Jamestown (The Keepers of the Ring) (52 page)

Without warning, a sharp crack shot through the wild hooting of the wind.
A weak branch from one of the leggy trees ripped loose and hurled from the sky overhead. Fallon instinctively flinched, but the branch cracked across his head and shoulders. He crumpled beneath the blow without a sound.

“
Fallon!” Gilda shrieked, crawling forward. He lay ten feet beyond the cave, as pale as snow but for a bright red trickle that ran from a cut on his forehead. She knelt beside him, feeling for the pulse of life at his throat, then clasped her hands together in an attitude of prayer. “Dear God, what more will you do to me?” she cried as the bawling winds mocked her. “Will you take even Fallon?”

As if in answer, rain began to fall, a dense slanting rush of thick drops that slapped sharp as a lance against her tender skin.
Weeping, she tried to drag Fallon into the shelter of the cave but the ground turned to mud beneath her feet and she did not have the strength to pull him through the mire. Finally, she managed to move one of the furs from the pile Fallon had dropped and covered him where he lay. Lifting his head into her lap, she held a lump of wet clay to the cut on his head. “I will not let you take this one,” she told the angry heaven as she used her arms to shelter him from the rain. “Not today. You can take my life, God, but you’ll not take his.”

A blast of cold air rushed from the east, and a howling gust lifted the heavy fur and tossed it down the hill as easily as if it had been made of summer linen.
Thoroughly soaked, Gilda lifted her face toward the roiling darkness above the slashing rain. “Take my life, now!” she shouted, lifting her clenched hands.

Deliberately ignoring all the polite and refined prayers she had learned from Edith Rolfe, she let the anger and venom in her heart pour out in the storm:
“You have made me suffer all my life. You took Pocahontas and the baby, you took Noshi. You covered me with boils and took whatever beauty I possessed. You made me an orphan and a widow. You made me neither Indian nor English. In this very hour you have struck Fallon and you’ll take him, too, so take me instead and be done with me! Kill me, God, for I’m tired of fighting with you!”

Lightning cracked the skies apart in answer, and thunder rumbled over the hillside while Gilda waited.
The storm continued to blow its foul winds and strangling rain, but no thunderbolt from heaven struck, nor did the slippery earth open up to devour her.

Fallon
’s head was heavy and cold in her lap, and she looked down at his wet and wounded face. Why had he ever come to find her? ‘Twould have been better if he had remained a respectable and prosperous schoolmaster in England. He had risked his life time after time on account of a promise made years ago and forgotten by everyone but himself.

“
And now you will die with me,” she whispered, her teeth clicking together in the cold. “And all is for naught.”

I sent him to save you.
The answer came like a voice in a sudden stillness and Gilda gasped as she recognized the simple truth. Why was she fighting with God? He had sent Fallon to save her life, and she had resisted his divine help in her time of greatest need. Of a sudden Gilda knew that God didn’t want her death. He wanted her life. Her surrender.

The muddy ground beneath her knees became the only solid reality in a shifting world and Gilda sat motionless as her heart absorbed the truth she had been too proud to understand.
She had mistook God’s blessings for curses, fortifying her heart in prideful resistance against every loss. Anakausuen had taken his own life rather than face the anguish of the pox. And she had yearned for death, too, holding herself aloof from God’s plan and provision for her deliverance.

The rain slackened, the winds calmed, and Gilda shifted automatically to shelter Fallon as her mind rifled through the memories of years past.
She had known about God for as long as she could remember. She had accepted his authority in nature and in the affairs of the English. But she had never surrendered her self will and pride to his molding hand. And oh, what a will she had! She winced as she thought of the occasions when she had glared defiantly at men who sought to command her life—first Opechancanough, then John Rolfe, Reverend Whitaker, Reverend Buck, Brody, and especially Fallon. Why, God had given Fallon a keen and abiding interest in her, and she had rejected him from the first day he had dared to display his love and protective concern.

Just as she had rejected God
’s care. She saw now, clearly, that never had she experienced a loss without a reciprocal gain. God had provided someone to care for her at each critical stage of her life, and she had been too proud and headstrong to acknowledge his sheltering hand.

She had prided herself on her healing gifts and noble sacrifices, but now her cheeks burned in shame when she considered how Fallon had watched over and cared for her even under the sting of her indifference and scorn.

The wind blew the remnants of rain from the trees, and Gilda looked up. Dawn was spreading a faintly pink light over the eastern horizon, and the rains had stopped. Beside her, Fallon stirred, and Gilda breathed a prayer of gratitude for his life.

Forty

F
allon groaned, conscious both of a dull pain in his head and the fact that he was freezing. His coat, shirt, and breeches were heavy with water, and mud pulled at his arm when he raised it to feel the knot throbbing under the hair plastered to his forehead.

He opened his eyes.
The sky was clear and blue above him, the trees black, wet, and still. The bearskin that covered him, though, was nearly dry, and he pushed it away and tried to sit up as his head swam.

He blinked unsteadily.
Gilda sat not far away, her face upturned toward the warmth of the rising sun. Her eyes were closed and her lips moved soundlessly as if she were praying, and he hesitated to disturb her. But the air snapped with cold, and her hair hung dark and wet down her back—

“
I will have to nurse you again if you do not stay warm, Gilda.”

Her eyes widened joyously at the sound of his voice, and she flew at him.
“Fallon,” she cried, wrapping her arms about his neck as she planted a happy kiss upon his cheek. “I’m so glad you are all right. I was afraid you’d die until I realized—”

“‘
Tis only a lump,” he said, grinning sheepishly as he wondered if he were dreaming. “I’ve had worse.”

