Into the Wilderness (63 page)

"Robbie's
on his tail, make sure he don't swing back," Bears concluded in English.
Clearly for Elizabeth's benefit, although he still didn't look at her.

They
were silent for the rest of the walk back to the clearing. Elizabeth noted that
neither of them put their rifles out of hand, and she wondered if
Runs-from-Bears had told the whole truth. Something occurred to her.

"What
of Dutch Ton?" she asked. He glanced over his shoulder at her.

"No
sign of him."

Now
that the first flush of agitation and fear was abated, Elizabeth began to
shake. She pressed her palms hard together, spoke sternly to herself. Once at
Robbie's, she went immediately into the caves and to her cot, and she sat there
while she was slowly consumed by trembling. Nathaniel came to her.

"My
face swells when I cry," she said. "It isn't a pretty sight."

"Pigheaded
and vain, too," he noted dryly. But he sat down next to her and put an arm
around her shoulders. She hiccuped a little and buried her face in his shirt.

"He
might have killed me?"

He
nodded.

"But
he was so polite."

Nathaniel
waited, saying nothing while her trembling slowly subsided.

"I
will grant you that the things he had to say were . . . strange. But I never
thought I was in real danger. He was so very apologetic about binding me."

"It
was my fault for letting you go off on your own," he said grimly. "I
should have warned you about him. Now." He wiped her cheeks with his hand.
"Tell me what he had to say."

She
drew in a wavering sigh. "He wants the Tory Gold," she said.
"And he's convinced you've got it, hidden away. You and Hawkeye and
Chingachgook. He described to me how he came upon it, although he cast himself
in rather a different role in the story than Axel did in his telling of
it."

Nathaniel
grunted. "Aye, and so he would."

"He
wears one of the coins around his neck. It is most unusual, I have never seen
anything like it. A five—guinea gold piece, with George the Second in profile—”

“Got
a good look at it, did you?" He looked vaguely intrigued. Elizabeth
described it to him in detail, down to the hole Lingo had punched through the
sovereign's temple in order to string the coin on a piece of rawhide.

"A
thousand of them would be an overwhelming sight," she finished.

"And
a conspicuous one," Nathaniel agreed. He was studying her hand, turning it
this way and that in his own. "He had a message for me?"

"He
said, "Tell your worthy husband and his father and grandfather that the
next time I will take what pleases me until payment is forthcoming." But
he said it in French. A rather different French than I was taught, but that was
his meaning." She grimaced in her attempt to smile. "At the time I
didn't think it through, but I suppose that was a threat against my
person?"

"Or
Hannah."

"Hannah,"
Elizabeth breathed. "Oh, no."

"It
ain't a pleasing idea, that's true." He leaned back. "He's getting
impatient. Wonder what's pushing him."

"He
said he wants to go to France," Elizabeth volunteered.

Nathaniel
pulled up short and saw that she was not joking. "He has never been out of
the north country," he said. "What would he want in France?"

"To
join the revolution, he said."

"Ha!
The man never fought for anything or anyone but himself."

She
said, "I told him you didn't have the gold. That if you had had such
amounts of money you would have bought the mountain long ago."

He
rewarded her with a grin and a hasty kiss. "And what did he think of
that?"

"It
made him angry," she admitted. "He didn't believe me. He wanted to
know how it was that you had managed to pay Richard off if you didn't have any
money. Monsieur Lingo is very well informed."

"And
what explanation did you have for him?"

She
found the strength to meet his eye and she drew in a big breath. "I told
him that you had the very good sense to fall in love with a well—to—do spinster
and marry well."

"Is
that what I did?" he asked, smiling broadly.

Elizabeth
nodded, her own smile more tentative. "Yes. I think so."

He
pulled her close. There was a great deal of satisfaction and relief in his
face. "And so I did. Very well, in fact. You see how well. No, don't stop
me." He was tugging at her clothes impatiently, spreading his hands wide
against her warm skin.

"Did
I say the right things to him?" she asked breathlessly.

"Aye,"
Nathaniel said, taking her hands above her head to lay her back against the
cot. "You did, indeed. I'm well satisfied with you, Boots. Maybe it's time
I showed you that again, don't you think? Would you be interested in another
lesson in satisfaction?"

In
reply, she pulled him down to her, and buried her face in the curve of his
neck. Speechless, for once, in the face of what he had to say to her.

* * *

Later,
his high spirits left him. While she slept out her adventure and what they had
done together, he sat quietly and thought it all through, and his conclusions were
not easy ones. Todd was too much on his mind, and had distracted him from other
problems. The idea of Jack Lingo in a frenzy because he smelled money in the
air was more than just mildly irritating. He had put his hands on Elizabeth,
and had made threats, and thus intruded himself on a set of circumstances which
were complicated enough already.

They
were expected in Albany, where Elizabeth would be asked to depose in a civil
action being brought against her by Dr. Richard Todd for breach of promise. He was
demanding satisfaction in the form of option to purchase lands included in her
dower. Knowing he was out of his depth, Nathaniel had sought legal advice and
found, to his immense relief, that she was not bound by law to appear. Mr.
Bennett had been quite clear on this: she had not been formally served with
summons papers, had she? When Nathaniel assured him that she had not, Bennett
had shown his own relief and noted that it would be a very good thing indeed if
the serving of such papers, on Elizabeth or on Nathaniel as her husband, proved
impossible.

Nathaniel
had paid Bennett's retainer and got out of Johnstown before Hichard or his
lawyers could find him. On the way north he had stopped briefly in Paradise to
see his daughter and father, and to lay plans. Before leaving he had made sure
to visit Anna Hauptmann, and to tell her in plain hearing of half the village
that he was off to fetch his bride to Albany so she could testify on her own
behalf and clear up these misunderstandings. The idea was to put Richard's mind
at ease, although it meant lying to Anna, which he didn't like doing. She had
always dealt fair with the folks from Lake in the Clouds.

