Twin Willows: A Novel (8 page)

Stuart raised Anna’s hands to his lips and kissed each finger in turn before he spoke again. “Your father is my friend, but apart from that, I love you too much to take advantage of your youth and innocence.”

Even as tears of joy gathered behind her eyelids, Anna sought confirmation for what she had heard. “You do love me?”

Stuart put a hand on each of her shoulders and lightly brushed her lips with his. “What has passed between us should prove it.”

“Why do you pull away from me, then?”

“Because I have no right to claim your love yet. At the moment, I have neither prospects nor money.”

“I don’t care about money.”

Stuart smiled slightly. “Maybe not, but unfortunately, a certain amount of it is necessary.”

“Maybe you have no sure prospects now, but undoubtedly you will when you finish your studies.”

He opened the side curtains, admitting enough light to reveal the set of his features, then turned back to her. “I hope so, but for now, we must live apart. Do you understand that, Anna?”

The tears she shed now were in sorrow, and speech again failed her. Anna nodded, and Stuart took her into his arms and kissed her, thoroughly but without his previous passion, then leaned back to look at her as if memorizing each line and curve of her features.

“What will happen now?” Anna asked when she found her voice.

“Have you had further word from your father?”

Anna pointed to her necklace. “Father sent this as a Commencement gift. He’s near Lexington, in Kentucky, and says he can’t leave his claim to come for me. He told me to go to my cousins’ farm.”

“It’s pretty,” Stuart said of the necklace, then sighed. “Oh, Anna, how I wish I could take you back to Princeton with me this very day.”

Anna’s heart ached with the knowledge that they were about to part again, but she felt sad joy in what she saw in Stuart’s violet eyes.
When he says he loves me, Stuart surely speaks the truth. How can I let him go now
?

“Stay here tonight,” she urged. “I’ll come back to the carriage house after Miss Martin goes to bed.”

He shook his head. “No, that would be dangerous for us both. You should go back inside before you’re missed, and I must return to Princeton.”

Anna put her arms around Stuart’s neck and raised her face to be kissed. “I am willing to face the danger. After all, what could Miss Martin do to me now?”

“My aunt is not the risk that concerns me.” Stuart brushed her lips lightly, then opened the carriage door. “Don’t worry, Anna. We will yet be together—I swear it. Until then, you must write to me at Princeton College.”

“And you will write back?” Anna asked.

Stuart took her into his arms one last time. “Yes, my love, if you will tell me where. For now, all I have to offer are my words—and my love.”

As Stuart kissed her, Anna wanted with all her heart to believe him.

At Anna’s request, the cook summoned Felicia to the kitchen to help restore Anna’s coiffure before she went back to the parlor.

“You look different,” Felicia said, but Anna was reluctant to tell even her best friend that she had been with Stuart.

“I went for a walk, and the wind blew my hair. It wasn’t anchored very well,” she said. Felicia looked dubious, but she let the matter drop.

With her friend’s help, Anna managed to look normal enough to escape Miss Martin’s notice for the rest of the afternoon. The headmistress, tired from the long day of Commencement, merely nodded when Anna asked to be excused from supper, pleading a headache.

Anna barely slept that night, instead reliving every word, every kiss, that she and Stuart had shared. She and Felicia arose at dawn, and it seemed no time at all before their luggage had been carried down the stairs and loaded onto the wagon that would take them to Lancaster.

Miss Martin came out to see them off. Standing stiffly on the doorstep, she offered her hand to Felicia, then to Anna.

“I trust that you will have safe journeys,” she said.

“Thank you, Miss Martin.”
And by the way, your nephew and I are in love
. Anna longed to say the words, but she did not.

Anna climbed up onto the wagon seat beside Felicia. The drayman slapped his reins across the horses’ backs, and the wagon creaked away from Miss Martin’s door, each turn of the wheel taking her away from Stuart Martin and toward an uncertain future.

W
ACCACHALLA

The warmth of the sun, along with the medicine and herbs Willow gave her, combined to help Bear’s Daughter shake off the lingering effects of her near-fatal fever. She gradually grew stronger, until the day came when Bear’s Daughter walked without help, then went about her normal activities.

