Columbine (25 page)

slept, but restlessly, her arms and legs thrashing as she muttered in her dreams. Taking care not to wake the girl, Dianna lay beside her and wrapped her own body around the sick child’S to share what warmth she could. Mercy’s breathing was harsh in her chest,

a wheezing rasp that meant the chill had settled in her lungs. Dianna hugged her closer, trying not to think of tomorrow. She had truly come to love Mercy as her own, yet there was nothing she could do to save her or even give her comfort. Hot tears of fear and frustration slid down her cheek and angrily she wiped them away with her fingers. Weeping would serve no purpose to either of them.

Gradually the first light of the false dawn began to filter through the yellow leaves of the tall oaks overhead. A low mist drifted over the ground, enveloping the dark tree roots like an eerie shroud, and muffling all sound, for the woods were strangely silent in these last moments before the true dawn.

Dianna remembered the elves and faeries and other woodland creatures that her father had used to amuse her as a child, but here their world seemed strangely real, and Dianna’s heartbeat began to quicken at what she felt but could not see.

Mercy shifted uneasily in her arms, her eyelids fluttering open.

“Dianna?” she asked hoarsely, each breath an effort.

“Hush, lamb, ‘tis not time to rise yet.” Dianna stroked the child’s hair. Oh, Lord, she was so very hot to touch.

“But it hurts t’breathe!”

“Then here, sit upright in my lap, and perhaps that shall be better.” Mercy climbed across Dianna’s legs and rested her head against Dianna’s chest. With each breath came the wheezing that meant congestion in her lungs, and Dianna’s heart sank when she remembered the long day before them. She could not let them leave the child behind. Better to let them kill her, too, than abandon Mercy, and she curled her arms protectively around the girl’s limp body.

“Would ye sing time, Dianna?” rasped Mercy.

“The pretty song wit’ the’ queen’s lament?”

Dianna hesitated, unwilling to disturb the sleeping Indians, but Mercy persisted.

“Please, Dianna, the’ queen’s song he my favorite.”

How could she refuse what might be the last favor the girl asked of her?

“Oh, aye, if that’s your favorite,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to tease the way they always had before. Mercy’s favorite was from an old-fashioned opera by Lully, and though Dianna was hazy as to which queen was doing the lamenting, the aria had always been one of her best pieces. She began softly, her own voice rough-edged from the chill, but soon the old beauty of the music filled her throat, and, closing her eyes, she let the notes rise and soar into the early nrning mists.

When she was done, she kept her eyes dosed just a moment longer to savor the vanishing pleasure of the music. When she opened them, Mattasoit loomed before them, and instinctively Dianna clutched at Mercy.

“You are Me’toulin, Anglaise?” he asked with a tentativeness that surprised Dianna.

“They did not tell me that when I said I’d take you.”

“Me’toulin?” repeated Dianna uncertainly. He was hanging back from her, unwilling to come too close, and Quabaug remained farther still, his dark eyes round with fear in the half-light.

“Me’toulin, me’toulin.” Mattasoit fanned his fingers, searching for the comparable word in French.

“You have the gift to speak to the spirits, yes? You can make magic for them?”

Slowly his meaning dawned on Dianna. Her singing, that was it. Perhaps the Sun King’s opera would sound like magic to ears that had never heard it.

“Aye, I speak to them,” she answered boldly, her chin high, “and they listen to me, too.”

Mattasoit drew himself up confidently, but Dianna saw the fear come into his eyes now, too.

“What did you tell them, your spirits, your gods?”

“I told them about you.” Dianna Paused for emphasis.

“And I told them the truth.”

Mattasoit flicked his hand, and Quabaug scurried forward.

“We are within two days’ journey of a village, Anglaise,” he said with an un warrior-like nervousness.

“There your daughter will be well tended.

And she shall not walk further. Quabaug will carry her, and she shall have his blanket to warm herself.

You will tell all this to the gods, Anglaise ? You tell them so they will listen of Mattasoit and Quabaug?”

Dianna nodded.

“They will listen,” she said softly, and somehow, she thought they already had.

“You are right, Sparhawk,” said Attawan as he rejoined Kit.

“The worn and the child are within the village.”

, Kit swore and slam met his hand down hard on the ground in frustration. They had been so close, not more than half a day behind.

