The Frontiersman’s Daughter (12 page)
Before spring, Simon came.
From the yard one crisp morning, Lael heard Ransom shout, “Rider comin’!” She was inside the cabin with her mother, salting venison and layering it in a tub. At Ransom’s call, Ma passed to the window and peered beyond the shutter, a slight frown creasing her face.
“’Tis Simon Hayes,” was all she said.
The words set Lael’s face afire. She’d not seen him since he’d come drunk to their cabin at the fort and put her down for her wandering ways.
Hastily, she wiped salty hands on her apron and looked down at her soiled dress. Too late to fuss, she decided. Barefoot, she passed onto the porch and walked to the end where the wild roses stood waiting for winter’s spell to release them to blossom. Still, the bare, thick canes formed a screen of privacy. She sat down in the cane chair and waited.
Horse and rider came to a stop by the springhouse. Ransom greeted Simon and they exchanged a few words before Simon went into the barn, leaving his horse to the boy. Lael knew then he’d come to see Pa about her.
She sat still as stone, her eyes fixed on the barn door while her heart thrummed a bit wildly in her chest. Her hands were red and chapped from the salt, and a cut on her palm where the knife had slipped stung unmercifully. She smiled wryly and tucked her bare feet underneath the hem of her dress against the chill. If Simon had come courting, he would court her shoeless and bonnetless or not at all.
The minutes grew long, and her eyes never left the barn door. She tucked a strand of hair behind one ear and willed him to appear. From the yard Ransom resumed splitting burly ash logs into kindling. The
chop-chop-chop
jarred her nerves till she could stand it no longer. Peering through the screen of rose canes, she hissed, “Ransom, git!”
He paused in mid-swing and grinned at her before laying aside the ax. She watched his back as he retreated to the springhouse, likely to snitch a cup of buttermilk, and she breathed a grateful sigh.
When Simon finally appeared, he did not so much as glance at the cabin. Out the barn door he blew with a purposeful stride and, in one quick motion, untethered and mounted the horse Ransom had tied to the rail fence. Before she could step off the porch and call his name he was gone, into the woods and lost from sight. Her spirits, which had soared at the mere sight of him, now plummeted to her toes.
She walked straight to the barn. The door was ajar and Pa’s back was to her. He was repairing a harness and seemed to take no notice of her entrance. She had made it a practice never to disturb him if she could help it, but today the self-made rule was cast aside. The sight of his bad leg, still bandaged, pained her, but her anger welled up within her in a hot rising flood and made her breathless. She stood just within the barn, breathing in the scent of leather and hay and livestock, a hundred questions hot on her tongue.
Without turning around, he said, “Daughter, I cannot let you wed young Hayes.”
The statement struck her hard as no hand could ever do. She could only gape at him, certain he’d change his mind when Simon told him of the cabin he’d built, the stock he’d secured, and the cotton and tobacco, all for their future.
Turning, he looked straight at her, his blue eyes like deep water. “No good can come from such a union.”
She swallowed a tart reply. “You sent him away.”
“He never spoke with you?”
The ache in her chest was so strong she almost couldn’t answer. Unable to look at him, she looked at her feet. “I reckon he thought better of it since you two had words.”
His voice turned gentler. “Daughter, do you love him?”
“I—I don’t know,” she stammered, afraid saying more would set her to bawling.
“You’d know if you did,” came his grave reply. “I misdoubt he cares for you like you hope. Word is he’s tied to Piper Cane. And the jug.”
Word is . . . rumors, all!
Her face deepened to scarlet. To hear such from her pa was shameful indeed. In a fit of fury she flung the lovely cameo from her pocket. It came to rest in a pile of hay near his feet. He eyed it with characteristic calm, revealing nothing, before looking at her again.
“Simon Hayes is all show and no stay,” he warned. “No daughter of mine is going to be tied to a trotter.”
A trotter.
