The Wood's Edge Read online

  Clear Day went on, “Among those who were listening were Grasshopper and Skenandoah, that great warrior with his fine house here. Because he listens to Kirkland’s path for our people, more are listening.”

  Good Voice turned the cakes. She served the men, then made sure her son had enough before she took what remained. Watching them fall upon the cakes and soup in their bowls like half-starved wolves, Good Voice found herself able to put aside her unease long enough to be grateful for Kirkland’s generosity.

  But at what cost was it given? Did the man expect something in return?

  In a quiet moment when they were concentrating on their food, Two Hawks said a thing that made his mother’s heart pound.

  “I want to learn English. I want to go with the boys who are learning at Kirkland’s school.”

  Every mouth in the lodge stopped chewing. Every eye stared at Two Hawks.

  “Stay away from that missionary,” Stone Thrower told him. “He will confuse your thoughts.”

  “But you said he is not all bad. I heard you. And you, Uncle.” The boy turned pleading eyes to Clear Day. “You said it too.”

  “I said so,” Clear Day affirmed, but warily, as though he sensed a trap about to spring. “Why do you wish to know English?”

  “We can teach you,” Good Voice said before her son could answer. “We know enough to speak to traders.”

  Two Hawks’s brow puckered. “I want to know all their words.”

  “But why?” three adults asked together.

  Her son opened wide his eyes, clearly surprised they needed to ask. “My brother will speak it. Someone should know how to talk to him when we find him.”

  Three sets of brows rose high. Three mouths hung a little slack.

  “That is a wise thought,” Stone Thrower finally said. “But I do not want you going near that missionary. Not until we know he can be trusted. That is all I have to say about it.”

  Far from showing disappointment at this pronouncement, Two Hawks grinned. “It is not the missionary who teaches the boys. It is his ah-sis-tent. The one called Fowler. He’s not even a white man. He will teach me.”

  David Fowler, the man who’d come with Kirkland to help him, was of the Montauk people, an eastern nation much overcome by white ways and religion, which made him not much better. Still…Good Voice’s heart was no longer pounding. She thought this idea of her son’s was a good one.

  “We will see,” said his father.

  The boy dropped his head, but Good Voice saw the smile lingering at the corners of his mouth before he raised his bowl to hide it. She knew what he was doing. He was circling this thing in his mind, confident he would find the clear path to it eventually.

  He was patient, her son.

  Stone Thrower beckoned her from the fire. By the door he leaned close, his head tilting toward their son. “When that one’s belly is full, I will take him hunting again. We may take a few days to find where the deer have gone. Will you be well?”

  “I have enough to get by.”

  “Because of Kirkland.” Stone Thrower sounded unhappy to say it. “When I get back, we will go to the fish camp.”

  “Iyo,” she said. Good. “But after…Will you let him go to school?”

  “If he wants it still, I will not speak against it. But only with Fowler.”

  “Yes,” Good Voice agreed. “Only him.” And she put it from her mind. They had enough to eat this day. Her son, though thin, wasn’t sickly with hunger as some had become but was still strong and lively. They had the hope of a new crop to put into the ground and the fishing yet to come. No one was making war on them or threatening to burn their town. Stone Thrower was caring for them, doing his best in a hard time.

  So why did she mistrust the good path that lay before her feet? Its smoothness felt deceptive, as if some danger lay coiled beyond its next bend, waiting to strike them as they passed.

  14

  Twilight had crept in from the forest, thickening shadows between the lodges. In one of those shadows Clear Day paused, looked around, then turned onto the path that led through a stand of white pine to the missionary’s house. He didn’t see Good Voice, on her way back from taking a gourd of the missionary’s cornmeal to a couple too old to hunt or grow crops. Seeing those elders with their bones like birds’, eyes lost in smiling wrinkles as they thanked her for the meager offering, had pained her. Now here was Clear Day making for Kirkland’s house.

