Snow Swept Moors: A Highland Winter Collection, page 44
Mary gasped. “Are yuh crazy, Catriona? Yuh’ll git us burnt quicker than yuhr bacon.”
Mole Woman’s caterpillar-thick brows shoved up her low forehead. Her jaw dropped open and puddled her neck with more rings of fat. Then she grinned, and Catriona knew the squaw was anticipating some kind of awful reprisal once they arrived back at the village.
This was one work day whose end Catriona for once wanted to delay.
Luck appeared to be on her side. The captives were not returned to their mud hovel but were escorted to the council house once again. She could tell something of import was about, because their captors were no longer taunting them or joking among themselves. A curious tension electrified the late afternoon’s stagnant air.
Inside, Jethro sat, his head resting in exhaustion on forearms braced on raised knees. When she dropped down beside him, he glanced over at her. Gone was his puppy dog gaze when around her, replaced by the reassuring wink of a young knight who over the last week had run the gauntlet and was proud of his wounds.
Beside him, Esau sat cross-legged with an incredibly dirty Billy, who looked more Indian than white, in his lap. At the sight of his mother, the boy jumped and ran to wrap his broomstick arms around her tattered skirt. As tired as she was, she stooped, scooped him up in her arms, then took a seat next to Esau.
The five of them were not the council house’s only occupants. On the far side of the central hearth sat Chef Atakullakulla, Dragging Canoe, a couple of older Indians, perhaps one being Esau’s medicine man because of the leather pouch suspended from his thick neck. Also, there were three Tory Rangers, distinguished by their green tunics. . . and a serious faced Barrett.
At once, his eyes fastened on her. He said nothing, just waited as the old chief began to speak in a stentorian voice worthy of the House of Burgesses. All the while, he spoke, she tried to make sense of Barrett’s presence. He had told her he was traveling upriver with the Remington’s but only as far as the Piedmont. So . . . .
Abruptly Chief Atakullakulla ceased speaking. At that point, Barrett unfurled parallel strings of leather about three yards long, belted at intervals by leather pouches.
“A wampum war belt,” Jethro muttered.
The Indians spoke back and forth with one another, then Chief Atakullakulla nodded his head in an emphatic gesture.
At that point, Barrett directed his attention at her. He wore not his usual elegant attire but was garbed like a common backwoodsman. Nevertheless, a hint of his distinctive hauteur edged his words. “I have arranged to ransom you.”
She should have felt boundless joy. Her fingers flicked toward her companions. “And them?”
Jethro, Mary and Esau’s gazes swerved from him to her and back to him.
“Catriona, I can only bend circumstances to fit my purpose to a point without arousing Atakullakulla’s suspicion. I have told him you are my chosen one. That we are affianced.”
“I am already married.”
“A farce of a marriage. You know this. And I have told Chief Atakullakulla this.”
“I canna go. Not without them.”
His palm thrust out at Dragging Canoe. “You would prefer to be the second wife of some subhuman brave like this and toil the rest of your life like a squaw?”
“How did ye know we had been taken captive?”
“Or would you prefer your red hair hang as a scalp piece from some brave’s lance?”
“Catriona,” Mary hissed, “don’t be a fool. Do it! Oncet yuhr free, mebbe yuh can – ”
She shook her head. “No! Dunna you see? They were just waiting for Barrett. They will kill the rest of – ”
Her voice was drowned out by the retorts of musket fire. Simultaneously, her nostrils flared with the odor of something burning. Screams and shouts curdled the hot, humid air.
The Indians shot to their feet. She, Jethro, Esau and Mary stumbled to theirs and, on the heels of the stampeding Indians, cleared the Council House rapidly.
Through the haze of smoke, she saw white men loading and firing their flintlocks and rapidly reloading. Others, brandished their axes much as Highlanders did their claymores. And still others, used the cold steel of their bayonets to impale fleeing Indians.
“The river,” Jethro shouted at them. “Head for the river.”
Her arm was grabbed, and she looked up to see Barrett’s fierce expression. “Come with me,” he yelled.