Next to a coward this was the worst possible brand. Suddenly she didn’t know whom she was most angry with— Simon or Pa. Her heart felt like a kettle left too long at the fire, boiled dry, about to explode. Balling her hands into fists, she sought words but none came.
Laying the leather aside, he faced her once again. “You’d best put all thoughts of marryin’ aside. Come spring, you’ll be leavin’ the settlement.”
As long as memory served, the image of Pa, made years younger in broadcloth the rich brown of chestnut, his face clean-shaven beneath a beaver felt hat, would never leave Lael. Sitting across from him in a lurching coach, the likes of which she’d never seen, she thought how strange he looked out of buckskin—not a woodsman at all, but a judge or a preacher or something other than who he was. His sandy hair, the color of her own, had been twice washed and swept back from his face in waves as soft as a woman’s, then tied at the nape of his neck.
Since leaving the settlement it seemed she’d shed a trail of tears. There had been time enough to bid good-bye to Susanna, Simon, and Ma Horn, but their sorrow had only made matters worse, not better. As soon as Pa’s leg enabled him to travel, they’d departed, riding back over the gap through which he’d come all those years before. This was her first foray out of the wilderness. She felt suddenly bewildered, thrust into a strange, new world like an infant from its mother’s womb.
By the time they reached the Clinch River in Virginia, they were beyond the frontier, past fear and Shawnee and stockades and uncertainty. Her old life was extinguished as fast as a candle flame as they sped east toward civilization and crowds and comforts.
As they set out, she’d asked, “Pa, where are we headed?”
“Briar Hill,” he answered simply. Where Miss Mayella lived.
What she should have asked was
Why?
and
How long?
In time she would regret her reticence. Briar Hill was some four hundred miles away, days upon days of hard travel.
Eventually she became too tired to talk. The sights before her snatched speech. Wide roads. Bells ringing from clusters of brick buildings. Churches with white steeples. Coaches and chaises and contraptions too smart to believe. Queer trees such as cypresses and pitch pines. And more people pressed together in one place than she had ever thought possible.
Was this her punishment for wandering? Or her reward? Did Pa feel he could no longer protect her from the Shawnee, limping as he did with an injured leg? Or was he afraid she’d run off with Simon?
Everywhere they went, be it inn or coach or tavern, there was talk of the war with England. Her soul seemed to shrink from such news and from the restless crowds. To maintain her bearings, to remember who she was, she recollected the eternal stillness of the frontier forest . . . the flash of fireflies at dusk . . . the feel of the milk churn in her hand and the moment she knew the butter had come . . . the bubbling of the branch . . . the way the dogwoods, blossoming now, danced in the wind. Except for her memories, all she had left of her old life were the blue beads in her pocket.
When she felt she could go no farther, the coach rumbled to a stop before a white-columned building shaded by a cluster of enormous oaks. Their rustling was like a balm to her nervous spirits. She had forever loved the wind and here it was to welcome her, whispering a greeting through the new spring leaves.
Emerging from the coach, Lael saw that they stood on a hill that sloped gently to a rose garden and, beyond that, the sea. She gaped at the sight of all that spangled, shimmering blueness, looking like the sky turned upside down. As if prompted by some unseen clock, the door of the brick building opened and Miss Mayella herself came forward, embracing Lael and erasing all the years that had come between them.
Her former teacher looked much the same—all silk and lace and milky skin—and Lael’s eyes fastened on her smile, feeling it was the only thing that propped her up. “Welcome to Briar Hill. You must be weary from your travels. No doubt, Miss Lael, you’ll become célèbre here, being from the frontier and having so famous a father.”
Miss Lael.
Never in her life had she been called Miss Lael. Never in her life had she seen Negroes dressed like gentlefolk in black trousers and pristine shirts and shoes with shiny buckles. Never before had she seen the grace with which a cluster of girls in indigo moved across the expansive lawn toward the sea, hardly walking at all but gliding, lace-edged parasols in hand. Never before had she been in rooms that echoed and smelled of books and leather and lemon oil.
