Twin Willows: A Novel (15 page)

Does Bear’s Daughter hear him?
Willow wondered. She hesitated for a moment, then as the rattling of her mother’s breath grew ever more pronounced, she gently withdrew her hand from her mother’s grasp. Covering her head with her blanket, Willow turned in the same direction as White Eagle and began her own Death Song.

When she had finished the chant, Willow spread her blanket and lay beside her mother. Wide awake, she waited for the long night to end, for the Death Spirit to take her mother, or for
Wishemenetoo
, the Great Good Spirit, to restore her health.

Willow also waited to learn her own fate. Although White Eagle had made a promise to her mother, such vows were not always kept.
I will go with this man and be glad of it
, she thought, and wondered if he knew that it was so.

White Eagle sat beside the fire and kept it burning brightly until the darkness faded to gray.

Somewhere toward the dawn, Bear’s Daughter’s struggle for breath ended, and her chest no longer moved. At first light Willow found her lying as she had been the night before, yet with a stillness not of the living. A trace of sorrow lingered on her mother’s face, along with an expression that was almost quiet satisfaction.

White Eagle watched silently as Willow performed her last service for Bear’s Daughter. She placed flat pebbles over her mother’s eyes, washed her face and limbs, and wrapped her as well as she could in her blanket.

When she had finished, Willow rocked back on her heels, her face taut with grief. “What more can be done? I will not leave my mother here alone.”

White Eagle picked up his tomahawk. “This soil is light. Her grave will be here in this place.”

White Eagle found a level spot beneath a massive chestnut tree and with his tomahawk began to break the ground. Willow picked up her ax and joined him. In silence they dug a shallow depression. They laid Bear’s Daughter in her last resting place, her feet facing east, the place of new beginnings, as was the custom. When they finished, the clouds that had brooded all morning began to produce a drizzling rain.

Still without speaking, White Eagle broke up their camp and removed all traces of the fire that had burned the night before. When all was ready, he turned to Willow and put his arms around her waist. She supposed he meant to help her onto his horse, but instead, he moved one hand to the middle of her back and drew her toward him. Willow laid her head on his shoulder. The salt of his sweat mingled with her tears, the first she had shed since her mother’s death.

White Eagle stood quietly for several minutes, stroking her hair and allowing her to weep. His surprisingly gentle touch soothed her as nothing else ever had, and Willow closed her eyes, grateful for his presence. Then White Eagle touched her cheeks with his flattened palms, wiping away her tears. “Do not cry, Willow. We go now to Shawnee Town. There you will be safe.”

White Eagle lifted Willow onto the horse, then swung into the saddle in front of her. With White Eagle’s back to her, Willow took a deep breath and asked the most important question of her entire life. “What will be done with me in your village?”

White Eagle looked back at her, inadvertently jerking on the reins so that his horse suddenly sidestepped. Willow grabbed at White Eagle’s arm to keep from falling off.

“Did you not hear? I have said that I will take care of you. Tall Oak will give us a
wegiwa
.”

Apparently not expecting any further response from Willow, White Eagle turned around again and rode out of the camp. Willow held on with her arms loosely around his waist as the horse settled into a steady gait. She barely resisted the temptation to lay her head against his broad back.

Tall Oak will give us a wegiwa
, White Eagle had said. Truly, he must mean that she would be his woman.

Never had Willow experienced such a strange mixture of grief and joy. Her heart ached for the mother she had just lost. But Willow also rejoiced that White Eagle would keep his promise to Bear’s Daughter.

Now Willow could only pray to
Wishemenetoo
that White Eagle would come to feel the same love toward her as she already felt for him.

B
RYAN’S
S
TATION

Anna soon discovered that life in a forted settlement would be unlike anything she had known. The lean-to where she slept made Miss Martin’s attic seem spacious. The only light and air came from a few small openings through which rifles could be fired. Because of their cramped quarters, everyone in the Station stayed outside most of the time.

Within a week, Anna learned the names of nearly all her new neighbors, although it was harder to sort out the many children always underfoot. Her father told her that sixty-four children, forty-eight men, and thirty-two women currently lived at Bryan’s Station. Not one of them was named Bryan.

“Four Bryan brothers from North Carolina started the station,” Ian explained, “but when the oldest was killed by Indians, the other three went back home.”

