The Frontiersman’s Daughter (13 page)

“
If
we Americans win the war, you mean. You forget what will happen if England triumphs. My father and every other Continental officer will be tried for treason.”

Lael shook her head, thinking of all the recent reports she’d heard and read. “Our side seems to be winning.”

“This week, anyway,” Lydia mused, reaching out to pluck a lilac. Bringing it to her nose, she said, “Enough melancholy talk. There’s to be a ball tomorrow night. What will you wear?”

“My royal purple sacque dress,” Lael said with a winsome smile. “And my two bare feet.”

“That seems rather dangerous given all your partners.”

“Thankfully they’re not all toe steppers, though they do tend to be shorter than I am. And it’s not me they’re interested in but my father’s exploits, same as you.” She bit her lip and said quietly, “I’ll take a long-legged frontiersman any day.”

Lydia studied her thoughtfully, as if all too aware of the heartache beneath her simple words. “Sadly, you’ll not find any frontiersmen around here.”

And that, Lael lamented, was her principal complaint about Briar Hill.

The tea room on Lee Alley was just beyond the gates of Briar Hill, and Lael fled to it as often as she could. Sometimes she would sit alone at a tiny linen-draped table, a wide window before her, admiring the fine thistle pattern on the exquisite English china, if not the owner’s Tory leanings. Occasionally Lydia would join her, and they’d talk of anything but lessons and pupils and finishing-school rules.

Today, as autumn transformed the world outside the shop window with a windblown assortment of scarlet and gold leaves, they huddled over their steaming cups, breathing in the scent of Egyptian chamomile and oranges and a host of other exotic things.

“I’ve heard the ‘queen’ is about to issue a new edict,” Lydia told her in hushed tones.

A wry smile pulled at Lael’s face. “Banning us from Tory tea shops? I’d heard the same.”

“She’s a hard headmistress. I’ve often thought how well she fits her name.”

Lael toyed with a silver sugar spoon absently. Truly, Alexandra Ice presided over Briar Hill with the cold formality of a queen. And it was this that had finally goaded Lael into action. She gave Lydia an apologetic look, feeling the need to tell her first. “Perhaps now’s a good time to reveal I’m planning to leave this place.”

A flash of concern darkened Lydia’s face and nearly made Lael wish she’d not said the words. “Has your father sent word he’s coming for you?”

“Nay. I sometimes think he never will, so I’m taking matters into my own hands.”

“When?”

“Not now. Next spring.”

“I’m glad of that. But Kentucke? You’re hardly the sturdy frontier girl who came here four years ago. You’ve grown soft, as you’ve said yourself.”

“Aye, and I’ll grow even softer if I stay.” Lael leaned back in her chair, knowing her news wasn’t welcome and wanting to take away the sudden sadness in her friend’s eyes. “With the war nearly won, you’ll be leaving too.”

But instead of bubbling over with enthusiasm at what lay ahead, Lydia reached up and rubbed her temples with gloved hands. The unusual gesture pinched Lael with alarm, and she noticed Lydia’s high color. “Lydia, are you unwell?”

Lydia looked down at her unfinished tea, her shoulders lifting in a little shrug beneath her scarlet cape. “Just a headache.”

“I’ll ask Mrs. Moss for some thyme tea then.” Rising, Lael started to turn away, but Lydia caught her arm. “Just help me back to Briar Hill. Perhaps if I lie down . . .”

The odor of camphor and the oil from cupping lamps reached Lael as she stood in the hall outside the room she shared with Lydia. As she watched the doctors—dark, dour men suffused with their own self-importance—hover over her friend as she lay on her bed, she felt a terrible disquiet.

Could Miss Mayella sense her agitation? Surely so, for she reached out and squeezed her arm as they waited, saying, “Dr. Clary will bleed her to restore the body’s balance, and all should be well.”

At this, a cold hand seemed to clutch Lael’s heart. “But Lydia’s afraid of bloodletting—”

“Lael, please.” The pale, composed lines of Miss Mayella’s face tensed. “She’s passed into unconsciousness. Besides, the doctors know how to best treat such a fever.”

Did they? Lael’s eyes fastened on the lancet Dr. Clary held. Why were his hands shaking? Was he addicted to drink like the last physician who’d come? The assortment of brass scarificators and bronze cups gleamed harshly in the lamplight, and she turned her back in silent protest.

Unbidden, the hazy image of Ma Horn sprang to mind. Bloodletting was against nature, she’d often said with vigor. Such a practice caused more misery than it relieved, and Lael had shared this with Lydia. Besides, Lydia had a terrible fear of worms and spiders and snakes.

Oh Lord, please don’t let her come awake.

The bloodsucking leeches were applied nearly round the clock, but blessedly, Lydia remained lost in the fever’s delirium. Lael sensed that she was more ill than they’d let on, and the following hours only confirmed this as her fever climbed higher.

Looking on, Lael wondered what cruel twist of fate kept her friend’s father on some far battlefield while his only daughter lay dying.

At last, Lydia’s next of kin, an aunt in Williamsburg, was sent for.

