This Side of Heaven (34 page)

Would he never be able to rise above the demon of lust that had plagued him all of his adult life? In his right mind, he would sooner cut off a hand than cause hurt to Caroline.

But his lust had been all the greater because he cared for her. Even as he had taken her, tenderness had combined with desire to ignite him to a pitch far hotter than he’d ever been.

Then Daniel had thrust his oar in to muddy the waters even more. He did not like to admit to feeling such raging jealousy for a brother he dearly loved.

The worst of it was, he knew full well that Caroline would be better off with Daniel. He would come to her unscarred in both body and spirit, able to accept her love and return it with no shadows of the past to fall over their life together.

While he—he was no more, and no less, than life had made him.

But he meant to have Caroline, if he had to crawl on
his hands and knees over sharp rocks to get to her—or knock his brother down again.

The boys were hungry, and he hurriedly got out bread, cheese, jam, and milk for them before heading out the door. If she had left those two to fend for themselves, then she must be very angry with him indeed.

Perhaps she did not intend to come back. The thought brought with it gut-wrenching pain. To hell with that, he told himself savagely, and fair knocked Rob and Thom down as they came in the rear door.

“Where are you going?” Astonished, they fell back before him.

“To fetch Caroline home,” he snarled. “Stay with the boys.”

They gaped at him, but before they could question or comment, he was gone.

With quick, angry strides he headed for the path through the woods. She would be at James’s house, of course.

It required some doing for him to rap at James’s door and inquire of Mary whether Caroline was within, because it occurred to him that someone, either Caroline herself or Daniel or James, had almost certainly told Mary at least a part of what had happened, and he hated her knowing so intimate a thing of him. But if her smile held a trace of teasing, and her eyes a touch of humor as she assured him that no, indeed, Caroline wasn’t within, the sense of her message quickly banished his embarrassment and her enjoyment of it.

Since Caroline was not with Mary, and was not at home, then where was she?

Mary, almost as worried now as he, assured him that Caroline had left for home—yes, Mary was sure that was where she was heading—some hours before. And no, she couldn’t have run off with Daniel (Matt had hated to broach the possibility, but he hadn’t been able to keep it from taking possession of his mind) because Daniel had gone with James to New London the day before.

As that last rage-provoking notion was removed, stark terror struck at Matt’s soul. He knew, better than most, the dangers that lurked in the woods. His first thought was of witches, but the coven met only in the darkest hours of the night and at certain phases of the moon. Caroline had disappeared in daylight, it seemed, so she couldn’t have fallen into the hands of those who had tried to claim her sister for their own.

Begging a lantern from Mary, Matt headed back to search the road from town and the path through the forest. As he went, holding the lantern high, forced to move with maddening slowness so that he wouldn’t miss what might be the smallest sign, he bethought himself of all the other things that could have happened to her.

She could have fallen and be lying unconscious somewhere. Perhaps he had passed right by her in his rush to get to town. She could have encountered a trapper, and the half-civilized brute could have borne her away to the Lord knew where. A mountain lion could have stalked her, a wolf could have made her its prey.…

But in the end, when he discovered the abandoned basket and musket, left where they had fallen by the side of the path not far into the woods, unmistakable signs pointed to a fate that had not even occurred to him.

Caroline had been stolen away by a band of Indians! Cold fear settled like a stone in his heart, and Matt set off at a dead run for home, praying for her safety as he went.

36

A
ll night and all the next day Caroline found herself pushed, prodded, and dragged as she was forced to keep pace with her captors’ seemingly tireless trot. They paused only briefly to eat, and not at all to sleep, conversing from time to time in what, to Caroline, were unintelligible sounds. When she stumbled for what must have been the dozenth time and they apparently realized that it was her long skirts that were making her so clumsy, they slashed her gown off at the knee. Sheer terror gripped Caroline as the blade hacked through the gray cotton skirt and white petticoat beneath. Visions of rape and murder danced hideously through her brain. But the knife never touched her flesh, and, savages though they were, they seemed to have little interest in her as a woman. With her legs bared from the knee down save for her white cotton stockings, they pulled the gag from her mouth, shoved a peculiar-tasting bread in her face, and held it, impatiently, while she ate. Then they gave her water from an oily-looking deerskin pouch, regagged her, and prodded her off again, following the course of the Connecticut River as it rolled away from the sea.