“Plenty of others took their places soon enough,” Rebecca added.

Anna was surprised to see that so many craftsmen lived at the Station, including a cooper, cabinetmaker, and even a hatter. Most were married, but among the single men were older sons who’d come with their families and other men who ventured alone. Most of the bachelors lived in the blockhouses at the four corners of the Station. Among them was Richard Story, a portly ex-schoolmaster. Although he looked nothing like Stuart Martin, his occupation reminded Anna of Stuart—not that she needed any prompting. Anna had quickly written to let Stuart know she had safely reached Bryan’s Station and hoped to see him soon. She wondered if he would read her longing for him between every line.

Ian regarded Anna curiously when she asked him to dispatch it on his next trip into Lexington. “So ye’re writing my friend Martin, eh? Ye never said ye knew him all that well.”

Anna tried to appear unconcerned. “He was kind to me when I was in his aunt’s school. He holds you in such high regard, I’m sure he’d like to know where you live now.”

Ian’s eyes twinkled. “I’m not so sure Stuart’s concerned about
my
whereabouts,” he said.

Anna tried to feel hopeful when her father rode out of the Station with her letter. She’d done all she could—any further contact between them was now up to Stuart. Soon he would finish his studies—and her letter would tell him where to find her.

Bit by bit, Ian told Anna what he’d been doing since the war’s end. Realizing that his old life of hunting and trading among the Indians was no longer practical, he’d joined many others to make a land claim when the Kentucky land opened up for settlement. He’d lived nearby on his own acreage until a few months ago, when the winter weather broke and bands of raiding Indians became a constant threat. In just such a raid had Rebecca been widowed and moved into Bryan’s Station with her brother. When he decided to return to Virginia, he left her his land and cabin.

“I think your father really married me to get this cabin,” Rebecca said one evening as they all sat on the doorstone in the deepening twilight.

Ian had made a small smudge fire to discourage the many biting night insects, and between its smoke and the dim light, Anna couldn’t see Rebecca’s face well enough to know if she jested. Even though her father’s wife had a strong independent streak and often spoke more fiercely than tactfully, Rebecca also had a lighter side. More than once Anna had seen Rebecca coax a smile from her usually serious husband.

“Nay, wife—had I been looking for a home, I’d have wed that widow in Lexington.”

“Then you’d not have the two Engler parcels of land to add to your own.” Rebecca glanced at Anna. “Your father could be a wealthy man if the savages would just leave us in peace.”

“Why don’t they?” Anna asked.

Ian sighed heavily. “Before I left the Muskingum, I heard the British solemnly promise the Delaware that their big chief across the waters would let the Delaware keep their hunting grounds in Kan-tuck-e if they helped the Redcoats fight the white settlers. King George’s orders kept settlers on the other side of the mountains, but once Cornwallis gave up the fight, no force on earth could stop them. Still, a few British and other whites who seek to gain from attacking settlers tell the Indians otherwise, and keep them on the warpath.”

“Are my mother’s people fighting whites too?” Anna feared his answer even before she heard it.

“Silverwillow’s people are all scattered, from what I hear. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if some Delaware are among the raiders.”

Rebecca slapped at her forearm. “Whoever’s to blame, the result is that the savages keep pestering us all, just like these mosquitoes. Each time we think they’re finally goin’ to leave us alone, back they come, killin’ and stealin’ stock.”

“It seems you’d be afraid to stay here, then.” Anna directed her words to Rebecca, but her father answered.

“Nay, lass. The raiders come in small groups. We don’t leave the Station but to tend crops, and that in large parties with a guard. We’re aware of the danger, but we aren’t fearful. If I didn’t think you were safe here, I would send you back East.”

Anna said nothing, but once more she felt a sense of loss that she’d probably never see the place where Silverwillow had lived, or meet any of those who shared her mother’s blood.

As July melted into August, Anna settled into the routine life of the Station, hoping each day to get a letter from Stuart Martin. Her presence caused quite a stir among the Station’s bachelors, some of whom awkwardly set out to court her, only to be politely, but firmly, rebuffed. As a result, some in the Station said that Ian McKnight’s half-breed daughter held herself to be better than they, and any other men who might have a notion to court her kept their distance.

