Thieving Forest (6 page)

“In forest you must lose fear,” Old Adam says over his shoulder. “See with all your senses. Only way to be safe.”

She will get to Risdale and ransom her sisters. And then, she promises herself, she will never set foot in a forest again.

Four hours later Susanna is hot, scraped, and sore, and whatever ignorance or pride started her off on this journey is by now long gone. Trouble comes to those who bring it upon themselves, her mother used to say, and she would certainly say that now if she were here. When at last they stop at a muddy stream to rest, Old Adam brings out a few strips of dried venison from his pouch and Susanna finds a flat rock next to the water to sit on. She leans over to fill Sirus’s wooden canteen, but the stream is so choked with debris that getting clear water is difficult. Old Adam’s dog stands in the middle where the water runs cleanest, taking a long drink. He turns to face Susanna, staring at her as though he has something to say but no means to say it. Water drips from his muzzle.

“How much further?” Susanna asks Old Adam. Behind him the sunlight makes bright handprints where it can along the bank. He looks up at the treetops.

“Turn west in little while. After that, soon there.” Not really an answer. “Must watch for
kineepikwa
,” he says. The snake.

Susanna pulls her skirt closer to her body, and then, still not feeling completely secure, she stands.

“Rested now?” Old Adam asks.

She made the mistake of taking off her boots to bathe her sore feet; putting them on again is difficult and now her feet feel worse than before. Old Adam helps her to retie the grain sack to her back, but after only a few paces it falls into an uncomfortable position that she can’t put right. She wishes she had Old Adam’s long moccasins. She wishes she had a split skirt. Why on earth didn’t they leave for Philadelphia immediately, when the question first arose? Her gloves will have to be soaked in new milk to get all the stains out.

Old Adam says, “In Swamp would take longer. See that?” He points to a line of rocks off the path. “Limestone. Unusual in woods.”

“I would never go into the Swamp.”

Everywhere she looks all she can see are thick trees and thin trees and trickles of yellowish water. Isn’t there a fairy story about a forest that never ends? A girl looking for her brother, who has been turned into a swan? However, this forest is not some magical place, it’s only an overgrown maze with ingenious ways of stabbing her legs. Get to Risdale, pay the ransom, go home. But as she quickens her pace something hits her like a bout of vertigo, and instead of her body moving forward everything else seems to be falling away. The tree canopy closes up completely, sealing them in, and a bag of cold air seems to enshroud her. Old Adam slows but Susanna carries on past him anxious to get to the end, wherever that is. As the path turns a warbler calls out not for joy but in warning, and all at once Susanna stops dead.

A panther is standing not ten yards away from her.

It is a long skinny beast, one rib sticking out when it draws breath, and although she is close enough to see the mud on its fur it hasn’t yet noticed her. It is intent on something on the ground. She wants to turn and run but she remembers Old Adam’s advice and instead closes her eyes. Her mouth is very dry but she is afraid even to swallow. When she hears a noise she opens her eyes again. The panther has lifted its head and is staring right at her.

“Sees you,” Old Adam says behind her in a low voice.

The animal’s eyes do not leave her own, and yet she senses it is distracted. The noise comes again, perhaps a trapped animal, whatever the panther has just been sniffing. Susanna stands very still and tries to think what to do. She cannot hear a whisper from Old Adam until suddenly his knife hums through the air and clips the panther on its shoulder. The animal jerks once and then shifts its weight to leap away from them. In a moment it is gone.

“Why didn’t you kill it?” Susanna asks him. She can hear it crashing through the undergrowth.

Old Adam plucks his knife from the nest of ferns where it landed. “Did not wish it dead.”

She swallows, trying to get moisture back into her mouth. A breeze circles them like a ghost and brings with it a strange heavy scent. A sour, heavy scent.

Blood.

She pulls away from Old Adam with the worst sort of dread and Spendlove’s words in her head:
If they see she’s sick they’ll kill her
. And there, just off the path, behind a pitted log, she finds what she is afraid she will find: her sister Aurelia lying there in the dirt and bracken.

Susanna drops to her knees. Aurelia’s eyes are closed. Her beautiful strawberry-blond hair is full of dried mud, and there is mud on her cheek, too, and mud on her collar. She is wearing Indian moccasins on her feet. Old Adam says something but Susanna doesn’t hear what he says. Aurelia’s left hand is raised, covering part of her forehead, and Susanna touches it. Her hand is cold, but it does not feel dead. It does not feel like dead flesh. But that isn’t mud on her cheek, Susanna realizes. It’s blood.

As gently as she can she pulls Aurelia’s hand away to look at her forehead, and then her stomach clenches and rises. She’s been scalped—partially scalped. Insects are already nesting inside the unclosed wound. Old Adam is crouching beside her and he puts his hand in front of Aurelia’s mouth, testing for breath. The dog barks and Old Adam says something and then he stands and says something else and then suddenly—Susanna is not sure how this happened—two other figures arrive, one of them making a noise in his throat, a man with fair hair: Cade Spendlove. But she doesn’t wonder how he came here, she has no wonder left in her. As she turns her head a shifting of the light makes her look past the trees to a spot not too distant, a glimpse of cleared land. Risdale? But the trees won’t end, she understands this now. They will never get out of the forest. Seth Spendlove is looking down at her, his hand on her arm.

“How will we carry her?” she asks.

