A Wild Yearning (39 page)

The pocked-face Indian got into the canoe, carrying Sara's blood-splattered mobcap and her faded, graying brown hair. Elizabeth was crying hysterically beneath Delia's hand.

Delia's captor yanked her back by the hair, tearing her hand from Elizabeth's mouth and releasing an outpouring of sobs, like pulling a plug from a dam. "Don't kill her!" Delia screamed, for the girl's cries sounded frighteningly loud, shattering the peace of the spruce-lined river.

The big Indian's fingers bit into Delia's arm as he pulled her away, shoving her down into the bow of the canoe with his hard, greasy body. He barked a command at her, but Delia struggled against him, lashing out with her feet and fists, sure that if she didn't stop Elizabeth's crying, the girl's captor would kill her with one blow from his tomahawk.

Delia's nails raked through the soft flesh of the Indian's cheek. He hissed at her and sent her reeling from a vicious blow across her face. For a moment the world grayed and dimmed, then she struggled upright again. But Elizabeth had at last stopped the sobs on her own, by pressing her fist into her mouth.

Putting the back of her wrist to her bleeding lip, Delia glared at the man who had struck her. Never, never had she felt such hate. "I spit on ye, ye bloody bastard, ye murderin' savage, ye..."

His hand lashed out, encircling her throat and jerking her head up. He brought his face close to hers. The cuts her nails had made on his cheek dripped bright red blood. "Understand this," he said in perfect, unaccented English. "Savage I might be, but I am no bastard. My parents were married at my birth. And my people call me the Dreamer, although you will call me master."

Delia set her teeth on the retort that wanted to fly out of her mouth. The pressure of the hand against her Adam's apple increased, cutting off her air.

He stared at her for a long, long moment, until Delia's vision began to blacken, then he let go of her throat and, picking up a paddle, pushed the canoe out into the current. "Come,
lusifee,"
he said, while Delia struggled to keep from gasping as the air rushed back into her lungs. "Let us see if you can show the same spirit when it comes time to run the gauntlet."

The gauntlet.

Delia hoped the terror she felt didn't show on her face. To prove she was unaffected by his words, she forced a nonchalant smile. "My name is Delia," she croaked.

The smile had no effect on that impassive face. "You have no name now but
awakon,"
he finally said. "Slave."

Delia's smile wavered only a little bit. "Then what does
lusifee
mean?"

They heard the sounds first—whooping, strident cries, the staccato beat of drums, the baying of dogs. The smell came next—a nauseous odor of putrefying fish. Sight came last—a clearing beside the shores of a great, silver-plated lake palisaded by majestic dark blue spruce.

Within the clearing stood a village of longhouses and wigwams, surrounded by a stockade of tree trunks twelve feet high. Around the village lay fields of cornstalks, their dry leaves crackling in the evening breeze. Heaps of alewives, fertilizer for the cornfields, decayed in piles outside the stockade, stinking up the air with an oily, rotting smell. Flames of pine knots flickered in the gray dusk and smoke coiled upward from lodge tops and dozens of small, open fires. The air resounded with the din of shouts and yodels, yapping dogs and throbbing drums.

The canoe glided onto a gentle shore. At the Dreamer's sharp command Delia climbed awkwardly, with legs that were stiff and cramped, onto a pebbled beach. Ignoring the man's fierce glare, she turned to help Elizabeth. Tiny shivers racked the girl's slender body and her lips were blue with fear. Delia started to comfort her, but the hypocritical words stuck in her throat.

For she had seen the gauntlet.

The gates to the stockade were open. Starting from the entrance and stretching to a low wooden platform in the middle of the village wound two parallel lines of men, women, and children. Armed with digging sticks, clubs, and thorny branches, they chanted a haunting
ai, ai, ai
sound, over and over, to the incessant beat of the drums.