“Did you see them?

Are they well, unhurt?”

Attawan dropped the bag of cornmeal he’d traded for a Dutch knife, his excuse for visiting the village, and sat on the log beside Kit.

“The woman is well, but the girl has been ill with lung fever. They carried her here.” Kit shook his head, remembered the time they’d wasted. When Mercy’s footprints had changed first to moccasins and then disappeared completely, he had insisted they search the surrounding woods in case she had been abandoned. He owed that much and more to Torn Wing and to Asa, too. And to Tam-sin… And instead the Indians had carried Mercy. A simple explanation, really, for only one of a hundred small missteps. The fleeing Indians had not gone north toward Quebec as Kit had expected, but northwest, farther into the wilderness claimed by the French than he’d ever ventured before. The falling leaves had obscured the trail more effectively than snow, leaving only a bent branch here, an overturned stone there, to mark that any had passed before them.

The first little flag of Dianna’s torn skirt had seemed like a miracle, and when Kit had found enough to realize she’d done it intentionally, his admiration for her rose even higher. He’d saved each scrap like a talisman, a tattered reassurance that she still lived.

And now she was just ahead, beyond one more hill and one more stream.

“How many guards are there?” he demanded impatiently.

“Are they kept in a house or out of doors?

Is there–” “I didn’t judge it wise to be too inquisitive, Sparhawk.”

“Damn it, Attawan, I didn’t let you come along so you could pass judgment!”

“You did not ‘let’ me. I chose to come. If I weren’t here, you would now be bound and waiting for the village women to torture you.” Attawan slipped a finger inside his moccasin and scratched his heel, considering whether to take offense or not, :.

and decided once again to let Kit’s outburst pass. It was the ghosts that spoke, not his friend, and it was a good thing that he, Attawan, was here to protect Sparhawk from letting those ghosts steal the Englishman’s wits completely.

“You forget the Pennacooks have no love for things English, and that includes big buRR-heads like you.”

Kit sighed heavily and rested his hand on the Indian’s shoulder.

“Aye, bullheaded I am,” he admitted “and I couldn’t have come this far without you. But I want them back, Attawan. Tonight I will come with you, and together we’ll find them.”

Attawan nodded, satisfied by the words. He reached into his bag for his pipe and a flint, for despite Kit’s impatience, they would not be going anywhere until nightfall at the earliest.

“They are prisoners of a brave named Mattasoit, an Abenaki, not of this tribe. They don’t like having him here, but they fear him and let him stay. What is strange, Sparhawk, is how he treats this woman as a great prize, yet in your English village, she is only a slave.”

“A servant, Attawan, not a slave,” said Kit automatically.

“But you’re right, it makes no sense.”

Attawan shrugged.

“I and Mattasoit believes her to be a me’toulin, that she can speak with the gods.”

Kit stared in disbeliefl “What about Dianna Grey would make him think that? She is a Christian lady, not some kind of Abenaki witch!”

Attawan’s expression grew serious.

“Then hope Mattasoit doesn’t learn this Christian lady has lied to him. He would be dishonored, and he would beat her, maybe kill her, if others laugh at him. She would not be much good as a servant after that, Sparhawk.”

The smoke from Attawan’s pipe filled Kit’s nose, the tobacco’s familiar scent pungent and oddly comforting.

It was time Attawan knew the truth.

“She won’t be a servant when she returns to Plumstead,” he said softly, trying to blot out the image of Dianna’s being tortured by Mattasoit, and remember instead the way she laughed, her little cleft chin tipped back.

“If she’ll have me, Dianna Grey will be my wife.”

Attawan showed no surprise, and only nodded thoughtfully behind the haze of smoke.

“Then tonight we shall find your woman.”

Dianna and Mercy were given a small wigwam to themselves near the center of the village. Although Dianna realized that they had displaced the wigwam’s regular occupants only that they might be more carefully guarded, she still welcomed the privacy of the little house’s windowless walls of woven mats. Their only visitor was a stout, wary woman who never raised her eyes from the water and food she left on the floor before retreating backward out the deerskin flap that served as a door. And, of course, Mattasoit and Quabaug, who did not leave their post outside the doorway.

