The Wood's Edge Read online

  “You know I have refused to go with him to Warraghiyagey,” Clear Day said. “You have never questioned this.” He paused, searching her face. “Do you understand why I refuse?”

  Good Voice took a moment to order her thoughts. “You do not want him to go because you believe Sir William would know my husband wants more than to get our son back. He wants to kill the man who took him, as his dreams tell him to do. You do not want Stone Thrower to bring back the white man’s violence on us all if he should find Redcoat Aw-bree and kill him for taking our son.”

  Clear Day raised his eyebrows. “All those things are true. I wish it was not so. All this time I have had in my possession three strands of white beads. Stone Thrower will not receive them. This you know.”

  Clear Day spoke of the condolence ceremony, the giving of white wampum and the speaking of good words to wipe away tears, to clear hearts of grief, to help the people heal and go on with living. The ceremony had been given to the Haudenosaunee generations ago in The Great Law of Peace that held their clans and nations together and made them strong.

  Their firstborn wasn’t dead, Stone Thrower argued, and Good Voice had forbidden him to bring her a captive to replace him. That was another thing that might have been done.

  Good Voice had been too small to remember when warriors stole her from a farm many sleeps away. Had the woman who birthed her, whose name and face were lost to Good Voice of the Turtle Clan, felt this anguish at the loss of her? Knowing now that terrible grief, she could never cause another woman, red or white, to bear it.

  So they were trapped, unable to move on from that moment she held a stranger’s dead baby and looked back at Fort William Henry with a shattering heart.

  “I have given him time to stop the drinking,” Clear Day said. “To remember he is blessed with a good wife and a son who need him to be a man. He has yet to hear my words. So I tell you, who carry the same pain but have not forgotten how to be a woman of the People…I tell you I will go myself to Warraghiyagey and plead the cause of my nephew.”

  Good Voice felt a brush of pleasure at the praise from her husband’s uncle, before that last thing he said came clear. “You will go?”

  “Yes. But I do not mean to tell my nephew of it.”

  “Why will you not tell him?”

  Clear Day’s mouth tightened, but he didn’t let his disappointment in his nephew show on his features. “Atahuhsiyost—Listen, daughter. I want you to have back what was taken from you. But I also want my nephew to find his way. Killing that redcoat is not a good path for him, no matter what his dreams tell him to do. This is something I sense in my heart. So I will go to Sir William and see what comes of it. We may find a better way than blood-spilling to make this right again.”

  Tears blurred Good Voice’s vision. “I wish you were wrong about that. Thought of killing that redcoat has many times crossed my mind.”

  How could it not, in the dark hours she’d wept for He-Is-Taken? Yet she too sensed spilling that redcoat’s blood wouldn’t cover their sorrow. She wasn’t certain why this should be. She only knew that Clear Day was right. It wasn’t a straight path through that dark valley, but one that would lead in circles of pain. Sometimes, awake in the night, she could almost glimpse another path. A shining path, like the stars across the heavens. But when she tried to trace its course, it shifted like forest shadows and was lost.

  “As much as I want my son found,” she said, “I do not want my husband lost. Or anyone else.”

  Clear Day put his scarred brown hand over hers. “If there is a way to do both, we will look until we find it. We—”

  A fierce cry, trilled from somewhere in the town, locked their gazes in alarm. Clear Day’s hand gripped hers as another voice took it up.

  “What is happening? Who—”

  “Traders. They came a while ago, from the Carrying Place.” Clear Day wrenched himself off the ground and hurried to the door hide. “They must have opened their rum and given it to the warriors.”

  Good Voice’s empty belly clenched. “Is that where Stone Thrower has gone?”

  She needed no answer.

  Clear Day was looking out into the falling dusk. “I see fire glow, from the council ground, I think.”

  Good Voice was on her feet now, propelled by fear. Two Hawks and Bright Leaf had gone to the fields. Soon the warriors would be crazy with the rum. It happened sometimes when the traders came. Men, sometimes women too, would get drunk and hurt each other, break belongings and heads, then wake up sick, in pain and shame, with no memory of the bad things they’d done to each other. Bloody wounds. Broken bones. Waste and ruin.

