Twin Willows: A Novel

“
Amo te
,” Stuart whispered against her cheek. “I love you.”

“Then show me,” Anna whispered back.

He needed no further urging. Gently he guided Anna to lie down on her side and stretched out beside her. Holding her close, he kissed her forehead and her cheeks, her eyelids, and the tip of her nose. She shivered when he nibbled her earlobe, and her head fell back almost reflexively as his tongue probed the hollow of her neck and traced her collarbone. His hands moved lower, pressing in slow circles against her breasts, teasing her nipples to become pebble-hard. She strained against him, longing to feel his hands against her bare flesh.

Knowing her need, he plucked at the drawstring on her shift until it fell open, freeing her full breasts. His mouth covered one erect nipple, and his tongue first circled, then sucked the sweetness there before repeating his movements on the other breast.

He eased her shift the rest of the way off, then quickly removed his own clothing. She didn’t have enough time to take in all the wonder of his naked body before he lowered it to cover hers. She felt as if every bit of her flesh strained toward every fiber of his body, seeking union.

To the memory of
William Moore, Sr. (1758–1844),
Revolutionary soldier and Kentucky pioneer,
and his wife, Olivia Ferree Moore

T
HE FORKS OF THE
M
USKINGUM
R
IVER,

N
ORTHWEST
T
ERRITORY
J
ANUARY, 1764

The first time Ian McKnight saw the beautiful young Delaware woman, she sat beneath a weeping willow tree, framed by its slender, silver leaves. She turned her head in a gesture as graceful as the stirring of the tree’s long limbs and regarded him with her great, dark eyes. From that very moment, Ian knew he loved her.

“You are my Silverwillow,” he said, and by that odd
Yengwes
name she had since been known. Now, in a lodge far removed from the rest of the village, the young Delaware woman known as Silverwillow had been in labor for many more hours than usual, even for a first child. The two women attending her, one not much older than Silverwillow, the other twice her age, looked at each other and shook their heads, both aware that if the child she carried was not soon born, Silverwillow would surely die.

The older woman, Bear’s Daughter, was the leading midwife of the sept of the Clan of the Turtle now living on the banks of the Muskingum River. She had felt uneasy when Silverwillow’s belly began to grow huge early in her pregnancy. Bear’s Daughter knew for a certainty that the trader Ian McKnight hadn’t taken her to wife until the Moon When the Deer Turns Red, less than eight moons ago; before then, Silverwillow had lived chaste in Bear’s Daughter’s lodge.

“The spirit of a witch has entered that one,” Blue Deer had muttered when all could see how much Silverwillow’s body had swelled by the new Moon of the First Snow, which the white trader called “December.”

Bear’s Daughter had frowned and told the woman to stop her words, lest such talk mark the babe. But privately she was also concerned about Silverwillow, whom she had brought to live in her own lodge when the girl’s parents had died from the white man’s red spots.

As Bear’s Daughter wiped the sweat from the young woman’s brow, she remembered that some had said the girl was bewitched even then, because she had survived the illness that had killed her grandparents, parents, and her four brothers and sisters. The disease had quickly spread through the village and taken a heavy toll. There were those who thought that Bear’s Daughter had been foolish to allow Silverwillow to stay with her when the half-starved girl came back to the village, so weak from the disease that had taken all her family that only Bear’s Daughter’s constant care had saved her life.

Silverwillow clamped down on the piece of rawhide between her teeth and moaned. Delaware women who cried out in childbirth were looked down upon, and at first she had made a conscious effort not to show how much pain she felt. Now, when she was past caring, she had no strength to scream.

“Where is my husband?” she whispered.

“I do not know,” Bear’s Daughter replied, half-truthfully. Like all men facing imminent fatherhood, Ian McKnight had been ordered to leave the village for a time. He said he would go check the traps he had set along the Paint River, but Bear’s Daughter doubted that the burly, redhaired Scotsman would actually return with any pelts.

Silverwillow moaned softly. “I would see him again before I die.”

“There will be no talk of dying,” Bear’s Daughter said sharply. “Take courage, my child. It cannot be much longer now.”

Even as Bear’s Daughter spoke, another racking pain seized Silverwillow, and her belly visibly heaved.

“The babe comes,” Blue Deer said, and the women moved in concert, each to do her job in bringing forth the new life.

“A female child,” Bear’s Daughter announced with satisfaction moments later. Quickly she tied the cord and anointed the wriggling, screaming body with bear grease. But when she turned to place the babe in her mother’s arms, Bear’s Daughter saw that Silverwillow’s agony had not ended. Her still-distended belly heaved once, then again.