One day when she rode into Lexington with her father, Anna’s heart nearly stopped at the sight of a tall blond man who walked a few paces ahead of her. She had never seen Stuart Martin in buckskins, but this man’s bearing and build were so familiar that Anna ran to catch up to him, certain that it was Stuart. She was about to call out his name when the man stopped and turned aside to enter a tavern. Her heart fell when she saw his beard and coarse features, so unlike what she remembered of Stuart.

That night Anna found it hard to fall asleep. Adding to her restlessness, the day’s heat had concentrated in the windowless lean-to where she slept, making it even more sweltering than usual. Sometime after midnight, she took a blanket and slipped out of the cabin in search of a cool breeze. In the light of an almost full moon, she climbed the palisade nearest the McKnight cabin. Spreading her blanket on the rough-hewn timbers, she sat on it and leaned back against the wall.

Anna could barely make out the form of the lookout on the north palisade, his rifle barrel glinting in the moonlight. The men took turns nightly watching for marauding Indians. Since her arrival, none had come, but the very necessity of such caution dashed Anna’s remaining hopes of ever getting to her mother’s land.

Her father was obviously quite happy with his new wife, and he didn’t need his daughter’s continued presence. Anna’s only reason to stay in Kentucky now was to wait for Stuart to come to her.

He is probably on his way this very minute
, Anna told herself. She closed her eyes and imagined their meeting. It would probably be in the daytime, and Stuart would wear the bucksins he had traveled in. She pictured him with a beard, then dismissed the image as not suiting a man of his refinement. Besides, her father’s beard had always scratched Anna when he kissed her. On the other hand, Stuart’s clean-shaven cheeks were just rough enough to be manly and exciting.

Stuart would take her into his arms immediately, of course. They would kiss a long time before Stuart told his former colonel that he wanted to marry his daughter. They would have to go to Lexington to be married, and perhaps they’d stay there for a time, at least until Stuart’s future was decided. There was a cabin at Bryan’s Station just vacated by some people who were planning to move to Danville; it might still be available when Anna and Stuart were ready to live in their own private place.

Thinking of the look that she would see in his eyes on their wedding night, Anna’s body flushed with a rising warmth that had nothing to do with the heat of the summer night. Stuart was older and obviously more experienced in matters of love than Anna, but from what had already happened between them, she expected he would be both a considerate and a passionate lover. She longed to show him how ready she was to meet him more than halfway, to allow him to break down the last barrier that prevented them from truly being one flesh, now and forever more.

With a sigh, Anna lay on her side and caressed the rough bulk of the blanket beside her, pretending that Stuart slept there. She was all too painfilly aware that he did not, but until the welcome day that Stuart actually arrived in Kentucky, her imagination would have to sustain her.

P
RINCETON

On a warm August morning, Stuart Martin looked around the quarters he would soon be leaving, and thought how much his life had changed since he had come here. Compared to many Princeton students, he lived in luxury, quartered in the home of the brothers he tutored. His small private room opened onto the study where he spent several hours each evening preparing his charges to take their Princeton entrance examinations.

When Charles Hoagland, the elder son, had failed to be admitted to the freshman class, his father had hired Stuart to tutor both Charles and his younger brother.

At first, Stuart considered himself extremely fortunate to get the post. Not having to pay for his room and board enabled him to hold on to more of his small inheritance. Further, if and when Princeton accepted the boys, Stuart would also receive a sum of money. “An admirable arrangement,” Mr. Hoagland had called it, and at the time, Stuart agreed.

But that was before he realized just how deeply he had fallen in love.

The stacks of shirts and smallclothes he started to pack reminded him of the past Christmas, when Anna Willow McKnight had entered his room at Miss Martin’s and hidden her gift to him among his shirts. It was then that he had kissed her for the first time. The second time their lips met, she had kissed him back, and nothing in his life had been quite the same since.

Anna Willow
.