  Scalp prickling as more voices shouted, Good Voice pushed her way past Clear Day into the yard. She saw the glow for herself. A big fire. She hoped it wasn’t a lodge burning. “I must find my son!”

  Clear Day came out with her. “Go to the field. Keep him and your aunt with you. Do not come back into the town until I come for you. I will get Stone Thrower out of this if he is not too drunk.”

  Good Voice was already running for the fields.

  It was full dark when Clear Day found them, two dozen women and children who had found each other amongst the dry cornstalks and late-ripening pumpkins. Two Hawks knelt beside Good Voice, brandishing his little bow, though Good Voice felt him shudder when screams or musket fire—shot into the air, she hoped—came close. There was crying, women’s voices soothing, low moans from an old woman who rocked herself and would not be consoled.

  The tumult was still going on when she heard Clear Day’s approach. He called out before he neared, knowing some of them would be armed. The moon was up and full. Its light revealed a gash on Clear Day’s scalp. Blood had made rivulets down over his ear, dark and colorless in the moonlight.

  “Stone Thrower?”

  She felt the breath of her husband’s uncle warm on her face. “I was too late. But he is not hurt.”

  Bright Leaf clutched her arm. “Who is hurt?”

  “No one badly,” Clear Day said. “A trader kept back some rum, refusing to sell it. The warriors found it out. They tried to stake him and burn him for it, but some of the sachems got that man away out of the town. He is probably halfway to German Flatts by now.”

  “My husband? Did he do this to you?” She touched Clear Day’s face, but he drew back.

  “He did not know what he was doing, swinging a club at anything within reach. I got in the way.”

  Rage filled Good Voice, coiling in her legs, urging them to spring her up, to race her off to find her husband and…she didn’t know what. Wring his neck, if she could.

  “I would like to do some head smashing,” Bright Leaf hissed.

  There were grunts of agreement, a few whimpers from children, then the huddlers in the cornfield fell quiet, listening to the chirps of crickets, the wind moving through rustling stalks. Now and then a trill, or a moan, or whoop from the town’s ravaged center. Good Voice held her son close as night enclosed them in its chill.

  They waited until the warriors had all passed out on the ground and it was safe to make their way back to their homes.

  9

  April 1762

  Shawl-wrapped against the threat of chilling rain, basket in hand, Lydia pushed open the apothecary door, walked into its scented embrace, and drew up short. On the near side of the dispensing counter, opposite her papa and Jacob, stood a man with black hair that reached halfway down his back.

  Hanging Kettle, the Mohawk sachem, turned at the tinkle of the bell above the door but didn’t smile. Hanging Kettle rarely smiled, even when he shook with silent laughter. “Sekoh, McClaren’s daughter.”

  “Sekoh, Mr. Hanging Kettle.” The address, used at their first meeting, still made humor dance in the dark eyes set above cheeks patterned with tattoos.

  Beneath a long shirt Hanging Kettle wore a breechclout and leggings—quilled like his moccasins—but his hair was full, not plucked nearly bald like that of the other Indian standing off to the side, finger
ing an arrangement of lavender-scented soap on a shelf. An older man than Hanging Kettle, he took no part in the conversation at the counter spread with a deerskin arranged with the plants Hanging Kettle had brought to trade.

  Jacob manned the scale while her papa and Hanging Kettle haggled. Lydia caught his glance and lifted the basket, mouthing the word dinner before ducking into the distilling room. It was warm in the back where the fire was kept burning for the various distillations in progress. Sight of them caused a pang of longing. There’d been little time to spare for experimentation since the responsibility of house and garden had fallen on her shoulders.

  Lydia pushed aside a drying rack on the worktable and emptied the basket of bread, cheese, and half a pie made with the last winter apples. By habit she checked the pots on the hearth. More often now, her papa left the medicinal preparation to Jacob, while he chatted with customers or dispensed to them at their homes. She replaced a lid as Papa’s voice carried from the shop. Since her mother’s death, he’d dropped a stone in weight. His hair had thinned and whitened.

