Spirited (5 page)

“Then let’s go,” Tashtassuck said, “before even one Yangee gets away!”

The weapons were brought—tomahawks, war clubs, and flintlocks, a few pistols, and sharp scalping knives. The men painted their faces with blue and red from clay bowls. Oneko reached his hand into the
bowl to paint Wusamequin’s face, but the medicine man held up his hand.

“I’ll wear ashes,” he said.

Odina gazed at him, then looked down sadly, and Wusamequin wondered if she had seen the truth in his eyes: He would never become her husband. Then she left the crowd and disappeared from his sight.

The painting was completed in short order. The men arranged their weaponry.

Then Wusamequin raised his hands to bless the war party; he opened the medicine bag on his hip and extracted pollen and ground tobacco, which he flung over the heads of the warriors. The fragrant dust settled on their hair and clung to their paint.

They prepared to go. A high-pitched ululation rose among the women as they sang the men to battle. Squaws embraced their husbands. Tashtassuck’s wife handed him an extra powder horn, which he slung over his neck and across his shoulder.

Odina returned, out of breath, and handed Wusamequin a scalping knife. He recognized it as her father’s. Wopigwooit wasn’t in the crowd; an aged elder, he suffered from the old people’s disease and rarely left their wigwam.

“Wopigwooit sends it with his blessing,” she told him.

There was a light in her eyes; he knew that she meant this act to be more than the loaning of a valuable weapon. He felt a moment’s fleeting longing for the touch of a woman, the warmth of someone
beside him at night. Perhaps he was being foolish and hasty; maybe once his blood feud was settled, his heart would soften toward her.

He sheathed the knife in the waistband of his breechcloth and turned to the men.

“Follow me!” he shouted. “My spirit will be freed this day!”

As the women sang them away, the men broke into a run, fierce and proud as eagles and wolves, powerful as bears.

Blood would be spilled.

At last
.

Chapter Four

The sky had lightened somewhat, as if the eerie blackness had accompanied the massive brown bear. The great creature was no longer a menace. It had been shot several times, and now it lowed like a cow in its suffering. Heaving on its hind legs, it wobbled forward, then backward, and fell on its side.

The men of the 35th had proved their mettle. The fracas won, they were backing away from the wounded animal. Some had fixed their bayonets; as a result, many were sprayed with blood. Others pointed toward the lifting sky, talking and clapping one another on the back with relief.

“This’ll be a story to tell our grandchildren!” one of the men said to another. His hair was bright red, and his smile was toothy and expansive.

Isabella half-lay across her saddle, gasping in her father’s arms as his lips brushed the crown of her hair.

He gave her shoulders a squeeze and said, “Courage, poppet. It’s over. I must see to the wounded.”

“Papa,” she ventured. “I need to ask you to help me with my lacings …”

But he didn’t hear her. He set her firmly back on her horse and rode away. She gritted her teeth and
shook her head as she raised an arm at his retreating back. He thought she had the vapors, like some fragile maid.

It all comes from lack of air, not courage
, she thought with frustration.

The men were talking all at once, laughing and cleaning off their weapons. Major Whyte was hard put to secure their attention, and as she slid off her horse and wobbled toward the stream, he raised his pistol in the air and fired it.

“Enough!” he bellowed. “I will have your eyes and ears
now!”

Seeing as it could be that he meant that literally, his troops immediately complied, even Ben Schoten, whose face was drenched with blood. Men were groaning; one was weeping. Surgeon Stevens knelt over a limp figure, muttering things to a soldier who knelt on one knee beside him to act as his assistant.

If only he would listen, I would be able to help him myself
, she thought huffily.

Suddenly she heard the cawing of birds—or so it sounded at first to her. Then she covered her mouth with her glove, horror washing over her like the icy spray of the waterfall. Her horse began to panic, stomping its feet and throwing back its head.

Those are the war cries of Indians!

“Papa!” she cried.

The men had heard it, too, and Major Whyte was already issuing orders. They were reassembling in rows, becoming once more the fighting men of Britain.

“Look alive!” Major Whyte shouted. “Get the wounded into the forest! Reload your weapons!”

“Isabella!” her father cried from his place beside the injured soldier. “Savages! Run into the forest! Hide yourself!”

Run?
she thought incredulously.

She took a step back toward her horse, thinking to remount. But the horse bolted. Isabella jumped away, then lost her balance and tumbled to the ground.

The shrieks grew louder.

“Fix bayonets!” Major Whyte shouted.

“Isabella!” Dr. Stevens cried again.

I
must do something!

She flopped over on her hands and raised herself to her knees. Her right hand slid forward in the mud; she pulled back. And then her fingertips brushed something hard. A sharp pain sliced her palm and she would have cried out if she had been able to manage a sound.

She gripped her hand around the object and pulled it from the muck.

It was a knife. She had never seen it before, which meant that it probably did not belong to her father. She had no idea how it got there, but she was grateful for it nonetheless.

Closing her eyes, she wrapped both her hands around it, aimed it directly at her sternum, and brought it downward. She began to saw at the lacings of her corset, and gasped aloud when the first crisscross of dark green ribbons was severed. Upon
the cutting of the second, she sucked in huge gulps of air. The third, and she carefully placed the knife between her teeth and yanked hard on the two sections of her corset.