Willow watched her mother’s improvement with mixed feelings. Of course, she was happy over Bear’s Daughter recovery, but she also knew that Otter was a man of his word. He had stayed away from Willow while she cared for her mother. Now that Bear’s Daughter no longer needed her constant attention, Willow feared he would soon insist on wedding her.

As if she knew Willow’s mind, one warm day when they sat grinding corn outside their lodge, Bear’s Daughter asked what had become of Otter.

“I do not know, my mother. I suppose he is still raiding.”

Bear’s Daughter looked closely at Willow. “You know more about this thing. Does Otter speak to you again?”

Willow nodded. “He still wants to take me into his lodge. He knows I do not want it.”

“Ah. What says Otter about that?”

Willow shrugged. “Only that he will ask again.”

“Ayee, it is that way with a man. He will want most what he cannot have.”

“Or take it by force,” Willow added.

Bear’s Daughter compressed her lips. “Has this Otter dared to put his hands on you? He should know that Black Snake will not allow such a thing to happen in his village.”

“Calm yourself, my mother. Otter has not harmed me. He thinks I should be glad that he offers to take me off Black Snake’s hands.”

Bear’s Daughter made a derisive sound and spat into the grass. “I will see Black Snake about this thing before Otter comes back.”

“I will go to the chief with you,” Willow said.

“No, I go alone. Help me get dressed.”

Willow watched Bear’s Daughter make her way to the chief’s lodge. She marveled at how straight her mother still held her back, how sure her steps, even after being so ill, and felt a wave of tenderness for her.
My mother is old
, Willow realized sadly.
But none of her fighting spirit has left her
.

Bear’s Daughter was gone so long that Willow feared she might have had some mishap. “Are you all right, my mother?” she asked when she finally returned.

“Yes. Black Snake spoke long about Chief Netawatawees.”

“Who is that?” Willow asked.

“The chief of the Delaware village on the Muskingum where you were born. Black Snake hears that some trouble has come to his old friend.”

“What has that to do with us?” Willow asked, bewildered.

“Black Snake says it would be a good thing for us to go to this place and find out for him what happens there.”

Willow’s heart began to beat faster in anticipation of the possibility of leaving Waccachalla, even if only for a short while, but she spoke cautiously. “It is a long journey to the Delaware villages. Why does Black Snake not send a warrior to do this thing?”

“I do not ask the chief his reasons. Black Snake has asked it, and it will be done. My old village lies to the northeast on a well-marked trail. I would see it once again.”

Her mother’s melancholy tone frightened Willow. “I fear that my mother lacks the strength for such a journey.”

“You are my strength, Littlewillow. We can no longer stay here.”

Willow sat in silence for a moment, beginning to understand the real reason Black Snake was sending them away. “What about Otter?”

The creases around Bear’s Daughter’s mouth bent in a fleeting smile. “Otter has duties here. When he returns from the O-hio-se-pe, he will not be allowed to follow us. It is likely that he will finally weary of waiting for you and choose himself another wife.”

Willow knew an almost overwhelming sense of relief that she might yet escape a forced marriage to Otter, but as she had been taught from birth, she made no open show of her feelings. “It is good. When do we begin this journey?”

Her expression equally impassive, Bear’s Daughter glanced around the lodge at their few possessions. “Black Snake would have us go when the signs show such a journey will be good, perhaps in another waxing of the moon.”

Willow nodded. As much as she wanted to be out of Otter’s sight, Willow knew the delay would help her mother gain strength. “We need time to ready ourselves for this journey.”

Bear’s Daughter nodded. She closed her eyes and rocked back and forth as she did when she communicated with the Great Spirit. Willow couldn’t make out the words her mother mumbled, but she knew their intention, which she also shared.

Make smooth our path and direct us there in safety
.

Although Willow knew that the way that lay ahead would not be easy, her heart sang a silent song of hope.

As difficult as this journey might be, almost anything would be better than living in Otter’s lodge.