Five

They get Aurelia to the tavern in Risdale and set her down in the little room off the barroom where soldiers passing through eat their meals. A man named Jonas Footbound owns the tavern with his wife Liza. Liza has the men lay Aurelia on a flat board lifted off the floor by six bricks. This will help the flow of blood, she says. She takes up a clean, blue-checked cloth and begins to wash Aurelia’s face.

“Will she live?” Susanna asks.

Liza rinses the cloth, dark with blood. Around here she acts as midwife or doctor since there is no one fitting either description for miles. A competent-looking woman, tall and muscular and big boned with a surprisingly small nose for her wide face. Her voice is rough from years of pipe smoking.

“There’s them who’ve come to me worse,” she says.

Eager Tavern, their place is called. Some men are at the bar when Susanna comes in but when they hear the news about her sisters they rally together to help in the chase. By the time they ride out the sun is barely above the tree line, but they are well armed with rifles and tallow jacklights. Seth Spendlove rides with them but Cade stays back to see to Aurelia. He helps Jonas transform the back room into a sick room, and together they remove the long trestle table and bring in a spindly legged oak stand and a basin of water, a straw tick for Susanna to sleep on, and two cane-bottomed chairs. The room is small and square with rough walls, easily warmed by the small fireplace. Susanna can smell mint on the windowsills to drive off mice, something her mother also did. When Liza finishes washing and bandaging Aurelia’s wound, she lights a candle made out of a twisted rag floating in lard in a small tin saucer. For a moment she holds the saucer near Aurelia’s face.

“Let’s see if we can’t get a bite of food inside her,” Liza says.

How can they feed her? She looks barely alive. Susanna’s heart feels tightly knotted. Anybody who didn’t know her might think she’d been struck dumb by the events of the day, but she is worried that if she opens her mouth she will start crying and never stop.

Her other sisters aren’t in Risdale. No one has seen them. And here is Aurelia halfway to Paradise, as her Aunt Ogg used to say. But Jonas brings in a bowl of broth—he is the cook here—and Liza puts the tiniest spoonful into Aurelia’s open mouth and by the greatest of miracles Aurelia swallows.

“Why don’t you go get a bite for yourself?” Liza says to Susanna without looking up. “You’re done in, I can tell.”

When Susanna hesitates, Cade says, “I’ll stay here with her.”

The tavern’s main room is now empty. Its main feature is a long wooden counter along one end that has recently been polished with tree oil, or maybe she’s been in Thieving Forest for so long that she can’t get the smell of trees out of her nose.

“My wife is good with the injured,” Jonas tells her. “Soft hands, though you’d not guess by looking.” Susanna figures he means because Liza is so large and rough looking, her cap turned any which way, her skirt unkempt, her voice abrupt. Jonas is large himself but much more careful in his dress. He wears trim, clean trousers and a blue waistcoat, and his boots look freshly buffed. A small deer comes into the room and stands by his side. Their pet, Jonas explains. He puts his hand between the deer’s smoke-colored ears.

“Name’s Becky. Found her out stuck in a mudhole starving and motherless. ’Twas Liza who saved her. Fed her by hand every two hours around the clock for three weeks.”

They have no children, he tells her, only Becky. “You can see she never got to her natural height. Comes from losing your mother too soon.”

He goes into the kitchen and brings out a wooden plate of food and sets it before Susanna, who is sitting on a chair near the window with a planed tree stump serving as her table. Roasted turkey with gravy and boiled carrots and new greens, and a smaller dish of apples and cream. While she eats Susanna thinks of Ellen, who grew up in Scotland where her father leased land near Loch Shiel. Six months a year they ate, Ellen used to say, and six months they didn’t. When Old Adam and Mary lost four of their pigs to a disease of the stomach, Ellen sent over half a barrel of cornmeal. She believed in working hard and watching out for your neighbors as well as yourself. “It might be your trouble next,” she reminded her daughters.

“Where’s Old Adam?” Susanna asked. “He must be hungry.”

“Well I don’t know—off with the men? Don’t worry, I’ll make a plate for him when he comes back,” Jonas tells her.

He begins lighting candles at the other end of the counter. The daylight is gone. Susanna tries to picture her sisters sleeping outside on the dirt: an almost impossible vision. Penelope will be complaining bitterly about the hard ground, and Beatrice’s hipbones will hurt. She can hear Liza begin to sing to Aurelia in a husky voice in the other room. The tune is familiar, but what is the song? It is low and sweet and calls up something down in her that has been crouching in wait for a while. She closes her mouth but it is too late, her tears are coming. She truly believed that she would find her sisters in Risdale, either already ransomed by the townspeople or awaiting ransom. But they are gone and she is left behind.

Jonas shuts the heavy tavern door and locks it. Then he comes to where Susanna is sitting. She tries to stop crying but every time she breathes out a new wave of grief rushes in. Jonas pats her arm and then, after a moment, awkwardly, he pats the side of her head.

“We’ll do our best for your sister,” he promises.

But the next morning Aurelia wakes shaking with fever. Liza bathes her wound again using water boiled with herbs and then strained and cooled. She wears the same apron, the same frown as last night. Susanna isn’t sure if she is worried or if those are just the natural lines of her face.

“We’ll keep her cool,” Liza says. “Keep feeding her. Best we can do.”

Cade dampens the fire but does not put it out. He spent the night wrapped in a blanket sleeping on the barroom floor. Susanna takes Aurelia’s hand in her own. Aurelia searches Susanna’s face as though she has just asked a question and is now waiting for the reply.

Susanna doesn’t know what her sister wants, but she says, “Aurelia, I’m so glad you’re awake! Are you hungry?”