Lori Benton (7 page)

She was not the only one intrigued. Anni asked, “What do you know of him?”

“Little beyond his name. I found him yesterday near the north boundary stone.” With renewed vigor, Willa pushed the spade into the earth with the ball of her foot. “When he gets hungry, he will go.”

Anni was quick to understand. “I’ll talk to Charles and bring what
supplies we can spare. Or I’ll send Francis with them. He’d like that, I think. He really does seem drawn to this place.”

They stared at each other across the hard, forsaken ground, still worlds apart, Willa at a loss to find a bridge. “My parents were not Tories.”

“I want to believe that,” Anni said, regret in her eyes. “But how can you prove it? And do you truly want to? I’m not saying I wouldn’t want you to stay, or that Charles wouldn’t, or even the Colonel. But Richard isn’t the only one who’ll see things as he does.”

And by
things,
she means me
. But Willa said nothing—what could she say? A woman did not return from nearly twelve years with “the savages” and expect to be seen by most whites as anything but tainted, ruined. What was the word Richard had used?
Despoiled
.

“Not that Richard mightn’t change,” Anni added quickly. “Give him time to accustom himself to your being here. I’ll talk to him and maybe …” She faltered, as if sensing the precarious ground beneath her words. She found her footing again, squarely in the practical. “I’ll find you a proper gown. Then you can come into Shiloh and we’ll see how things stand. I know the Colonel will want to see you.”

Cap bounded onto the porch and lay down panting, spent from roaming and studded with cockleburs. Neil leaned forward and bowed his head into his hand.

After Willa had stalked off to the field, he’d asked Anni only one question. “How long has she been gone?”

“Twelve years, nearly,” she’d said before following her childhood friend, distress on her open countenance.

“Gracious Father,” he said now. “A captive of the Mohawk, for what … half her life?”

’Twas no news to the Almighty, of course, but Neil couldn’t push beyond the notion, with all its unspeakable horrors. Had she escaped after all this time, or been permitted to leave? Would they come looking to take her back?

Concern for Willa Obenchain was taking root in him. Surely whatever hopes she’d had for this homecoming had been dashed, however well she concealed the fact. Who wouldn’t be sent reeling? Having returned from captivity to be greeted by an empty cabin, parents vanished and branded traitors, and a hulking frontiersman bent on evicting her from her refuge—by force if necessary, if the man’s conduct this morning was any indication of his scope.

Blood mounted in Neil’s face at the thought of his pitiful attempt to defend Willa. Thus far it was she who’d done the defending, offering him shelter, care, and sustenance, warding off Waring by force of indignation alone.
“You will not touch him again.”

A cold nose nudged his hand. He passed it over the dog’s head, then glanced down at the animal. Drying blood specked the white fur around Cap’s lips.

Chasing squirrels
. Hadn’t he better chase up something to feed the rest of them? His bruised wame gave a growl, having made short work of the cornmeal cake left for his breakfast. At least he’d kept it down after that blow and hadn’t added
that
humiliation to the rest.

Movement in the distance distracted him. Through the trees he glimpsed Anni Keppler striding away down the track, presumably to collect her offspring from someone with the unlikely name of Goodenough. He watched Willa toiling determinately in the field, ignoring her departing friend, musket slung at her back, and decided questions about her recent history could wait.

He stood, tensing at the ache in his belly, wincing at the sharper pain in his wrist. He did need shelter, for a little while at least. But the last thing Willa needed was another burden to bear.

He wouldn’t be one. Not even for a day. Or no more than he could help.

Using a stick in lieu of a pothook, Neil lifted the kettle from the crane and set it on the stones. Willa leaned in to peer at its steaming contents. “Rabbit stew?”

She hadn’t quite hidden her startled pleasure. Neil bit down on a grin. “ ’Twas Cap caught the wee bautie. I contributed the green bits.” He’d been foraging along the runnel from the springhouse when Cap started the rabbit in the ferns. Replete with squirrel, the dog hadn’t minded his appropriating the kill.

“What green bits?” Willa asked warily. “Not all plants are safe for eating.”

“I ken that well enough. ’Tis fiddleheads, in the main. I found a patch of
asclepias syriaca
as well, along that creek the spring empties into.” At her puzzled stare, he amended, “Milkweed. The shoots are tender, early in the season.”

“I know that well enough,” she said with a lifted brow. “What other name did you call it?”

“Oh, aye.
Asclepias syriaca
is the Latin for it, by Linnaeus’s system.” He caught her sidelong glance at his satchel where his sketchbook resided. Had she gone looking while he slept?

“The creek the spring runs into is called Black Kettle.” She took up the horn spoon he’d found among her belongings to taste the stew. Her face softened in reluctant approval. “You did not mention the wild onion.”

Having but the one gourd bowl and spoon between them, they ate by turns. Willa watched him finish his share. “I ought to have set snares for rabbits. I will do so tomorrow.”

“Would you instruct me in their setting? I canna help ye overmuch in the fields yet, but I’d like to make myself useful.” His question drew a frown from her, and he realized the presumption his words had implied. “If you dinna mind my staying on, that is—just till I’ve the use of my hand again.”

She regarded him in silence. He was learning it wasn’t her way to speak without thought, but her inscrutable stare and those mismated eyes left him disconcerted.

“You made a brush pen for the goat.”

“I did.” He couldn’t tell if she approved. “Easier to move the goat to fresh grazing than to bring the grazing to the goat, aye?” It was the only thing he’d accomplished besides the stew. “Did you bring it with ye, the goat?”

“Your dog has a knack for finding strays, as well as food. But this”—she gestured toward the kettle and their empty bowl—“making of food is for a woman to do.”

“And field work isna a man’s work?”

“It is not.”

