Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution (26 page)

"As for my
selecting suitors with whom I've never shared myself —"
 
She showed him her thumb and forefinger
spaced but a quarter inch apart.
 
"That's how much affinity I've had for them, so why bother
sharing?
 
How sad to feel the affinity
we still have for each other after eighteen years, but we're unable to nourish
it because we're so busy being afraid."

She waited for
him to respond, but he stared at her as if her words had paralyzed him.
 
Rolling back her shoulders, she headed to
camp, where she cast herself on her bedroll and yanked the blanket over her
head.

Her heart
thrashed about like a caged hawk.
 
Mathias's energy, his passion, burned within him, hot as the heart of
any forge, so hot it glowed dark.
 
All
her life it had spoken to her in a language her soul understood but couldn't
voice.
 
Small wonder she'd kept his
confidences through all the years, rejoiced when he mediated between the worlds
of the white man and the red man, and acknowledged the things of importance to
him.
 
Small wonder she'd been bored with
other men.
 
Her soul thirsted for each
next contact with that passion, attuned as it had somehow become eighteen years
before by one afternoon of intimacy.

Did he not feel
it?
 
How could he
not
feel
it?
 
All that passion had resonated
through his fingertips last Tuesday afternoon when he, despairing for her life
and safety, had taken her face in his hands and told her without telling her
that he cherished her.

Cherished,
yes.
 
She had been desired by many men,
and her body had been in the legal possession of two men, but in her entire
life, only Mathias Hale had cherished her.
 
Of all the men she'd known, only he had captured her abiding
respect.
 
Now that she finally
recognized it, he wanted nothing to do with her.
 
Oh, how very bitter.

Chapter Twenty

AT MIDNIGHT,
DAVID woke Sophie to assume watch beneath an overcast sky.
 
A muscle in her neck knotted as she trudged
through mist with her musket to the edge of the pine copse.
 
A breeze from the east drifted drizzle down
her neck.

Runs With
Horses joined her.
 
"Listen.
 
What do you hear?"

Wind rustled
palmettos and pines.
 
A brook dribbled
over stones.
 
An owl hooted.
 
And men were talking near the road.
 
"Redcoats?" she whispered.
 
With their military discipline, would they
have prattled so?

The warrior
sniffed the wind.
 
"No.
 
We go see."

She followed
him, her footsteps almost as quiet, and they crouched in a thicket.
 
Dark skin on eight people in the road — one
doubled over on hands and knees — offered little contrast to the night.
 
She whispered, "Runaway
slaves."
 
The Creek nodded.

A woman's sob
broke from the person on hands and knees.
 
"Cain't — cain't go no more!"
 
Her voice twisted with pain.

A stocky man
knelt beside her.
 
"Baby's coming,
Moses!"

"Massuh
ain't more'n half an hour behind us.
 
I
ain't letting him catch me again.
 
We
cain't stop."

Another man
said, "Got to leave Lila behind."

"Yeah,
Ulysses.
 
'Mon with us."

Lila
wailed.
 
The man at her side stood, a
full head taller than the other men.
 
"Cain't leave her!
 
G'wan
without us!"

"You
sure?"

Lila arched her
back.
 
"I got to push!
 
I got to push!"

"I said
git!"

The six backed
away.
 
"Good luck," said the
one called Moses.
 
He and the others sprinted
south.

"Ulysses,
the baby killing me!"

Sophie moved to
rise.
 
"I must help her."

Runs With
Horses grasped her arm.
 
"Runaways
are desperate.
 
Slave catchers are
worse."

"You'd
want
your
child born in the middle of a postal road?"

He
considered.
 
"We first make sure
the others are gone."

They waited
another half minute before rising from concealment.
 
During that time, Lila moaned and rocked herself.
 
Crouched at her side, Ulysses didn't spot
them until they were upon him.
 
He
leaped up, knife drawn, teeth flashing a snarl.
 
"We ain't going nowhere with you."

Sophie stood
her ground, right hand upheld in greeting, even though his size made her feel
more like running in the opposite direction.
 
"Let us help the woman.
 
We've a fire and blankets."

The whites of
his eyes glittered.
 
"Ain't never
heard of no slave catcher being a woman.
 
You ain't slave catchers."

"No, we
aren't."

He sheathed the
knife at his belt.
 
"We be much
obliged for yo' help, then."
 
He
bent over and put his arm about Lila's shoulders.
 
"Folks going to help us.
 
Got to walk to their camp."

The woman
struggled to her feet.
 
Another
contraction seized her.
 
Sophie went
around the left side of her to help Ulysses.
 
Above the stink of the woman's sweat, she detected the almondy odor from
her bag of water.
 
Back-to-back
contractions, her water broken, her pushing instinct in place — the baby was on
the way.
 
"A little farther, and
you can rest."
 
Lila panted and
nodded.

Runs With
Horses sniffed north.
 
"Listen."

From Darien
came the baying of hounds.
 
Lila
moaned.
 
Ulysses tensed.
 
"They coming for us!"

Sophie looked
at the warrior.
 
"Wake the
others.
 
We must throw off those
dogs."
 
Runs With Horses dashed
westward.

Sophie and the
Negroes followed more slowly.
 
Halfway
to camp, Standing Wolf, Runs With Horses, and Mathias met them.
 