Her gaze swung back to Mary, Esau, and the others, but they had disappeared through the roiling, acrid smoke of burning huts. Then Jethro wrenched free her arm and yanked her with him into the smoke’s pall. All around shots pinged and gun smoke plumed and tongues of huts’ burning flames flared. She lost sight of the others but spotted here and there fringe-shirted militiamen savagely attacking.
She and Jethro made it just outside the palisaded walls to the bank, gray with eddying smoke. Even here, bedlam prevailed. Somehow in the melee they became separated. Off to her right, Mole Woman, waddling as fast as her fat would allow, halted abruptly and swung toward her. The squaw’s sudden grin was clearly one of delight for the opportunity for retaliation.
Fear paralyzed Catriona – like in the occasional nightmare, where she wanted to scream and nothing would come out.
Then, a hurtling hatchet cleaved the squaw’s low forehead. She toppled like a stone statue. Catriona gaped. Next, the breath was knocked from her as she was tackled, and all her hope for escape was obliterated.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The three canoes shot along the river, glistening with the sun’s dying light. Jacob, in the stern of the canoe with an exhaustion-drugged Cat bundled in a rough blanket at his knees, paddled in long, deep strokes, as did the other two Catawba Indians toward the prow. Up ahead, Fergus and Esau put their full weight into paddling two other captives. Behind, paddled Tom Brindle and a pair of North Carolina militiamen with yet another captive.
Oars flashed in and out of the water, spraying sparkling gems. Along the banks, the maple leaves were just beginning to redden with the hint of approaching autumn. The fragrance of azaleas was intensified by the late afternoon heat. A big trout broke water alongside the oars’ silvery splash.
The Cherokee, in siding with the English, had forfeited their land. American militia forces numbering 2,400 from North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia, with the aid of Catawba scouts, had coordinated attacks on thirty-six Cherokee towns, destroying their cornfields and livestock. No other choice had existed, not with the Cherokee at the colonists’ back door and the English at their front.
South Carolina had offered a bounty of 50 pounds for each Cherokee scalp and 100 pounds for each Cherokee prisoner. The Georgia Militia had vowed to burn out the Cherokee and indiscriminately kill men, women, and children in retaliation for all the innocent white lives cut short.
And he – well, he had taken savage pleasure in cleaving the skull of the squaw who had been persecuting his Cat.
Any chase Barrett Fairfax would be giving was behind, and ahead awaited the falls with their thirty-foot plunge.
And what awaited, Jacob wondered, him and his wife – the garrulous Cat, with her easy smile that had stopped him in his tracks. The sight of her at the Highlander Games had been like picking up a vestige of a trail he had overlooked since childhood. With an intoxicating force, the sight of her had attacked his senses, insulated from polite society.
The boy, Jacob, had been impressionable, not yet molded by life’s unforgiving laws. Laws that set apart the aristocrat from the uncouth, the gentry from the bastard.
He possessed little of his father’s eloquence. Jacob had to make his actions speak for his poverty of words. Yet those actions had only worsened his attempts to woo her. She held it against him for taking her in marriage by so practical and expedient an arrangement. Yet she had no idea the full extent to which he had gone – taking advantage of her clan’s plight and adding pressure.
But what do you do when you want something so much? Bank on a leprechaun to provide it? At the Highlander Games, he had known not when next his tar and pitch business might bring him to Campbelton. Had he not reached for what he wanted, any other man in his right mind, or not, might have asked her father for her hand. Barrett Fairfax being foremost.
The fair-haired favorite of Tidewater society was an English agent. Doubtlessly, Fairfax would be lauded back in Tory territory, especially in Campbelton.
The roar of water signaled the falls ahead. In unison, the paddlers thrust their oars hard against the churning current and swung the three canoes toward the concealing reeds and, behind them, the large flat rock covered in lichen. He lifted Catriona from the canoe’s hard ribs. Tomorrow, he would doubtlessly hear her venting her annoyance with her freshly bruised body. Bone-weary as he was, he could not but feel pleasure at her satisfying weight.
