Captive (48 page)

“When your escape is planned,” he repeated, “let me know.”

As it happened, when the time came, there was no choice but for him to go.

“It was quite a spectacle,” Tara murmured, pulling off her gloves as she came into Teela’s room. “Jarrett was never even able to say a word to James. Everyone was whispering as we arrived. According to the most wildly circulated story, you and James had a terrible argument. James tried to assault you, you escaped him. He came after you again, but you made your escape—and it took a good eight soldiers to bring him down. Shall I take this to mean that things did not go very well?”

“He is a wretched bastard,” Teela said. “Oh, God, was anyone hurt?”

“Well, those boys will not feel wonderful come morning. James throws quite a punch.”

Teela gnawed lightly on her lower lip. She had been right, she was quite certain. Yet she worried now that she had caused real harm by walking away. She had heard shouting, but she had never turned back. “He— he asked me who the baby’s father was!” she said indignantly.

Tara was silent a minute. “Well, then, he quite deserved whatever you did,” she said brightly. With a smile she started to leave the room.

“Tara!”

“Yes?”

“What happened to James after I left?”

“They took him back to the Castillo. He was too wild to enjoy a civilized white party.”

“Well, he was,” Teela murmured.

“Let him simmer and brew for a while. Perhaps it will teach him manners.”

“Perhaps …”

Teela was suddenly afraid. She felt a strange quivering within her. But she was in the right—and he was locked in the Castillo. And he did deserve whatever punishment he got. He had behaved with something worse than savagery, and he could damned well rot a prisoner before she attempted to see him again.

“He may take his uncivilized manners straight to hell!” she assured Tara.

Smiling slightly, Tara left the room once again. She closed Teela’s door, leaning against it. James and Teela were both too stubborn and too proud. The situation had to be resolved. Time, it seemed. They needed time. She hoped that they had enough of it.

It was nice, in a way, to worry about her brother-in-law and yet know at the same time that he was actually safe for once—even if he was behind bars.

He couldn’t get into mortal danger where he was.

“You’ve studied the layout as I have?” Wildcat demanded anxiously. He spoke in a whisper, though none of the guards near them knew a word of Muskogee.

James, walking in the yard of the fort, nodded, gazing to the southwest. That angle of the coquina fortress was considered to be escape-proof. Because of that fact there were no guards posted there. On a dark night silent figures could reach the parapet walk unaccosted, and slip downward over the side of the wall.

They could escape. The small opening they sought was a good fifteen feet above the ground. It was five feet high but only eight inches wide, cut through the six-foot thickness of the walls. There were two iron bars across the opening, but James, Wildcat, and another of the warriors, Coweta, had determined that they could break the shell around the one bar and remove it while using the other as the anchor they would need to reach the opening. They could then drop down into the ditch behind the walls and from there disappear into either the ocean or the land.

“We’ll take turns each night, chipping at the shell to loosen the bar,” James said.

Wildcat nodded. “It’s very high. We’ve nothing to use to reach the wall—”

Coweta, a strong Indian with Negro blood, entered the discussion. “We have one another. We will manage the task.”

Four days later, they were nearly ready to lift the bar, though they would not do so until the time of escape arrived, lest they alert someone to their intentions.

Warriors had made a human pyramid, and James was atop them, chipping the last little bit of the wall away to clear the bar. He was startled when Wildcat’s husky whisper suddenly urged him from his task.

“Running Bear!”

“What?”

“We must talk. Quickly.”

He had pressed against the bar. It moved. The task was done.

He climbed down the ladder of bodies in silence. One by one the Seminoles leaped from their perches atop
one another. James, hands on his hips, stared at Wildcat, frowning.

“It’s done.”

“And none too soon.”

“Why? What has happened.”

“Come with me.”

James quickly followed Wildcat through an archway to the adjoining cell. Osceola was there with his family. He motioned to his first wife, Morning Dew, to leave them in peace. James sat before Osceola while Wildcat hovered behind him.