  Astonishment washed over Good Voice like a cold plunge in the creek. Had she stepped into that story Kirkland told, about the sachem going to Jesus at night because he feared what the people would say?

  Hooding her blanket-shawl over her head, she followed her husband’s uncle up the path, pausing at the edge of the clearing in which the missionary had his lodge. Clear Day stood at the door, which was open and filled with the flicker-light of fire, except where Kirkland’s thin figure shadowed it. Good Voice hid herself in shadow as Kirkland stood aside and motioned Clear Day into his lodge. After a hesitation, Clear Day went in. The door closed.

  Good Voice knew she should leave, but her feet crossed the trodden yard to the window. Unlike a few of the frame houses in Kanowalohale—Skenandoah’s being the grandest—the missionary didn’t have the stuff called glass but thin oiled hide across his window. It wasn’t yet tacked down for the night.

  Crouched below it, Good Voice peered back through the trees separating the house from the rest of the town. Voices reached her, sounds of people finishing up work and turning to their cook-fires. It was almost dark. Stars lit the sky with milky light. Dampness filled the chilling air. Inside the men were talking. Kirkland was telling Clear Day how he’d seen him at the meeting where he spoke to the people, listening like someone with a question in his mind.

  “Have you come to ask me that question?”

  It was rude to come so straight at a thing or presume to know what was in the mind of another before he revealed it. Maybe Clear Day thought so too. When he spoke, he sounded uncertain he’d done right in coming to the missionary. “It is about my sister’s son. A warrior called Stone Thrower.”

  Alarm raced over Good Voice’s face like crawling insects. What was Clear Day doing? She’d been right to creep in close to listen.

  “I have heard of this warrior,” Kirkland said. “He is one who went against the sachems’ counsel and fought with Pontiac, and left his wife and child to be tended by others. And he is one who indulged in that devil’s rum. He has been a drunkard and a troublemaker.”

  Good Voice felt shame and anger at these words against Stone Thrower. Shame because they were true. Anger because this white man said them.

  If he felt the same, Clear Day kept it from his voice. “Those things you say of my nephew are true. But listen now to my words. As one who knows him well will tell you, lately he has tried to walk a better path, to put the needs of his wife and son before his own.”

  A mouse skittered across the toes of Good Voice’s moccasins. She started, clapping a hand across her mouth to keep silent. The mouse scurried away through rustling leaves. Good Voice composed herself, taking heart at Clear Day’s defense of her husband. But the mouse had made her miss some of Kirkland’s response.

  “…good to think of others, to love our neighbors, to give to those in need. But it is not in doing good that we find peace with Heavenly Father, our Creator. There is only one way, through being born again—being born of the Spirit into Heavenly Father’s family by believing that His Son, Jesus, shed His innocent blood to cleanse all mankind of the sin in their hearts. To cleanse you of sin, and me. It is in confession of sin and acceptance of God’s cleansing that we are set on a good path—for this life and the one after.”

  There was silence. Clear Day was waiting to be sure Kirkland had said all he meant to say. Then the older man cleared his throat. “Maybe you brush aside the efforts of my sister’s son to follow a good path because you do not know the bad thing that happened to set him on that crooked path and hold him t
here with its power.”

  Good Voice listened as Clear Day told the story of Fort William Henry and her sons born there. He took his time, putting in every detail she’d ever shared with him. All he kept back from Kirkland was the name of the redcoat who stole her son.

  “I am telling you these things because I think you have some wisdom, though much you say is hard to understand. I think you have a heart for our people, whether or not your path for us is best. And you are a white man. You understand white men’s thinking. That is why I have come to talk of a thing that happened before you came among us. It is to do with Stone Thrower and his son that was taken.”

  On the cold ground below the window, Good Voice rocked herself in darkness, hugging her knees. She knew what Clear Day was going to say before he confessed to knowing where He-Is-Taken could be found. Then he said it, and there was no taking back the words.

  “I want to know,” Clear Day concluded, “whether it is wise now for me to tell my nephew where to find the child we think is his son.”

