Into the Wilderness (82 page)

Elizabeth
nodded. "And Otter. And—" She almost smiled. The relief of this, her
almost smile, took away a little of the surprise at Otter's presence.

"And
the red dog," she said. "I call her Treenie." He watched her
thoughts moving across her face, and the small promise of a smile fade away.

Nathaniel
leaned toward her, brushed her mouth with his own, felt her start and then come
to him. "The world will be right again," he said. "Together we
will make it right."

* * *

It
was a busy time in the village, Nathaniel told her as she discarded the ragged
clothes she wore and dressed in the buckskin overdress and leggings a young
woman had brought her. The moccasins were very fine, decorated with beadwork
and porcupine quills; Elizabeth took it as a sign that the clan mother was not
completely set against her.

Elizabeth
found herself wondering about her pack, and provisions, and the weather and the
trails, and then she remembered, with something between relief and
disappointment, that they would not be on the trail today. She had completed
her task, she had found him, and for the moment they were not going anywhere.

She
walked with Nathaniel, and looked at the things he pointed out. The new crops
in the fields demanded a great deal of attention, and it seemed that every
woman was there with a hoe, many of them working stripped to the waist. Elizabeth
wondered if the ability to be shocked had been taken from her for all time, or
if it simply required more energy than she could spare.

Nathaniel
walked very slowly, and his breathing was labored at times so that he would
stop, as if taken by some unexpected thought. She stopped then, too, and
watched him. Content that he was in fact mending, Elizabeth felt herself
beginning to relax.

"Richard?"
she asked, although she meant not to. The thought of him, and what he had said
to these people about her, would make her go pale with anger, if she let it.

Nathaniel
shrugged. "He is still pretty bad off, I think. I don't see him. They keep
him over there—" He jerked with his chin toward the last of the long
houses where boys played with small baggataway sticks in a noisy game.

"They
saved his life."

"Not
yet, they haven't. I don't think he's cooperating much, but then he never
thought to come back here. That much I know."

Elizabeth
stopped. "Here? This is where he was brought as a child?"

"I
thought you realized," Nathaniel said. "I thought Otter would have
told you. He was adopted into the Bear clan. They mourned him when he ran away.

"No,"
Elizabeth said thoughtfully. "Otter said nothing of this. He mentioned
Richard very little."

Nathaniel
looked concerned. "The boy bears watching," he said finally.
"Stone—Splitter wouldn't be pleased if he took vengeance on Todd, not here
and now."

"I
made Richard a promise," she said, more to herself than to Nathaniel.

He
grunted, as if to save himself the trouble of disagreeing.

Pausing
while he caught his breath, Elizabeth had time to look around her. The village
was as large and ordered a community as any farming village in England, with
every adult she could see at work. A trio of young girls about Hannah's age
were clustered together under a young birch tree, stripping dried corn from
cobs, each of them working with what looked to be the jawbone of a deer, teeth
intact. They had been chattering with great abandon, but when Elizabeth and
Nathaniel came into hearing distance they giggled, and fell still.

"Nathaniel!"
Otter materialized out of a crowd of young men examining a gun—Elizabeth saw
with some discomfort that it was Lingo's rifle—and came at them at a trot.
Robbie was just behind him, his great rosy face beaming and Treenie at his
side. The dog greeted Elizabeth with great joy, took unenthusiastic note of
Nathaniel, and then calmly positioned herself on Elizabeth's free side.

"You
see?" she asked him. "The red dog."

He
grinned at her. "Aye, Boots. I see plain enough."

"By
God, man," Robbie said, clapping him on a shoulder. "Ye canna be left
alone wi'oot callin' a' the trouble i' the world doon on your thick heid."

For
the moment Elizabeth was content to stand and listen as Otter spoke of home,
and how he had left them. She saw Nathaniel's concentration and his slowly
growing alarm as he listened to Otter's story of how he came to be in the bush
at all, but Elizabeth was suddenly very sleepy and could not concentrate on
this involved tale of an Indian called Little—Turtle who lived to the west.

She
stifled an expansive yawn.

"Did
ye need mair sleep, lass?" Robbie asked, and then produced one of his
blushes. It occurred to Elizabeth that his Kahnyen’keháka name had something to
do with the blossoming of flowers, and she felt a great wave of affection for
the man, which she showed by brushing some of the accumulated muck from his
sleeve.

"Nathaniel
and I thought to go down to the river."

"Ach,
weel," said Robbie, slapping Otter on the back. "We mun be on our
way. Tae see aboot a canoe. Or wad ye rather walk back tae Paradise,
experienced woods woman that ye are?" He winked at Elizabeth and turned
away without waiting for a response, whistling for Treenie to follow. The dog
trotted off with an apologetic glance at Elizabeth.

Otter
hesitated. "I won't be going back with you."

Nathaniel
grimaced. "That's a discussion for another time," he said.
"Right now Elizabeth and I have business."

Elizabeth
looked down to find a very young boy tugging on the long fringe which bordered
her overdress. He gulped hard and giggled a high, sweet tone. Then, seeing that
Elizabeth was not in a frame of mind to eat him whole or otherwise bewitch him,
he rattled off what seemed to be a question in a torrent punctuated by the soft
whistle of his breath.

"I
don't understand." Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders at him regretfully.

Nathaniel
shooed the child off with a few words and then he took Elizabeth's hand. The
rope burns on her wrist were scabbed over, and Nathaniel looked hard at them.

"He
wanted to see the ghost coin," he said evenly. Elizabeth could see in his
eyes that he knew most of what she would tell him. When she tried to look away,
he pulled her closer, and leaned down to speak into her ear. "Come on,
then," he said softly. "Let's get it done with. It won't go away on
its own." He lifted her hand higher, turned it this way and that.