The river was wide and beautiful, with high grassy banks and a swift blue current in the middle. The forest
crowded to the very edge of the banks. Beneath the trees the heat was a mere memory. The air was not merely cool, but turning cold.

Flagging badly but afraid that if she collapsed, as her body threatened to do, they would slay her and leave her cooling corpse as food for the wolves, Caroline gritted her teeth, forced all thought from her mind, and set herself to matching as best she could their curiously silent gait. When at last the little band stopped, toward sunset of the day following her capture, Caroline sank to her knees with relief. Were she to have no sleep this night either, she would not be able to go on in the morn. And then what would happen to her? She shuddered to think.

Trilling birdcalls whistled back and forth through the trees. It took Caroline a few minutes to realize that the nearest of these emerged from the leader’s leathery throat. An answer, from somewhere no very great distance away, caused one of the braves to pull her to her feet and push her, stumbling, in the direction of the sound.

Like an army regiment escorting a prisoner, her captors closed ranks around her, and in this fashion they emerged through the trees into an Indian camp.

It was situated in a lush, well-guarded valley, at the side of a small deep-blue lake, though the term pond would have fit as well. Perhaps two dozen huts, unkempt pyramids of sticks and straw as scraggly as hayricks, composed the main of the village. Numerous small campfires dotted the enclave, while in its center a larger fire blazed. Squaws in shapeless, ragged garments turned from their cooking, incuriously, to eye
the approach of the small band. Children and dogs watched with a degree more interest, a few of the former ceasing their play to gather round and a few of the latter bracing themselves to bark a greeting.

Caroline was taken through the camp to the center fire. There a quartet of old men squatted, passing a feathered pipe back and forth among them. They looked up, their eyes as black as their coarse hair, as the newcomers stopped on the other side of the fire. The blade-faced leader walked forward, while one of the four men, the one who looked the oldest, rose, and the two exchanged greetings. Then the leader, who was tall, muscular, and, Caroline thought, fairly young, gestured, and another brave pulled her forward to shove her in front of the blanket-wrapped old man.

His skin was the color of red mahogany, his eyes, set in a nest of wrinkles, dark, liquid, and intelligent. For the rest, he perhaps just topped the warrior’s shoulder, and he seemed paunchy beneath the blanket. His nose was broad, his mouth no more than a slash in a face that was square and pitted and fearsome. Caroline felt a spurt of renewed fright as she realized that this was the chief and that her fate most likely rested in his hands.

He gestured. The gag was removed, and her hands were unbound. Caroline rubbed her wrists, ran her tongue along her dry lips, and waited for what would happen next.

The old man looked her up and down.

“You wise woman?” he asked. His English was guttural in tone, but understandable.

Caroline blinked. Whatever she had expected, it was
not to be addressed, perfectly rationally, in her own tongue. She opened her mouth to deny it, thought better of it, and nodded once. Almost holding her breath, she waited to discover if her answer to his question was the one he wanted.

“Good. It is as we have heard from our brothers who visit the white man’s village to trade. They told us that you held the Great Spirit of Death back from your man with your medicine. We have sickness here. You come.”

He turned, heading toward one of the huts. A shove in the small of her back left Caroline in no doubt that she was to follow.

As she ducked to enter, the odor of illness inside the hut almost made her recoil. A small fire burned in the center of the hut, its smoke rising to the sky through a tiny hole in the peaked roof, but also filling the interior with eye-stinging haze. Refuse cluttered the earth floor. A young woman crouching beside a pallet turned to stare at them as they approached. On the pallet another young woman lay inert, swathed in blankets to her chin. It was clear from first glance that the supine young woman was very ill.

“This fever has killed six so far in our tribe. Our medicine does not help. Finally we think, it is white man’s illness. We need white man’s medicine. You will help my daughter.”