She felt suddenly small and awkward and homespun. Even clothed in her best apple-green dress, she sensed she was out of place, a spectacle. Suddenly it all came clear. Pa was going to leave her here with these people to winnow the wilderness out of her.
The spring breeze turned wintry then, and she felt the same strange desolation she’d felt as a girl upon hearing of his capture. And then, as if he sensed her misgivings, he suddenly took his leave. Doffing his beaver hat, he failed to kiss her cheek. If he had, she would have clung to him, weeping. Instead, in silent agony, she remained by Miss Mayella, staring down the long emerald drive after him.
She stood as she would so often in the days to come, looking westward. Just stood and looked, not speaking or even weeping, just waiting.
“I’ll be back to bring you home,” Pa said as he left.
It was a promise she wondered if he would keep.
Lael felt fettered, shackled to books and clocks and finishing school rules. Within a week, she’d written each rebuke she’d earned from her teachers in a journal Miss Mayella provided.
You must be a lady before you can act a lady.
No more ayes and nays, only yes and no.
A lady’s skin must be milk white, not tobacco brown.
Always be in a good humor.
Never look a gentleman directly in the eye.
Stuffed into whalebone stays that poked and prodded like the most ardent suitor, she walked about in an indigo dress as if encased in armor, her white collar and cuffs irreproachable. Even the ribbons in her hair had been ironed, just like those of her twenty-six schoolmates. The only difference, she reckoned, were the blue beads in her dress pocket and the rising homesickness in her heart.
“Briar Hill grows on you in time,” Lydia Darrah assured her. The oldest girls were paired with the youngest, and Lydia had been assigned to Lael. They shared an attic room with four other girls, their slim beds laid out like garden rows and covered with cabbage-rose coverlets.
“Our time isn’t always taken up with French and music and writing. Those with the highest marks may attend the opera and theater. I doubt that will change even with the war on. Aren’t we lucky the British are still fighting in the east and haven’t yet moved south?”
Lucky? Lael wished they would so she could go home. Keeping abreast of the war became her mission as she smuggled copies of the
Virginia Gazette
into her room, defying the headmistress’s latest rebuke:
A true lady does not pursue politics, particularly matters of war.
Perhaps she could simply run away, straight back into Simon’s arms. Or Captain Jack’s. As the days passed, she no longer looked for Pa’s return but Simon. By now, Simon would have planned to come after her. She was not so far away, and the Hayes clan had kin in Virginia.
As summer waned, her hopes flickered like a spent candle. Might he write her a letter? A letter was a simple matter, to be savored and tucked in one’s bodice and read again and again.
But no one wrote. Not Ma, not Pa, not Susanna. Not even Ma Horn. Lydia Darrah felt so sorry for Lael she shared her own letters. Soon it became a game in their attic room, the six of them circulating mail and discussing the lives of family and friends. Lydia. Sophie. Euphemia. Molly. Esther Ann. Lael fed them tidbits about her frontier life to make up for her lack of letters.
“You should write a book,” Lydia told her. “You make up quite the best stories I’ve ever heard.”
Molly lit a candle, defying their bedtime curfew. “Tell us again about Captain Jack. Did you say he has green eyes? How queer that he’s lived as an Indian for so long but can still speak English!”
“Show me the blue beads,” Esther Ann begged. “Do you think you’ll ever see him again?”
Somehow, sharing her past kept it as near and dear as the beads in her pocket. Yet spilling her secrets seemed also to tarnish them and make them less sacred. As the days passed she grew quieter. Practicing her penmanship, she composed copious letters to Susanna that were never mailed, detailing her melancholy. When she partnered with her dancing master, she pretended he was Simon. Playing pall mall on Briar Hill’s expansive lawn, she purposefully hit her ball through the wickets far into the park of trees, just so she could pretend she was in the woods again, with Captain Jack at her heels.
