Wicked Angel (Blackthorne Trilogy) (38 page)

      
Charity listened attentively to the lovely young woman whose nervous demeanor indicated her attempts to conceal her unease in what must be an exceedingly alien environment.
      
"Once Alex returns we will have a great wedding feast to honor the son and daughter-in-law of the Golden Eagle and the Dawn Woman. In the meanwhile, you will have time to learn our ways. I know they must seem strange, even frightening to you," she said gently.

      
Joss felt a bond with the older woman, whose kindness and keen wit were apparent. "I have wondered..." she began uneasily, then faltered.

      
"Why I chose to return here after being educated by my white father and marrying a white man?" Charity completed Joss's question, smiling. "I loved Alastair dearly but I was not welcome in Savannah. The only people who accepted me unconditionally were here. After my husband died and my son was grown, there was nothing left for me among the whites. The Muskogee had need of me. I could teach our children the skills they require to survive in a world that will one day belong to the Americans.

      
"My brother also grew up white. Then he was known as Nathaniel McKinny. Now he is Tall Crane and I am Listening Woman among the Muskogee. We have chosen to build a bridge between red and white in this place. My son's wife has also done this. Will you as well?" Her clear amber eyes studied Joss as if looking deep into her soul. It was disquieting yet in no way unfriendly.

      
"I, too, was a teacher of children who needed help to survive in a hostile world in London. I will try, Grandmother Charity."

* * * *

      
Joss rested that afternoon on the surprisingly comfortable mattress in the upstairs quarters of an adjacent house, which Charity had given them. Then she joined Barbara for a tour of the village. When Barbara indicated that it was time to join the women for their daily ablution in the river, Joss was horrified.

      
"You mean undress and bathe in ... in front of everyone?" she asked, aghast.

      
Barbara smiled. "Not everyone, just the other women and very small children. I had a bit of trouble with it at first myself, but one quickly learns to shed modesty when the alternative is to itch and perspire in the heat. Perhaps for the first few days we can go to a secluded spot farther upriver where no one will disturb us."

      
Joss nodded gratefully and they set out after gathering up drying cloths and clean clothing. Barbara included two pairs of the low-cut beaded leather slippers she called moccasins, but Joss indicated that she could not bare her legs in public no matter how hot and uncomfortable her boots were.

      
"Just watch that you do not get sweat blisters. Any wound festers in this heat."

      
Marvelous. Joss was liking life in the wilderness less with each passing day. But after a bath and a swim in a secluded inlet of the swift-running river, she felt refreshed.

      
She applied a cooling salve that Charity had given her to the numerous scratches and insect bites on her body, then dressed and began to brush out her hair. With the harsh American sun beating down on her head daily she no longer needed lemon rinses to keep the tawny bronze highlights in her hair, a small consolation for all her miseries.

      
Her eyes were irritated from the river water so she did not attempt to put drops in them. Instead she took her spectacles and perched them on her nose, ready to walk back to the village. Barbara had left her moments earlier with the admonition not to wander off while she went to spend time with the other women at the communal bathing pool. Since Poc remained to guard her, Joss was unconcerned.

      
The pair were following the path toward the village when three youths, around twelve or thirteen years of age, approached her. Poc growled softly, then decided they meant no harm and quieted. Joss was not so certain. "G-good day," she stammered, unable to remember the Muskogee words of greeting Barbara had been teaching her.

      
The boys were unsmiling, their dark eyes huge in their round bronzed faces. Solemnly they studied her with a thorough curiosity bordering on rudeness. She was uncertain about whether to ask what they wanted or simply to try to walk on and hope they would let her pass. She noted the sharp-looking knives attached to their breechclouts.

      
An exchange in their language ensued, after which one of the boys stepped forward, extending his hand toward her, an expression of awe on his face. What did he want?

Chapter Nineteen

      
The youth muttered something in his guttural dialect as he touched her spectacles with his fingertips, then jerked his hand back as if burned. Another exchange of words followed in which it seemed the boys were arguing among themselves. Every so often they would cast a wary glance her way before resuming the debate, which seemed to have something to do with her eyeglasses. She had no way of knowing that the sunlight reflecting off the heavy lenses gave her eyes what appeared to the Muskogees to be magical properties.

      
Poc watched the youths with his head cocked in curiosity, tail wagging. Apparently, he sensed no animosity. Taking off her spectacles, she offered them to the boy who had touched them. How did one pantomime "looking" to savages who had probably never seen a spyglass?

      
"These help me to see," she said slowly, hoping they understood a bit of English.

      
At first the boy jumped back as if the spectacles would bite him, but in a moment curiosity won out over fear and he took them gingerly in both hands. She held her hands up to her face, mimicking putting the eyeglasses on. "Like this. Try it," she urged.

      
The boy raised them with grave hesitation, squinting through the lenses from a foot away, then slowly brought them closer to his face as the other two watched spellbound. He finally perched the frames on his nose and attached the earpieces, holding out his hands in front of him. Then he blinked and let out a loud squawk of horror.

      
Because his vision was normal, he could see nothing but distortion and blurring through her lenses. He must have thought he'd been struck blind! As Joss stepped closer to remove the eyeglasses from the panic-stricken lad, a gnarled old man carrying a tall pole adorned with ceremonial paraphernalia came running down the path.

      
He raised the lance and shook the rattles on it menacingly at her, crying out something in Muskogee. Joss needed no translation to know his actions were decidedly hostile. Neither did Poc, who growled and stepped in front of his mistress as the boy tore the spectacles from his face and thew them to the ground, then took off pell-mell after his friends.