She stirred in half protest, and he set her on her feet in the glade, where Esau and the other rescued captives were already gathering. She turned unnaturally bright eyes up at him. “Go with the others,” he told her. “Rest while you can.”
With casual proficiency, he made a swift inspecting circuit of the forest margins, then joined Tom and Fergus, palavering with the Catawba and the militiamen. “A smokeless fire – oak bark and green branches – for what is left of the buffalo carcass,” Tom was advising.
“Once we eat, best we strike out afoot as soon as possible,” Fergus said. The trader’s expression had not veered once from its habitually gruffness, despite burying Coowee’s desecrated body days earlier.
They were still in enemy country. Jacob set a militiaman to work on the canoes, sinking them with hatchet holes.
With twilight, the marsh wrens’ sweet trills gradually diminished. While the others ate, he sat with his long rifle balanced across his knees and cleaned it. It was damp from the canoe bottom, and he took care to oil its steel at the lock.
Cat left the huddled others and, wrapped in the dirty blanket, crossed the clearing to join him. In all her disarray, her sunburnt cheeks, her filthy tangled mass of hair, and hands and feet pustuled with insect bites and weeping sores, she had never looked more vibrant to him – as if forged by fire.
“How did ye know where to find us?”
“When Coowee did not return from your lessons, Fergus went looking for her.” He blew down the muzzle to make sure it was not clogged by partially burnt powder. “He tracked for a distance your trail – your cap, your hair pins, scraps of clothing. When he realized its destination – the Cherokee town of Coyate – he set out after us.”
“Barrett, he planned this, dinnae he – taking me captive?”
“Yes.”
“And ye persuaded Caswell’s militia to attack Dragging Canoe’s village?”
“The attack was already planned. Led by Brigadier General Rutherford. His men probably saw the operation as a potential land grab.”
“Yet ye still carried me off.”
“You are my wife.”
She chewed on her lip. He was expecting her to bring up their argument outside the trading post or his rough treatment of her or Afton Manor’s destruction – any number of complaints, but she surprised him.
“Ye will admit that what ye did that first time – at the Highlander Games – was no different than Barrett having me kidnapped two weeks ago? Ye also finagled to take me.”
He measured out a charge of powder. “Legally.”
“But ye would have taken me, legally or illegally, aye?”
“Yes.”
“Then are ye no better than Barrett – in taking me?”
“Is that how you think?” It was obvious to him that she believed Barrett to be the more civilized between them, but surely she could not believe that made Barrett the better man.
“I dunna rightly ken,” she groaned.
“You have had time to know.”
He could see she was trying to reach her own conclusion. He said nothing, only continued with his priming and reloading.
“Back at Kinsfolk Landing, ye had made no objections to me going with Barrett – ye even suggested an annulment if I wanted one. Yet ye came for me at the Indian village. That makes no sense.” She looked down at her clenched hands, as if she could not bring herself to look at him.
He waited for the gabble, that torrent of words, white people felt necessary.
“We are so different. If it were only our political loyalties . . . but that is only a wee part of our differences,” she said with a great attempt at reasonableness. She risked glancing up at him. “Look at yeself, sitting there, dog-tired, yet, nevertheless, cleaning your rifle. Ye are fastidious. And I – me maid, Phoebe – she calls me Messy Betsy. Ye are as parsimonious as a Scotsman with your words, while for me . . . well, communication, it is everything.”
When he continued to say nothing, she paused, then blurted, “Even now, we canna converse. Ye sit there like that slab of stone. What do ye expect of me?”
That was a fool question. Had she anticipated him to gainsay her? “I expect you to be my wife. In all ways.”
Indignation flashed across her countenance, only to be replaced by what would seem a supreme effort at tolerance. She was wanting something more from him, he realized. Those words that had been locked away in his childhood. But he should not have to say them. From his point of view, actions counted for everything. He had studied his conviction, and it bore up well under examination.