“They have been fairly free with old Riley here, you are aware of that?” Osceola said.

James nodded, frowning. “Yes, why?”

“He is able to give the white soldiers our requests, to ask them questions for us. They have used him in return, making more of a servant of him.”

“They often seek to return black men to their evil masters, you know that.”

Osceola waved a hand. “Riley is among us,” he said dismissively. “The point is that he hears the soldiers talking often. One of the soldiers who works with the papers in this place was talking to another.”

“And?”

“This soldier once rode with Michael Warren.”

“Yes?”

Osceola lifted his shoulders as if he had already explained things fully. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “Papers … letters. This man has sent out a rtlessage to Major Warren. To let him know that you are imprisoned here. Where Warren is, he didn’t exactly know. How long it might take a letter to reach Warren, the soldier didn’t know. But a man on a good, fast horse can travel fifty miles a day at least, eh?”

James nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, you are right.”

“So, though you worry about me and the others, though you let yourself be taken for me and the others, you must now go. Your heart has been soaring over these walls many days now. Your spirit has been gone
while your mind has fought to remain for the good of the people here. Now there can be no war within you. I am not afraid. I am resigned. What will come, will come. But you must go.”

“Osceola, Warren cannot just walk into this place and shoot me down—”

“My friend, both of us know that he would not even need to do so! Guards could come in the night, food could be poisoned. Who knows? You could kill yourself with a rope that happened to be in your cell. A tragic suicide. A half-breed, battling all his worlds. Many will suspect. None will be able to prove anything. James, you must go.”

James nodded slowly. “As you say, great
mico.”

Osceola smiled, drawing his blanket more closely around him. “Warrior. I was a great warrior, eh?”

“You are a great warrior.”

Osceola nodded, not arguing the point.

That night, James stood with Wildcat beneath the opening, studying it.

“Will we make it through that little space? There lies our challenge,” James said.

“It will be easy for me, more difficult for you. But you are determined. We will slick our bodies with grease and twist and turn until we are free. We have starved often enough because we haven’t had food, and now we have starved to make ourselves smaller. It is still your desire to do so? You could most probably call upon your white brother and be free.”

“I have asked my brother not to interfere. I will not put him or his family in jeopardy for helping me. I will be coming with you,” James said. He knelt down by Osceola, who sat against the wall, ready to tell them good-bye. “Perhaps I can be a better friend from the outside.”

There was no question of Osceola joining the escape. He hadn’t allowed the whites to realize how sick he often felt. Some of the warriors had tried to talk him
into coming. His escape would be a just revenge for the whites who had behaved so treacherously bringing them all in. But Osceola had made his decision. He was, as he had told James, resigned.

Now he placed a hand on James’s. “I am proud that you will keep fighting. I will tell my captors that I could have gone with you, but that I chose not to do so.” He lowered his voice. “You, James, know that I cannot go. I will slow you down, bring disaster upon you. I will pray to the Great Father for us all.”

James clasped his arm. “I will never be far from you. I will seek to help you from the outside when I am cleared of Otter’s guilt in the massacre of the soldiers. And …”

“When you have settled that fire in your heart, eh, my good friend?”

“Yes, great
mico.
When I have settled the flames that eat upon my soul.”

He stood again, very tired yet grateful for his own health. There had been so much sickness. Yuchi Billy had died just four nights ago and been buried under the supervision of the medicine men and priests. Others had already perished as well. James was now ready to leave. His way. With no outside help.

It was very late, and the sky darkened even further as a cloud slipped across the moon. It was time to go.

Eighteen of them had determined to risk the escape, sixteen men and two women. They worked together in unison and in silence. The chiseled-out bar was removed. A rope was cast and anchored over the remaining bar.

The hardest part of the escape was slipping through the narrow opening. For the women it was easy. They were very small and slim. James knew that with the size of his shoulders and torso, it was going to be most difficult for him. He had been aware of that fact from the beginning.

