An Undisturbed Peace (13 page)

“For a time this summer, the settlers made raids against my people daily. In our villages, in our fields, even at the Christian churches some embrace. Our warriors take revenge, as they're allowed under the white man's law. Did you know that? In our treaties, it says we may punish those who violate our lands however we see fit. We are a nation. The United States agrees we have the same right of self-defense every other nation has. But it doesn't work. My life's trials have taught me all revenge inspires is more murder and treachery.” Her chin lifted in a prideful way. “In this cabin, I try to live a good Cherokee life and ignore the settlers. For many years, I've been too well hidden for anyone's notice. But now there's gold down in Georgia, on Cherokee land. The governor of Georgia tries to squeeze us out by law. More Cherokee flee their ancestral lands at the point of his guns every day. Meanwhile, the settlers and gold hunters swarm everywhere, in Georgia and even here, looking in every stream, in every cave for that rock they worship more than God. Three found me this summer.”

“What happened?” Abe asked, thinking more of the revenge on Billy Rupert that he suspected had led her to isolated independence than her recent encounter with settlers. She shrugged as if the answer should be obvious.

“They approached me, guns drawn. I killed them with my hunting bow. The traps had warned me. It wasn't hard. Afterward, I scalped them and burned their flesh. I hung their scalps from the trees and I put their bodies near my fields to scare off others. So far, it's worked.” She lifted herself up and, leaning on an elbow, touched his face with her free hand. “I confess, I've been on alert ever since. The enemy feels too close. I don't sleep. Otherwise, I would have seen who you were and not shot at you. Having shot at you, I would not have missed.” She patted his cheek, then laughed in a way not without bitterness. “Forgive me. Or thank my tired eyes for your life.”

It was a lot for Abe to take in. Never before had he felt so much the callow youth, lying next to a woman who spoke easily about death and the maiming of one's enemies. It was a nasty, vicious world they lived in. Everything in it warred with everything else. The mountains warred with the valleys, the rivers with the oceans, bear with fish, fox with porcupines, men with the earth, men with men. London was a hard place. As long as he had eyes, a poor boy growing up there knew the sting of clever cruelties before he could speak. But in America, brutality came stripped of refinements, of civilization's analysis and rationales. No one knew yet what America might become, who would survive to tell the tale. In this feral corner of it, Abe's money was on Marian, not himself. He dared an important question. Her response would pave the way for his later proposals. He closed his eyes, hoping.

“Have you thought about leaving this place, going somewhere the settlers and gold are not?”

“Give up my land? After I've killed for it? Ridiculous.” She yawned. “Abe, I'm quite fond of you. I've grown used to you. Your company is pleasant. I can use another pair of eyes and hands, especially now. But keep up such questions and I will have to banish you.” She made a gesture of dismissal as regal as any duchess. Then she smiled and reached over to pat his cheek.

How could he not have known this would be her answer? Abe's awareness of his inexperience deepened. He wanted to approach the subject of his trip to Echota. Along with planning their future together during the trip to her cabin, he'd also thought a great deal about whether or not he should tell her about tracking down Jacob. He decided he must or else the shadow of the man would ever lie between them. That the slave loved Marian was evident. But he needed to know what he meant to her, and there was only one way to find out. Well, he thought, here we are cozy and happy. Might as well leap into the breach now.

“Marian, my travels took me to Echota this time,” he began. She leaned up on an elbow, interested. “It's a brilliant town. I met many leaders of your people. Fine men. While I was there I came across a curious man who knew you. Actually, he knew you as a woman named Dark Water, which I assume is your tribal name?”

She nodded. “What was curious about him?” she asked.

Abe took a deep breath and plunged in.

“He was a black man, a slave, scarred all over from battle he told me. He was called Jacob.”

The name was barely out of his mouth before she pounced on him like a cat, holding him down with her body while her hands gripped his naked shoulders as a hawk closes its talons on its prey. Her face hovered inches above his own, the eyes bored into him, her nostrils flared. Her mouth looked a dark, angry wound studded with the points of sharp, white teeth. “Who said he was Jacob? Who told you this lie? Who?” Her breath was hot and fierce. Each word seared his flesh. “Tell me where this liar is that I might kill him.”