  Lydia decided to linger until Hanging Kettle departed, to be sure Papa ate his share of dinner. He needed to be reminded these days.

  She stepped back into the shop in time to see the strange Indian put a piece of soap to his nose, then jerk it away, grimacing. Lydia grinned—right as the Indian turned his head to look at her. His weathered face was slightly pitted; he’d suffered smallpox, probably as a child.

  Her papa cleared his throat. “Lydia, ye havena met Clear Day, of the Oneidas. Clear Day, my daughter, Lydia.”

  Surprise flickered across the Oneida’s face when Lydia made him a polite curtsy.

  The shop bell tinkled. Lydia turned as Rowan Doyle came in, so tall his hat brushed the drying herbs hanging from the ceiling beams. His eyes widened at sight of the Indians. George McClaren nodded to him but continued sorting herbs with Hanging Kettle, jotting each transaction in his ledger with a quill, while Jacob weighed and measured.

  The Oneida turned to finger more displays of toiletries. Lydia stepped past him to greet Mr. Doyle. “I haven’t been down to the Binne Kill in days for news. How are Anna and William?”

  “Gone feral, Miss Lydia, and happily so.” Long face clouding, Mr. Doyle took off his hat. “Or would be happy but for what brings me to town. The major’s to home with his old war wound festered.”

  This was dismaying news. “That wound? But Major Aubrey has been in such good health these last years.”

  Mr. Doyle hesitated. “Not as good as he’d have ye think. ’Tisn’t the first time the wound’s troubled him these six months past, but he’d never have us tell Mr. McClaren. It’d come right on its own, sure. But this time he’s taken to his bed, so by his leave or no, I’ve come.”

  Lydia’s frustration and worry mirrored Mr. Doyle’s. “What do you mean by ‘it’d come right on its own’? What has Major Aubrey done for—” She broke off the question when, his face stiffening, Mr. Doyle put a hand to her shoulder.

  Behind her, in broken English, another voice spoke. “Who is Aw-bree with wound?”

  Startled, she turned to find the Oneida, Clear Day, standing close behind her. Lydia’s gaze traveled over the feathers tied in his graying scalp-lock, the silver loops in his ears. The intensity of his eyes.

  “You say name, Aw-bree?”

  “Yes. Major Aubrey. My father’s friend.” And her own, she thought, her mind still a roil of worry and distraction.

  “He redcoat soldier?” Clear Day asked.

  Lydia looked closer at the Indian, bewildered by his interest. “He used to be. Why do you ask?”

  Clear Day ignored the question. “Where fire?”

  Lydia shook her head. Fire? Did he mean the infected wound? She glanced at Mr. Doyle, but he seemed as mystified as she, and none too happy with the Indian’s queries.

  The Oneida tried again. “Where Aw-bree lodge?”

  The man must be a healer after all. Did he wish to see Major Aubrey to treat his wound? Lydia could think of no other explanation for his interest. Yet something a shade too urgent in the man’s gaze kindled her unease. Before she could decide what to say, Hanging Kettle turned and spoke to the man in Mohawk. Clear Day stepped back from her, ending the conversation. Papa instructed Jacob to finish transactions with Hanging Kettle and beckoned Mr. Doyle into the back room. With a frown at Clear Day, Lydia followed.

  “…a mild fever as yet,” Mr. Doyle was saying. “But a bad case of pigheadedness, you might say, has confounded matters.” The major, it followed, had saddled his horse that morning to ride to the Binne Kill, concealing the state of his troublesome wound. He’d barely made it to the road before tumbling from the saddle. “Maura caught the gelding wanderin’ back and ran up the lane to find the major pickin’ himself up off the verge. He admitted the wound’s been threatenin’ to break for days. So it has done.”

  Lydia listened as her papa asked for details, knowing he’d set himself to go to the farm. “May I ride with you, Papa, and help with the major?”

  Her father shook his head. “Och, Lydia. There’s nay need. Ye’ve enough to keep ye busy to home, aye?”

  Both the Indians, Mr. Doyle, and Papa had left the shop, which Lydia minded while Jacob ate the dinner she’d brought. Papa had grabbed no more than a morsel on his way out to the farm. She hoped Mrs. Doyle would offer him something and see that he ate it.