L
ANCASTER
, P
ENNSYLVANIA

The journey that took Felicia and Anna from Philadelphia to Lancaster went as well as might be hoped, with a few long delays caused by wagon wheels that broke or came loose, and had to be repaired on the spot. Such things were to be expected.

Although they were both tired when they arrived, Anna and Felicia talked far into the night, promising never to forget their friendship. The next morning, each tried unsuccessfully not to cry when Felicia’s younger brother Davy loaded Anna’s luggage into the family buggy and took her into Lancaster to board a westbound wagon.

As the wagon carried her still farther from Philadelphia, Anna felt a pang knowing that each turn of the wheels put more distance between herself and Stuart Martin; but for now she had no choice.

And the following day, when the wagon finally left the Bedford road and entered the land to which she had been brought as an infant, despite everything, Anna felt a sense of homecoming. The property had remained in the Barfield family for many years. Fresh from Scotland, Agnes McKnight had come there at fifteen as the bride of William Barfield. At the time, her brother Ian, her only living relative, was presumed dead, having been taken in an Indian raid several years earlier. Agnes and William’s marriage spanned twenty years until William’s death, and produced six children, only two of whom had lived to maturity.

Anna knew the story by heart: Agnes and William had been married almost two years when Ian McKnight finally returned home. At once William Barfield offered to deed him the McKnight land, which Agnes had brought as her marriage dower, but Ian had refused it. By then he’d made a life for himself among the Delaware Indians with whom he traded, and he declared he had no desire to live in Pennsylvania.

Agnes had always felt indebted to her brother for his generosity, and always welcomed his visits.

Aunt Agnes paid that debt many times over when she took me in
, Anna thought, and tears came to her eyes.

“Looks like some folks are to home,” the driver said.

Anna saw the arrow-straight plume of smoke rising from the stone chimneys that flanked either end of the sturdy frame house. In this place she had early come to know that she was Anna Willow McKnight, not Barfield.

Quickly she wiped her eyes, determined not to give her cousins the pleasure of seeing her tears. In their childhood days they had sometimes played a cruel game they called “Indian Captive,” in which her cousins chased her. When they caught her, they tied her to a tree and made as if to burn her alive. Anna had heard that Indians never showed any emotion, but the harder she tried to keep from crying, the worse her cousins’ tortures became. Once they tied the bonds so tightly that she fainted. Thinking they had killed her, her cousins ran away. Aunt Agnes finally came upon her while herb-gathering and quickly revived her. No lasting harm had been done, but that had marked the end of her cousins’ Indian Captive game.

“At least the dogs are home,” Anna said as a half-dozen lop-eared hounds emerged from their resting places to raise a barking chorus.

The driver handed Anna down from the seat and put her luggage on the ground near the doorstone. He climbed back on his wagon, but when no one immediately emerged from the house, he hesitated a moment after gathering the reins and letting off the wheel-brake. “Are y’ sure—”

He was interrupted by a voice from inside the house. “What’s all the commotion?”

“It’s just me—Anna Willow,” she called back, as if it had been hours instead of months since she last stood at the Barfields’ doorstone. “It’s all right—you can go now,” she said to the driver, who nodded and slapped the reins across his team’s sturdy backs.

As the wagon jolted out of the yard, Anna had a momentary impulse to call after him to wait, that she had changed her mind about staying here, after all. But it quickly faded. For now, although it might not be what either she or her cousins preferred, Anna had nowhere else to go.

Her cousin Henry’s unsmiling face when he saw her confirmed that he probably wouldn’t make things easy for her. Henry had inherited his mother’s red hair and fair coloring, but his eyes were as dark as Anna’s, and he had the Barfield’s jerky spareness of figure.

“Anna Willow—I’m surprised to see you. You should have let us know you were coming.”

Anna was grateful that Henry stayed in the door-way, a safe distance away, thus sparing her the indignity of a forced cousinly kiss of greeting.

“I thought Father might have written you,” she said.