When she wasn’t teaching, Lael stood by helplessly in the hall, wanting to shout at the doctors to take their cupping sets and get out. What Lydia needed most was a healer like Ma Horn, who’d break the fever with boneset and cold cloths and kind words. The thought brought about such a crushing wave of homesickness that Lael rushed to the window of her empty classroom in a near panic and considered leaving before winter set in.

Leaning her forehead against the chill glass, she weighed what she would need to travel four hundred miles through still-hostile wilderness. A horse. A gun and powder and lead. Flint and steel to start a fire. Enough warm clothes and provisions to take her there. She’d be fighting the elements all the way now that winter neared. And Lydia—she couldn’t leave Lydia till she got well or . . .

In a week’s time, Lydia was whisked away to convalesce with her Williamsburg relatives, who announced she would not be returning to school. Her teaching responsibilities were given to Lael, who felt the weight of them settle over her and shackle her to Briar Hill in new ways. As the autumn days grew darker, the panic that had settled over Lael upon Lydia’s leaving returned with chilling regularity.

Oh Pa, where are you? Will I ever see you or Kentucke again?

22

Briar Hill, Virginia, 1783

The high-ceilinged room was filled with the cold light of early spring, not unlike that spring five years past when Lael and her father first set foot on Briar Hill. Alexandra Ice presided over the small gathering in a black satin gown with pearls draped like rope about her wrinkled neck. She looked, Lael thought again, like a queen. Dark and dour, she’d said little thus far, but her eyes, needle sharp, roamed the room as if ferreting out the slightest infraction.

Miss Mayella was present, as were all Lael’s instructors. Each wore the characteristic dark silk and lace except Lael. She was dressed in a traveling suit of fine black cloth with fifty faux-pearl buttons from collar to hem. In her hands she held a straw hat, the only hint of color allowed her. Its lavender feather fluttered softly in a draft as she set it atop her lap.

“First, I want to offer my condolences regarding your great loss,” the headmistress began. “You have been an exceptional student and assistant teacher. Your father would have been proud.”

The letter bearing the black wax seal, with its news of Pa’s fate, lay in her pocket alongside the blue beads. Lael sat very still, her eyes on the wide oaks just beyond the narrow windows, their vivid greenness heralding spring despite the sudden cold.
Dogwood winter
, she mused for a moment, her concentration slipping. The dogwoods were blooming now from cabin to river, and if she hurried she might just see the last of their showy splendor . . .

“I think I speak for all of us when I ask you to reconsider your rather rash decision to leave us. We are in need of another instructor at Briar Hill.”

“I hope to return to Kentucke right away—after I see my mother and brother in Bardstown.” She colored slightly as she spoke, wondering if they knew her mother had already remarried and, with Ransom, had left the settlement. She had told only Miss Mayella, stumbling with embarrassment over the news that had come at the end of Ma’s grievous letter.

“Women are so few on the frontier, Lael. You must not judge your mother too harshly,” Miss Mayella had told her.

But Lael felt fresh resentment flare within her as she sat stoically before her instructors. Ma’s mourning hadn’t lasted two months, and her haste to marry again seemed a blatant show of disrespect to Pa’s memory.

The headmistress said, “I suppose you plan to teach at the Kentucke settlement school.”

“No, I . . . I have no desire to teach at all.”

“Then what do you plan to do—you, a young woman, alone?”

Lael hesitated.

“There are still wild savages about, mademoiselle,” her French instructor warned.

At this Lael nearly smiled. “Not so many as when I was a girl, I should think.”

Another of her teachers pressed, “But how shall you support yourself if you do not teach?”

Put in some corn. Dig ginseng in the woods. Ride up and down the hollers and balds. Just . . . be.
She said nothing, knowing how foolish this would sound to them. All but Miss Mayella.

The lines of displeasure in the headmistress’s face deepened. Her thoughts were plain.
All the years of study wasted!

“I shall take my books with me,” she said quietly. “They are like old friends and shall be put to good use.”

“All right then. But if you should ever change your mind,” came the terse reply, “you can always return to Briar Hill.”
When your plans fail and you realize how utterly futile—and dangerous—it is for a woman alone on the frontier, you may fall back on our beneficence
, her tone implied.

But Lael was finished with Briar Hill forever. Dutifully, she would write to let them know she was well and settled. But for five long years her soul had chafed at a life lived by unbending rules, when every thundering strike of the grandfather clock in the great hall signaled prayers to be said, lessons learned, niceties uttered, and meals taken.

Alexandra Ice lifted upturned palms in a gesture that signified resignation. “I should be quite apprehensive in regards to your future, Lael Click, but for one thing: You are your father’s daughter.”

In the long years between leaving Kentucke and finally escaping Virginia, Lael had hoarded every single shilling Pa had sent her in hopes that they would someday see her home again. Now with sufficient funds needed to travel, she set out, though she was unprepared for the unceasing spring rains and the nearly impassable roads awash with mud on the first leg of her journey.

Traveling by coach, she took lodging in respectable inns and taverns, eating little and sleeping less, always looking out for trouble. Her twin trunks would follow later, bearing her books and dresses. By the time she reached the Virginia border and secured a horse and food and shunned a guide, it was as if her sheltered, cosseted life at Briar Hill had never been.