Like an infatuated schoolboy, Stuart often spent late winter evenings writing her name on scraps of paper, then adding “Martin,” as if she were already his wife. He liked to speak the name out loud, emphasizing the trochaic cadence of its syllables:
An
-na
Wil
-low
Mar
-tin. Many times when he should have been concentrating on Euclidean proofs or Horatian odes, he found himself seeing her dark eyes and hearing her sweet voice instead. He imagined his hands moving from her long chestnut hair to caress her body. He took pleasure in mentally kissing the palms of her hands, the tips of her fingers, each earlobe. In these pleasant dreams, she was always warm and pliant, instantly responding to his slightest touch. Not a poet himself, he nevertheless wished he had the ability to compose tender verses that would convince her of the depth of his love.

Stuart knew the reality was quite different, however. No amount of imagining how wonderful it would be when he and Anna were together could change the fact that, for the present, he and Anna were not only physically separated, but also unable to share their thoughts.

The territory where Anna had traveled to since her Commencement from his aunt’s school was far away, and it took many weeks for letters to reach there. He had so much he wanted to tell Anna—and no way to do it. He hoped no harm had come to her. Most of all, he hoped the feelings for him she had expressed in her warm kisses had not changed.

Strange, Stuart thought, how Colonel McKnight’s gangly girl-child had turned into the lovely young woman who now occupied the center of his life. None of the other young women he had held possessed even a faint glimmer of Anna’s rare combination of insightful intellect, unusual beauty, and passionate innocence. Each time he saw her, each moment they shared, had made Stuart want her even more.

His mind returned to their brief April encounter, when their growing intimacy had been cut short by his aunt’s unexpected appearance. It was no wonder that Stuart had felt compelled to return to her. He had finally done so on the day of Anna’s graduation from Miss Martin’s, even though it meant that he jeopardized his own studies by missing an important examination.

It was worth it
, he thought. Since that day, time and time again he had relived each embrace, every word they had shared in the carriage house. His loins ached with desire at the memory of her touch, of the way she had so sweetly yielded to him, of the breathless eagerness to surrender herself completely that had made it even harder to leave her again.

Sometimes he allowed himself to imagine that he had possessed her there when he had the chance, before reason stepped in and overruled his heart. At those times, filled anew with frustration and longing, Stuart immersed himself in his own studies and redoubled his efforts with his pupils.

How ironic, Stuart thought, that this tutoring post, which had once seemed so advantageous, had instead kept him and Anna apart. If he were not living with the Hoaglands, and if he were concerned only with his own education, Stuart could have brought Anna back to Princeton with him the very day of her Commencement. Stuart thought of his aunt’s likely outrage at such an act, and smiled faintly.

But all of that was about to come to an end. Stuart had completed his baccalaureate degree, and had just learned that both Hoagland brothers had passed their entrance examinations. At last, he was free to leave Princeton, free to be with Anna. It was all he had thought about for months, but now that the time had come, Stuart wasn’t sure where she was.

Anna’s first letter had reached him not long after she left Philadelphia. It verified that she was at her cousins’ home near Bedford, but she had said that she might not stay there long. He immediately wrote back that he would come to Bedford as soon as he could; even though he’d heard nothing further from Anna, he still planned to go there.

“Master Martin, are you in there?”

Stuart put down the shirt he’d been about to fold and opened the door to admit a smiling Mr. Hoagland. “I suppose you must have heard the news already,” he said.

“Indeed! Charles ran all the way to the counting-house to tell me. He was so out of breath, he just handed me the dean’s letter.”

“You must be quite pleased at its contents.”

“Yes. And I hope, Master Martin, that you will be equally as pleased with the contents of this bag.”

Stuart took the leather pouch from Mr. Hoagland, pleasantly surprised by its unexpected weight.
Gold coins
, he thought. His heart beat faster as he realized that this might be enough to give him and Anna a start, at least. “Thank you, sir. You are most generous.”

“No more than you deserve.” Mr. Hoagland looked past Stuart to the evidence of his packing. “Are you leaving so soon? I had hoped we might persuade you to stay on a while longer. The boys have been admitted to Princeton, but it’s more than likely that they will have even more need of a tutor when they commence their studies.”

“If so, you can ask the dean to recommend someone. I must be on my way.”

Mr. Hoagland nodded. “Then I wish you Godspeed.” He started to go, then slapped at his pocket and turned back to Stuart. “Say, I almost forgot—the dean asked Charles to give you these letters.” He squinted at the top one as he held them out to Stuart. “This one came all the way from Kentucky County—I never saw a letter from that far west before.”