“No. We’ve heard nothing from Uncle Ian for many months. Everyone thought you’d probably stay on in Philadelphia.”

You mean you all hoped I would
, Anna thought. “Father wrote me to come back to the farm, so here I am.”

“What is, it, Henry?—Oh!”

Helen Thayer—now Helen Barfield, having married Henry a few weeks after his mother’s death—appeared in the doorway behind her husband.

Although she and Anna were almost the same age and had known each other for most of their lives, they’d never been friends. Anna always thought there was something hard about Helen, something in her character that matched her sharp features and shrill voice. With hair so blond it was nearly white, and light gray, almost transparent eyes, Helen enjoyed the local gossip that she could put a spell on anyone at will. Anna had never believed it, but from the way Helen looked at her at that moment, Anna thought her cousin’s wife would gladly hex her if she could.

“As you can see,” Henry said, “our cousin Anna Willow is back from the big city.”

Helen crossed her arms over her chest and gave Anna a searching glance. “I never expected to see you in these parts again—we thought you’d a-caught yourself a fine gentleman an’ be wed by this time.”

Anna returned Helen’s glance and spoke calmly. “Father didn’t send me to Miss Martin’s to find a husband.”

“Humph! Anyway, I hope you didn’t come back with so many city notions that you’ve forgot the way common folk live,” Helen said. “We don’t put on no airs around here.”

Anna thought of the way she had lived at Miss Martin’s, and smiled faintly. “Neither do I. And I don’t intend to cause you extra work—I’ll do my fair share and keep to my room the rest of the time.”

Helen and Henry exchanged glances, then Helen looked back to Anna.

“We’re using that room now ourselves—it’s better for the baby. You can have the attic.”

“Baby? You didn’t write me about a baby.”

“There’s hardly been time,” Henry said. “Little Henry came on April twentieth, several weeks early.”

“Congratulations,” Anna murmured. “What about James? Is he also married?”

Henry shook his head. “No, and with his lack of prospects, it’s not likely.”

A thin wail came from within the house, and Henry and Helen turned toward it in unison. Anna swallowed hard against the growing lump in her throat, picked up her smallest bag, and followed them inside.

Anna had known coming back to Bedford wouldn’t be easy, but she’d also harbored the hope that marriage might have mellowed Henry and Helen. Obviously, if anything, they seemed to resent her even more.

When Henry’s brother James came in for supper that evening, he seemed almost glad to see her again. Anna could scarcely believe it. Two years younger than his brother Henry and two years older than Anna, James Barfield looked more like his mother and now seemed to have inherited some of her pleasant disposition, as well. In the last few years before Anna left home, he had simply ignored her rather than antagonizing her, as Henry had continued to do.

“I thought you’d stay in Philadelphia City for good,” James said, repeating his brother’s words.

“No. I don’t think I’d like to live in a big city,” Anna said.

“Then what are your plans?” James asked.

“I’m not sure. Father told me I should return here. I suppose something will come along for me to do until he can come for me.”

“It had better,” Helen said sharply. “Ian McKnight hasn’t sent us anything toward your room and board, and now with the baby—”

James ignored his sister-in-law and stared at Anna. “You’ve done some growin’ up since the last time you were here,” he told her.

Helen frowned and spoke as if Anna weren’t present. “If anything, I’d say Anna looks even more like an Indian squaw the older she gets. She’d better not braid her hair around these parts, for a fact.”

Anna bit her lower lip and looked down at the table, struggling against the hurt in Helen’s words.

“She shouldn’t wear buckskin, neither,” Henry contributed.

To Anna’s relief, the baby chose that moment to begin crying, and as both parents rose at once to see to him, James looked across the table at Anna.

“I reckon my nephew’s bound to be the spoiledest brat in all of Pennsylvania,” he said.

“Henry surprises me—I didn’t think he’d make such an attentive father.”

“The newness will wear off soon, I’m sure,” James said. “At any rate, becomin’ a father hasn’t softened Henry up any.”

“So I noticed,” Anna said. “He and Helen—and perhaps you, as well—probably wish I’d stayed on in Philadelphia.”

