The Last Killiney (36 page)

Frantic, terrified, she wanted to scream at Vancouver, urge Paul to fight his way back on board, take her ashore with him, anything other than simply give up.

But she didn’t make a sound. Puget released her as soon as Vancouver had boarded the pinnace, and she watched in silence when they cast off from
Discovery’s
side.

Paul’s defeated eyes remained locked onto hers until at last the distance became too great. Then Ravenna strained to see the boat beached at the village, where Paul with his gun got out and lumbered up the hillside through the painted houses. James’s tall figure was ever beside him, and after some discussion with their native hosts, the entire party ducked through the central door of the largest of the houses and disappeared from view.

* * *

She was still at the rails when Vancouver returned. They didn’t have lanterns, hadn’t been equipped to stay out after sunset, and so the men rowed against the night wind in darkness. The sailors’ voices, worn and sharpened by their long day ashore, mingled with the lapping of the waves against the hull, and Ravenna listened frantically, trying to hear the difference between them, trying to discern Paul’s accent from the rest.

It was only when they came alongside that she felt relief, for she heard James clearly, telling the men to toss their oars.

As the marines began to appear on deck, she waited urgently to see Paul’s face.
He’ll be cold
, she thought. He’d taken no coat in the midst of Vancouver’s fit, and doubtless, he’d be grumbling about what a bastard the captain had been.

But when Vancouver came up, he was strangely quiet. He barely even glanced at Ravenna near the rail. Mr. Orchard, having taken the lantern from the watchman, held it soberly as he and Vancouver went below. The other officers and sailors streamed onto the ship, and as they went about their business with grim expressions, she imagined Vancouver had partaken in scoldings, that he’d punished all the men for Paul’s disobedience.

Soon the deck had cleared of sailors. Ravenna battled with herself for patience, telling herself that Paul would give her a report on Vancouver’s furthering madness when he came aboard, when the boats were raised.

But they never were.

When James reached the deck, there was something amiss in his face, Ravenna thought. His brow seemed too rigid. His eyes, always full of that characteristic warmth and flashing dark, now seemed dull when he glanced at her, lifeless when he looked away.

He paused by the railing, and Ravenna drew in a quick breath, for when James approached her, his arms outstretched to take her up close, blackness crept into the corners of her vision.

She knew fear then, real and desperate, as if the earth had opened up beneath her feet. Her heart squeezed hard; in a mindless rush of understanding, she felt James crush her tight to his chest, heard him whisper some nonsense in the softest breaking voice that Paul was dead,
Paul was dead
…

Ravenna shook him off. Digging her fists into his height, she pushed him back a step, staring up at him.
Surely he’s wrong
,
cruelly and stupidly, terribly wrong
.

Yet there was no denying the truth in his eyes, in the crumple of his chin as he struggled to compose himself.

“He’s gone, Love,” James whispered. “He’s gone.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Wearing Paul’s coat, clutching his sword and his handwritten music of Debussy’s “Claire De Lune,” Ravenna became a senseless creature as James helped her down into the pinnace.

Taking her on his lap, he tried to console her. She felt his arms around her, heard his whispering in her hair, and yet there seemed nothing so much in his comforting as his own self-absorption, that strange, uncertain tremble to James’s voice. Ravenna couldn’t bear it. She stared into the night, and her thoughts became a clutter of useless repetition to tune him out, begging no one in particular,
Please say it’s not true, please let him be alive
.

A group of native women were waiting on the beach, and after James had greeted them and with simple gestures arranged for Sarah to be led to the village, he lifted Ravenna from the bow. Setting her feet above the waterline, he spoke softly; it was some baloney about how everything would be fine, and hearing it, coming to her senses at last, Ravenna found the voice to ask him the question.