“
I know.” Her smiled softened as if she knew a secret, and her arms relaxed on his shoulders. She was flesh and blood, in sooth, and no dream, but Fallon marveled at the change in her. Her eyes shone with peace and a quiet confidence, and she seemed infinitely softer than he had ever seen her before. Had illness wrought this change in her?

“
I tried to drag you into the cave,” she said, lowering her eyes modestly as she slipped her arms from him. “You should go there now, and mayhap we can light a fire to keep warm.”

He nodded, and struggled to his unsteady feet as she pulled the bearskin from him and followed him to the cavern.
The blow to his head had drained him more than he realized, for he fell upon her pile of furs as bright colors exploded in his brain and blocked his vision. “Mayhap the fire can wait,” he said, closing his eyes.

He felt her slide the bearskin over him, and after a moment, he opened his eyes again.
She stood before him, bedraggled, scarred, and thin, but her eyes glowed with inner fire as she watched him.

“
Y’are cold, too,” he said, turning onto his side and lifting the edge of the bearskin. “You will not get well if you do not stay warm.”

She did not resist his invitation, but snuggled against him, wrapping her arms about his waist.
He lowered the heavy fur over them both, then carefully positioned his free arm on top of the bearskin. When he heard her sigh contentedly, he wondered if her fever had returned and brought delirium with it.

“
Are you well?” he asked, placing his hand upon her forehead. “No fever?”

“
None,” she murmured happily, resting her forehead against his chin.

“
And no pain? No itching?”

“
None,” she said, tilting her head back to smile at him. “You have saved my life, Fallon Bailie.”

“
We are even then,” he said, trying to position his arm again so he would not inadvertently touch her in an inappropriate way. “You saved mine once, remember?”

“
I remember,” she said, tightening her grip around his waist. “But ‘tis I’ll who forever be in your debt. And according to the tradition of my tribe, you can adopt me, make me your slave, kill me, or send me away. But before you do aught, I want you to know—”

“
What?”

She smiled and ran her fingers to his cheek.
“I think I began to love you the moment I heard you singing at the torture pole, do you remember? I wondered what sort of Englishman would be brave enough to sing in the face of death. And the song itself seemed familiar in a way—”

“‘
Twas a song of Ocanahonan,” he murmured. “A hymn.”

She nodded.
“‘Twas then I knew I could not let you die. But I could not accept your story about my parents, and I could not stand the thought of someone to order and command my life.” She flushed and lowered her eyes. “I suppose Pocahontas and I were more than a little spoiled.”

“
So you hated me,” Fallon finished. “I knew you did, and I knew just as surely that you would be lost if you stayed under Opechancanough’s influence. His hate will devour him one day, and I feared it would consume you, too. When we were children, Gilda, he taunted me with the prediction that you and Noshi would worship heathen spirits, and that you would grow to forget the true God—”

“
His soul is sour with bitterness,” she said. “And though I would not admit it, I enjoyed life at Jamestown. Edith and I had become close friends while I lived at her house with Pocahontas, and I was secretly glad that you brought me out of the woods. But you kept trying to marry me to Brody, while hinting that you wanted an English bride—”

“
I never said such a thing,” Fallon interrupted, lightly pressing a finger across her lips.

“
Mayhap Brody put words in your mouth,” she allowed, smiling shyly. “But though I wanted to be close to you, you pulled away.”

“
I truly thought you’d be happier with Brody or Noshi.”

“
Nay.” She shook her head. “I wanted more than anything for you to want me as a wife, but you never said aught. And then when you opened the gate and allowed me to leave, I thought you’d never care.”

“
I cared more than you will ever know,” Fallon whispered, the memory of his hurt passing through him like an unwelcome chill. “And I hoped you’d choose to stay.”

She sighed, resting her forehead against his, and after a moment she spoke again:
“I tried to forget you. In everything, even in marrying a warrior, I tried. But God had other plans. And last night, when it appeared that I’d lose you forever, of a sudden I realized that with each trial of my life, I grew angrier at God. I’d be as sour and bitter as Opechancanough unless—”

“
Unless what?”

“
Unless I relinquished my pride. And in the rain and the storm I knelt and endured the sweet agony of surrender. ‘Twas the strangest feeling, Fallon; painful, because I was giving up my life, but wonderful because I could rest in the assurance that God would hold it for me—”

Her eyes were mirror brilliant, and she stopped as her chin
quivered. When she began to speak again, he was stunned by the sound of tears in her voice. “Know this, Fallon Bailie—I love you with all my heart and soul. God hath been good to send you to me.”

His heart reacted immediately to her gaze, and embers he had thought dead and buried burst into flame at the core of his being.
Long-suppressed emotions roughened his voice when he was finally able to speak. “I don’t need a child, or a slave, and I’ve worked too hard to preserve your life to take it now,” he said, a little in awe of the woman who filled his arms. “And I’ve sent you away one time too many. What other choices does a man of honor have when he saves a maiden’s life?”

“
Only one,” she whispered, her hands locking in his hair. He thought she would speak the words he longed to hear, but her gaze shifted and the light vanished from her eyes. She brought her hands down and covered them beneath the fur. “What?” he asked, sensing her distress.

“
I forgot.” She refused to look at him. “Oh, Fallon, must our battles leave us so scarred? If only I had given you my heart when I still had some measure of beauty—”

“
Think you that I care about
this
?” he asked, lifting her wounded hand in his. He pressed her palm against his cheek, parting her clenched fingers. “Or this?” He took her other hand and pressed it to his heart. “Your beauty hath always come from within, Gilda. Y’are caring and compassionate, warm and womanly. ‘Twas for you that God made me.”