“Ayee! There must be another babe in her womb,” Blue Deer said in fearful tones. Only a few minutes later, her words were proven true when Silverwillow’s labor produced a second child.

“Does it live?” Bear’s Daughter whispered, seeing the unnatural stillness of the tiny form in Blue Deer’s arms.

Blue Deer shook her head and gently set the baby down on a thick bearskin. “It is as well,” she said. “A twin girl-child. It is a bad omen.”

Tears welled in Bear’s Daughter’s eyes. “Such a beautiful child could never be a bad omen.” She picked up the still form and patted the tiny girl’s back. The baby gasped, her face contorted in rage, and she let out a lusty cry.

“They both live!” Blue Deer exclaimed almost fearfully.

“Let me see my babies,” Silverwillow said weakly.

The woman knelt beside her. “This is your first-born,” Blue Deer said, “a fine, well-formed daughter.”

“And here is a second girl-child,” Bear’s Daughter said. “Your husband will be much surprised.”

Tears formed in Silverwillow’s eyes. Her cracked lips moved, but the women couldn’t hear what she said.

Bear’s Daughter bent her head close to Silverwillow’s. “What is it, my daughter?”

“I wanted to give my man a son,” she whispered.

“He will not care,” Bear’s Daughter said.

Silverwillow closed her eyes and seemed to be gathering strength to speak again. “Tell my husband he must not sorrow.”

Bear’s Daughter straightened, then laid Silverwillow’s younger daughter by her side. “Rest now and you can tell him yourself. He will be here soon,” she said.

Feebly Silverwillow shook her head. “No. I will not see him again in this life.”

“Ayee,” Blue Deer muttered. “The girl prophesies her death. Did I not say this one has been bewitched?”

Bear’s Daughter wanted to tell her to stop, that Silverwillow wasn’t dying, but she knew that denying the obvious wouldn’t change it. “Your man and I will see that your babies are cared for,” she said instead.

“It is good,” Silverwillow said weakly. She turned her head and bent to kiss each baby’s forehead, then closed her eyes and sighed. She drew a final, shuddering breath, then lay still.

Blue Deer leaned over and closed Silverwillow’s eyes. “Her spirit is gone now,” she said.

Bear’s Daughter put a hand to her mouth and stifled the impulse to scream and throw herself on Silverwillow’s body. The girl had been like a daughter to her for half of her young life, but even though Silverwillow’s death grieved Bear’s Daughter as nothing else ever had, it would not be the Delaware way to give in to it.

Instead, she rocked back on her heels and looked at the babies, who both now lay quietly with their eyes closed in sleep. “A nurse must be found for them, or they will die,” she said.

“No one in our village can nurse two more in these hard times,” Blue Deer said. “It would be better to smother them and tell the trader that they never breathed.”

Bear’s Daughter glanced sharply at Blue Deer. “No! I will never allow harm to come to Silverwillow’s babies. There is another way.”

“Would you suckle them yourself? You are old and have no milk,” Blue Deer said scornfully.

“It is time you weaned your Little Faun,” Bear’s Daughter said. “You will have enough milk.”

“Not for two babies,” Blue Deer protested.

“Newborns do not take much. I will keep the second girl-child and leave the trader the firstborn.”

Blue Deer made a derisive noise. “Whites are greedy. The man will want them both.”

Bear’s Daughter looked meaningfully at Blue Deer. “He will not know about the second one,” she said.

Blue Deer shook her head. “Ayee, I like it not. How can he not know? Does he not live among us?”

“I have been planning to visit my kin among the
Shawonese
for many moons. I will take the second girl-child and find her a suckling-nurse there. We will not return to this place.”

“It is not good,” Blue Deer murmured. “Everyone knows that girl twins are likely to be bewitched. They are better off to die now than to cause us all grief later.”

Bear’s Daughter leaned forward and spoke earnestly. “Will you kill the babies yourself, woman? I promise that the moment you move to harm either of them will be your last on earth.”

Blue Deer had always been half-afraid of Bear’s Daughter. Now as the older woman riveted her with her dark, brooding eyes, Blue Deer could only reluctantly nod her assent.

“It will be as you say, then. But if the trader learns of this—”

Bear’s Daughter made the cutoff sign. “If ever I find that you have told of this, it will not go well with you and yours, either in this place or any other that you might go to live. Know this.”

“I will say nothing,” Blue Deer promised.

