should stay away from Paradise for a month or so."

"Weel,
as much as ye wish him here, I'll be sad tae see you awa', lass."

"Why
do you live up here so much by yourself?" asked Elizabeth, a question she
had been wanting to ask for days.

He
smiled. "Have ye no seen the truth of me yet?" Although he did not
blush as strongly or as often as he had the first days of their acquaintance,
Robbie's color was still a thing to behold. Right now Elizabeth noticed how
mottled his neck was with it, there where the soft folds of skin disappeared
into the hunting shirt.

"I
was a sodjer for so lang, and I had enough o' men, and their doin's," said
Robbie. "Sometimes I'm bored wi' masel' and lonely for conversation or a
bonnie face, and so I take masel' awa' and find it. But mostly I'm content tae
live here tigither withe beasties. If only I could read, but ma eyes wilma have
it. If I gae amang people agin, it will be because o' that, because I canna
live wi'oot voices, if I canna have books."

Elizabeth
had been spending the evenings reading to Robbie, and she knew what pleasure he
took in it. Often he would stop her to recite in a strong voice, with great
emotion and certainty.

"Perhaps
we could get you some spectacles."

He
turned slowly to her, nodding. "Aye," he said. "I've had that
thoucht, masel'. But tae tell ye true, lass, I dinna much like the idea o'
Albany. Havena been tae such a place for ten year, or more. However," he
said with a sigh, "wha' canna be changed maun be tholed. So, there's work
tae be done. Nathaniel will be by sometime soon tae fetch ye hame, and he'll be
verra surprised tae see what's been made o' his guidwife."

"What's
been made of me?" asked Elizabeth, curious.

"Why,
a woods woman o' course," said Robbie with a smile. "Or the
beginnin's o' one, at the verra least."

On
the next afternoon Elizabeth went down the mountain to the river by herself
taking a fishing line with her and Robbie's instructions to bring back some
catfish or trout for supper. The path through the woods was familiar to her
now, and she moved along quickly and quietly. Too quickly, she thought later,
thinking over what had happened.

With
many blushes, Robbie had warned her about the dangers of surprising bears as
they foraged, especially bears with young. While black bears were generally
timid creatures who would rather run than confront a human being, he said, she
must be careful not to disturb them, and that especially when she was in her
courses. The smell of blood would make them curious at the very least, and
aggressive, in the worst case.

In
fact, she had just finished her courses—an event which had taken her by
surprise, for she had lost all sense of time, except for the eight days since
she had last seen Nathaniel. The clutching and first trickle of it had reminded
her of time passing, and then presented her with a new challenge; it was one
that had preoccupied her for a good day until she had found ways to cope with
the materials at hand. Once this had been addressed, Elizabeth had been a
little relieved: she was not ready for the idea of a child quite yet, not until
she felt more of a wife. But she had been sad, too, thinking that it would have
pleased Nathaniel, and proved Richard quite decisively wrong.

It
seemed a long time ago, that tousled conversation in their wedding bed, but
Elizabeth wondered if satisfaction, or the relative lack of it, had something
to do with the fact that she hadn't got with child. She thought of what had
happened in that bed often, piece by piece, of the touch of him and his
ferocious need, how different that had been from the first time under the
falls. How complex the whole undertaking was, and how much there was to learn
about it. She admitted to herself that she missed Nathaniel's touch very much,
and thought that he wouldn't be disappointed to find in her a new curiosity
about him. It was this thought that was in her head when she came to the
river's edge and looked up to see the bear not twenty feet in front of her. She
stood tall in the sun with her coat glistening wet, her attention fixed on
Elizabeth and her soft black nose twitching. Elizabeth knew it was a female,
because a very small cub played at her feet.

Her
mind went very still and blank, and then in a flurry she turned and lunged at
the nearest tree, scrambling up it as she last had as a twelve—year—old with a
vengeful cousin in full pursuit. Even as she climbed, she knew the stupidity of
this gesture, for bears climbed trees, and this one could come after her if it
chose to. But she climbed anyway, the sound of her breath ragged in her own
ears, drowning out what else there might be to hear. She climbed until she
could climb no farther, and the young beech threatened to bend and deposit her
back where she had begun.

It
wasn't until then that Elizabeth stopped and looked down the trunk. The bear
stood there, looking up at her quizzically, her nose still twitching. They were
about as far apart as they had been on level ground, but now Elizabeth had
nowhere to go. She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe deeply until
her vision cleared and she could hear something besides the rush of her own
blood. When she looked down again, the bear was still there, but she had turned
her attention back to foraging.