James shook his head, but his expression told Anna that she wasn’t far from the mark. “If Mother was still with us, she’d be remindin’ us we ought to be kind to you. I reckon we heard that just about every day.”

The unspoken sadness that Anna had felt all day threatened to overwhelm her, and she knotted her hands in her lap and struggled to maintain control. “I miss Aunt Agnes so much,” she said softly. “I keep looking around, expecting to see her come in the door any moment with her herb basket . . .”

“I know. I still feel the same way myself. But Mother suffered so much there at the end, it was almost a relief to let her go. She just wasted away.”

“Who took care of her?” Anna asked.

“Helen—she brought her things over here and moved into Mother’s room when she took to her bed.”

“I don’t think of Helen as being a nurse,” Anna said. Although James said nothing, his face confirmed what she suspected; Helen had probably come to nurse his mother in order to catch Henry Barfield, and not from any charitable impulse.

Henry emerged from the bedroom carrying his son. “Little Henry was just wet,” he said.

“He’s always wet,” James muttered, too low for Henry to hear, and Anna smiled.

As long as there’s one person I can talk to in this household, I can stand it
, she thought.

The next day, Anna unpacked and wrote several letters, the first to Stuart telling him that she had arrived safely. She paused, debating how she should address him. “Dear Mr. Martin” seemed too formal, yet “My darling Stuart” sounded too familiar, even to her.

What if someone else reads this? The worry was not unfounded, but Anna decided she had to take that chance. Until she could be with Stuart in person, her letters would have to speak for her. She wanted to confirm the feelings she had for him, while letting him know where she was. But this first letter she would make brief and to the point. Anna hesitated, then began to write.

After sealing Stuart’s letter with a generous amount of wax, Anna began a letter to her father. She gave him the family news, but made no comment about how unwelcome her cousins had made her feel.

She was more candid in her note to Felicia. “You wouldn’t believe how much like Miss Martin’s I find the way I am living here,” she wrote. “I am not sure how long I can stay here, under these circumstances.”

That night at supper, Anna told James she wanted to go with him when he went to the Bedford market the next day.

Helen directed a sharp glance at Anna. “What business do you have in Bedford?”

“I have letters to post,” Anna said.

“We can all go,” Helen declared, as if Anna couldn’t be trusted in town.

The next day brought sunny weather. James left the wagon at a Bedford livery stable and helped Helen and Anna down. Saying that she would meet them there later, Helen Barfield walked away, holding the baby in her arms, and soon disappeared down a side street.

Anna and James exchanged amused glances. “That’s not the way to the market,” James said. “Helen must be aimin’ to visit someone.”

“I’m sure she has her own errands,” Anna replied absently, dismissing Helen as she took in the familiar market scene.

Bedford’s center teemed with people who had come from miles around to barter their goods at the monthly market. The kaleidoscopic scene provided a variety of competing sensations. Bleating sheep, mooing cows, and hawkers crying out the virtues of their wares reminded Anna of her childhood, when the Bedford market had seemed an almost magical place.

“Not much like the Philadelphia market, is it?” James asked.

Anna shrugged. “Actually, it’s very much like it, except in Philadelphia it’s much bigger, of course. And there aren’t any Indians around there.”

Anna looked at a group of Indians who occupied the same area they’d claimed for years. The men squatted beside stacks of hides and pelts, seldom talking. The women sat cross-legged on their trade blankets, speaking occasionally as they worked. Some wove baskets, while others applied beads to soft deerskin, stitched moccasins, or cared for the children who had come along with them.

In her childhood, Anna had watched the Indians from a safe distance and tried to imagine if her mother had really looked like any of them. But many of the squaws that came to Bedford were old and wrinkled, and none of the younger ones remotely resembled Anna’s mental image of Silverwillow.

Your mother was beautiful, my Anna Willow, the most beautiful of all the daughters of the Delaware tribe. Tall she was, taller than many men, and so graceful she could balance a pitcher of water on her head and walk up a hill without spillin’ a single drop
, Ian McKnight had told Anna.