Despite her daydreaming, she excelled in every subject except the art of fancy needlework. While the other girls embroidered and tatted lace, Lael sewed shirts for the Continental Army and kept abreast of the war. General Washington had just established West Point as his official headquarters, and the long-awaited French fleet was now lying at anchor off Sandy Hook in Delaware. But she read that Washington was already growing weary of French officers who acted in a condescending manner toward him and his men.
Despite the war, a late-summer dance was to be held at Briar Hill. Lael marveled at the gowns the girls had brought with them for just such an occasion. Her apple-green dress, now too short and too snug, was sorely lacking.
“Lael, you must wear one of my gowns,” Lydia told her, throwing open one of her trunks to reveal a rainbow of fine fabric and lace. But Miss Mayella had other ideas, and a seamstress was called in from nearby Williamsburg.
“Your father has generously provided funds for a new gown,” Miss Mayella explained with a smile. “A girl’s first ball is an extraordinary event. You do want to attend, don’t you?”
Lael looked pained. “I—no.” Would
no
forever nettle her tongue? A simple, settlement
nay
was what she longed to say. “I have no heart for it.”
Miss Mayella gestured for Lael to sit down with her in a deep window seat that overlooked the sea. “You have been here four months, Lael. What would you rather I tell your father? That you are learning and growing and making him proud, or so homesick he will have to come and get you? I must give him honest answers.”
Lael sighed. “Pa was wrong to bring me here.”
Miss Mayella’s mouth set in a soft line. “I don’t think so, Lael. There is a purpose in everything, so Scripture says. ‘A time to be born, a time to die. A time to laugh, a time to mourn.’ Even, I think, a time to be a lady.”
Her face turned entreating. “How long will it take? To make me a lady, I mean?”
Miss Mayella looked like she might laugh. “That, my dear, is entirely up to you.”
Lael looked down at her hands, her long fingers no longer tanned by the sun, her callused palms softening. All the wilderness was slowly seeping out of her. If she hurried the process, might Pa not fetch her sooner? If she dallied, he might let her linger.
She decided a Briar Hill ball might be at least as interesting as a fiddle on the fort common, and when the day came, she no longer felt like a crow among cardinals, smothered as she was from head to toe in rose silk. Standing beneath crystal chandeliers, the heat of a hundred candles turned her face the color of her gown.
“Why, Lael!” Miss Mayella had exclaimed. “You look positively regal.”
Regal.
Another word for too tall, she reckoned. Yards of silk, the color of the cabin’s roses, framed her bare shoulders and cinched her waist before flowing to the floor in a cascade of white lace. Delicate ruffled sleeves left off where snug, white gloves began.
A lady with ill-fitting gloves cannot be well dressed.
Aside from her too-tight shoes, a painted fan finished her toilette and had a language all its own. Turning her eyes on the Twin Oaks gentleman in evening dress across the crowded ballroom, Lael slowly twirled her fan in her right hand, meaning
I love another
. Next she brought the fan to rest over her left ear.
I wish to be rid of you.
Finally she pressed it to her left cheek.
No, thank you.
Would the men understand this unspoken communication? Around her, Lydia and Esther Ann fluttered their fans as well, but flirtatiously.
’Twas a good night to run off, she decided. She wouldn’t be missed in the press of people. A full moon beckoned off the ballroom’s veranda. Just beyond, the sea was a bewitching silver. She slipped outside. The great oaks and elms on Briar Hill’s lawn were as dark and forbidding as the frontier forest but smelled more of the ocean than the wilderness.
“Would you care to dance?”
She spun, startled, and faced a boy—a man?—nearly as tall as Simon, though his hair was as fair as her own. Her silk skirts settled, and she raised her fan to touch her left cheek in refusal. He waited, the perfect gentleman, as she fought a furious battle, all her wilderness ways rebelling against the lady she was fast becoming.