  “You have not done so?”

  “I came to know these things when my nephew was on that bad path. Even after he left it, I did not trust he would stay off it if he knew about his son. He has dreamed of killing that redcoat, and the dream is strong in him still, though he fights it. I feared he might let that dream win the fight, that he would go to where his son is and kill all the whites there. Then other whites would come killing more of us. He might get his son back only to see us all dead.”

  Kirkland was silent for a time. The waiting made Good Voice’s heart drum with the beat of a war dance, so loud she feared the men would hear it.

  “Does the mother know?”

  Good Voice gripped the blanket-shawl, fingernails digging into the fibers. “She has kept the secret with me, thinking as I do,” Clear Day said.

  Good Voice bowed her head against her knees, hoping so fiercely it hurt that the missionary would have something wise to say. Some way for what was broken in her family to be made whole.

  What Kirkland said was, “Vengeance belongs to God. He will repay. No man’s sin is overlooked. If he does not ask forgiveness through the blood of Jesus, then he will spend eternity paying for it himself.”

  Good Voice put a hand across her mouth, afraid for her husband, of what he might do, what he might suffer for doing it.

  “Do you want me to tell Stone Thrower about his son?” Kirkland asked. “Is that what you are asking?”

  “I do not think,” Clear Day said, “that he would stand still and listen long enough for you to get the words out.”

  It sounded like the missionary chuckled at that. “You have given this much thought.”

  “Years of thinking. And prayer smoke to Creator.”

  Good Voice waited, wondering what Kirkland with his differing ideas about God and prayer would say to this.

  “You have been open with me,” he said. “I will be so with you. I do not know whether to say tell him or do not tell him.” Good Voice’s heart plunged to the ground, only to rise again when Kirkland continued. “But it is not my wisdom you need.”

  Through the window came a rustling like dry leaves in a wind, before Kirkland’s talking voice changed to his reading voice. “ ‘If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.’ Are you willing to ask God for wisdom in this matter of Stone Thrower’s son?”

  Clear Day made a sound in his throat that could be taken as consent.

  If any of you lack wisdom…ask…it shall be given…Good Voice ran the words over in her head, clutching them like a drowning woman would a passing canoe.

  “Heavenly Father,” Kirkland said, dropping into his prayer voice. “God of all creation, who sent Your Son to earth to live a sinless life and die to satisfy Your just indignation over men’s sin, we come before You, this man Clear Day and I, to ask for wisdom in this matter of a great wrong done, a son stolen at his birth.”

  And me, a woman called Good Voice. I am the mother of that son. I am here.

  She’d joined in the prayer before she knew she meant to do it. She’d heard Kirkland talk to his God as she passed by his gatherings. He didn’t use a prayer pipe, only words. She couldn’t be sure she’d done it right, keeping her words inside her head, but she couldn’t speak or her presence would be known.

  “You know the outcome of either decision we make on this matter,”

  Kirkland prayed, “as You see the end of every path Your children choose, for good or ill. We cannot see that far with human eyes, but You have a path planned for all Your children, white and red.”

  My skin is white. My heart is red. Does the God of white men have a path for one like me to walk? For my husband, my children?

  “Heavenly Father,” Kirkland prayed, “we ask as children who don’t know which path to take, show us what to do about Stone Thrower’s son. Show us whether now is the time to tell him where to find this child, how to see this son restored.”

  That man praying to You calls You Father. He says You have a Son called Jesus. He says this Son went away from You and died in a distant place. Do You know the pain of my husband? Do You know my pain?

  Something was cracking open in Good Voice’s soul. Like the quail egg Two Hawks had brought home, the one that broke and spilled its running insides.