With a small fire in the center of the packed dirt floor, the house was pleasingly warm, and Dianna was relieved that Mercy’s breathing had eased and her sleep had grown more peaceful. Gently Dianna stroked the child’s hair if she stirred, and settled the blanket higher over her shoulders. Whenever Mercy woke, Dianna urged her to eat—fried cornmeal cakes, baked beans and small strips of roast moose.

The villagers had obviously offered them their best, but even their hospitality made Dianna uneasy. At Plnmqtead she’d heard many stories of Indian captivity, and not one of them had included Englishwomen as pampered guests in a village. But then none of the other captive women had been called a me’toulin, either.

In the afternoon of the second day, she waited until Mercy had fallen asleep again, and then drew back the deerskin to speak with Mattasoit. She had not realized how dim the house was until she stepped into the bright autumn sunlight and squinted, shading her eyes with her hand.

“Take yourself back inside, Anglaise,” ordered Mattasoit with a touch of his old arrogance. He had freshly painted his face, and there were more beads and feathers woven into his hair.

“It’s not fit that you show yourself.”

Dianna raised her chin imperiously, remembering the haughtiest of the dowager duchesses at court as good inspiration for an aspiring me’toulin.

“Clearly these people are not yours and this is not your village,” she said, declaring what was obvious even to her. These villagers bore little resemblance to Mattasoit, and were obviously timi dated by him.

“Why do we remain here with them when they are such lesser warriors?”

She could have sword he preened at the compliment.

“We wait here for the men who seek you.”

“What men are these?” she asked quickly, unable to keep the excitement from her voice. Maybe he meant the men who made and carried the ransom for captives. This would be as far as she and Mercy would have to travel before they could go home.

“The Frenchmen will come first,” he said, and Dianna’s hopes plummeted.

“Forty gold pieces the fat one offered me to take you. He wants you badly, that one.”

“What is the man’s name?” Somehow her voice remained calm, almost offhanded. She had been chosen, kidnapped by design. The fat Frenchman must be Robillard; no other knew of her. She remembered the coarse hunger in his face when he’d looked at her at Plamstead, and she knew Mattasoit was right.

Robillard did want her, and the certainty sickened her.

Mattasoit looked at her shrewdly.

“The spirits haven’t told you?”

Dianna returned his gaze levelly.

“I can only hear what they tell me, and they don’t bother to speak of fat Frenchmen.”

Mattasoit shrugged carelessly, and with his thumb wiped a smudge from the barrel of his musket.

“A

Frenchman. I know not his name, and it matters little to me if he brings his gold pieces. He’ll have you, and Quabaug shall have your daughter. Then shall come the Englishman.” He smiled, his teeth startling against the black warpaint.

“You are like a fawn, set out to tempt the big wolf to come before the hunters.”

Suddenly, horribly, she understood. She was the bait to trap Kit.

“He’s not coming,” she said too rapidly, fighting against the tightness in her chest.

“If he had followed us, he would have found us already.

Don’t you hear me? He’s not coming!”

“He will come, and he will die. You will go to the Frenchman, and your daughter will go to Quabaug’s sister.” Mattasoit’s smile faded, and he tapped three fingers together lightly on his lower lip.

“Listen to your spirits, me’toulin, and you will hear that all this is true.”

Dianna jerked back the deerskin and stumbled back into the little hOUse, the world swimming before her. Now that she knew Kit must not come for her, she was certain that he had. Somewhere, not far

?

away, he was waiting to try to steal her and Mercy back. He would die trying, and it would be her fault.

She needed no spirits to explain it. She balled her fingers into a fist and pressed it silently to her lips as if she could take back all the words she’d spoken to bring her to this place.

“What is it, Dianna?” asked Mercy, her face by the firelight still puffy with sleep.

“What has happened?”

Dianna took a deep breath, the effort sharp as a blade in her lungs.

“It’s nothing, lamb, nothing at all.”

But outside they heard the jingle of horses’ bridles and more voices in French, angry, agitated voices.

Dianna seized Mercy and drew her to her breast.

The man who thrust himself into the house was ruddy-faced above his noatly clipped beard and moustache, his chest as round and solid as a hogshead barrel and his legs bowed as if from the weight of his body. But what Dianna noticed first was the silver cross around his neck and the neat white collar above his dark cloak that marked the man for what he was: a minister, or more likely, since he seemed a Frenchman, a priest. Surely a man of God would help her escape!