  “Hope you didn’t want any of that pie.” Jacob came out of the back, wiping his mouth with a sleeve. He grinned as he went to the ledger at the end of the counter. “I’m afraid I demolished it.”

  “Naturally.” Lydia tried to match his mood, but her thoughts were miles to the west. Or most of her thoughts. “You did that well, you know.”

  Jacob’s burnished head, bent over the figures jotted earlier, lifted. “What? Eat pie?”

  Lydia rolled her eyes. “That never fails to amaze. I meant Hanging Kettle. You’d never dealt with him alone before, had you?”

  Jacob’s brows rose. “I was nervous. Think he noticed?”

  “I think that gift you made of the soap pleased him. Amused him too. Did you see the way that Oneida grimaced at its smell?”

  Jacob’s eyes twinkled. “That’s what gave me the notion.”

  “Indians hold generosity in high regard—so Hanging Kettle reminds Papa over and again. It was well done.” It had been an offhand remark. The change that came over Jacob’s features surprised Lydia. He was looking at her as intently as that Oneida had done, but in a different manner.

  Maybe it was down to how the window-light fell, but for the first time it struck Lydia that Jacob van Bergen was a man grown. And not a bad-looking one. When had his blemishes cleared? His jaw grown so firm? His shoulders so wide? It was as if she was seeing him for the first time in years. And something else was happening. The air between them had taken on the crackling weightiness it sometimes did before a thunderstorm came rolling down the valley. A little unnerved by it, she hurried to say, “Did Hanging Kettle say who Clear Day was? A friend of his?”

  Jacob hesitated, still staring at her. “It was my impression they knew each other but slightly.” A flush rose from his neckcloth, staining his lean cheeks. “Lydia…next time I’m called to tend a patient, you’d be welcome to accompany me.”

  Lydia was surprised by the offer, even touched, until it occurred to her to wonder how much it could mean. Jacob was barely past his apprenticeship. The denizens of Schenectady wouldn’t often call on him while Papa was available. As he would be, surely, for years yet.

  Still it was kindly meant, and she thanked him for it.

  Two weeks later, Lydia snatched a few moments to hurry down to the Binne Kill and learned from Mr. Boswell that Reginald Aubrey hadn’t been to work in all that time. Alarmed by the news, she longed to go out to the farm, but no one was free to escort her. Jacob and Papa were busy caring for two families south of town fallen victim to the smallpox, which meant she was the one on hand when Mr. Doyle returned in
urgent need of an apothecary.

  The major’s wound had worsened.

  “The pox is spreading,” Lydia explained. “The town physicians have been called out as well. I’ll leave a note for Papa,” she hurried to add as Mr. Doyle’s face registered dismay. “He or Jacob will come after us as soon as they’re able.”

  She’d fished out a scrap of foolscap from a drawer and begun writing before Mr. Doyle registered her intention. “Come after us? If you mean what I think—”

  “At the least,” Lydia said, refusing to acknowledge the protest, “I can sit with the major and give Heledd and Mrs. Doyle a rest.”

  She thought it worrisome that Mr. Doyle barely hesitated. “Have you a horse I could be saddlin’?”

  “Papa has it.” She dipped the quill and finished her note. “I’ll be out directly. I need but a moment and a quick stop at the house.”

  Lydia left the note on the counter, then filled her satchel with oil, flannel, linen bandaging, and every herb she could think of to poultice a wound so reluctant to heal. At the last she took a small, elongated case from a window display. Whether she’d have the nerve to use what it contained—should it prove needful—she couldn’t say, but she’d every intention of doing something more for the major than sitting by cooling his brow.

  Maura Doyle was nigh to losing her self-possession in the kitchen of the Aubreys’ farmhouse. Confronted with Lydia instead of her papa or Jacob, she raised her hands in surrender. “He’s after treatin’ smallpox? Heaven help us—with the major fevered and that wound a suppuratin’ mess, us two nigh to keelin’ over, and Rowan with the fields and stock to tend.”