"Your
wedding ring."

"He
took it." Her tone was hollow, but there was a flash in her eyes: anger,
and desperation. "Lingo took it, and I couldn't find it—after."

"We'll
get another one," Nathaniel said.

"No."
She shook her head. "I don't want another one. I want that one."

And
she walked off toward the river with her husband close behind, to tell him what
he needed to know.

* * *

Otter
and Robbie spent their morning negotiating with Aweryahsa about the cost of the
fine birch bark canoe he had just begun to build, and having come to an
understanding, Otter went to fetch Nathaniel and Elizabeth to get their
approval.

"You
can come see it. If you've got the inclination," Otter added, politely
looking away. He had found them stretched out in the sun on the riverbank,
Elizabeth asleep with her head in Nathaniel's lap and her face blotchy and
streaked with tears.

Nathaniel
looked up at him, this young man he had known all of his life. He had had a
hand in the raising of him, and at this moment, he was especially proud to be
able to claim that.

"We'll
be up directly," he said quietly.

Otter
nodded, and turned to go.

"Wait."
Nathaniel looked out over the flowing river, seeking the words he needed there.

"What
you did for her I can't ever repay," he said. "Although I will surely
do my best."

"I
didn't do anything for her you wouldn't have done yourself." Otter pointed
out. "Nothing I wouldn't have done for my sister."

Nathaniel
was silent. He watched Elizabeth breathing for a long minute.

"She
would have made it on her own," he said. "She's that tough. But she
wouldn't have had a chance to heal, and now she does."

Otter
looked thoughtful. "She is not proud of what she did," he said, and
Nathaniel knew this was more of a question than a statement. Often he was
called on to explain the way that white people thought and acted, when their
ways mystified the Kahnyen’keháka. Otter was watching him, wanting to
understand how this woman could take anything but pride in killing stronger
enemy. But Nathaniel could not explain this to him in any way that he would
understand, and after a while the younger man went away, as thoughtful and
quiet as Nathaniel had ever seen him.

After
he watched her sleep for a few more minutes, counting her breaths and measuring
them against his own, Nathaniel woke Elizabeth. She was disoriented and
flushed, but the silence between them was an easy one. When he told her about
the canoe, she managed a smile.

"We
can go home," she said. "When?"

"The
canoe will need a good week," he said, brushing his knuckles across her
cheek. "And I'll be stronger then, too."

"A
week," she echoed, looking uncertain.

"Sitting
still for a week goes against the grain, I know," he said. "If it can
be managed in less, we'll do that."

"I
suppose I shall cope," Elizabeth said.

"Aye."
Nathaniel nodded. "I know that you will."

She
sighed, and started up the riverbank. "Let us go look at this wondrous
canoe, then."

Nathaniel
caught her by the arm, and turned her to him.

"Elizabeth."

The
gray of her eyes seemed lighter now that her skin had darkened in the sun. He
traced the outline of her face, touched the dimple in her chin. Cupped her
cheek, and then the back of her neck. "None of it would have mattered if
you hadn't come back to me," he said, hearing the catch in his voice. And
saw by some miracle that he had found the words to comfort her.

* * *

On a
small stream a short walk away from the long houses they found the canoe maker
and his apprentices hard at work, their naked upper bodies and legs streaked
with grime and sweat. One of the boys alternately fed the fires and stirred a
great kettle of what looked like a coiled mass of stringy rope.

"Spruce
root for lacing," Nathaniel explained. Elizabeth, who as a child had
willingly spent hours with the cook, the blacksmith, and the carpenter, stepped
in closer to watch.

The
second boy was holding two long ribs of wood at an angle in another kettle
while the older man poured boiling water over them. While they watched, he
dropped his ladle and took the ribs in both hands, stepping backward without
looking to sit on a tree stump, where he began to work the wood back and forth
over his knee. His whole concentration was on a single point in the wood, as if
he could will it to bend. Suddenly his mouth turned down at one corner and then
blossomed into a full—blown frown. With a sigh he took up a crooked knife, and
began scraping at the wet wood.

"Not
thin enough to give the right bend," Nathaniel explained. The canoe maker
looked up at him and asked a question, which Nathaniel answered at length.

"That
is not Mohawk," Elizabeth said, her tone slightly vexed.

"No,"
Nathaniel agreed. "Sturdy—Heart is Atirontaks. He came to live with the
Kahnyen’keháka many years ago." He glanced at her from the corner of his
eye. "He wants to see the gold."

"I
suppose it would be impolite to refuse," Elizabeth said. With a little
shake of her head she pulled the chain from inside her neckline and held it
out. The boys came up close, so that Nathaniel spoke a soft word to them. Then
the canoe maker came, too, and looked down at her face, rather than at the coin
in her fingers. Elizabeth did not mind his close inspection, for there was an
honest curiosity in him that disarmed irritation. He said something to her
directly and then stood waiting for Nathaniel to translate it.

"He
says he will build you a very good canoe."

"Ah,
well," said Elizabeth with a half smile. "Then I suppose it was all
worth the effort."

* * *

She
slept again, and ate, and slept, and in between she talked to Nathaniel at
great length. Sometimes she talked to him in her sleep, and woke to find him
listening to her with an intent look on his face. They passed three days like
this, seeing Robbie and Otter now and again but otherwise keeping to
themselves. In the evening when the great fire was lit and the singing began,
they retired with the youngest children and the oldest grandmothers. In a few
days' time the village would celebrate the Strawberry Festival, which they
would be obliged to join, Nathaniel told her. She agreed to this, but for the
moment she sought to avoid both Todd and a conversation with the old woman.