Tomorrow,
Bennett would show up in court without his clients, and if all went well,
Richard would be angry enough to set out into the bush to find Elizabeth and
serve the summons himself. They would lead him on a chase for a week or so,
enough time for Hawkeye to try to talk Richard's witnesses out of perjuring
themselves. It was not the best of plans, and there was all kinds of room for
trouble, but it was all they could come up with on short notice.

In
the morning he and Elizabeth would go north, and Runs-from-Bears would go back
to Paradise, where Hawkeye would be glad of his help in case Jack Lingo made good
on his threat and wandered in that direction. Not to mention Many-Doves , who
had been directly displeased to see Nathaniel come home alone.

When
Elizabeth stirred and woke, Nathaniel would have to make all of this known to
her. He hoped there was enough to satisfy her curiosity for the moment. With
any luck, she wouldn't ask those questions he wasn't yet ready to answer.

Late
in the night, Elizabeth lay awake watching the guttering of a single candle
near its end. She knew that she must give herself over to sleep soon, as
reluctant as she was. Her body had adjusted well to these demanding
circumstances, Nathaniel's attentions, her own hungers, the increased work and
physical activity, but she would need her strength for what was ahead of them.
Still she could not sleep, not yet. It would be hard to walk away from Robbie
tomorrow, but the idea of going off into the bush with Nathaniel was very
welcome to her. The rift that had opened between them today had not yet been
healed.

"Do
you realize I've never spent a full day alone with you?" she asked.

"It
won't be easy," he said. "The terrain's more than tough in
places."

"I
don't mind," she said. It was more than that, but she was shy to tell him.
She was proud of how much she had learned and how far she had come, and she
wanted to show him those things. And if it kept Richard Todd at bay and gave
them a chance to settle this business, she would be content. The solitude would
give them time to learn to know each other. This thought made her aware of
other things, of the heaviness in her loins, and the fact that her lips were
tender. She pulled hard on her plait, taken aback and made uneasy by how easy
it was to become aroused, how easy to lose her train of thought when Nathaniel
was near.

"There
will be time to talk," she said out loud. There were so many things she
didn't understand and needed to know about. Questions slid into her
consciousness and then out again, lazily.

"You
still don't know how to swim," he murmured.

She
stretched a bit and turned in his arms. Felt the weight of them around her, the
solid strength of him an endless comfort.

"Never
mind," he said, sifting through her hair, strand by strand, but in a
distracted way. "There'll be time for that, too." There was an
awareness about him when he was thinking hard, an underlying hum that she could
feel in the rush of his blood. Elizabeth did not like having his thoughts
elsewhere, not at this moment. She moved closer to him, bedded her head on his
chest, and looked hard inside herself for words that would not come.

His
arms flexed and then relaxed again. He smoothed the hair away from her face and
cleared his throat. "You're thinking about Sarah," he said. "But
you're afraid to ask."

She
didn't respond.

"It
wasn't right of me, the way I flew at you today when you brought up her
name."

"No,"
Elizabeth agreed. "It wasn't right."

"I
ain't exactly proud of what it is I've got to tell you."

"Tell
me anyway," Elizabeth said. "Or we'll never get past this."

When
he didn't answer, she lifted her head to look into his face. "Nathaniel. I
promise I'll do my best not to judge you unfairly," she said.

"That's
what I'm afraid of," he said. Then he cleared his throat, and began.

"When
Barktown burned, Sky—Wound—Round and Falling—Day took the younger children and
they went north to Canada to winter with Falling—Day's people, because there
was no food. I wanted to go along with them, but Sarah didn't. She had been
trying to talk me into taking her home to live at Lake in the Clouds ever since
we married, and it looked like the right time to go. I couldn't argue with her
anymore. Didn't want to, really, not with the village wiped out the way it
was."

Nathaniel
turned a little so that he was lying on his side curled around Elizabeth's
length. In the flickering candlelight his features seemed more animated than
they really were. She lay with one hand at rest on her abdomen, and he covered
it with his own.

"So
we went home, and they took us in. Glad to have us, too. My ma especially had
always wanted a daughter and she was pleased with Sarah. That's what you have
to understand about Sarah, she had the gift of making folks love her. There was
a childlike quality to her when she was pleased that went to the heart, and I
guess that would be the simplest truth: she had a girl's way of looking at the
world and she never learned to settle for less than that." He paused.
"Or to cope with more.

"Don't
misunderstand me, now. She was a good worker and never shirked, but she could
play harder than anybody I ever saw. Learned every song my Mother knew in three
months' time, and my mother had an ear for a song. My mother, now, you'd have
to understand that she was hard on her own kind, she demanded a lot. But Sarah
won her over, and it was the music that built the bond between them."

"That's
how she learned Scots," Elizabeth noted.

"Aye.
They sang together in the evenings." His voice trailed oft, and Elizabeth
felt a deep sadness for him.

"I
remember my mother's voice very clearly," Elizabeth said. "And it's
still with me after all these years."

He
had been staring toward the ceiling, but he looked down to Elizabeth. "You
haven't told me much about your mother."

"Another
time," she said quietly. "Go on, please."

"Well,
let's see. Sarah settled in at Lake in the Clouds real fast. Some in the village
weren't glad to see her and didn't make her welcome, at first. But when she put
her mind to it she could win over anybody. Sometimes I had the feeling that she
felt obligated to prove to the world that she could be a Kahnyen’keháka and a
human being, too. The trouble started then, because I like the Kahnyen’keháka
way of life, and she didn't. We were both young, you see. Young enough to think
we could just decide what we wanted to be, that it didn't take any more than
that, the wanting.