It
took a good ten minutes for Elizabeth's heart to come back to a normal rhythm.
In another ten, she noted that she had scraped her hands quite badly, and that
they were sticky with sap as well as her own blood. More blood, she thought
with dismay. The creature would never go away. And it seemed the case. She was
playing with her cub now, batting at it and rolling it back and forth
good—naturedly, while it squawked and mewled at her, and then finally rooted
and found what it wanted.

Elizabeth
sat in the fork of her branch with her knees tucked under her chin and watched
them. The bark against her back was smooth, and there was a natural indentation
here which provided a secure seat, if not an especially comfortable one. When
it seemed sure that the mother had forgotten about her, she could watch them
with interest. They were beautiful creatures, with deep, glossy coats and bright
expressions. The cub was droll and absurd in its attempt to gain its mother's
attention, squeaking and howling in an astounding range of sound. The mother
ignored it placidly to disappear through a stand of pine. Elizabeth saw her
emerge on the other side and walk into the river. She stood there staring down
into the shallows, and then, faster than the eye could follow, with a wing of
water flying, she flipped a fish onto the bank with a great swipe of her paw.

Elizabeth
had a good view from her perch: a winding stretch of the river, and the canopy
of trees, filled in now completely but still tender with spring color. On the
eastern horizon storm clouds were gathering.

The
bears seemed to like the little clearing at the river and were in no hurry.
Elizabeth wondered if this was intentional on the mother's part, if she waited
purposely for Elizabeth to come back down. Just when this idea was taking on
unfortunate detail in her mind, the animal rolled to her feet and swayed off
into the bush with her cub running behind her. Elizabeth let out a sigh of
relief and prepared herself for the climb down, which seemed much more imposing
now than it had when she had feared for her life.
 

There
was more rustling from the underbrush; she froze, and decided that she had
better stay where she was until it was clear that the bear wouldn't be coming
back. Impatiently, she settled back into her hiding place and looked down at
the river.

And
there was Nathaniel, just pulled to shore in a small canoe loaded with
provisions.

* * *

She
dropped out of the tree in front of him, but he didn't start. Nathaniel didn't
seem surprised at all to have his wife appear so suddenly from overhead with
her face scratched and her hands bleeding. Elizabeth stepped up to him, and put
her arms around his waist, her face on his chest, and she felt herself tremble,
and then, slowly, stop trembling.

"Good
day to you, too, Boots," he said softly, his mouth against her hair. The
pack he was carrying slipped to the ground and his hands moved to her back.

Elizabeth
pulled away then, looked at him hard.

"You've
been a long time," she said. "What happened?"

He
shook his head, smoothing her hair. "Time enough for that later," he
said, bending down to her. But she dropped her head, as much as she wanted him
to kiss her.

"But
what
happened?
" she repeated.
"Did Richard prevail?"

Nathaniel
lifted her chin with one crooked finger and ran his thumb along her lower lip.
The shock of this, the pressure of his thumb, reverberated through her and her
breath caught in her throat.

"Not
the way he hoped," he said. "But it ain't over yet, I'm sorry to say.

"But—”

“We
could talk about this," Nathaniel interrupted her, his thumb at the corner
of her mouth, pressing lightly. "Now or later. There's other things on my
mind, at the moment. But if you're set on talking—"

His
breath was warm on her face. She blinked at him, paralyzed.
 

"Aye."
He smiled. "I thought so." And he pulled her up to him and kissed
her, a slow, thorough kiss, all Nathaniel, his heat and his mouth and the driving
intensity of him. Elizabeth opened to him and kissed him back, her fists
clenching on his back.

When
he pulled away from her, he wasn't smiling anymore.

"I
was worried."

"What
were you worried about?" he asked in a low voice, kissing the corner of her
mouth. "You knew I'd come back to you, now, didn't you?"

She
swallowed hard, nodded.

"Good."
He grinned. They stood looking at each other, his hands holding her by the
upper arms.

"We
should go up and see Robbie," she said. "He'll be happy to see you, too.

"Aye,"
said Nathaniel. "But not so happy as I am to have you in front of me
again." He looked up the beech tree.

"You
thinkin' of telling me what you're doing climbing trees, Boots?"

This
made Elizabeth remember. "There was a bear," she said. "With some
curiosity about me.

"That
much I can believe," he said, his eyelids lowering. He pulled her to him
again and this time she didn't protest. There was nothing in her but his
nearness and wanting him. He supported her weight, for she could not, and he
kissed her until she was gasping with it.

He
was trembling himself when they broke the kiss.

"Let's
get these things up to Robbie," he said hoarsely. "We can do it in
one trip if you help."

"I
was supposed to bring fish." She glanced over her shoulder to the river.
It had begun to drizzle.