They sent Ulysses to the road with the Creek
brothers, while the blacksmith assumed support of Lila's right side.

David rose from
where he and Jacques had fed the fire with dry wood, amazement in his
expression at the sight of Lila.
 
Sophie
gestured to a blanket.
 
"Pull that
blanket near the fire."

"I got to
push!
 
I got to push!"

David
gulped.
 
"Right away."

Lila dropped to
the blanket on all fours, panting through another contraction.
 
She gasped, "The baby's head.
 
I feel it."

Jacques
whispered, "
Belle
Sophie, I hope you know what you are doing."

Her brain muzzy
from lack of sleep, she rolled up her sleeves and regarded him.
 
"Does
anyone
really know what
they're doing at a time like this?"
 
The Frenchman shrugged and joined David in loading weapons.
 
Sophie knelt on the blanket with the
big-boned, young Negro woman.
 
"Let
me see how far along you are."
 
She
motioned Mathias to support her back and eased her into a sitting
position.
 
Beneath Lila's soiled petticoat,
a two-inch-diameter circle of the baby's head crowned.
 
"I can see the baby, Lila.
 
I want you to push with all your might next
time."

Tears rolled
down Lila's face.
 
"It hurts so
bad."

"I
know."

"The baby
tearing me up inside."

"I
know."

Lila's belly
stiffened with a contraction, and her spread legs trembled.
 
"Now, I got to push!
 
Oh, Mama, I got to push!"

"Deep
breath and push!
 
Mathias, bring her
forward!"

Lila screwed up
her face and bore down, exposing more of the baby's head, squeezing out clear
fluid and a little blood.
 
When the
contraction passed, she collapsed against Mathias, gasping.
 
"You got to promise me.
 
Please don't tell Ulysses."

"Shh.
 
Save your strength.
 
You're almost done."

"The baby
be the young massuh's.
 
Promise not to
tell."

What difference
did it make?
 
A baby was a baby.
 
"I promise."
 
From the direction of the road, she heard
the hounds.
 
Weapons in hand, David and
Jacques waited, facing the road.
 
The
wind favored their party, so the slave catchers wouldn't smell burning wood,
but if those hounds followed their scent off the road, or they heard Lila cry
out —

"Young
massuh come ten — maybe twelve — times when Ulysses not there.
 
He kill Ulysses if I tell."

Indignation
smoldered within Sophie at the unknown male who had indulged himself with
Lila.
 
"Forget about it and birth
this baby."
 
She rolled up a rag
and pushed it in Lila's mouth.
 
"Bite down and scream into it so they won't hear you."

Lila's belly
knotted.
 
The rag trapped her wail.
 
Sophie hissed, "Push!"
 
Her scream muted, Lila bore down again, and
the baying of hounds swelled.
 
"Harder!"
 
The baby's
head slid out face down and rotated to the side.
 
Sophie held it in her hand.
 
To her, the baby looked very much like Lila and not at all like the
spoiled son of a plantation owner.
 
"Another good push like that, and you'll have the shoulders
out."

The hounds
sounded even closer.
 
David and Jacques
cocked their firearms.
 
Then the
predatory overtones in the baying transformed into confusion.
 
Jacques slapped his knee and chuckled.
 
"What?"
 
Sophie glanced over her shoulder at him.
 
"What did you do?"

"What
every good chef knows to do,
belle
Sophie.
 
A dash of
poivre
enhances the flavor of food."

Pepper.
 
They must have seasoned the area in it.
 
That ought to keep the hounds busy.

Another
contraction gained momentum.
 
Lila
writhed against Mathias, words muffled.
 
"Ain't gonna have this baby.
 
Ulysses won't want me when he see it."

Oh, hell.
 
Sophie scowled.
 
"You nit, if he didn't want you, he'd have left you
behind.
 
Stop talking!
 
Deep breath.
 
Push!"

Lila bit the
rag and bore down once more, legs quivering, to squeeze out the baby's
shoulders.
 
Sophie guided the slippery
mass of girl baby into the world trailing umbilical cord, cradled the infant
lengthwise on her lower arm, and massaged her back while Lila spat out the rag,
panted, and trembled.
 
The little girl
coughed, wriggled, and gave a lusty cry.

Mathias tucked
a blanket roll beneath Lila's back and eased her down before scooting aside and
standing.
 
Lila reached for the baby,
and Sophie handed her over.
 
"She's
beautiful.
 
Good job."
 
Lila, already busy counting the baby's
fingers and toes and cooing into her face, hardly seemed to hear Sophie.

David
grinned.
 
"That looked mighty
easy."

Sophie glowered
at him.
 
"Men always say
that."
 
She wiped her hands on the
blanket, stood, and walked about, rolling muscle kinks from her shoulders.
 
How long had Lila pushed?
 
Ten whole minutes?
 
Both times Sophie had delivered, she'd pushed for an hour.
 
Lila must be one of those women made to have
babies.

Mathias
strolled past and paused.
 
"Nice
job, General."

He'd made an
excellent assistant.
 
"Thank you,
Ambassador."

"You tried
to tell me that day at the forge."
 
She blinked at him without comprehension.
 
He lowered his voice.
 
"Betsy.
 
You'd planned to tell me I was her father,
but Teekin Keyta was there."
 
Concession filled his expression.
 
"I assumed you never tried to talk with me about it.
 
My words were harsh.
 
Please accept my apology."