Suddenly the reason for Caroline’s presence became clear. Relief made her light-headed for a second as she realized that they meant her no harm. As she looked down at the unconscious maiden, it occurred to her that she might not be able to do anything to help the
chief’s daughter. If that were the case, if the girl died, would she then be killed?

“I will try,” Caroline replied cautiously, and knelt beside the girl The other young woman moved aside to make room. The victim’s skin, when Caroline touched it lightly, was burning and dry. She seemed to have no awareness of anything at all.

“How long has she been like this?” Caroline asked the old man over her shoulder.

“Two days since. The others have all died in three.”

The kneeling girl said something to the old man, who translated for Caroline’s benefit.

“She has vomited, and has passed much waste matter that looks like rice water. My other daughter, Ninaran, says that her sister Pinochet is gravely ill.”

“I will do what I can,” Caroline promised.

For the next few hours, with the help of Ninaran, she labored to force liquids into the stricken girl. The Indians had few medicines that she recognized, but she did the best she could, and she thought that there was some slight improvement. Finally, when the fever rose so high that Caroline feared that it alone might kill Pinochet, she, with the help of Ninaran and two other women of the tribe, wrapped the girl in soaking blankets, just as she had done with Matt. And finally, as dawn streaked the sky, there was no doubt that the girl was better. Caroline thought, and said, that she would with careful nursing recover. What she kept to herself was the suspicion that no intervention of hers had turned the tide. God had selected this one to live, or the girl’s own body had refused to recognize its destined fate. Because, in the hours before the fever broke,
all Caroline’s healing skills had told her that Pinochet would die.

So tired that she could scarcely focus, Caroline was at last led away to a pallet and allowed to sleep. When she awoke, it was to find the day well advanced. There was a squaw in the hut with her, regarding her with bovine eyes, but the woman made no move to hinder her as Caroline unwound herself from the nest of blankets and walked to the door of the hut.

It was a gray day, amazingly cold considering the heat of the day before, and very still. With no one to stop her, Caroline left the hut to which she had been taken and made her way to the one she thought held Pinochet. She was right, she discovered as she entered, and after a few minutes’ check of the patient and a sign-language conversation with Ninaran, she left that hut in search of food.

As before, the three blanket-wrapped old men squatted before the center fire, passing their single pipe between them. A thick-waisted squaw stirred a pot suspended from a tripod, from which emanated a delicious smell. Her fear of the Indians having largely disappeared, Caroline headed toward the quartet and that enticing aroma.

She had just reached them when a horse and rider rode into the camp.

The rider was muffled up to his ears in a beaver coat, and a large black hat sitting low on his brow did much to conceal his face. Still, Caroline had no difficulty at all in recognizing him.

“Matt!” she cried joyfully, quite forgetting their
quarrel and everything else in her pleasure and relief at seeing him.

“Ah,” the old chief remarked knowledgeably, getting to his feet even as warriors surrounded Matt’s horse, “your man?”

Caroline nodded, and with the chief’s escort hurried toward the place where the young men of the tribe gathered, blocking Matt’s access to the camp. Matt appeared unarmed, and there were no drawn weapons among the braves that Caroline could see, but if anything went wrong the situation could turn ugly very swiftly.

The braves cleared a path for their chief, and Matt dismounted as they approached. His stance was stiff, his eyes wary, his mouth grim. His gaze ran swiftly over Caroline as she neared him, seemingly to assure himself that she was unharmed. Her welcoming smile must have reassured him because a degree of rigidity left his jaw. Nevertheless, his right hand snaked out to grip her arm hard and draw her close to his side.

“I am Habocum, sachem of the Corchaugs,” the old chief said to Matt. “You have come for your woman.”

It was a statement, not a question, but Matt nodded. “Yes.”

“She has done much good here. My youngest daughter was dying when she came, and your woman has restored to her the breath of life. We would gift her with many presents, except that we have been impoverished by the white man until we have little to give. But we give you, and her, our thanks.”