“I cannot believe that you would refuse such a fine opportunity, Stuart. My school needs a good teacher, and you need a position.”

Stuart sat at his aunt’s table in Philadelphia where he had often helped Anna McKnight with her studies, so reminded of her that he scarcely heard his aunt’s words. Being back in this house where he and Anna had met and fallen in love only made him more impatient to see her and be with her again.

“Stuart! Are you listening to me?”

His aunt’s face reflected her anger and bewilderment, and Stuart felt a moment of pity for the lonely woman. He knew that Matilda Martin cared for him as much as she could care for anyone, yet she had never quite known how to reconcile her affection for him with her own selfish ambition.

Stuart nodded and spoke matter-of-factly. “Yes, Aunt Matilda. Your offer is quite generous, but I cannot accept it.”

“Then I must assume that you have a better prospect in mind.”

Stuart patted his coat pocket, which contained his last letters from Anna. He could close his eyes and quote every word. The looping, somewhat uneven handwriting was as familiar to him now as his own. Although the first of the letters had been posted from Bedford, she had written that she was in Pittsburgh, on her way to Kentucky. Anna’s latest letter told him she was in Kentucky with her father, where she waited for him to join her.

“I do, Aunt. I plan to start a school of my own in Kentucky.”

If Stuart had told his aunt he was leaving for China in a rowboat, she could not have looked more stunned. “Why would a man with your education even consider going to that wild land?” she asked.

Because Anna is there
, he could have said, but knowing how his aunt felt about her former student, he did not. “Perhaps because that’s where I’m most needed.”

Matilda Martin’s face reflected her bewilderment. “Sometimes I wonder if being in the army all those years left you unbalanced. Kentucky, indeed!”

Less than a week later, Stuart felt growing excitement as he loaded his small store of possessions onto a Kentucky-bound flatboat. A hidden leather pouch held the coins left over from outfitting himself for life in the wilderness and paying his passage.

At the last moment, when she finally understood that her nephew meant to go to Kentucky if he had to walk, Matilda Martin had pressed a money pouch into his hands, saying she felt obliged to give it to him for his father’s sake. When he opened it later, he found that it, like Mr. Hoagland’s, contained a far greater amount than he had expected.

The money had allowed Stuart to travel in relative comfort to the mouth of the Greenbrier River. From there, he bargained for passage on a flatboat bound for Kentucky via the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers. If all went well, in less than two weeks, Stuart would be welcomed by his old army companion, Ian McKnight—and, even more important to Stuart, by his daughter.

Stuart hadn’t written that he was coming, in part because he knew that he would likely get to Lexington before any letter could, but also because he wanted to see the expressions of surprise on their faces when he arrived, unannounced.

Despite the flatboat captain’s general words of warning, most of the passengers had no serious fears about the trip they were about to undertake, although they were all aware that they would pass uncomfortably close to land where several groups of hostile Indians still harassed settlers. They passed the first trouble spot without incident, but the worst would lie ahead, especially when they reached the waters of the Ohio. From then on, whenever they tied up to the shore for the night, the captain posted double and sometimes even triple guards.

One night, a week into the journey, Stuart stood watch with Davy Darby, the youngest of those who voyaged alone. He had introduced himself to Stuart as soon as he’d heard Stuart’s name.

“My family’s from Lancaster, but my sister Felicia went to a Miss Martin’s School in Philadelphia,” he said. “Might you know of it?”

Stuart stared at the boy, whose features were very like his sister’s. “Yes, that is my aunt’s school. I taught there some. I remember Miss Felicia Darby very well. As I recall, she had a friend there named Anna McKnight.”

Davy had smiled widely at the coincidence. “Aye, that’s so. She came home with my sister after they graduated. Felicia’s married now.”

“Have you heard anything more about Miss McKnight?”

“Not directly. She went on to some relative’s house in Bedford, but she wrote she aimed to go to Kentucky. Maybe we’ll meet up with her there.”

All through the journey, Anna was never far from Stuart’s mind, most especially when the flatboat briefly came under fire from Indians on the north side of the river. He knew that she had safely reached her father, but that didn’t stop him from wondering if was she still all right.

Stuart would be uneasy until Anna was in his arms once more. And this time, he would not hold back; he would give her all his love.