The Dreamer stopped so abruptly that Delia, who was tethered by a thong to his wrist, almost walked on his heels. A Jesuit priest in black cassock and skirt strode out between the gates, swinging a censer that filled the air with wispy trails of incense. He stopped before the Dreamer. To Delia's astonishment, the big warrior knelt on the ground at the priest's feet and bowed his head for the man's blessing.

The priest fixed his fanatic blue gaze on the prisoners. He was an extremely thin man, all fleshless bones and pallid skin. His lips were two sharp diagonal slashes beneath a nose that curved like a fish hawk's beak.

The Dreamer jerked so hard on Delia's leash that she had to grasp his arm with her bound hands to keep from falling to her knees. His flesh was marble-hard and slick with grease, and she clung to him, swaying dizzily, before he flung her off him.

She was almost fainting from fatigue and lack of food. It had been four days since she had eaten, except for a few roots and nuts she had managed to forage for herself and Elizabeth while on the trail. Even above the stink of the alewives, she could smell the savory aroma of roasting meat and she thought she was capable of begging for it on her knees. She had been hungry many times in her life, but never like this.

The Dreamer barked an order at her in Abenaki. She stared back at him, trying not to show her fear. But fear was a metallic taste in her mouth, like blood.

"Strip!" the Dreamer barked again, in English this time.

Delia stared down the long line of Abenaki, ready to lay their clubs and sticks across her bare flesh. The whooping of the men and the strident screeching of the women and children had risen to a crescendo. Some of the women and girls had turtle shell rattles and bear claw bracelets tied to their ankles and knees, and they stomped their feet, shaking the rattles in time to the beat of the drums. A few boys played reed flutes, while others swung long cords of shells in circles over their heads, producing a grating, eerie whine.

For the first time Delia noticed the scalp poles that encircled the platform, marking the end of the gauntlet. Dozens of scalps —dried, stretched on round hoops, painted and decorated— flapped from the poles in the lake-cooled breeze.

In the Boston grog shops, Delia had listened to stories about white captives being forced to strip naked and run the gauntlet. Usually they didn't make the women prisoners run it, she had heard, but sometimes they did. Sometimes...

The Dreamer's face appeared suddenly before her, his lips pulled back in a sneer. "Strip,
lusifee.
Now."

A thin, blue-veined hand fell on Delia's arm. "I suggest you obey," the French priest said, his words heavily accented, "or he will cut the clothes from your body. And he will not do it gently."

God protect me,
Delia prayed, and with trembling fingers unlaced her bodice. Her short gown and petticoat had been ripped and stained by the arduous four-day journey, but she had never realized what an armor were a woman's clothes, even if they were only rags, until she stood naked before the Dreamer's cold eyes and the mob of screaming, bloodthirsty Abenaki.

"You!" the Dreamer snarled, pointing a stiff finger at Elizabeth. "Strip."

Elizabeth stood unmoving, sunk deep within her well of fear. The Dreamer took a step forward, his knife flashing.

"No!" Delia grasped his arm, cringing at the cold, greasy feel of his flesh. At the sight of the knife, Elizabeth's eyes had rolled back in her head and she had crumbled slowly to the ground. "You can't make her do it," Delia cried. "Can't you see she's with child? It would kill her."

He stared at Delia, a look of incredulity on his face. "She runs. Unless you are willing to take her place."

Delia's legs began to tremble, but she nodded, swallowing hard. "Aye. I'll do it in her stead."

He stared at her for a long moment. Then he said, almost sadly,
"Lusifee.
You will not survive it twice."

Delia looked down the long double row of club-wielding Abenaki, all screaming for her blood. Her chin came up.

"I've survived my share of beatings," she boasted, to shore up her wavering courage. "Aye, an' by experts too. No pack of bloody, ignorant savages'll defeat Delia McQuaid."

The Dreamer grabbed her arm and flung her forward. "Run! Run hard!"

Delia ran. She pumped her arms and legs so fast the first blows merely glanced off her back. But the Abenaki were more loosely packed toward the middle of the gauntlet and they had more play to swing their clubs. The sticks and cudgels seemed to fly at her from everywhere. The pain when they landed drove the air from her already heaving lungs and stole her vision.