His outstretched hand seemed a bridge to her new life at Briar Hill. Once crossed, she would turn her back on her beloved wilderness, on her girlhood and all she held most dear. No longer would she be simply Lael Catherine Click of Kentucke, but Miss Lael of Briar Hill.
Truly, what choice did she have?
Reluctantly, she placed her gloved hand in his and felt his fingers tighten around hers, leading her back into the crowded, candlelit ballroom.
Help me, Lord. Help me get home.
It was the first prayer she’d prayed in a long time, for she felt the Almighty had failed to hear her thus far. Perhaps, she decided, God would rather listen to the prayers of a lady. He didn’t seem to hear the ones of a homesick settlement girl torn between the savage and the civilized.
“Lael? Where are you?” Lydia Darrah’s voice seemed to echo off the stone portico, her tone a trifle exasperated. “It’s your birthday—what are you doing out here alone?”
“Enjoying turning seventeen,” Lael replied, the stone bench beneath her warm and inviting. Hemmed in by a flurry of blossoming lilacs, she was nearly concealed in her painted silk gown, for it was the same shade as the heady, fragrant flowers. She nearly laughed as Lydia—dear, near-sighted Lydia—crisscrossed the lawn looking for her.
“I’ve brought you a surprise,” she said, ducking into the lilac bower to sit beside her. “But you’ll have to read it aloud to me, as I’ve forgotten my spectacles.”
Sitting shoulder to shoulder with Lael in the spring sun, Lydia passed Lael the latest issue of the
Virginia Gazette
. Looking down, Lael scanned the front page, eyes lighting on a boldly printed column bearing a beloved name. For a moment her smile nearly slipped, but she kept it in place for Lydia’s sake. Still, it hurt her to hear about Pa this way, secondhand, seemingly a continent away.
“Well, go on,” Lydia urged.
Lael scanned the newsprint. “My father is surveying near the Falls of the Ohio with George Rogers Clark, so this says. And settling disputes over land claims.” She couldn’t say more for the lump in her throat, relieved when Lydia took back the paper.
“Rather dry reading this time,” Lydia said. “I much prefer reports of his exploits in Missouri territory or treating with Indians.”
Lael turned thoughtful eyes on the trimmed lawn that rolled in gentle Virginia fashion to a fringe of sand that seemed to hold back a wealth of blue water. Today—her birthday—the Atlantic curled and foamed just as it had every spring, with an awesome familiarity that nearly eclipsed the memory of Kentucke altogether.
She’d come out here today to hide among the lilacs, shutting her eyes against all the refinement and elegance and ease surrounding her, willing every hazy detail of her home place to come back to her. Three years she’d been here, and the hollow feeling in her heart told her she’d likely be here three years hence.
“Any letters lately?” Lydia asked, tucking the newspaper out of sight.
“None from Kentucke,” Lael answered. “Just a note from Esther Ann in Philadelphia.”
“Announcing her debut, I suppose.”
“Aye—yes. She’s become a bonafide colonial belle.”
Lydia leaned over the bench and took in Lael’s slim bare feet. “You might be a belle too if you’d wear some shoes!”
They laughed, and Lael tucked her toes out of sight. “’Tis my last holdout against civilized life. Look at the rest of me. I fairly shine with refinement. My bare feet simply remind me of who I really am.”
Lydia’s smile turned pensive, and she tucked a strand of russet hair into her carefully pinned chignon. “What’s to become of us, Lael? Now that Euphemia has returned to England and Molly and Sophie have married, we’re the oldest ones here. And Miss Mayella has turned us into student teachers, like it or not.”
“
Not
,” Lael said, smoothing her shiny skirts. “But at least we’re out of indigo and those awful pressed collars and cuffs.”
“Sometimes I think we’ll always be here, till we turn gray . . . hobbling about these old halls with canes—”
“Nay!” The forbidden word burst forth with such unladylike force that Lydia drew back. Lael was instantly sorry and gave Lydia’s arm a reassuring squeeze. “The war won’t last forever, you know, and your father will finish fighting and take you home.”