She’d thought to meet up with other travelers. The newspapers had reported them pouring through Cumberland Gap on the trail Pa had first blazed, spurred on by the war’s imminent end, or coming down the Ohio River on flatboats to start new settlements. But not a soul was to be seen. The edges of the wilderness wooed her, still and lush, an eternal green. She fancied Pa’s spirit lingered on in these woods. Heading west, she’d not made many missteps. Somehow it seemed he was with her, careful to keep her on the right path.

On the sixth day, before darkness fell and the moon rose, when the deer gathered at the watering places, she came upon a bonnet. It lay limp and lifeless along a creek bed and had no color at all, the dye long since washed out and bleached by the sun. Reaching up, she touched the wide brim of her own straw hat, recalling how she hated wearing a bonnet. Unable to see beyond the wide brim, she always felt boxed in, her head hot beneath the cloth. Had she not felt the same at Briar Hill and even Fort Click when the wild woods beckoned? Was Pa’s wanderlust not her own?

As she rode on she heard rather than saw the hot springs, clear and warm as fresh milk. Above the springs was a cave, breathing a cold sigh into the tepid night air. Fireflies winged all about her, and it was here that she made a cold camp.

Piling her traveling clothes atop a rock, she slipped into the steaming water and gasped with glee. The water swirled and bubbled, smelling of sulfur, assuaging the weariness out of her. Unpinning her hair, she ducked under the surface, then sat where the warm water was up to her neck. Looking up, past the towering elms and oaks, the sky called to mind the Star of Bethlehem quilt, white with stars.

When she had pulled free of the spring, her long hair covering her nakedness, she combed through the sandy tangles before making a braid. There was no more need of a fancy traveling suit, black as it was for mourning. She traded it for a light linen dress, rolling up into a blanket near where her horse was hobbled, wanting a fire but too tired to make one. And too careful.

In the morning she worked at igniting a small amount of powder with a spark from a flint, feeding the small flame with dry leaves and twigs. She mixed water with meal and a pinch of salt and set some small cakes on a flat rock in the heat of the fire for her breakfast. Out of another leather pouch she took a bit of dried meat and chewed on this while waiting for the cakes to bake. Once finished, she was careful to put out the fire, raking the coals flat and dampening the ground with water, then covering it over with dirt and leaves. She wanted to be certain she left no trail. From this day forward she would keep to the waterways when she could to hide her tracks, just as an Indian would. She recalled Pa had done the same.

How many days had she traveled? Nothing seemed familiar to her, and yet she kept in a westerly direction, certain she would eventually come to the Louisa, or Kentucke River. She recollected the Shawnee called it the Chenoa, the telling landmark she looked for.

Time and distance worked to dull her excitement at leaving Briar Hill but did nothing to unburden her. Cold, hard grief now seeped in, her shock at learning of Pa’s fate now giving way to a fearful hurt. She was heading home, but what awaited her? Several years had been lost to her. Letters from the settlement had been few and far between. Ma had written but twice, and only Pa had visited her at Briar Hill, returning once that first spring, but it proved so painful he never came back.

When she saw him, she’d been certain he meant to take her home. “Oh Pa, I was a-feared you’d forgot all about me,” she gushed, gladness spilling out of her. “I’ve got to get shed of this place. I always believed you’d come get me in—”

“This place grieves you, Daughter?”

“Oh, it’s tolerable. But I never liked it. I reckon I’ll like it a heap better when it’s behind me.”

His usual stoicism turned to sadness, as if any hope he had of her happiness had been struck down. What girl, taken from the wild woods and tucked into the cocooned, comfortable world of Briar Hill, could want for anything at all? Was that what he thought?

“Your teachers tell me you’re doin’ fine.”

Fine?
She didn’t feel fine, she felt sick with a hunger for home that never ebbed, only flowed. And she didn’t look fine, what with the ladies being so shy of the sun and the elements and covering up every chance they got. She was pale as frost herself and longed to be barefoot and brown as dirt.

“Your ma sent you some crabapple jelly,” he told her. “And this here’s from Ransom.”

At the sight of a linen hankie full of dried flowers, she burst into tears. And she did what she vowed she would never do— she clung to him until he had to pry her arms loose to leave, his face so filled with angst it nearly broke her heart in two . . . even now. Recalling this last encounter with Pa, she couldn’t see the trail for her tears, but she kept on, bowing to the wind as it began moaning through the treetops. A thunderclap nearly unseated her, and her horse reared then veered off the trail. Another gust snatched away her straw hat, and it went flying birdlike behind her, ribbons fluttering. Lightning lit the woods and the wind twisted the trees into grotesque shapes, keening and crying in mournful melody.

For the first time in years she felt fear. The mare sensed it and grew more skittish, plunging into a briar patch and tearing her skirt. Sliding off, she grabbed hold of the bridle and with all her strength, pulled the animal beneath a rock overhang just as the heavens opened and poured forth a cold, pounding rain. Nay, she could go no farther this day.