Prepared to wait for the next conclusion she drew, he began to stuff the patch with the flint into the muzzle. At that moment, Tom chose to join them. He slid the rifle strap from one sloped shoulder, and hunkered before the fire. “I figger we got two, maybe three hours, afore the injuns pick up our trail.”
Jacob only nodded. He could smell the singed wool of Tom’s trowsers that came from standing too near the fire, drying himself from the river’s flight. Tom turned his attention to the blanket-wrapped Cat. “Heard ‘bout the bonfire of Afton Manor.”
Beyond exhaustion, she only nodded. “Aye.”
“Could’a been worse,” Tom continued. “Congress was wanting yur father’s neck in a noose. Jacob, here, had the idear of swapping yur father’s neck fer Afton Manor. Course, Congress gobbled up the idea of adding the revenue of Afton Manor to their coffers. A shame the rabble had to burn it down. Well, I’ll see ‘bout setting’ up a sentry for the hour’s respite.”
Jacob knew what was coming and braced for it.
Once Tom took his leave, Cat turned on Jacob eyes blazing as hot and sputtering as the fire. So angry was she, she could barely spit out her furious words. “Ye . . . ye knew all along . . . ye wove your web ye did, like some colossal cunning, spider . . . trapping me . . . arranging to give over to the insurrectionists me home . . . taking it from me, so ye could give it back to me . . . bartering the security of me home . . . for a wife stout of heart and strong of arm . . . and able to bare your bairn!”
He hunkered before the fire, shoving dirt to douse its coals. Cat raged on.
“Well, I will no’ bear your bairn, do ye hear me?”
She buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook, as with fever, and when she lifted her head, he could see she was shattered. Her features struggled to compose themselves. She looked at him scathingly, then spoke slowly, distinctly, as if addressing that Indian part of him that could not conceive words like culture or refinement. “You rescued me today. I owe you that. I am willing to be your helpmate . . . but not your handmaiden. And only until Christmas, when ye pledged your word you would take me home.”
As a child, he had never known the word ‘home’ much less the one, ‘Christmas.’ Now he wished he had never heard the words, so empty of meaning.
Chapter Fifteen
Heat lightning flickered outside the cabin’s open doorway. The night was sultry, not a leaf stirred, and the cabin’s silence grated on Catriona’s nerves
After being in such intimate contact with the other captives, sleeping and eating under the most confined circumstances, she felt the strain of being alone with Jacob that first night back in their cabin. While she sat near the hearth on the stool and shucked corn for supper, he was priming his Doune pistol. The thud of her kitchen knife, the click of the pistol’s hammer, only emphasized the silence between them.
Laying aside the pistol, he crossed to hunker in front of the fireplace and ladle out a chunk of the boiled squirrel he had put on earlier. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him warily. From the ladle, he plucked the steaming chunk between his thumb and forefinger and, blowing on it, held it up to her lips. “Eat.”
She shook her head. “I canna,” she whispered. Survival that week of captivity had demanded total focus, but now that she was safe, now that her mind had time to ponder – to collide with the cruelty, the brutality and barbarism she had both witnessed and endured – the mere idea of food was repellent.
“Soon, you will look like Mother McGee.”
She frowned, but he nevertheless nudged the chunk between her lips. She thought she would choke, but its savory juices whetted her hunger instead.
He fed her another piece, asking quietly, “Were you bedded against your will?”
She shook her head once more. “No.” She shivered. He was asking if she had been violated by the Indians . . . when she felt violated by him. Then, watching him carefully, she asked, “Would it make a difference if I had been?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“The good – the bad, you are still you.”
So much for eloquence.
After a taxing, all-night march, the party under his command had arrived at Kinsfolk Landing two days later, just before sundown. Instead of collapsing on the bed, she had spent a full hour, scrunched in the wooden tub, and had scrubbed herself free of Indian taint. Her resentment against the Indians she could not scrub away.
And, yet, here Jacob hunkered before her, those dark eyes watching her with the Indian’s blank gaze. Distant thunder murmured its discontent. “Fairfax will want you again.”