      
The old man remained behind, shaking the staff at her angrily. She squinted, desperate to retrieve her eyeglasses. Without them she'd never be able to find her way back to the village. Kneeling down, she groped myopically, trying her best to ignore the furious diatribe of the old man, whom Poc was holding at bay with a businesslike growl.

      
Just as she caught a glint of light reflecting off the lenses and reached out toward it, the old man bent down with amazing speed and dexterity, seizing the prize and scuttling off with it as Joss called out for him to stop.

      
Poc started to give chase, but upon hearing his mistress's frantic cries, returned to where she sat on the ground. He gave her several slurpy kisses of consolation as she calmed herself. Sighing, she held on to the dog and said, "Well, Poc, you shall just have to find the way back for me. Slowly now, so I don't break my neck in this barbarous wilderness."

      
While they made their way up the twisting woodland path with branches slapping her face and roots tripping her, Joss vowed to use her drops no matter how irritated her eyes. She would never again be at the mercy of these savages! That was if she lived to find the village, she thought in dismay, imagining every leaf a poisonous spider, every tree root a deadly snake.

      
By the time she stumbled into Charity's house, the commotion created by the influential Shawnee prophet who had come to live with them this past year still had not died down. Joss did not realize she was connected to his ranting.

      
"Thank heaven you've returned, Jocelyn," Barbara said. "We were just going to search for you."

      
"I lost my eyeglasses—no, they were stolen by some strange little man carrying a long staff with rattles on it."

      
"Turtle Snake," Charity said with distaste. "He's a shaman among the Lake People, a real troublemaker."

      
"Why would he take your spectacles?" Barbara asked, baffled.

      
Joss quickly outlined what had transpired. "So, if not for Poc, I'd still be wandering around in the woods."

      
"Oh, dear. This is going to cause trouble, I fear, just the sort of display Turtle Snake loves to put on," Charity said. "He will tell everyone the white man's magic has placed a curse on the boy's eyesight through those spectacles and it must be cast out before everyone in the
idalwa
is struck blind."

      
"That's absurd! All he need do is give me back my eyeglasses," Joss replied indignantly.

      
Barbara patted her arm sympathetically. "I think it wise to let Grandma Charity handle this, Jocelyn."

      
While waiting for Charity to return, Joss dug out her spare pair of spectacles and as an extra precaution, put drops in her eyes so she could see.

* * * *

      
About half the town turned out the following afternoon to watch Turtle Snake cast out the curse in Joss's spectacles, which were sitting atop a huge drum placed in the center of the public square. The performance took several hours and involved a great deal of chanting, incantation and dancing before the cursed object could safely be returned to its owner.

      
She was torn between acute embarrassment and righteous anger when Turtle Snake brought the eyeglasses, suspended on top of that long decorated pole of his. He poked it in her direction and she snatched the spectacles from it, feeling like a fool with so many people watching her.

      
"What should I say?" she whispered to Barbara.

      
"A simple thank-you would suffice," Alex replied, moving through the crowd toward her.

      
"Alex," she squealed in surprise. He took her arm pro- prietarily as he exchanged a few words with Turtle Snake and the other religious leaders, then led her back into Charity's house. Devon and Barbara faced each other outside the doorway.

      
Alex could hear his father saying, "I should have known you'd not remain behind like a sensible, obedient wife." The rueful resignation in Devon's voice did not match Alex's mood. His parents were always overjoyed to see each other. At that moment he was not certain if he wanted to hug Joss or throttle her.

      
Recovering herself a bit, Joss turned to Alex as he moved into the shadows of the interior. He still had a firm hold on her arm. "When did you return?" was all she could think to say.
Idiot.

      
"Not soon enough to prevent you from getting into all sorts of trouble, apparently," he responded, going on the offensive. "I told you to remain in Savannah."

      
"You did no such thing. You merely assumed that I would," she retorted, stung by his cool greeting. He did not want her to be here. Well, fine. She didn't want to be here either now that it was too late to do anything about the regrettable fact.

      
"I also assumed you'd have enough sense not to meddle in Muskogee religious taboos."

      
"I wasn't meddling—that horrid man stole my glasses, preaching some sort of twaddle about their being cursed."

      
"Only after you let a boy look through them and get frightened half to death."

      
"I was only trying to be helpful," she said as her anger built. This was so unjust.

      
"Helpful?" He harrumphed. "And were you being helpful to my uncle when you gave him a lecture on the evil of liquor after observing his morning Black Drink ritual."

      
Someone must have told Alex. Her cheeks flamed as she recalled the humiliating blunder. Early this morning she and Poc had been taking a leisurely walk about the perimeter of the village, when she had chanced to see a tall, reed-thin man swilling something from a gourd. The fellow had given a loud belch, doubled over and retched. He was still at it when an incensed Joss had reached his side. She had witnessed the scene far too often about the streets in London—poor wretches suffering the effects of overindulgence.

      
As the man straightened, wiping his mouth, Joss launched into an impassioned sermon on the evil of strong spirits and drunkenness. She earnestly urged the offender to follow the path of sobriety.

      
The elderly man had stared at her curiously. He obviously did not understand English. Joss silently cursed her limited Muskogee vocabulary. But she refused to give over this poor benighted creature to the demons of drink. She thought for a moment and then began to pantomime. She swilled from an imaginary cup, staggered about, pretended to vomit, and then collapsed on the ground. She arose, then gazed into the man's eyes, which oddly enough reminded her of Grandmother Charity's.