He forced himself to think of Teela. Her face, her form—and the way she had walked away from him, leaving him to be tackled by the soldiers. His skin was well
greased. He twisted and strained harder, then sought to make his muscles and bulk smaller, all but shearing the flesh from his body. He clamped down hard on his jaw, knowing that he could not let out a sound.

And at last he was through. He joined the others.

Wraiths, they stood in the darkness and the breeze. Free.

They knew how to move in silence, all of them. One by one they shinnied down their stolen line the twenty-one feet to the ditch below.

It was there that he parted with Wildcat and the others.

“I must go my own way now,” James told him.

“The white way.”

James shook his head, though he knew full well that he was not going to become a part of the war against the whites, no matter what accusations Warren conjured to throw against him. He had never fought willingly; he had only fought for the survival of those around him.

“I have always tried to remain at peace with my father’s people and my mother’s. I want to find peace again.”

“Perhaps it cannot be found when there is a war being fought.”

“Peace is something we may have to find in our own hearts,” James told him. “But I promise you this, I will never betray my
Seminole
brothers.”

Wildcat smiled. “Neither of your peoples, eh? The Great Spirit be with you. When you tire of the pasty-skins, find me. I will fight the war again, by our lives and blood!”

They embraced briefly.

Wildcat went his way, raising a hand to indicate that the rest should follow him. He was there a moment, a dark shadow barely visible in the dark night, then he was gone, silently disappearing with his people. James scampered through the darkness until he reached the water of the inlet. He plunged in. Thanks to Dr. Weedon’s interest in half-breeds and talking, he knew where
his brother’s family was lodged, even though he’d yet to see Jarrett since his capture.

It was well past midnight when he found the house. Yet he was in luck. As he stood dripping on the wood-planked sidewalk before it, staring up at the second floor, Teela sat at a dressing table. He could just make out her form through the filmy white curtains in the flickering glow of her candlelight.

She blew out the flame.

He smiled.

He was naked save for a breech clout. His body had been greased down to allow for his escape, but the salt water had washed away the grease. His hair was queued at his nape with a leather band. Dressed so, he could move with the same ease of any creature who preyed in the forest.

He climbed the wall with the help of a trellis and slipped onto the balcony, then through those telltale flimsy curtains and into the darkened room. He made his way to the bed, kneeling swiftly down by the woman there and clamping his hand over her mouth. He lowered his mouth to her ear even as he heard her muffled squeaks of protest, and cast his weight against her to keep her still.

“All right, now, my love, just whose child is it?”

To his amazement, a large, dark shadow moved on the side of the bed by the woman.

“Mine!” snapped the shadow.

J
ames leapt back from the bed, stunned but instantly wary, prepared to fight. But no one attacked him, and he was startled to hear the shadow speaking and to recognize the voice.

“Mine—and there’s no damned question about it. And what the hell are you doing in my bedroom at this time of night?”

A match was struck, a candle lit. James found himself staring at his brother and sister-in-law, both seated in their bed with the covers drawn up around them and looking at him expectantly.

“I—” he began, then lifted his hands. “I’m sorry, Tara.”

“I think you’ve got the wrong room,” his sister-in-law said smoothly. “You want to be down the hall and to the left,” she informed him.

“Of course, you could have just knocked on the front door,” Jarrett said, studying his appearance critically.

“I can’t stay long,” James said simply.

“Maybe you should stay long enough to talk,” Jarrett suggested.

“He doesn’t need to talk to us. He needs to talk to Teela, as is evidenced here,” Tara said.

“Yes,” Jarrett said, “and no matter what your circumstances, I want to know what’s going on before you leave.”

“Fair enough,” James said, turning to leave their room.

“There was an escape, I take it?” Jarrett said.

“Yes.”

“And you led it?”

James paused, shaking his head. “I did not. I merely joined it.” He hesitated. “I had no choice. I’ve had word that Michael Warren was informed of my presence at the Castillo. It was suggested to me that I might not survive imprisonment if I didn’t leave quickly.”