Her answer was prompt and decisive. His response was more hesitant. “So … ’tis like that among the Mohawks?”

“It is different, yes. It is women who tend the crops,” she explained. “And the cook fire. But these things are hers to tend—fields, children, and lodge—because they belong to her, not to her husband.” She held his gaze, adding, “She allows him to live in her lodge with her, but the lodge is hers.”

He took her meaning well enough. She was telling him this cabin was hers; that no man—least of all him—had any right to it save what she gave. “But you’ve none by to help ye here, Willa. Leaving aside yon Waring and his threats, d’ye truly think you can work this land, a woman alone, and survive?”

“I am as strong as a man, and many men come alone to the frontier. You came alone.”

And look how that’s gone awry
, he thought, and wondered suddenly if his bid for time to stay beneath her roof was less about healing and more about putting off acknowledging defeat.

She wasn’t taking favorably to the notion of extending his welcome in either case. He could see her drawing into herself, retreating. Not out of timidity he was sure. He doubted she possessed a timid fiber in her being. But there was something she didn’t wish him to see, some reason she found thought of his continued presence there troubling. What it was he couldn’t tell. She’d curled herself around it like a creature protecting its vulnerable parts. A porcupine, maybe, with all its quills a’bristle.

Deciding to let the subject rest, he indicated the ruined book still lying near the hearth. “Did ye find that with my hat and cup? It isna mine.”

“It is my book. Or it was.”

“Yours? Can ye read, then?”

She frowned at his surprise. “I have not had the chance for many years, but yes. I read.”

“Aye, well. I expect there were no books among the Mohawks.”

“You are wrong,” she countered. “There were some. But none in English, or in German, which I can also read. I had a … friend. He had a Bible written in Kanien’keha.”

“Someone translated the Scriptures into their tongue?”

Her glance strayed to his brow, where the hair curled over his scar. “That surprises you?”

He steered the subject back to safer waters. “So where did ye find your wee book?”

“Where I left it. Upstream along Black Kettle Creek there is a lake, with a little islet. That was my place for hiding books.”

He’d seen the lake of which she spoke, he realized, early on the day he took his fall, having paused there to sketch a pair of nesting loons, before journeying north. “Why did you need to hide them? Did your parents disapprove of your reading?”

“Oma did not like it. My grandmother,” she explained, when he questioned her with a look. “Dagna Mehler. She would hide my books if she found them lying about, so I hid them from her. Oma thought
reading
another word for
idleness
. I was going to the lake to read when the warriors found me.” She glanced at the book with a fleeting sadness. “I never got to finish this one.”

Before he could say a word to prevent her, Willa took up the ruined book and thrust it into the hearth. With the stick he’d used to lift the kettle, she pushed it into the fire’s center. It had been beyond salvaging, but still he felt a catch of regret in his chest at the cremation.

The smell in the cabin sharpened with its burning.

“What book was it?”

Willa watched it taking flame. “I am trying to remember the author’s name. Richardson, I think.”

“Samuel Richardson,” he said, faintly amused by her tastes. “
Clarissa
or
Pamela
?”

“
Pamela
. You have read it?” She looked at him expectantly, her face transformed, open, younger seeming. “Do you know what happened after Pamela’s friend, that man, Mr. Williams, was attacked and arrested? That is the last of the story I remember.”

“If I did,” he said with a corner of his mouth lifted, “you wouldna appreciate my spoiling the story.”

The book was a blackened lump on the embers now.

“I am not likely to see another copy,” she said, “but would like to know how the story ends. I thought of it often.”

Neil tried to imagine her in years past, far away among the Mohawks, perhaps stitching beads onto a pair of moccasins like the ones she wore, pausing in her labors to stare into the fire and think about Richardson’s titular servant maid kept prisoner at an English estate.

“Dinna be so sure of never seeing another copy,” he said. If nothing else he’d find one in Philadelphia and post it to her. Small repayment for her kindness. He looked up from the dying flames at the faint squeak of the hearth crane. Willa had taken the empty kettle and put the bowl and spoon into it. She’d be headed for the spring next. “You’ve worked the day long, Willa. Let me see to that.”

“As have you,” she replied, and went out of the cabin with the kettle.

Neil followed. The sun was setting, its mellow rays striking sparks in Willa’s braid as she crossed the yard and passed through the fringe of shadowed trees to the spring. While she knelt to scrub the kettle with pebbles from the runnel’s bed, he stood by, wishing she’d allow him the task, awkward as it might prove one-handed.

“If you dinna mind my asking, how old were ye when the Mohawk took ye away?”

She didn’t look up as she rinsed the kettle. “Fourteen.”

Which made her now … six and twenty, most like. “Could you write as well as read?”

She scooped another handful of pebbles to scrub the bowl. “Papa taught me to do both.”

Neil sank his teeth into his bottom lip, thoughts hovering on the edge of a possibility. If she hadn’t lost the skill, might she consider helping him write a letter … once he acquired ink and quill and explained why he should
need such help? Anni Keppler’s husband was a miller; perhaps there was a trade store in Shiloh as well …

He followed Willa back to the cabin, feeling like a trailing pup. “You didna answer my question before,” he said as she hung the kettle, filled now with water, over the fire. “I find myself in need of shelter and would stay here with ye, if that’s agreeable. Till my arm is healed. Under different circumstances I’d never suggest it, and if you’re concerned about your reputation, I could apply to Anni Keppler and her husband.”

Willa turned to look at him, faint amusement in her mismatched eyes. “I have no reputation to protect.”

“ ’Tis more than that needs protecting, I’m thinking.”

The flash of amusement in her eyes was more than faint now, and mildly insulting. Reining in a twist of a smile, she nodded her chin toward Cap. “I do not need protecting, but if that dog can go on filling my kettle as he did today, you may stay as well.”