“Please,” she said, and her words faltered when she met his gaze, “James, tell me what happened…what happened to my…”

She tried to stifle that horrible dread deep in her heart, that unfathomable pain, and when she lapsed into tears, James held her up, spoke to her as if she were a child. “Let me take you to the village, Love. Then I’ll tell you everything that he—”

“
No!”
Clutching his arm fiercely, Ravenna brushed aside her tears. “No, I want you to tell me now.”

James didn’t answer.

“Look,” she said, gathering her wits, “tell me what happened. He was…he was shot, wasn’t he?”

James looked down at the stones, the salt water lapping at his boots, and then up to the pinnace as the men shoved off and started the slow rowing back to
Discovery
. “Vancouver is to blame,” he said quietly. “He’s the one who sent us up that river, and if we’d only had the sense to depart his authority—”

“
This
river?” she asked.

“Two miles distant, on the southern bank, but—”

“Then there lies his body,” and pulling away before he could stop her, Ravenna ran headlong up the beach.

She heard James come after her. She didn’t care. Rushing over the rocks, her only wish to follow Paul even into death on the same expanse of tidal shore, she threw herself forward up the river’s bed blindly, and with all the will she had so that she barely even heard James’s pleas behind her. “You won’t find him! They’ve dragged him into the forest, I’ve already searched—”

Dragged him into the forest
.

Suddenly she heard Paul saying those words, the fear thick in his voice as the last strains of Beethoven echoed through the house.
I tried to call you, but I couldn’t make a sound. All I could do was watch you go on up the river
.

With the memory of that night taking hold in her thoughts, Ravenna slowed her flight; it was just enough for James to catch her from behind.

“You have to believe me,” he said, seizing her waist. “If I could tell you otherwise, I’d give my life to do it, but he’s gone, Love. They’ve—”

“Was he alive?” Ravenna calmed her struggle a little. “When they took him, was he still alive?”

“I couldn’t reload fast enough! There’d lay before you a heap of savages, if only I’d had my—”

“Did you
see
him die?”

“Ravenna, it had to be fatal, as much blood as he lost on those banks. He couldn’t have possibly—”

“
Did you see him die?”

Guilt tore at James’s expression. “No, but surely—”

That was all she needed to hear. In an instant, she was wrestling against him, crying out when he held her fast. “No, Love,” he told her sternly, fighting to hold her, “he’d have wanted you safe with me, so that nothing more could—”

“Don’t you understand?
He’s alive!”
She felt the tears streaming down, and still she went on doggedly, “James, he’s there. He’s waiting for us. We’ve got to save him, we
have
to save him—”

Already James was shaking his head. “No, Love, he’s found mercy in God and we’re powerless to change that.”

Yet even with his face so filled with conviction, all Ravenna could think of was Paul’s dream, his whispering in the dark,
my
Mary of the river
…

With a tremendous shove, she broke out of James’s hands. Beach soaked by the tide loosened beneath her shoes as she willed herself forward, traced the river’s course, paying no mind to anything but the color of boulders, searching the banks for the stain of his blood. She knew unquestioningly he was on that river. Paul could see her; his dream had given her that much at least, and if only she knew where to pick up the trail.

* * *

She ran until sorrow diminished into exhaustion. With James fallen behind somewhere around a bend, the only sounds were of her own violent passage, the branches she snapped, her breath coming hard in the silent cold.

Slowing to an unsteady walk, the weakness in her limbs kept her falling down, tripping over boulders, but still Ravenna went on searching. She must have gone two or three miles before she collapsed. Sinking to her knees in the river’s flow, she bent down into the icy current in the hopes James wouldn’t find her there. When he did, she begged him to leave her. She wanted to die in the rush of that river. She wanted to feel the chill in her bones until she couldn’t feel anything more.

With his boots slipping beneath the water, James stooped to lift her and carry her, dripping, back to the village. She clung to him, to the living warmth of his neck, and by the time they’d reached the Indian houses, she was unconscious in his arms, half-dreaming and half-terrorized by the image of Paul being forced into the pinnace and sent to his death.