  “For the man who did this terrible thing, I ask You to awaken repentance in his heart so he may seek Your forgiveness, so his heart will be soft toward You and the family of the son he stole. May there also be forgiveness in the hearts of Stone Thrower and Good Voice. ‘Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.’ ”

  Good Voice put her hands over her face. Forgive Redcoat Aubrey? Before her son was even restored? Not knowing if he ever would be? It was too much to ask…but had demanding her husband take vengeance on Aubrey brought peace? Had it covered her grief or eased her pain? It had made everything worse. What if one day Stone Thrower carried out that demand she regretted? What if he obeyed his dreams?

  The missionary paused in his prayer, as if he sensed her outside, fighting against the words he’d uttered to his God. The silence tugged like hands pulling, urging her to do this hard thing. She resisted and found they were gentle hands, ready to release her if she struggled.

  That terrified her more.

  “I forgive Redcoat Aubrey for the harm he did me,” she whispered aloud. “To my husband. To my sons. Will you forgive me through-Jesus-blood-amen?”

  Kirkland’s voice drifted through the window. “You are the Good Shepherd who leaves the sheep safe in the pen and goes to find the lost one. We wait for You to tell us what to do and when to do it, and we ask all these things in the name of Your Son, Jesus, that He be glorified in them…”

  Good Voice no longer heard the words of the missionary, though it seemed she floated on the river of his voice. She hadn’t meant to ask his God to forgive her, but having done it, that breaking-open feeling had passed. Now she felt empty and spilled, yet…somehow full. And not alone. No one from beyond the trees had come near. The men inside hadn’t noticed her. She blinked into the darkness. Tears coursed along her nose, over lips that were smiling now.

  Is it You?

  She realized it was quiet. Were they still inside, Clear Day and the missionary, waiting for God to speak? As He had spoken to her? Not in words. He was simply there, where He hadn’t been before. He’d heard the words of a woman called Good Voice and let her know they were important to Him. She was important to Him. Like a daughter. Heavenly Father.

  Inside Kirkland’s lodge, Clear Day asked, “Have you heard your God speak?”

  Good Voice waited with anticipation, with wonder, still with a little fear—but that was fading like the darkness lifts at the coming of dawn.

  “I will tell you what is in my heart, and you may do with it as you think best,” Kirkland said. “I believe it is time to tell Stone Thrower the truth about his son.”

  15
/>   May 1768

  Lydia smoothed the gown laid across the Doyles’ bed. It was the brocaded wool she’d worn the day Reginald returned wounded from the campaign in Quebec. How small the garment seemed, yet how grown-up she’d fancied herself that day she brought tea to the major—until she’d opened her mouth and disabused even herself of the notion. She smiled forbearingly at her fourteen-year-old self from the amused detachment of three-and-twenty.

  “Look at this one, Anna.” Across the bed Maura Doyle held up a striped gown, all blue and cream and girlish bows.

  “That one’s agreeable,” Anna said, peering at the gown cascading across the coverlet. Her voice held but a trace of the enthusiasm Lydia had hoped to elicit by the gift of her girlhood gowns. At eleven, Anna was nearly as tall as Lydia had been at fourteen, far prettier, and every bit as spindly. The gowns would require little altering. Some taking in at the shoulders, a few fresh ruffles…

  Anna’s brows, darker than the wealth of hair restrained beneath her cap, tightened above eyes that reflected pain like glints of sun on water. A few new gowns wouldn’t fill the emptiness William had left behind, any more than they’d have assuaged Lydia’s grief at the loss of her father the previous year.

  As though he’d only waited for Lydia to be settled, three months after she and Jacob van Bergen wed, George McClaren went to his bed one night and never rose from it.

  As had been the case when her mother passed and, far away in Wales, his father, Lydia and Reginald Aubrey were destined to lose a significant family member within the same year. This time it was the major’s brother.

  That distant death brought about a significant alteration in the Aubreys’ lives. Because his brother hadn’t married, the family estate in Breconshire passed to Reginald, whereupon Heledd Aubrey redoubled her efforts to persuade her husband it was long past time to return to it.

  Instead, a flurry of letters ensued between Reginald and the family’s factor, centered on the topic of keeping the estate running in absentia. For now.