Her rib cage finally freed, she inhaled like a drowning woman, spitting out her knife. She grabbed it up, still breathing hard; then she staggered to her feet and lifted her skirts—just as a figure leaped from the top of the waterfall and splashed into the water. She whirled around and tried to hold up her skirt with one hand as she gripped the knife with the other.

She was vaguely aware that she was screaming.

A wiry painted savage dressed in leather clothing crested the bubbling waters. As soon as he caught sight of her, he began slogging through the water straight for her. The water swirled around his thighs, then only to his knees as he advanced.

She screamed louder, backing away. She could not read his face, or his expression; he grinned like a devil in his warpaint. His hair was caught away from his face with feathers and he wore a silver earring; he held a tomahawk in one hand and a huge club in the other.

He said something in his native tongue, and then he stepped onto the bank of the stream. Dripping wet, his paint sliding down his features as if they were melting, he lunged at her.

She shrieked, “Papa!” and then rather than race away, she jumped straight at him, extending her
knife. The sharp blade slashed his upper arm.

Her action startled him as much as it astonished her. His eyes widened and then he bolted toward her again. Staying her ground, she arced the knife, praying it would cut him again.

This time he stayed out of her reach, and her knife sliced at thin air as he began to circle around her.

Then a shot rang out. The savage’s eyes widened and he shouted with pain. A bloom of crimson erupted on his leather shirt. He grabbed at it and lurched toward her, muttering at her in his heathen language.

Then he crumpled onto his knees and fell face first into the earth.

“Oh, thank God,” Isabella moaned, catching her breath.

Just as another Indian leaped toward her from the top of the falls.

As he waded from the stream, Isabella turned and ran. She shouted, “Again! Fire again!” But the man who had saved her was busy reloading; her rescuer was none other than Ben Schoten.

She sent him a prayer of gratitude and kept running, heading for the forest. Her mind was flooded with terror. Her skirts dragged over the ground, catching on the exposed root of a pine tree: she stopped and yanked at it, then took the knife and hacked off the offending bit.

But it was too late.

Strong hands grabbed her around the waist. Then she and the Indian slammed to the ground, he
landing on her. Her bones cracked and the wind was knocked out of her. She could not scream; she could only gasp; she saw stars as the world blurred into shades of gray and yellow.

Then he flipped her over on her back, and her fear snapped back her focus. She cowered at the wild look in his black, human eyes, which stared from circles of blue and black. Inhuman in visage, he smelled of blood and sweat. As he showed her his tomahawk, he grinned at her and grabbed her hair.

Oh, my God
, I’m
going to die!
she thought.
He’s going to scalp me!

At that instant, the skies burst open and it began to rain. The savage was startled and looked up. The rest of his war paint sluiced off his skin and she was startled to see that he was a man perhaps her father’s age.

She had no idea how she had managed to keep hold of her knife, but time stopped for her as she stared at his leather shirt. Then she thrust the blade into his chest with all the force she could muster.

Blood sprayed from the wound as the Indian shrieked more in anger than in pain. As he yanked the knife out of his chest, he backhanded her with his free hand. Her head snapped painfully to the left into fresh mud.

He grabbed her hair again.

She began to pummel his face and shoulders, kicking her legs in a frenzy as she worked to free herself. He laughed and grabbed her wrists with both his hands. Then he caught them both with his left
hand as he spoke to her in his language. With his other hand he picked up her knife and showed it to her. Raindrops smacked the metal and slapped her face. His smile was cruel. He was playing with her, savoring her fear.

Thunder rumbled above them. Lightning flashed. A wind sailed over the man’s body, stirring his long, wet hair in the rain, as if he were sitting on the bottom of the sea. Isabelle realized she could hear no gunshots, no screams. All she heard was the wind, and her own whimpering.

Stop it, stop it
, she ordered herself.
You are the daughter of a British officer.

But she could not stop it. She was bitterly afraid.

He drew the knife along the center of her face. Isabella remembered the stories she had heard of white women captured by savages and mutilated straight off, their nostrils slit as soon as they were captured. Her mind blurred ahead to when they were returned to their white families, and the sight of their shame had caused husbands to turn away and claim, “This is not my wife.”

If such was to be her fate…

“No!” she shouted, baring her teeth like a feral animal. “You shall
not!”

She twisted her head left, right, as the rain pelted it. Impatiently, he grabbed her chin and forced the back of her head flat against the mud. Water pooled in the hollow he had created, the rainwater rapidly pooling and trickling into her ears. He held her still
and spoke to her, his eyes crinkling with laughter.

The rain poured through the cracked, wounded sky. Brusquely, he released her chin and yanked her hands back over her head. His fingers were rough against her smooth flesh, but he still had trouble holding onto her. His hands were slippery with his own blood.

Thunder rumbled; lightning answered. A zigzag of yellow light slashed across his face, giving him the look of a gargoyle in an engraving of an old French church in her father’s Bible.

He is from hell,
she thought wildly.
He’s a fiend.

Lightning flashed again, and he dipped his head toward her loose, drenched bodice. The two torn panels had separated, and though she was still covered, it was only in the broadest sense of the word.