In a halting manner that did not please her, Abe started from the beginning, trying to give her time to calm down. He told her the countryside buzzed with rumors concerning one Dark Water, whom he'd discovered was Marian herself. She nodded once impatiently as if to say,
Yes, yes, we all know that now
. He continued, describing in detail his trip of discovery to Echota and meeting Chief Ross and the Ridge, the last a name that curled her lips into a snarl. She hissed a Cherokee curse through clenched teeth. He paused in confusion, wondering at the source of her venom until she gave his shoulders a shake to focus him. “Get to it,” she said. “Get to this man saying he is Jacob.” When he got to the part about Jacob's house, about his appearance from out of the dark, about his ruined face, the weakness of his arm and hand, her grip loosened, little by little, until she released him. Slowly, she got off his chest to slide from the bed to the floor, where she crouched with her head in her hands. Her voice was soft, heavy with sorrow.

“Jacob,” she said. “My Jacob is alive.”

He called her true name. “Dark Water.” She picked up her head, looked to the rafters, her cheeks tear-stained, and murmured again, as if she had not heard him, as if he were not there, “My Jacob is alive,” before burying her head once more in her hands. This time, her shoulders trembled.

Abe had no idea what to do. He'd never seen her in a vulnerable state. She looked cold. He left the bed, walked around it, and sat beside her on the floor, draping a deerskin about her shoulders. She leaned over onto his chest. He put an arm around her and let her weep. After a while, he said, “Talk to me. There seems to be much I do not know, and only you can tell me of it.” She dropped her hands, dried her eyes against her palms, and did exactly that.

Dark Water of the Foothills

A
t first there was an eerie detachment to her telling that frightened him. Her voice was flat, her body limp. Her eyes stared ahead, void of expression. She looked soulless, an empty husk. It was as if her spirit had traveled to the past and was locked there in the reliving, robbing the present of vitality.

“I told you before that I was sent to England the year I was sixteen. The day I returned home, Jacob arrived to be in service to my family. I didn't notice him for a time. I had missed my people and the land. I was busy, renewing friendships, visiting my aunties. My family's plantation was large and fruitful. There was always much going on my father must attend to and Jacob was most often at his side. I confess, I was resentful of the father who'd sent me into exile and I avoided his company.

“So. I was overwhelmed with joy to be back where I belonged. Bright Star was still alive in those days and I rode her daily, reacquainting myself with the foothills. Lord Geoffrey Tinsdale, who'd escorted me home all the way from London, rode with me. Lord Geoffrey claimed to travel with me to paint portraits of the Cherokee, but I knew it was because he was in love with me, poor fool. He was a fine painter and a finer horseman, I'll give him that. I was young enough then to think such skills a mark of character. It pleased me greatly to show my visitor the glories of our waterfalls and wildflowers, of our lakes held fast in fog's embrace, of eagles and hawks, of the mountains beyond the hills, standing like sentries to our paradise. Nothing is more delightful than to see appreciation for the things you love blossom in another's eyes. I had him dressed in buckskin that he would know what it was like, how superior to his silks and satins and, I admit, for a kind of revenge against my year of corsets, crinolines, and buckled boots.

“During my exile, the countryside had changed. Settler communities had sprung up where none had been before. Not so many, mind you, but enough to cause me concern. Here and there, in places my people had cultivated or where they had hunted for generations, settler farms suddenly stood, proud and permanent, clustered one after another without regard for the boundaries they violated. Once, we were shot at as we rode close by a settler farm for a better view. Lord Geoffrey's mount was grazed at the shoulder. I was infuriated.”

Dark Water stood up, slipped a long shirt over her head, and paced while she spoke, making strong gestures, cutting the air with her hands. It reassured Abe to see her reanimated.

“And Jacob?”

“Oh, yes, I've not told you about Jacob yet, have I? Well, I went to my father to demand retaliation against the settlers who'd shot at us. That was the day I first saw the man you met in Chota.

“They were in the parlor of that awful house, the place my father built with the intention of turning us into white men, may it burn to the ground. The same place I was meant to inherit one day from my mother with my white husband at my side, breeding half-white children who would forget their ancestors as quickly as the white world would allow them. Why I thought I would receive satisfaction from my father, I don't know. I was still young. That must be it. He sat in a wing-backed chair, drinking tea from a china cup, which he held in two hands like a bowl. Jacob stood behind him, holding a peach and a paring knife. He cut slices of the peach and handed them to my father, one by one, as if the great chief were a small child not to be trusted with sharp, shiny objects. I was yet trembling with anger from the afternoon's incident. My shirt and britches were stained with the horse's blood, as I'd ministered to his wound before storming into the house. To see my father amidst all his finery, behaving like some feeble peer of the bloody English Crown, enflamed me further. I say it was the first day I saw Jacob and this is true, but I did not truly see him yet. For me, he was a dark form without humanity, a liveried piece of furniture, so blinded was I by anger and the ignominious sight of my father in his ruffled blouse being fed a peach.