“Go out now and show the village the daughter that Silverwillow died birthing. As you do, I will hide the other babe in my lodge.”

“What about the trader?” Blue Deer asked.

“Send after him—he cannot be far away now. I will speak to him.”

“I hope this thing will not bring trouble to us,” Blue Deer said.

Bear’s Daughter looked down at Silverwillow’s still form and shook her head. “No. All will be done as I have said. Now go.”

Casting a nervous glance at the second baby, Blue Deer took the firstborn twin and left the lodge.

Carefully Bear’s Daughter wrapped the girl-child in a deerskin and concealed it beneath her buffalo-skin cloak. As a small group gathered outside around Blue Deer, Bear’s Daughter made her way unnoticed to her lodge, where she quickly made a bed of soft bearskin for the child she already thought of as hers. Although traditionally a Delaware baby would not be named until it was about ten days old, Bear’s Daughter already knew what she would call this child. Bending over the small form, she whispered the name into the child’s tiny ear.

As if she heard and understood, the baby opened her eyes and stared gravely at her new mother.

“Yes, Littlewillow—you already know who you are!” Bear’s Daughter exclaimed. “Sleep now. I will be back soon.”

As she left her lodge, Bear’s Daughter heard the first keening notes of the Death Song, and pulled her cloak over her face as a sign of her grief.

No one in this village loved Silverwillow as I did, she thought. And no one, anywhere, could ever love Silverwillow’s daughter more
.

The chanting had been underway for about half an hour when Ian McKnight returned to the village. Over six feet tall, with curly, dark auburn hair and intense blue eyes, he normally cut an imposing figure. But this day, burdened with the news of his beloved wife’s death, the trader’s bearded face wore a stunned expression, and he looked far older than his thirty years.

“What happened?” he asked Bear’s Daughter in the Delaware language.

She shrugged. “I do not know. Silverwillow lost much blood.”

Tears glistened in the big man’s eyes and he dug at them with the palm of his hand. “I should have stayed here,” he said. “I should na’ have let ye send me away.”

“It would change nothing, trader. She said to tell you that you must not be sorry.”

“Not be sorry!” Ian McKnight spoke rapidly in English, then recovered himself and set his jaw. “There is a girl-child?” he asked.

“Yes. Will you go to her now?”

The trader nodded. “Did Silverwillow live to see her?”

Bear’s Daughter nodded. “Yes. Come, the child is in Blue Deer’s lodge.”

Ian McKnight clenched his fists and blinked his eyes furiously to keep back the tears as he looked for the first time at his dark-haired daughter’s tiny features.

Bear’s Daughter placed the child in her father’s arms. Unconsciously repeating his wife’s actions, the trader bent to kiss the child’s forehead, then gazed down at the baby, who gravely looked back at her father.

“Welcome to this sad world,” he said softly in English.

“Do you name her?” asked Bear’s Daughter, who knew only a few words in the
Yengwes
tongue.

Ian McKnight looked over at her and nodded. “When the time comes, she will be called Anna Willow McKnight.”

Everyone in the lodge exchanged glances and murmured about the strange
Yengwes
name that the trader had given his daughter.

“I will take her now,” Blue Deer said. “I will keep the babe in my lodge until she is weaned.”

Ian McKnight looked at Blue Deer in surprise. “My daughter will not stay here at all,” he said.

“Then how will the child live? She will die if she is not suckled.”

Ian McKnight looked back at his daughter. “There are those among my people who can nurse her. I will take her to them.”

Bear’s Daughter tried to sound distressed. “She is all I have of my Silverwillow. The Lenni-Lenape are her people, too. Surely you must let her stay here, where she belongs.”

“You speak true, Bear’s Daughter. But Silverwillow knew that I planned to take her and the baby back to my people in the time of the Pawpawing Moon. I will go there now instead.”

Bear’s Daughter nodded meekly. “It will be as you say. But Anna Willow should also learn the ways of her mother’s people.”

“I will tell her of these things. Someday perhaps she will come back here.”

“May it be so, then.” Bear’s Daughter lowered her head and turned away from the trader, more satisfied than she could let anyone know. She didn’t believe for a moment that the daughter Ian McKnight called Anna Willow would ever return to the land of her mother.

It is just as well that he takes her to his people
, Bear’s Daughter thought. Sometimes twins grew up to look almost exactly alike. If that should happen and Ian McKnight ever saw this other, he would know at once that he had been deceived.

It will never happen
, Bear’s Daughter vowed. Littlewillow would be raised as hers, and hers alone. The white man would never know she existed.