* * *

She woke up before dawn to the sound of loons calling in the distance. James had placed her on a woven mat against the wall of the largest of the Indian houses, and with her back to the cedar planking, she heard his low voice just outside.

Her eyes were swollen from crying. Her head hurt when she straightened up, but still she managed to find the mat-covered doorway and step out into the terraced street.

James stood only a few yards away. With that quiet voice, he spoke with a young native man, and Ravenna watched as the Indian passed something to James, something small that fit easily into his pocket. The young man raised his hand to his lips; he tipped back his head, as if tossing down a strong drink, and James nodded in understanding.

Watching them struggle with these words and gestures, she was certain James was trying to extract some knowledge of Paul’s whereabouts.
He must know something
, she thought with hope, and picking her way with blistered feet to James’s side, forgotten was the misery of the Nimpkish River. She’d think only of Paul’s dream and Paul’s survival, for what had he told her?
I tried callin’ out to you, cried out your name
.

Without hesitation, she went up to James and put her arms around his waist. She looked up into his dark face, fully expecting to see evidence of some news, some clue that Paul had been found alive.

Yet when she met his eyes, she wasn’t prepared for what she saw: hopelessness, complete resignation.

“They’ve gone to all the villages,” he said softly. “There’s no word of him. There’s nothing more we can do for him, Love.”

She froze against his side. “That’s it? You’re just going to leave him out there bleeding to death?”

James slipped his hand around her shoulder. “This boy thinks,” and he paused, rubbed at his brow wearily, “Ravenna, you know how I’ve asked to see the guns in every village? They all know I can mend them, every Indian we’ve met, and this boy thinks that…that
I
was the target of the attack.”

“What does that have to do with anything?
Why won’t you look for him?”

“Because if he’s survived, they’ll only kill him. He can’t repair their guns, and if he gets away, he’ll starve before he reaches us, you know that.” James hesitated. “Love, he’s too badly wounded. You have to believe that.”

With these words, she turned toward the eyes of the native youth, so surreal and gentle and exotically dark. No matter how concerned the young man might have seemed, Ravenna couldn’t bring herself to see the truth.

But James was talking again. “Ravenna, this boy will take us to Nootka, where we can gain passage on a trading vessel—”

“You’d go with him?” She nearly choked on the words. The young man started to say something in his own language, but Ravenna pulled loose from James’s grasp. “You think he’s
helping us?
He’s the one who did it, can’t you see that? He knows where Paul is, he’s lying to you!
He’s lying
—” And she beat her fists against the young man; well and beyond rationality now, she threw her weight into him, crying out in the silence of the morning, her words turning to shrieks and then to miserable wailing.

The young man only stood there quietly.

Eventually James restrained her. When Ravenna saw the way he looked at her, the nausea crept back into her consciousness, and the awful truth of Paul’s death only became stronger when the last flicker of self-control disappeared from James’s face.

Staring down at his boots, she lost command of her senses. She sank to the ground at James’s feet, seeing nothing but the agony of life without Paul.
Is James going to talk you out of feelin’ responsible when you think of how you told me I wouldn’t be killed? Is James gonna be with you night and day, holdin’ back the darkness, keepin’ you from topping yourself? Can he take the place of me, make you feel like I make you feel?

With the memory of his voice, her sobs grew until she’d bent with the force of them, her arms wrapped around James’s knees.

He didn’t stoop to pick her up. He didn’t bend down to hold her close. He only spoke gently as the young Indian walked away. “It’s not your fault,” he whispered above her. “Paul would have wanted you to know that.”

* * *

The men of the village combed the woods for days, looking for Paul’s body. When she finally gave permission for the search to be called off, James arranged for the young man to take them inland, up the river and into the mountains.

The journey to Nootka Sound took them twelve days. They carried letters from Vancouver that were to be delivered to Captain Quadra, the senior officer at the Nootka installation, and it was for this reason James had been released from further service aboard
Discovery
. Nothing could have kept him on Vancouver’s ship anyway. To him, it was as if Vancouver had killed Paul.