“You must understand, when I was a small child, I was raised in the old ways, as a proper Cherokee, in a Cherokee village nestled in the forest, schooled in the arts of my clan. I learned the skills of women and, because it was my nature, those of men as well. But all the while of my growing up, my father was building his white-man's empire, constructing that house, clearing the woods to make fields where he could plant far more than we could consume. Everything he did was an abomination to my mind. ‘Chief Redhand!' I near shouted at him. ‘Wake from your slumber! The enemy is upon us, infesting the land the Great Beings entrusted to us. They creep about us like ants hunting apart from the hive, ready to summon their fellows, and now they dare violate our guests.' I told him about the settler who shot at us and damaged Lord Geoffrey's mount.

“For a long time, he did not speak, but sat in his wing-backed chair, his slippered feet crossed at the ankles. In silence, he sipped his tea. His gaze seemed to be upon me, but the heavy lids of his eyes were half-closed. His mouth opened, then closed. His lips pursed. He remained silent. I felt imprisoned in that quiet of his. I was like a fire contained by rocks, unable to spread, a flame that burns upward to lose its heat and become only smoke. I'm ashamed to tell you, my frustration grew so that my eyes soon filled with girlish tears.

“‘Daughter,' he said at last. ‘That land where you found the white settlement was given them by the Council. It's a small piece and all they will ever get. Keep your distance from them. Or if you must draw near, use your English manners. Someday those settlers may be family to you unless we find you a more suitable white husband elsewhere.'

“I was shocked beyond speech. My lips trembled, my hands shook. It was then I looked into the dark, still eyes of his man, Jacob. I suppose I searched them for evidence that I was not in some dream state, a nightmare where my father could betray me, could betray the clan of my mother with commands of not just reconciliation but union with the men I hated most in the world, white men, the interlopers, men without manhood who plowed the earth like women. And what did I see in Jacob's eyes but tears that matched my own. Yes, this stranger, the lackey of my father, wept for me. His pity unnerved me. I quit the room.

“I went directly to my mother and complained to her. I don't know why I thought she would help. She was a hard woman. Despair likely drove me to her. Mothers are powerful among the Cherokee and she was my only hope. I thought she might stop my father's plans. I forgot it was likely her plan too. Perhaps it even originated with her.

“She sat in her dressing room and another slave, the wife of Jacob, I discovered later, brushed her hair. I collapsed at her feet and buried my head in her lap. I told her of the shooting incident and my father's reaction. But I had no satisfaction there. ‘Your father is right,' she said. ‘We must compromise. It is the only way.' I grabbed her knees with two hands. I shook them. I said, ‘You too would have me marry a white man? Who would take my inheritance from me?' She patted my head the way one does a dog. ‘Better my property goes to your daughter one day than to the soldiers,' she said. It was too much. ‘No, no!' I cried, then howled like the dog she took me for.

“Suddenly, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a sharpened fishbone, an instrument all Cherokee children know as a mother's most harsh tool of punishment. Most of us feel its swift sting once or twice while growing up, perhaps when we have done something very wrong or even dangerous. But on this occasion, my mother struck out at me repeatedly as if she could wound me into submission. She scratched my neck, my arms, even my face until I was a mess of blood trails everywhere my skin was exposed. I was defiant. ‘Go ahead,' I taunted her. ‘Your petty torture can't hurt me!' She complied. Over and over she scratched me, thinking, I'm sure, that sooner or later I would cry out and beg for her to stop. But from the first cut, I'd stiffened my limbs and sealed my throat. It was easy. At that moment, I hated my mother and hatred is a drug that dulls all other feeling, even pain. When she exhausted herself, she let me slip to the floor and left, telling her slave, ‘Clean up that mess.'

“I admit Jacob's wife was kind to me. She brought me water. She washed my injuries and dressed them so that they healed quickly, without scars. I was numb with anger and despair. I did not speak to her, not even to thank her, or to mention the multitude of marks I saw on her own arms, more evidence of my mother's swift hand at discipline. Lulu was a good woman. I can't believe she deserved such punishment. She did not deserve what happened to her later on either, and more or less at my hand. I will repent for her sake for the rest of my life. But the past is past. There's nothing to be done to change it.