She flung her arm up to protect her face and worked her legs harder, her toes digging into the soft earth. The platform loomed up directly in front of her and she knew with a thrill of triumph that she would make it.

Then a child Tildy's age stuck a stick between her legs.

She toppled forward like an axed tree, without even time to fling out her hands to break her fall. Her teeth bit through her tongue, and blood, hot and salty, filled her mouth. Her ears rang like a carillon of bells. The Indians swooped down on her with their weapons, beating her mercilessly.

She struggled to her hands and knees. Blood trickled into her eyes from a cut above her brow. The child who had tripped her swung his stick at her face, but she grabbed it from his hands and whacked it across the nearest pair of shins. The woman jumped back, howling in surprise and pain, dropping her club. Snatching it up, Delia swayed to her feet.

"Aooow!"
she howled, as she went after them. She was no longer Delia Parkes, the respectable farmer's wife. She was Delia McQuaid, the grog shop wench, and she turned on her attackers, flailing the club, screaming every disgusting, filthy epithet she'd learned on the waterfront slums of Boston. She was hitting back at everyone, her drunken father, the topers who had pawed her in the Frisky Lyon, Nat who had belittled her and made her feel worthless, Tom Mullins who had stolen her kisses, and Ty. Ty who had stolen her heart, while guarding his own until it was too late, too late... She struck back at them all, all the men who had battered and used and pulled and twisted her this way and that, trying to make her into the woman
they
wanted her to be, instead of the woman
she
wanted to be—

Stunned by her snarling rage, the Indians began backing away from her savage, swinging club... and then a numbing blow knocked the club from her hand.

She whirled around, panting, flinging her hair from her eyes, tensing her body for the slash of the Dreamer's tomahawk that would end her life.

But it was not the Dreamer she faced.

If anything, this man was even taller and broader. But he was at least thirty years older. Dark gray strands liberally streaked his long, black hair, and lines scored his sharply chiseled face, fanning out around his olive-black eyes and bracketing his hard mouth. He wore a heavily fringed doeskin shirt and long kilt that were gaudily decorated with dyed porcupine quills, bird feathers, and shells. Around his neck hung a French silver gorget and on his head he sported a beautiful beaver hat with a white plume. Delia had thought the Dreamer was chief of his people, but she knew immediately it was this man who ruled.

The look he gave her froze her blood and she was sure he was about to order her death. Instead, he turned to those who had formed the gauntlet and were now packed into a tight angry group. He asked them a question, gesturing at Delia. The Indians immediately erupted into hot speech, pointing at her and shaking their fists.

Suddenly the Dreamer burst from the crowd. He said something in a sharp, harsh voice that cut off all the shouting. Then he threw a defiant look at his chief.

The black-robed priest appeared at Delia's side. "Normally, it is the women who decide a prisoner's fate," he said in a dry, indifferent voice. "And they are saying you should die at the stake." He glanced pointedly at the torture platform. "They say you have the heart of a warrior and so you should die a warrior's death." His thin lips curled into a sardonic smile. "You should be flattered."

Delia wasn't the least bit flattered; she was terrified. She looked at the tall Indian warrior who had called her his slave.

She had to swallow twice to dredge up enough saliva to speak. "And the Dreamer," she said loudly. "What does he say?"

"He has claimed you for his second wife." It was the chief who spoke this time, in clear English, his voice ringing in the sudden stillness.

Relief and horror washed over Delia in alternate waves. She wasn't going to die at the stake, but the alternative...

"But what if I..." She gave the Dreamer a weak, pathetic smile. "That is, I'm very honored, but I..."

Delia, ye wooden-headed fool. Shut up afore ye find yerself tied t' a stake an' bein' basted like a Christmas goose.

The Dreamer's dark eyes raked over her in a hard challenge. "I will
take
you for my woman,
lusifee,
" he said.

But another voice, deeper and harsher, cut through his words.