“Over the next weeks, I kept myself apart from my family, from Lord Geoffrey too. He began leaving me letters, shoved under the door of my bedroom, but I didn't see them. Those weeks I lived in the woods, under the sun and stars. I prayed to Father Sun and Mother Moon for deliverance from my parents' designs for me, for the strength to defy them, and for the courage to live as I lived those happy weeks, on my own. I made myself a crude hut out of branches that had fallen in a storm. I hunted with sticks and rocks to feed myself. I went naked when I was hot and covered myself in mud when I was cold. And all the while, I knew there was someone watching me. There was no question about it in my mind. I felt eyes upon me even in my sleep. It occurred to me that my father had sent a spy to report on my activities. I knew when he was there. I knew when he left to make his reports. One day, I grew tired of this surveillance. I made a trap to catch the spy and be done with him. It worked. By nightfall, a cry rang through the forest, a human cry, and I laughed and ran to where my prisoner dangled from a birch tree, strung up by braided vines wrapped around his left foot. It was the slave Jacob, twisting and turning and grunting while he hung from that noose like a beast. I watched from where he could not see me, enjoying his humiliation. He was dressed not in his livery but in buckskin. It was like humiliating my father himself.

“Then, just as I was about to reveal myself and free him, Jacob did a most remarkable thing. The movements I witnessed had purpose. While I watched from my secret place, he twisted harder and harder to gain momentum. Mind you, the strength this required was phenomenal. Every muscle of his body strained. Soon he was swinging in an arc that had him close to the tree's trunk and once he was close enough, he grasped it in two hands then pulled his torso up to the branch from which he hung. Taking a knife from a scabbard on his belt, he cut the vines and, once he was free, straightened his legs while yet grasping the branch and lowered himself to the ground. I was very impressed and even more so when he ran off toward my family's plantation with the grace and speed for which my clan is celebrated.

“Perhaps it was an effect of my prolonged solitude in the forest or even of rebellious desire, but from that day on thoughts of Jacob preoccupied me. He was young and handsome in those days. His face was noble, especially about the mouth and eyes. His body was perfect. I considered his agility, his strength, and his compassion for me the day my father refused my plea for revenge against the settlers. I considered myself nearly as much a slave as he, and that too inspired my fancy. I began to wait for his sessions of spying on me with eagerness. When I felt him near, I struck poses, went on parade, so to speak, to seduce him. I could feel his anxiety and the periods of his watch over me grew longer and longer. At last I decided my prey was snug in my snare. I went home to my parents' house but not for their sake. I returned for his.”

Dark Water continued describing the fever Jacob provoked in her. As she spoke, her demeanor softened, her features took on a kind of glow, her voice sweetened. Abe was locked in torment. Jacob was, she told him, her first passion. A knife plunged into his gut. “There is no love comparable to a woman's first,” she added. “I will love him forever.” The knife twisted. The feelings she described for Jacob might have been his own for her. She was his first passion. He was convinced there would never be a love for him comparable to the one he held for her. Resentment grew in him with her every sigh, every blush in recounting the bliss of her youthful affection.

“Can you believe it? I had never even kissed a man before. Girls my age had husbands, children for years already, but at seventeen, I was pure. When I was very young and the others played at kissing games, I was too proud to join in. I wanted to save myself for the bold warrior who would be my destiny. Now I knew at last what it was to desire a man, and that man was a slave. Today, under our Constitution, the punishment for marriage to a Negro slave is twenty-five lashes. Had he known of my fixation, my father, who tried so hard to be white and to be accepted as one of them, would have lashed me himself with or without the blessing of law. My behavior would have ruined everything he worked for, everything he built. In the eyes of the clan, it would be a great disgrace if it became known I wished to commit adultery with a married slave. It would ruin my reputation and no honest Cherokee would have me later on. White prospects would be insulted by even the hint of a match. I considered none of these things. I considered only his face, the muscles of his legs, and the broad, calloused palms of his hands.

“In the beginning, I was content to be in the same room with him. Proximity to Jacob was my greatest pleasure. That I might be near him as much as possible, I extended my father a false reconciliation. I wore the dresses I'd brought back from London. I rode sidesaddle to accompany him on his rounds about the plantation. I told him if I was to be a landowner's wife, I must learn the business of civilized land management. But while my father conferred with the overseer of the orchard or of the cornfields, I hung back to stand behind him and brush purposefully against the body of his valet, to revel in his heat against my back. For months, nothing more happened between us. I languished. My desires pestered me while I was awake and robbed me of my sleep. As it had to, one day my patience wore out. I manipulated a moment when I could be alone with him in a darkened corridor. It was evening, the hour at which Jacob left my father's chambers for the night. He carried a single candlestick that cast little light. I approached him in my pantaloons and chemise, my feet bare, my hair free. On reaching him, I blew out his candle, took it from him, and placed it on the floor. He did not resist and the music of his hot, tortured breath sang in my ears. Seizing my chance, I put my arms around his waist and pressed against him. We kissed.